Chapter 386: The Iron Curtain
"From Stettin in the Baltic to the Danube Delta on the Black Sea an 'Iron Curtain' has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie the great cities of Central and Eastern Europe and our Reich. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Kiev."
-Franz von Papen
Constantinople - January 1945
A light rain fell over Mese Street. The once great street in the Queen of Cities was but a shadow of its former self. Rubble still covered the sidewalks, and water-filled craters dotted the middle of the street, interrupting the beautiful cobblestone patterns and causing traffic jams as cars slowed down to get around them. Streetlights flickered on and off at the sides of the street. Many of the beautiful and ancient buildings lining the street had been destroyed and reduced to rubble. Four years since the last major bombing wasn't enough time to restore the street to its former glory, as most of the architects, engineers, and workers had been sent off to the front. Hardly anybody walked along the sidewalk on account of its severe damage. Johann von Neumann didn't care, though. As his black trenchcoat flapped behind him, he trudged down the street on his daily walk, lost in thought.
The war was finally over, he realized. And yet there were no organized celebrations in the major cities. No parades, no triumphs, no speech by the Kaiser...the day just passed with only a few sporadic celebrations in the west. Neumann wondered if it really was a victory. Most of the Reich's cities were destroyed. Millions were dead. Millions more lived under Soviet occupation. And the Soviets had stolen his work and used it to kill his own people. To know he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and the destruction of three entire cities...it was unbearable, even for a man like him. He'd tried to hand in his resignation to the Kaiser, but it was denied. He had to keep working on building more of those infernal devices, which would be used to kill more innocents.
Other scientists apparently didn't feel the same way. A few days ago, he had read in the newspaper that the first practical helicopter design had just been approved for use by the Kaiserliche Luftwaffe. But it probably wouldn't see any action anytime soon. It had been approved just six days after the war had "ended."
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As for Development of Substitute Materials, the Kaiser had ordered it to continue its work with what it had. While the NKVD and Rosenberg had set them back significantly, Spitz sent him reports saying that he had salvaged a significant amount of their research. However, it would be years before they could get back to where they were six months ago. But Neumann wasn't sure he wanted to go back to Development of Substitute Materials. His work had already caused so much destruction. Was he willing to cause more chaos?
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Sarajevo - March 1945
Mihailo Princip stepped off the bus at his stop, thanking the driver and handing him another mark. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked down the dusty street, stepping around the pieces of debris lying across the sidewalk. Sarajevo had probably suffered the worst of any Reich city in the war. Every major building in downtown was destroyed, and the streets were barely clear enough for people to walk. Nobody had time to rebuild anything. Everybody was off fighting on the front, and the scale of the damage meant they had to wait until peacetime to begin truly rebuilding Sarajevo.
A newspaper, probably
Die Zeiten, lay on a nearby bench. The front page talked at length about the Soviets' deromanization program and their first target: Taurica. All place names in the province had been changed to Russian, and traditional provincial borders and divisions had been abolished and redrawn. Use of German and Greek anywhere was banned, and Russian language and culture was promoted. Many Romans there chose to flee the province, but many died in the process. The Soviets simply seized the homes of those who left and gave them to Russian settlers.
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That cowardly Papen didn't seem to be protesting this, Mihailo thought. While he was sure the Kaiser had sent many strongly worded letters to Kiev, he doubted that the government would get anything done. He doubted that the government could do anything about the Soviets' Anti-Romanism with the military and the economy in such a bad shape. All Papen had done so far was order a transition back to a full civilian economy and demobilize the troops.
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Mihailo had been discharged as soon as possible from the Indian peacekeeping force and sent back on the first ship from India. They had said he was a hero. He didn't feel like a hero. Millions of people were dead and another few million had their homes destroyed. He was just lucky to have survived this long. Slobodan wasn't so lucky. He'd been killed by a Chinese mortar in the Battle of Rapar...one of them. He didn't know which battle it was, but he was told Slobodan died there. They also said he was a hero. A hero for doing what? Dying?
