My first bigger TL project. The style is like the Reverse Cold War, but events have folded, are folding, and will fold out very different.
This will not be the most plausible TL, so do not tar and feather me for that. Neither will it be the most well-written TL. Just a "rule-of-cool" TL of mine where events transpire somewhat plausibly at least. I will try to steer clear of real ASBs. No aliens, no time travel, no FTL, no ISOTs, but also no Operation Sealion. Nearly everything else is... free game!
The POD is that, shortly before and during WWI, the Pan-Scandinavist movement becomes popular again as Sweden is allying with the Central Powers. For anybody who wants a more specific POD, Karl Liebknecht discovers the Baha'i religion in the 1900s and converts to this faith by 1913. By this move, *Communism is no longer strictly atheist, but can also be Baha'i. ANd it is guaranteed by this that all *commie countries grant freedom of religion.
But the butterflies really fly at the end and after World War I... and they fly to the left! World War I does not start over the assassination, but some other minor crisis in the Balkans, and lasts until 1917 instead of 1918. During spring and finally summer of 1917, the Entente totally collapses. Armies mutiny and soldiers defect regularly, the population starves and turns to revolution (as in Russia) or desperate measures like looting, as is common in Britain, munitions and weapons go low,... Just a total collapse of the Entente. And since the US is unable and also unwilling to help, the Entente has thus lost the war.
So, without much ado, the first update.
“Hiermit rufe ich die Vereinigten Deutschen Arbeiterrepubliken aus! Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!”
Hereby, I proclaim the United German Worker's Republics and Communes! Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Steht auf, ihr Genossen! Framåt kamrater!
A Story of Left, Right, and Centre
September 26, 1917 (Versailles, German-occupied France) – January 1, 1924 (Zhordaniagrad, Union of Russian Social Republics (DURSR))
Chapter 1
The consequences of fighting too long, or: Völker, hört die Signale!
After the French government surrendered on July 17, 1917, followed by the British on August 2 (and preceded by Russia on March 3), the guns fell silent in Europe.
The Great War is over. Nearly exactly three years of bloody and gruesome combat are over. It has been totally won by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire. Spain is a neutral "ally" throughout the whole war which could be brought into the CP camp by some minor incident, and was promised some gains in case the Central Powers won.
France, Britain, the Kingdom of Italy, Denmark (after having declared neutrality at first, but an attack by Sweden and Germany bringing it into the Entente camp) and the Russian Empire (which copped out after the start of the revolution in February 1917 and hastily devised the Treaty of Leningrad-Bryansk) have lost. They have lost so totally and utterly that the Central Powers can impose any terms they want on the Triple Entente.
Signing of the Treaty of Versailles, September 26, 1917
The following main peace treaty terms were worked out and forced onto the people and governments of France, Russia and the UK in the treaties of Leningrad-Bryansk (Russia), Versailles (France and Britain), and Genoa (Italy):
There are several minor conditions and terms, but those are the major ones. The USA had never intervened in the Great War, as it was occupied with the Mexican revolution. Mexico went haywire when all revolutionary factions, instead of arguing and infighting between themselves, bound together and were helped by Leon Trotsky and Pancho Villa. Mexico itself went Villaist, a form of rather authoritarian socialism (although not quite as authoritarian as the USSR of OTL). Baja California and a strip of coast in Sonora were occupied, and the Yucatan was made into an US puppet. And then,
The new powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Bulgarian Empire (which even gained some colonies), the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and to some extent also Japan.
However, the situation did not remain stable for long. And the most important, if not the first, brick to fall was, ironically, not in one of the defeated countries, but in the most powerful country in Europe: Germany.
It was, however, not as powerful as some people thought, as Wilhelm II. had contracted Spanish Flu in early 1918 and died of it on March 26 of the same year. Wilhelm III., his son, was unexperienced as an emperor and didn't prove too competent for this rule.
It began with a general strike of the Ruhr area mineworkers on March 2, 1918. Anti-war elements that wanted to retreat into isolationism and those that were at first for the war, but now tired of it, joined the mass demonstrations. Wilhelm II., anyway wanting to implement reforms, called new elections to the Reichstag, and they were held after his father's death on May 1, 1919 (May 1 had become a public holiday only weeks earlier as part of a reform package).
