A Recruitment poster for the war against the Union of Britain aimed at British exiles living in the various Dominions.
It's a cold night. The moonlight and the waves against the ship's bow produce what for most would be an almost peaceful mood. Oswald Mosley is anything but in a peaceful mood. Aboard the battleship RNS Republican, Oswald Mosley, General Secretary of the Union of Britain, stands on deck. Breathing in the cold night air he seethes with anger and rage. He is aboard one of the few remaining capital ships of the now defunct Republican Navy, as well as the fleet's flagship at the time of the surrender. RNS Rebecca, the former flagship, lay at the bottom of the English Channel, having been sunk by shells from HMS Warspite.
It had been four months since the first sirens wailed, warning the Union that forces of the King Emperor had landed in Wales and that aerial troops had taken Inverness. It had been two months since London had fallen, the Worker's Palace destroyed, and the TUC Headquarters leveled.
It had been two weeks since Arthur Horner, the Chairman of the Union of Britain had signed the Treaty of London, ordering all forces to stand down and ending the Union officially. Some listened. Annie Kenney's Congregationalists, the anti-war faction, had already thrown their arms following the fall of Birmingham and the sinking of five Union Battleships and the remaining three carriers. All within one week. That bitch.... thought Mosley, I should have had her and her entire faction executed after that speech she gave.... Accommodation with the Royalists? Pff.. Language of a traitor. Another traitor, Niclas y Glais, the Celtic nationalist and poet, led his Welsh and Scottish followers to surrender at Edinburgh following its encirclement.
Mosley's Maximists refused, seeing Horner's order of surrender as both illegitimate and illegal. The actions of a traitor to both Syndicalism and Totalism. That night, following the treaty's signing, they took into their possession, RNS Republican and alongside a small flotilla based in Manchester, the last major port to lie in Union hands, fled through the Irish Sea on route to somewhere in the Atlantic, where Soviet representatives were to meet them and offer them sanctuary. The comrades in Russia, the Soviets, had wholeheartedly adopted Totalism, and were in his mind, a redoubt from where Totalism could reemerge after being strengthened and made ready for a return to the land of it's birth. This is not the end, but merely the end of the beginning. "I came through and I shall return." said Mosley. There was no one to hear him, but he believed it nonetheless. His words echoed against the waves deep into the night.
Background
The German behemoth, the engine of the Mittleuropan structure, was in crisis in the West. Faced with an armoured blitzkrieg orchestrated by the Commune that struck deep into the Reich, the Germans and their allies threw everything they had to blunt the Commune's attack, suffering enormous numbers of casualties as a result. Successful as they were in blunting the French assault on Frankfurt, they still continued to lose ground to the hated Syndies. While the Titans clashed in Europe, the other power centers made their moves.
The Entente, a British and Canadian dominated organization, since the Great French Betrayal of 1940, invaded the Union of Britain from bases in Ireland. Quickly overcoming the almost militia like structure of the Republican Army, Canadian armored spearheads swept down into England proper, cutting off and encircling vast numbers of Republican troops. The Republican army had no counter to the armored tanks which they faced.
Southern Front and the Catholic League
Pictured: Francis Xavier de Bourón-Parma, King of Spain and the founder and leader of the Catholic League
Further action was seen in the South of Europe, where the newly formed Catholic League leapt into action. The formation of the Catholic League in 1940, saw the joining together of National France, Carlist Spain, Portugal, and the Italian Federation into an economic and military Bloc, opposed both to Syndicalism and Communism as well as Socialism and even Liberalism. This new Catholic League struck in 1941, with National French and Spanish forces attacking across the Pyrenees while Italian forces supported by a Portuguese expeditionary force attacked across the Alps and into the South of Italy, against the Commune’s ally the Naples based Socialist Republic of Italy. The French and Spanish drove deep into the Commune, with National France returning to the mainland at Marseilles, to once again govern from France proper. The Italians and Portuguese were not so lucky. Their attacks were driven back by outnumbered Commune Forces, which reached the outskirts of Milan and even threatened the de facto capital of Firenze. The Socialist Italian forces meanwhile overran Rome and almost managed to link up with their Commune allies. Only timely arrival of National French and Spanish forces saved the beleaguered Italians, averting a full scale collapse of the Italian army.
The French invasion of Sicily marked the beginning of the end for the Socialist Republic of Italy and the end of the Internationale.
This intervention by the Catholic League, saved Mitleuropa from destruction. The increasingly confident advance of their brethren from Algiers supported by Spanish reactionaries and Papal serfs left the Comune unable to further prosecute their war against the desperate German defenders. Indeed, the Commune slowly lost ground in both directions. With Metz falling first followed by the complete collapse of the French 1st and 2nd Armies, leaving the road to Paris open to German forces. Who gleefully took full advantage of the Commune’s collapse. Looting and worse were commonplace after the desperate position their army had been in at the hands of the Commune. French political officers, noted Syndicalists, as well as German Syndicalist collaborators were all shot on sight.
When National French forces met German forces at Vichy, and an agreement, the treaty of Vichy, was hammered out. The National French would retain control of Southern France while the Germans would occupy the North. In the face of superior German numbers, the National French and the rest of the Catholic League agreed. France was then split between the French Republic based out of Marseilles, headed by Marshal Petain, and the Kingdom of France, a German puppet in the North, based out of Paris and led by the German Prince August Wilhelm, who restyled himself as Francois III.
Following the Partition of France in late 1941, the full attention of the Catholic League fell upon the Socialist Republic of Italy, which fell quickly to the well trained French forces diverted to deal with the last vestige of the International in Western Europe. Like in the case of the Union of Britain, high ranking members of the Commune of France and the Socialist Republic of Italy escaped to Brazil or to Soviet Russia aboard the remnants of their fleets.
Benito Mussolini, political agitator and proponent of Italian Totalism, in exile in Petrograd.
Next Update : The Situation in Asia and the Americas
Attachments
Last edited:
- 2