And what about his old friend, Demetrios? As soon as he landed in Illyria again he sent off a letter to Constantinople, hoping to reconnect with his friend. All he got was a call from Demetrios's brother, saying he had been killed in the Battle of the Bulge. They hadn't found his body yet. They probably would never find it. The cities over in northern and eastern Illyria were even worse off than Sarajevo, and the land they stood on had been bombed down to bedrock in some places. For some reason, he felt glad that his ship had been torpedoed in the middle of the Mediterranean. He could only imagine the slaughter that Hugo Doukas had to deal with.
All he had left was his family now. As he stepped through the door of his old house (which miraculously was still intact), he was relieved to see his mother still alive, sitting by the fireplace.
Nat Milosevos looked in his direction, and her eyes widened. "Mihailo?" she said, not believing her eyes.
"Mom," said Mihailo, hugging her, "I'm back."
"Thank God you're alive!" she cried. "I was so worried about you!"
Mihailo barely held back his own tears. He was so glad to be home again, to be with his family again...
"Wait a minute," he said, "Where's dad?"
Nat's smile disappeared. "Your dad..." she began. "I don't know. Three years ago he just packed up, got in the car, and drove away. He said he was headed to Vienna for something. It was probably something important for the angel."
"And he hasn't come back yet?"
Nat shook her head. "In three years, not a word from him."
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While the world had returned to peace, it hadn't really calmed down at all. Despite record economic growth in the mainland, non-Chinese nationalist movements, bolstered by the chaos of the war, grew even more powerful, and Chiang was having a hard time keeping a lid on the tensions in the colonies. After a string of Seri Thai bombings in northern Siam, he was forced to organize the Siamese provinces under a semiautonomous kingdom to prevent outright revolution. In the Eimericas, the Commune of Michigan came to an agreement with the various CSA equalist factions. Michigan would help organize an independent but equalist CSA, led by the prominent equalist demagogue Ousabe Wyota Witko, who had demonstrated time and again his talent of uniting the various peoples of the south, whether through charm or force. Meanwhile, a workers' strike broke out in Yucatec when the government failed to keep its promises of equalizing the economy. Various trade unions staged peaceful protests in the streets of the capital, Havana, demanding better rights. The Yucatecan government simply sent in the troops and crushed the protesters with force.
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In early April, the next step in deromanization began with the Soviets focusing on the former Provincia Carpathia. On the 4th of April, the Soviets organized a referendum that would pass a new constitution which would declare Carpathia's independence from the Reich and set up an equalist government. However, despite significant rigging of the votes and harassment of the opposition, the referendum still failed, with the equalists taking only 17% of the votes. Frustrated by this defeat, the Red Army launched a coup the next day, formally abolished the Arpad viceroyalty, and declared the independence of the Carpathian People's Republic. An immediate crackdown on the use of German ensued, with the Soviets promoting the use of Hungarian and suppressing everything that worked against the formation of a Hungarian national identity. Carpathia and its people were to be returned to their Hungarian roots and freed of Roman oppression, but it appeared that the Soviets would only substitute Roman "oppression" with their own.
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Flag of the Carpathian People's Republic
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In India, several Gurapu officers who refused to accept the nation's capitulation to the Reich launched an insurrection in the south. They were quickly put down with minimal casualties, but the uprising inspired some pro-Angeloi riots in the former Angeloi provinces, forcing the General Staff to reconsider its occupation policy. Martial law remained in place in Gallia and Germania, the two provinces where Angeloi support remained strongest, and the legions were deployed to maintain order. Surprisingly, during one such operation to crush pro-Angeloi insurgents one legion found Hindenburg's body, as well as the bodies of his wife and two Renaissance-era Kaisers. Until that point, the General Staff feared that Hindenburg's body, buried in East Prussia, was in the hands of the Soviets, but now they were relieved the Angeloi had evacuated the body to the west. Two days later, the legions also recovered the Holy Crown of Carpathia, the medieval crown with which old Arpad monarchs and a few early Kaisers were crowned.