And since it was Labour Day, and the strikers experienced huge sympathy waves, the KPD won the most votes. Wilhelm II. didn't accept that result, but the KPD then performed a March on Berlin as most people thought the election legitimate (which it was, since it was free and fair). A true civil war was mostly avoided for several reasons:
General Strike in the Ruhr Area, March 1919.
Nevertheless, some loyalist and far-right forces, namely people like Lüttwitz, Kapp and Ehrhardt, fought the Red threat even after the Vereinigte Deutsche Arbeiterrepubliken (VDAR) are proclaimed on said March 18, 1918. The bloodiest skirmishes are known as the Battle of the Allgäu. Conservative remnant armed forces waged open war against the, now mostly Red, Army and Police forces in the Allgäu and Schwäbische Alb hilly regions. For example, the local Red Army and a division of the old Army which had not deserted faced each other in the Battle of Ulm and were actually on equal footing. The Red Army only won when reinforcements from the Northwest and East arrived.
When they know they have no chance against the Reds, the old armed forces, in September and October 1919 retreat into the hilly regions of the Allgäu (anywhere south of Kempten) and waged guerilla warfare. The last pockets of resistance could only be extinguished in mid-1921 near Obeerstaufen, Garmisch-Patenkirchen, the Erzgebirge, and some die-hards inside Berlin.
Yes, Berlin was one of the very few cities seeing gruelling house-to-house urban combat during what is sometimes, though rarely, called the German Civil War. Other regions seeing quite fierce guerilla combat were the hills of the Harz and the Erzgebirge.
The Imperial forces fled to Mittelafrika, although to the shock of the world community and especially the Imperialists, the Western African gains announced they would stay loyal to the government in Berlin. The former Entente were forced to recognise the new government in Berlin
In 1920, Lithuania had also succumbed to a Spartacist win in the elections. The same happened in Denmark, which had become a quasi-puppet kingdom allied to the German Empire in 1917 with the Versailles treaty. Finland became a very social democratic, quasi-Spartacist commune, too, after a win of the Spartacist Party.
The Kalmar Union still exists and, although there are some demonstrations currently and the Kalmar Union has had to democratise very much, and although they were allied to Germany, has not yet fallen to any far-left (or far-right, for that sake) ideology.
Germany's system of government, calling itself Spartacism, is the ideal model of a Soviet Republic: The country is divided up into Arbeiterrepubliken, of which there are currently eleven:
Berliner Arbeiterrepublik (Berlin)
Preußische AR(West Prussia)
Ostpreußische AR (East Prussia)
Sächsische AR (Saxony)
Elbische AR (Elbia=East Germany)
Küsten-AR (North-West Germany)
Arbeiterrepublik Rhein-Ruhr (Rhine and Ruhr)
Alemannische AR (Alemannia=Baden-Württemberg)
Bayerische AR (Bavaria)
Elsäßisch-Lothringische AR (Alsace-Lorraine)
Luxemburgische AR (Luxembourg)
Every Worker's Republic (AR) has, according to it's population and updated every 7 years by means of a census, a number of representatives in the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung (German Assembly of Soviets). This system is valid in every Worker's Republic, too, and in every province and so on, down to the lowest representation levels, the Kreise. There is a second chamber, too, the Rat der Arbeiterrepubliken (Soviet of the Worker's Republics)
Elections only ever take place at the local, or at the most at regional, level, but never at the national one. When one representative of the German Assembly of Soviets, who is always of one Kreis (county), dies, steps down or otherwise falls out, there is a local election, only in that constituency. If one representative of the Soviet of the Worker's Republic dies or something, he is reelected (only) from that AR.
There are no parties or other such competing organisations in the two chambers, and only the will of the individual representative count. Also, you need a majority in one or both houses to get a law through. Anybody can run for an office as long as he is (currently) over 24 years old, and anybody can get elected.
The communist nature of this state is ensured not in the politics (which are basically a highly grassroots-oriented democracy, as it also includes the right of every Kreis council to initiate laws and the possibility, no, the obligation to hold referendums on “important national issues”) but in the economy. But no, it's not a state-planned economy as you may expect, but a rather syndicalist model: Worker's Councils (Arbeiterräte) manage every firm, and they are obliged to run the firm in the interest of the workers. And as the councils are elected, within the firm, every 4 years, no such council would dare not run it in the interest of the workers. However, one can still climb up the career ladder and the basic laws of supply and demand are still valid. And if one Worker's Council becomes somewhat too exploitative, there are still the unions who have as much or more power as they had at the best times of Arthur Scargill...
