World before the Great War
Before the Great War[]
The Fashoda Incident forever began the slow drift in relations to hell between the British and French Empires. French politicians waved their armies in Africa alongside British West African Colonies while the Fleet screened the Channel Islands. The French leadership increasingly scowled at the British Empire deeming it would be French if Napoleon had won. France also became protective of its colonies in America. Large marine presences were in French Guiana, the Islands of Canada and in the French West Indies. Germany had a cool in relations with Britain showing Frances ever presence in militarism. France tighten its alliance with the Russians by 1905. The British signed a defensive pact with Belgium, however.
The Great War[]
On June 28th, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated by a Serb terrorist. Russia moved on Austria. Germany moved on Russia. And France in order to take the French Majority in Belgium, invaded the country to move on Northern Germany. This was the final straw for Britain. It joined the Central Powers with Germany and Austria. France moved swiftly through Belgium and captured the Belgian Border forts. To Russia, they had advanced into Austria but the Germans managed to stall the Russian before they hit Tannenberg. German forces advanced into Poland and took Warsaw by December 1914. The British in China and India quickly seized French embassies and Cities controlled in both areas.
In the Pacific British Marines secured French Polynesia while Australians secured New Caledonia. Other British marines left Georgetown in British Guiana and occupied French Guiana officially annexing it into British South America. Fighting also raged in Africa. British Nigerian reinforcements helped back up the defense of Kamerun. French forces attempted to take the Channel Islands. They only captured one. The British landed at Cherbourg after heavy shelling of the city. Japan had also made its move. Japanese soldiers had outright seized and annexed Hainan Island from French Influence. Other Japanese troops pushed into Manchuria and Vladivostok against Russia. Russia was forced to send more men to the east. In early 1915 Indochina, and Serbia fell. The Ottomans joined the War on the Central Powers side after the French attempted to seize a Ottoman battleship that was previously bought from Germany. German zeppelins in 1915 made their first runs over Paris. The French were defenseless. Other German airships flew as fair as Petrograd and Moscow to deliver payloads on factories. The Germans in the East pressed their advance taking Lithuania and Riga while beginning an advance on Minsk. Austrian and Bulgarian forces overran Montenegro and Albania while setting up a Pro-Central Powers Government against Franco-Serbian rule. German troops ultimately repelled French forces into Belgium and Luxembourg by September 1915 and forced whatever forces were in the Rhineland back into Alsace. In November 1915 Russia was retreating on all fronts. The weight of British and German naval forces duking it out in the Baltic while shelling Imperial cities made the Czar himself travel to the Front. 1916 was the main finally. The Liberation of Belgium had begun at a slow pace. As did the battle of Normandy. In the East the war was fluid. Austrian and German lancers advanced as far as the lads of the Cossacks. Ottoman forces began to press into Armenia and also had annexed Northwest Persia into the Empire. In March Russia had concluded a formal peace with Japan letting the Japanese annex the entirety of the two far east provinces and the Kuril Islands. CP troops in summer entered Kiev and Pskov. German naval marines had also from Captured Romania, landed in Georgia and begun a separate invasion there. The British launched the Breakout Offensive.
With new armored machines called landships, they had broken through the French lines and performed a breakout offensive. British airships and bombers began to pound Paris. German troops slogging through Wallonia reached Brussels. The landship proved the most decisive weapon of the war. France and Germany all began programs. Germany would get theirs, the A7-V at the tail end of the war. France got several armored boxes out but their were useless. The Battle of Paris was drawn out through the Winter. The city of lights and love faded into a apocalyptic warzone. German and Austrian soldiers had finally entered the Don-Kuban regions. On February 18th, 1917 Paris fell as did Brussels several days later. Petrograd fell on March 1st, and the evacuated French government in Lyons surrendered followed by Russia. The Great War was over.