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The subject of the occupation of the Angeloi provinces wasn't the only thing they had to worry about. With the famine in Frisia only growing worse, Ludendorff authorized plans for Operation Manna to begin. Dozens of Kaiserliche Luftwaffe bomber squadrons took off from airfields in Gallia and Britannia and airlifted food and other supplies into inaccessible parts of Frisia. On the ground, soldiers drove through villages, handing out more food to starving citizens. The idea was for people to gather and redistribute the food, but some could not resist eating straight away, which caused some people to get sick and vomit, (and some died) a result that fatty food can have in starved bodies. On the other hand, distribution sometimes took as long as ten days, resulting in some getting the food only after the liberation. Nevertheless, many lives were saved, and it gave hope and the feeling that the war would soon be over.
Three aircraft were lost: two in a collision and one due to engine fire. A few that returned had bullet holes on them, presumably having been fired upon by Angeloi holdouts.
Operation Manna
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The same day that Operation Manna began and the famine began to subside, the remaining Axis holdouts in Asia, mostly Iranian and Indian troops hiding away in the mountains and deserts of Turkestan, unconditionally surrendered to Chinese and Roman forces. This mass surrender prompted what remained of the Iranian government to formally demand the withdrawal of Chinese and Roman troops from Persia, but nobody paid attention to this demand.
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As summer began, the Soviets began the next stage in deromanization. This time, they targeted Bohemia and Slovakia. In April, the Red Army had installed several pro-Soviet democratic governments in both Bohemia and Slovakia, which then abolished all local monarchies and declared themselves the independent Republic of Bohemia-Slovakia. However, Molotov thought that this new government didn't go far enough in equalizing Bohemian and Slovakian society (and he disapproved of the name Bohemia-Slovakia, instead preferring Bohemia-Moravia). In May, he ordered the Red Army to launch another coup against the government in Prague, which was completed in just one day. The government was forced to dissolve itself, and the new equalist-dominated government declared the independence of the Socialist Republic of Bohemia-Slovakia (the name would change to Bohemia-Moravia in 1946).
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Flag of the Bohemia-Moravian Socialist Republic
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The next day, the Soviets also pushed through a referendum in Provincia Polonia. This referendum dealt with several issues. First, it abolished the Provincial Diet of Polonia and deposed the Polish monarch, replacing them with a Soviet-style politburo. Second, it implemented sweeping land reform, seizing land from large landowners, industrialists, and nobles and granting them to the tenants. Finally, it defined the western border of the new People's Republic of Poland as the Oder-Niesse line. All three questions (hence the referendum's name of "Three Times Yes") passed with 99% of voters in favor, and the equalists proclaimed the independence of the People's Republic of Poland from the Reich.
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Meanwhile, the Reich also went through some of its own reforms. First, the General Staff's current occupation policy was quickly falling apart. As a result, Ludendorff ordered the creation of a new occupation administration that would both maintain order and eradicate all Angeloi influence in the Reich for good. This administration, centered in Vienna, was called the Imperial Control Council.
Headquarters of the ICC
On 14 June 1945, the Control Council constituted itself and issued its first proclamation, which informed the people of Germania and Gallia of the Council's existence and asserted that the commands and directives issued by the General Staff were not affected by the establishment of the Council. The Council was made up of several prominent generals, among them Hugo Doukas, Friedrich de Normandie, Gustav von Anhalt, and Jacob von Bulow. They would issue laws and orders independent from the General Staff or the civilian government, though the Kaiser could override their decrees at will.
Subsequently, the Control Council issued a substantial number of laws, directives, orders, and proclamations. They dealt with the abolition of Angeloi laws and organisations, deradicalization, deangelification, but also with such comparatively pedestrian matters as telephone tariffs and the combat of venereal diseases. On many issues the council was unable to impose its resolutions, and the council issued recommendations that did not have the force of law.