So the VDAR might not be seen as communist by all readers, but I do see it as that, because it is a true “dictatorship of the proletariat”, i.e. a grass-roots democracy at its best. A dictatorship cannot really form here, since the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung and the Rat der Arbeiterrepubliken always govern together and there is also an independent justice system. Also, there can be no single-party state as there are no parties at all. Karl Liebknecht was head of the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung, together with Rosa Luxemburg, but these two positions were really primus inter pares.
But the situation in France was grim: The Versailles Republic was imposed on France by the German-led Central Powers. Brittany was made independent, as was Corsica, and a Basque area was put under administration of the Council of Nations (CoN). The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources, and it was instable due to food shortages, shortages of nearly everything. Okay, the worst starvation went away soon after the war as trade was resumed all over the world, but still, rationing remained in place. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and sought to overthrow the Republic and do so themselves. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian, autocratic state like the 1871 Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for France's defeat in World War I.
In the next five years, the central government, assured of the support of the Defénse, dealt severely with the occasional outbreaks of violence in France's large cities. The left claimed that the Social Democrats had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, while the army committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against striking workers.
The first challenge to the Versailles Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the government of Brittany in Rennes and declared the creation of the Brittanian Soviet Republic. The uprising was brutally attacked byforces of the Divisions libres, which consisted mainly of ex-soldiers dismissed from the army and who were well-paid to put down forces of the Far Left. The Divisions libres was an army outside the control of the government, but they were in close contact with their allies in the Defense.
A putsch took place on 13 March 1920: 5000 Divisions libres soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Jean-Claude Marat, a right-wing journalist, as chancellor. The national government fled to Clermont-Ferrand and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Marat government collapsed after only four days on 17 March.
Putschists during the Marat Putsch of March 1920
Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Divisions libres ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the PSF leaders did not want to lend support to the growing PISF and PCF, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of PSF supporters by the reactionary forces in the Divisions libres on the instructions of the PSF ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group that could have withstood the Ethnist movement. Other rebellions were put down until March 1921 in Haute-Alpes, Normandie, and the Vendée.
In the early post-war years, inflation was growing at an alarming rate, but the government simply printed more and more banknotes to pay the bills. By 1923, the Republic claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty, and the government defaulted on some payments. In response, Germany and Belgian troops occupied the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, France's most productive industrial region at the time, taking control of most mining and manufacturing companies in January 1923. Strikes were called, and passive resistance was encouraged. These strikes lasted eight months, further damaging the economy and the social life.
The strike prevented some goods from being produced, but one industrialist was able to create a vast empire out of bankrupt companies. Because the production costs in France were falling almost hourly, the prices for French products were unbeatable. Stinné made sure that he was paid in dollars, which meant that by mid-1923, his industrial empire was worth more than the entire French economy. By the end of the year, over two hundred factories were working full-time to produce paper for the spiralling bank note production. Stinné's empire collapsed when the government-sponsored inflation was stopped in May 1923.
In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 franc; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion francs.
A commemorative medal for the hyperinflation in France.
Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fuelling a period of hyperinflation. The 1920s French inflation started when France had no goods to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this meant payments within France were made with worthless paper money, and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon banknotes were being overprinted to a thousand times their nominal value and every town produced its own promissory notes; many banks & industrial firms did the same.
The value of the “Paper Franc” had declined from 4.2 per U.S. dollar at the outbreak of World War I to 1 million per dollar by May 1923.
This led to further criticism of the Republic. Reparation payments resumed, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais was returned to France under the Locarno Treaties, which defined a border between Germany, France and Belgium.
Further pressure from the right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch, also called the Lille Putsch, staged by the PPTEF (Parti Populaire des Travailleurs d'Ethnicité Fran[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]çaise[/FONT]) under Émile Chandonne-Golaz in Lille. In 1920, the French Ethnic Party had become the Ethnic French Popular Workers' Party (PPTEF), and would become a driving force in the collapse of Versailles. Chandonne-Golaz named himself chairman of the party in July 1921. On 8 November 1923, the Association marseillaise, in a pact with Raymond Poincaré, took over a meeting by Norman Prime Minister Jean-Paul Chapuisat at a beer hall in Lille.