Advancement in Technology[]
Meanwhile the French automobilist, Louie Renault sold his landship design to Ford who began production in Mid-1918 amidst the war in Mexico. US troops used the FLS-18 landships to breach Mexican revolutionary lines and restore order in the country. By 1920 Pancho Villa was gunned down by soldiers of Lieutenant General George Patton. Villa had been wounded by shrapnel from an artillery unit under the command of Captain Harry S. Truman. The US consulted a formal treaty with the Mexican government. In return for US aid to federal forces, the United States would receive Baja California from Mexico and trade regulations lifted as to allow American corporations into the country (especially the Sugar and fruit industry). By the later part of 1920 the whole of Central America effectively became a group of US puppets. The American Empire President Woodrow Wilson wanted to rid, came. He also was possibly regretting the bankers ties into the economy due to Wilson not signing the IRS bill in December 1913.
Map of 1920 after the Great War and the Mexican Civil War
The production of the FLS-18 was revolutionary. No landship had ever had a turret placed on top for 360 degrees firing radius. The arms race was on in the skies and on the land. The Germans to patrol their vast colonies and drop bombs on rebels made huge airships capable of firing cannons while the Americans perfect the Arkon class airships which launched aircraft. The Americans having reserves of Helium loaded their airships with that resource and not the flammable hydrogen the Europeans used. Britain focused less on the war side of the zeppelin and on commercial usage.
The Imperitor-class airship was launched in 1922 on its maiden flight from London to New York. The airship had the underbelly of the fuselage as a cabin where at least 300 passengers road. The Imperial Air Corporation essentially became a monopoly on all the other aircraft manufacturers. They however did have major competition in the warplane industry but were unrivaled in airships. The IAC bomber, the Type 1 crashed on takeoff due to sudden engine failure to its Hanley-Page counterpart performed greatly. In 1924 the Republicans in the White House once again ascended to the White House after the death of President Harding. Calvin Coolidge took office for his first true inaugural address.
The British Empire was also experiencing some changes. South Africa barely hammered by the Great War annexed the British colonies of Batusoland and Swaziland. But the major change was in East Africa. In early 1917, the British had proclaimed the Balfour Declaration opening a Jewish state in East Africa. Many Jews came to Kenya and Uganda and set of shop. Many colonial whites welcomed the Jews. Nairobi quickly became flooded with 16,000 migrants by 1923. By 1927 there was some 60,000 Jews living in British East Africa.
The World of 1928
Old Fires are Rekindled[]
France and Russia had been wallowing away in ruins after the Great War. Britain had occupied the entire Channel Coast while Germany had annexed the remainder of Alsace-Lorraine. Strings of violent left wing uprisings rattled the Fourth Republic and the Russian Republic set up after the war. New strongmen were coming into the spotlight. In 1925, Jacques Doriot of the Parti populaire de France or PFF quickly ascended to popularity. Doriot wanted to seek an end to the Jewish, aristocratic ways of France. Doriot was loyal to the Socialist Party but split into the PFF after the Socialists failed to straighten out the French Economy. Doriot as near head of the PFF. In a speech to the Party in a local Paris restaurant, he claimed the economic policy the PFF would follow, National Socialism.
In Russia, the Republic barely lived on. Daily riots in the streets of Tsaritsyn and Moscow threatened the stability of the country. The Military essentially held all power. The people were beginning to turn ever radical from the government of Antonin Denkin. Denkin increasingly ordered the army to fortify the Kremlin. Citizens were gunned down in the streets. A executive committee of workers leaders and revolutionaries inspired by the PFF. Formed the Russian National Socialist Party. Russian Blacksburg thugs then began roaming the streets taking command from Joseph Stalin. The RNSP rallied behind the Jew Leon Davidovich Trotsky. Trotsky was a proud National Socialist.
The RNSP grew greatly under his leadership and in the Duma. In the Russian election of 1935 the RNSP and Trotsky steeped into the Kremlin, destine to remake Russia. In France the next year Doriot and the PFF became the new leaders of an emerging France. One controversial thing about the RNSP was its symbol. The Swastika was used by many ancient religions. In 1937, it had become the official party symbol. The Swastika became a main symbol of national socialism everywhere. Many anglospheric National Socialists such as Mosley's BUF in Britain used it on modified versions of the Union Jack while keeping the Flash and Circle. French and Russian spending on their armed forces increased dramatically. In Russia, work began on the Object 149, or the worlds first walking tank. It would have a main turret with a few machine guns and a cannon, drivers pod, and legs.