The Kaiser was also concerned about the Council of Nations. This international governing body had completely failed to stop the war, and nobody, not even the Reich itself, even listened to its decrees. But Otto didn't want to abolish this governing body. On the other hand, he wanted to reform it and make it stronger so that it wouldn't repeat the same mistakes that led to this war and become truly effective at keeping the peace. On the 14th of June, the same day that the ICC was organized, he formally sent out invitations to heads of state from around the world (including Molotov but not his puppet governments) to meet in Vienna, where the Concert of Eurasia was established, to discuss the creation of a new and improved international organization. All of them, including Molotov, responded positively and immediately made their way to Vienna, where they met in Schonbrunn Palace to work on a charter for this new organization. It took them just twelve days to agree on a charter, which was promulgated on the 26th of June as the Charter of the United Nations (also known as the Treaty of Vienna). The nations represented at the Vienna conference ratified the charter the same day, but the charter wouldn't go into effect until the governments of the Reich, China, and the Soviet Commune ratified it. The first meeting of this new "United Nations" was planned to begin on the 1st of January, 1946, in Constantinople. The headquarters of the United Nations would be in Vienna, with secondary headquarters in Nanjing and Delhi planned. Otto hoped that the United Nations would be more effective than the Council of Nations.
Tentative symbol of the United Nations, decided upon at the Conference of Vienna
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Good news arrived out of Norway the next month when Vidkun Quisling and his few remaining supporters emerged from the wilderness of northern Norway and surrendered to Reich occupation authorities. He and the senior officials who were with him would be extradited to the Reich and put on trial for war crimes. News of Quisling's surrender spread quickly, and tensions in occupied Norway died down as the few remaining pro-Quisling insurgents also surrendered. King Gnupa II and his family returned to Noregr a week later and were met with cheering crowds. Otto planned to end the occupation and return self-government to the Kanatans at the end of the year. The Danes would also be granted self-governance at the same time, though he refused to grant the two realms unification.
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The first trials for Axis war criminals began on the 23rd of July with the trial of the former Field Marshal Phillip Petain, who had defected to the Angeloi at the start of the war. Petain had been a hero in the first war, being nicknamed the Lion of Manaus (a jab at Ludendorff's nickname as the Hero of Vilnius). He had been highly decorated after the war and achieved the rank of field marshal, becoming one of the Reich's oldest generals. However, in 1939 his home province of Gallia defected to the Angeloi, and he sided with Angelos. Angelos appointed him as the military governor of Gallia from 1940 to 1944. After the capitulation of the Angeloi and the end of the war, Petain turned himself in to Reich authorities. He pleaded guilty to the charges of treason in an emotional speech that was broadcasted over radio to the rest of the Reich. The speech touched the Kaiser, who decided to show mercy to the former war hero. The tribunal spared him the death penalty (which by then was reserved only for traitors and other special cases) and instead stripped him of all of his titles, ranks, and awards. He was given life in prison with no chance of rehabilitation, though the Kaiser ordered that his sentence be commuted to house arrest a few years later. Petain died in disgrace in 1951, his career ruined and his honors revoked. The Lion of the Amazon had been stripped of his kingdom.
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Petain's trial was a warning to the rest of the Reich of the fate that awaited the rest of the Axis leaders. The Kaiser had shown mercy for Petain only because of his service in the previous war. He would not show mercy for the other war criminals, and he certainly wouldn't waive the death penalty for many of them. He had to show his strength as a leader, both to his people and to the Soviets.
Even as the governments of the world met in Vienna to work on reforming the Council of Nations, darkness was falling again. An Iron Curtain was descending across Europe, and Otto had to act fast before it engulfed the rest of the Reich.
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Before anybody asks, those borders are not final (as are the names). They will likely change in the conversion to NWO (if I can get the mod to work again). The rest of the Warsaw Pact (Romania) will be dealt with in a future update.
2. No, the Aisin Gioros have protected status and will not be killed off. And they're quite irrelevant anyways, so I have no reason to kill them all.
3. *Soviet anthem intensifies*
I'll explain in another update.
Again, I will explain later.
No Muslim state. I don't know how to implement it in a realistic way that doesn't offend anybody, both real and in-universe.
Once I get into NWO, they won't be incompetent anymore.
Well, blame the AI for not knowing how to use boats better (aside from that invasion of South Eimerica). And I actually intended for Iran to be this timeline's Italy, but they were surprisingly more competent at resisting the Reich than the Indians. Silly AI.