Émile Chandonne-Golaz, the Swiss immigrant and leader of the PTEF
Poincaré and Chandonne-Golaz declared that the Versailles government was deposed and that they were planning to take control of Lille the following day. The 3,000 rebels were thwarted by the regional authorities. Chandonne-Golaz was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason, a minimum sentence for the charge. Chandonne-Golaz served less than eight months in a comfortable cell, receiving a daily stream of visitors before his release on 20 December 1924. While in jail, Chandonne-Golaz dictated Mon luttre, which laid out his ideas and future policies. Chandonne-Golaz now decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power.
The Nizza Revolt took place in January 1923 in the Nice Region (Savoie Territory, Savoia). The region, located west of Mont Blanc, was detached from the French Republic by the Treaty of Versailles and became a mandate of the Concord of Nations. It was placed under provisional Piedmontese administration until a more permanent solution could be worked out. Piedmont wanted to unite with the region (part of Piedmont Minor) due to its large Italian-speaking minority of French Piedmontese and major port of Nizza (Nice) – the only viable access to the Mediterranean Sea for Piedmont. As the Conference of Ambassadors favoured leaving the region as a free state like the Free State of Corsica and Sardinia, the Piedmontese organized and staged the revolt. Presented as an uprising of the local population, the revolt met little resistance from either the Savoie Police or the German occupying army. The rebels established a pro-Piedmontese administration, which petitioned to unite with Piedmont citing the right of self-determination. The Council of Nations accepted the fait accompli and the Savoia Region was transferred as an autonomous territory to the Republic of Piedmont on February 17, 1923. After prolonged negotiations a formal international agreement, the Nizza Convention, was signed in May 1924. The convention formally acknowledged Piedmont's sovereignty in the region and outlined its extensive legislative, judicial, administrative, and financial autonomy.
Flag of the Republic of Piedmont, used before and after the unification with Savoie (Savoia).
Russia had five years of brutal civil war, in which Czarists, advocates of the Old Order, and Mensheviks formed a temporary alliance in which the Mensheviki soon gained the upper hand. They were supported by Germany and Japan to combat the red Bolsheviki during war time, Japan was promised Sakhalin as a reward. One charismatic, but middle-ranked party functionary of the Bolshevik movement, nobody important, was lost when the house of Iosib Besarionis Dze Jugashvili in Tiflis, in independent Georgia, now allied to the Ottoman Empire, burnt down with all inhabitants dying on May 8, 1918. It is suspected that this was done by either Mensheviki or Ottoman agents, or both of them in cooperation. Other important battles were the Battle of Petrograd and the Battles of Bishkek and Fergana, which defeated the last stronghold of the Bolsheviks in the Pamir Mountains.
Russia's Capital is, as a compromise demanded by Germany and the Bolshevik remnants, neither in Moscow nor in Petrograd/Leningrad (which now belongs to the Kingdom of Ingria anyway), but in Nizhniy Novgorod.
Czarist and Menshevik factions are at an uneasy peace, having given the post of President to a Czarist supporter and the one of Prime Minister to a Menshevik supporter, . However, the Prime Minister, who was the head of government, changed extremely often and seemed to mostly be at the mercy of the President. However, the latest holder of the office, Aleksander Kolchak, was a general of the Army and had lead the Provisional All-Russian Government, returned to Head of Government function in December 1922. He is charismatic and has already shown heavy signs of governing independently from the President. Kolchak, however, is also affiliated with the Ethnist faction in the RSDLP, and he has renamed the city known as Volgograd into Kolchakgrad, effective January 1, 1924, and rumour has it that he wants to abolish the post of President and once again wants to become Supreme Leader of Russia...
Aleksandar Kolchak
In 1922, Austria-Hungary, which had been bolstered by the winning of the war and the reparations payments, started to collapse. Yes, the war had been won, and it had not been forcibly broken up, however, the system was very unequal and very much geared towards Vienna and, to a much lesser extent, Budapest. Especially the Slavic peoples (Croatians and Bosnians) have no say in the federation whatsoever. There were mass demonstrations, sometimes even violent acts of protest, against the government and it's rather undemocratic policies ever since the Great War was over in 1917. At first, they were sporadic and could be shaved off by a relatively minor act of reform. But protests got viral in 1920/21 with peaceful mass demonstrations in nearly every major city from Innsbruck to Temeschburg, but even these protesters gave in when the government democratised and appeased the protesters. Now, Czechs, Slovaks, and Romanians were represented equally with Austrians and Hungarians in the Imperial Diet. But still, the South Slavs and Galicians had no say in the Imperial Diet.