In the start of the 1930s Brazil started its "Great Leap Forward" Program. Under the National Socialist Brazilian Integralist Party (NSBIP) began a large airship, naval and military program. In mid-1932 Brazil introduced the Salvacion-class airship. The zeppelin was Brazil's prime air transport vehicle and delivered passengers from São Paulo to Europe or America. They could even match in near flight range the IAC's Wanderer-class which carried King George V on his last voyage from Montreal to Sydney on a last grand tour of the Empire. In 1938 after his first real tour of India, the late King Edward VIII consulted Imperial Parliament, and after a year of fierce debate, granted India Dominion Status. Some theorized by 1970, British West Africa, Nigeria, and even Malaya or the British West Indies could become Dominions. If anything, King Edward was weary on granting Egypt independence and joining into and increasingly prevalent Ottoman Sphere of Influence. Brazil did increase its political power. Brazil had essentially pupated Uruguay in 1933 and bribed politicians in Bolivia. After Colombia fell into US influence Peru and Venezuela joined in. Ecuador was a side factor now wanting to be pulled into the American Sphere. Relations with Argentina boiled over to Argentina signing a defensive pact with the US.
Other American interests concluded with Paraguay and Chile in 1937 joining what President Alf Landon called, was the Monroe Pact.
British colonies in East and South Central Africa. There by 1945 was 90,000 in The Rhodesia's and Nyasaland, and some 400,000 Jews in East Africa. Five years later there was 110,000 in Rhodesia, and with heavy emigration out of Russia and Anti-Semitic National Socialist France some 700,000 in Nairobi. On June 1st, 1945, a convening of the Commonwealth Parliament in London, granted Kenya, and Uganda, as the Dominion of East Africa. President Henry Wallace who was elected in 1940 sought to contain the spread of National Socialism in America. Paraguayan PNSP members were chased into Brazil and the renowned Castro Brothers of Cuba tracked down and handed Felgenico Batista over to local American troops. In Rhodesia, a large population surge left the sitting population at 330,000 people. The Parliament intervened, and Rhodesia was granted Dominionship by 1949. In 1950 the "Free World" and the Paris-Moscow-Rio Pact were on the brink. US President Harold Stassen in January 1951 delivered a speech to the US congress declaring "Those who seek to replace Liberty and Freedom with a totalitarian idea that we can only call hateful and evil. This idea of as the former governor of Louisiana whos name I shall not mention, will share the wealth in the time of eradicating the upper class, and eradicating the states which support it. The United States and her allies must not back down to aggressors, who's only ambition is that to kill us. That's why I have already signed an executive order rearming the United States Armed Forces and putting funds into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Association. It would be five months after that speech, that the Second Great War would begin.
In July of 1951 Jacques Doriot and his Russian counterpart Leon Trotsky began to demand territory from Germany and Britain. Doriot demanded Frances old colonies in Africa and the Pacific be handed back, and Russia demanded total annexation of all puppet states the Central Powers set up. Brazil began extraditing US services and corporations from itself, and its puppets. Rio demanded the US withdraw from South America entirely. President Stassen despite protest ordered a road to be build through the Darien Gap in Panama. Russia unveiled its walking tanks. Krupp and Ford immediately began rushing for Allied walker designs. French airships appeared as far as Madagascar to enforce Doriot's demands. The Allied Powers refused.
On August 1st, 1951, French landships crossed into Alsace-Lorraine, while Russian troops stormed the Cossack and Kuban Republics. World War II was on.
World At War[]
The French under Marshall Robert Neville advanced across the German border and into Belgium as well. The French tactic of Guerre de foudre (known as Lighting Warfare), French troops punched through the heart of allied lines. By the end of August or 1951 all of Belgium and part of the Netherlands along with 90% of Alsace-Lorraine was under French control. In the east Russian troops occupied the Cossacks and Kuban while its mountain forces held back Georgian and Ottoman forces in the south. The Germans mobilized their puppet state armies but lacked a lot of regular and heavy equipment. In Ukraine, the Ukrainian army mutinied under the leadership of Pavlo Shandruk and stood beside Russian soldiers as they marched into Byelorussia. In the north, the Finish army was cut off by land after Russian troops captured the northern part of the Republic of Pskov.