And when a Bosnian extreme nationalist and madman by the name of Zvjezdan Ibisevic assassinated Minister of the Interior Leopold Waber and minister of Finance Alfred Gürtler on May 27, the Schober Ministry, anyway plagued by the need to save money and disagreement between the Socialists (ÖSDP, Österreichische Sozialdemokratische Partei), the extreme Communists (AFPÖ, Arbeiter-Fortschrittspartei Österreichs) and conservative factions dominated by the CSVP (Christlich-Soziale Volkspartei) fell into crisis over who should follow Gürtler. The Chancellor Schober and his CSVP, supported by the Austrians and Czechs, insisted on a CSVP man, and the ÖSDP, supported by most minorities wanted their candidate for the job, Ferenc Hidegkuti from Hungary, to get the job. Schober stepped down on June 22, as did President Breisky.
Johann Schober, last non-AFPÖ Chancellor of Austria who was democratically elected.
And this moment where the Empire of Austria-Hungary was without government was used by many groups to rise up: Hungarian nationalists in Hungary, Romanian nationalists in Transylvania, Ukrainian nationalists in Galicia, Bosnian nationalists, Croat nationalists. However, to many's surprise, workers and far-left elements dominated the streets of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and even some parts of Hungary.
As the Great War was over, everybody that had armies or troops to spare helped their favourite side in Austria-Hungary. And Ukraine was the most successful of the smaller nations in supporting the Galician rebels, only surpassed by the success of German support for their comrades. The Germans had agreed with the Austria-Hungarian rebels in a secret protocol that, in return for all the help, the VDAR would get the Sudetenland.
And due to the already-achieved reforms, the nationalist movements were never as strong as in OTL and so achieved relatively little, especially against the communists/Spartacists/AFPÖ who promised the constituents full democratic representation in the Imperial Diet. Thus, the more time passed in the Austria-Hungarian Civil War, the stronger the communist movements became.
Very soon, units of the regular Army and police forces also started to defect and, as German, Romanian, and Ukrainian troops helped the rebels, the rebellions were exacerbated against a valiantly fighting and rushedly reforming Emperor Ferdinand I. (yes, he lives here!), however, this time, the Spartacist rebels did not give into appeasement. Poland fell in a quite brutal civil war in 1922-1924, whereas Estonia and Livonia, in response to their communist movements growing, drifted more and more to the right as they became rather autocratic anti-communist.
In Asia, little changed in China, although Xinjiang independence movements gain more traction and are supported by Russia, and the Indochinese were treated way better by the VDAR than by their former French overlords.
Generally, this is a time of great instability in many regions of the world, and this will not change any time soon. The guns fell silent in Europe. But not for long...
Britain was, although it didn't have to cede too many territories, so totally insolvent and defaulted on all loans immediately after the surrender that it could only be prevented from full civil war by harsh authoritarian government measures, combined with an austerity package never seen before or since. Also, it had to grant home rule to Ireland and sell British Somaliland to Austria-Hungary. And those conditions did not get any better, austerity package after austerity package followed. And in the 1921 general election, the Labour Party gained a slight majority, but not the totally ruined Conservative Party got the second spot, but the PBE (Party of the British Ethnicity), a newly founded party of after the war. And radicals of this party, around Oswald Mosley and Lord Harmsworth, planned a coup. As the Labour government increasingly got taken over by hardline syndicalist unionised people, and wanted to reform Britain into a Syndicalist state, on April 2, 1923, there was the coup as the PBE hardliners had gotten much of the army and navy, and of course King George VI., on their side. Oswald Mosley became Prime Minister and, as his first act of government, has taken away home rule from Ireland. Canada went even more independent, but Australia and all of Southern Africa has declared loyalty to the government of Mosley.
In India, a puppet government was installed, but it shows signs of breaking up very soon...
Also, in Italy, which was forcibly democratised, the far right "Fascista" movement, with a basically Ethnist policy and under Benito Mussolini, rose in prminence. As opposed to OTL, they participate in the elections and have, already in the first 1922 Prime Minister election gained third place with 23,8 % behind the Socialists with 51,2 and the conservative Partito Populo with 29,2 %.
This will not be the most plausible TL, so do not tar and feather me for that. Neither will it be the most well-written TL. Just a "rule-of-cool" TL of mine where events transpire somewhat plausibly at least. I will try to steer clear of real ASBs. No aliens, no time travel, no FTL, no ISOTs, but also no Operation Sealion. Nearly everything else is... free game!