In the skies above the English channel, Anglo-French airships and aircraft clashed in the bloody Battle Over Britain. French battleships such as the Richelieu fought head on with George V and Rodney. French marine raiders sunk tons of goods heading from Canada and the United States to the Isles. The US later abandoned the Convoy system in favor for Air Trafficking. US zeppelins hogged the skies over the north Atlantic protected by Anglo-US Aircraft Carriers.
In South America, the Brazilians struck hard against Argentina. Bolivian and Peruvian troops crossed into Chile. Whatever American troops stationed in the far reaches of South America joined the fight. US and Central American troops flooded Colombia. Panamanian troops were more hesitant but were forced by the Americans. From permission from the Dutch government-in-exile and the British government in the region, US troops, aircraft, and boats were stationed in Guiana. Brazilian troops could barely advance though the territories. As Brazilian,Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, Peruvian forces closed in on Bogota, President Stassen order Operation Tropical Thunder, the heavy bombardment of enemy lines and cities with bomb. US B-17s and B-29's took off from airbases In Panama and northern Colombia to meet the threat head on. Precious B-36 Peacemaker bombers flew missions all the way from Cuba to hit Caracas.
In Africa the French had continued their lightning attack strategy. French forces striking from Niger and Volta bolted into the Allied West African colonies. French Colonials and FFL soldiers marched into Liberia, Sierra Leone, the "Golden Ivoral Coast", and Togoland. Throughout 1951 Nigeria would be the Allies only stand in West Africa. In southern Tchad the French also encountered light resistance besides aeriel. French troops finally met real German resistance in Northern Kamerun. Ever more Rhodesian, South African, and East African troops poured into the German colony of Greater Kamerun. Whatever East African soldier the French found was shot. The French did not tolerate Jews and show every one.
In the East the Russians had invaded Byelorussia in December. The Russian forces were however halted in the Priyat Swamps and on blown roads to Minsk. The Russians also stalled on the road to Helsinki. The Finish General Gustav Mannerheim with low numbers of supplies and men waged one of the most successful Guerrilla Warfare campaigns during the winter of 1951-52. Receiving Supplies from British airships secretly flying through Norwegian and Swedish airspace undetected. Finish forces behind the front lines rebuilt their stocks of weapons and ammunition. Russian airships did the occasional raid but Finish Me-109's and Fochewulf-109s shot down many, whose wrecks were used in anti-landship and anti-walker obstacles. In the Caucasus Russian troops finally took Tbilisi. Other Russian forces were in Afghanistan trying to invade India. The full brunt of the Indian army was focused on its Northwest. In response to the heavy resistance Russia began a large bomber campaign over northern Indian cities. Russian troops also quickly invaded and seized Persia and its crucial oil fields.
The Brazilians and their allies had also in some areas run out of steam by March 1952. Brazilian and Uruguayan troops had failed to breach the Plata Line. Brazil if anything lacked important walker technology Russia had developed. Brazil also lacked large numbers of airships. Brazilian and its allied forces were still bogged down in a now surrounded Bogota and in north central Argentina. By Mid-Spring of 1952 the United States had finally developed the M-1 Bulldog, the United States first walking landship.
French forces continued their advance in Europe and captured the Netherlands finally. Other French Forces also drove into the Rhineland in Spring 1952 advancing on Bonn and Cologne. British Commonwealth forces began to amass in Britain itself. The Canadian corps in Early-April launched a large raid on Antwerp, Belgium. It was mainly successful but there were casualties. France began Operation: Norman, the prepping of defenses along the French coast for a British invasion. German forces under Erwin Rommel in Kamerun finally in Summer began to drive the French back. French forces into the Summer of 1952 finally captured the Rhineland. In another stunning victory French forces crossed parts of the Rhine into old Germany past Alsace-Lorraine.