The POD is that, shortly before and during WWI, the Pan-Scandinavist movement becomes popular again as Sweden is allying with the Central Powers. For anybody who wants a more specific POD, Karl Liebknecht discovers the Baha'i religion in the 1900s and converts to this faith by 1913. By this move, *Communism is no longer strictly atheist, but can also be Baha'i. ANd it is guaranteed by this that all *commie countries grant freedom of religion.
But the butterflies really fly at the end and after World War I... and they fly to the left! World War I does not start over the assassination, but some other minor crisis in the Balkans, and lasts until 1917 instead of 1918. During spring and finally summer of 1917, the Entente totally collapses. Armies mutiny and soldiers defect regularly, the population starves and turns to revolution (as in Russia) or desperate measures like looting, as is common in Britain, munitions and weapons go low,... Just a total collapse of the Entente. And since the US is unable and also unwilling to help, the Entente has thus lost the war.
So, without much ado, the first update.
“Hiermit rufe ich die Vereinigten Deutschen Arbeiterrepubliken aus! Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!”
Hereby, I proclaim the United German Worker's Republics and Communes! Proletarians of all countries, unite!
- Rosa Luxemburg, March 18, 1918, Berlin
Steht auf, ihr Genossen! Framåt kamrater!
A Story of Left, Right, and Centre
September 26, 1917 (Versailles, German-occupied France) – January 1, 1924 (Zhordaniagrad, Union of Russian Social Republics (DURSR))
Chapter 1
The consequences of fighting too long, or: Völker, hört die Signale!
After the French government surrendered on July 17, 1917, followed by the British on August 2 (and preceded by Russia on March 3), the guns fell silent in Europe.
The Great War is over. Nearly exactly three years of bloody and gruesome combat are over. It has been totally won by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire. Spain is a neutral "ally" throughout the whole war which could be brought into the CP camp by some minor incident, and was promised some gains in case the Central Powers won.
France, Britain, the Kingdom of Italy, Denmark (after having declared neutrality at first, but an attack by Sweden and Germany bringing it into the Entente camp) and the Russian Empire (which copped out after the start of the revolution in February 1917 and hastily devised the Treaty of Leningrad-Bryansk) have lost. They have lost so totally and utterly that the Central Powers can impose any terms they want on the Triple Entente.
Signing of the Treaty of Versailles, September 26, 1917
The following main peace treaty terms were worked out and forced onto the people and governments of France, Russia and the UK in the treaties of Leningrad-Bryansk (Russia), Versailles (France and Britain), and Genoa (Italy):
- Corsica goes independent, Savoie is administered by the Council of Nations which is newly formed.
- Alsace-Lorraine remains German. Luxembourg joins Germany as a separate province.
- Germany occupies the eastern part of Champagne-Ardennes
- Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria gain Serbia as a puppet
- Austria-Hungary gains Romania as a puppet
- Germany fulfils it's Mittelafrika dreams and gets even more colonies from France. Austria-Hungary gains Somalia and Eritrea. Denmark gains Madagascar and the Indian Ocean parts, and the borders of Africa are totally redrawn.
- Germany creates puppet/allied states. These are the Kingdoms of Poland, Lithuania, Livonia, White Russia (Belarus), and Ukraine. The same applies to the United Baltic Duchies (i.e. Estonia), and the Grand Duchy of Ingria. All of those get a Hohenzollern King/Duke.
- Finland gains the Kola Peninsula and Karelia, plus some territory in the Southeast
- China gets a part of Russia near Blagoveshchenk
- Japan gets Sakhalin and the Kuriles back.
- Tannu Tuva, the Khanate of Khiva, the Sultanate of Turkmenistan, and the Khorezm Khanate are independent.
- Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are independent under the protection of the Ottoman Empire.
- France and Russia pay huge reparations to the victims and accept all guilt for the war since they have reacted “harshly and exaggeratedly”
- Arms limitations (e.g. Russia's army is limited to 500,000 men, a navy worth calling that is prohibited, and an air force and tanks are completely prohibited, and the same is valid for the French in a more lenient form)
- Italy must release Sardinia (in a federation with Corsica, they go independent), Piedmont (independent) and the Republic of Venetia. Algeria and Tunisia go to Bulgaria.
There are several minor conditions and terms, but those are the major ones. The USA had never intervened in the Great War, as it was occupied with the Mexican revolution. Mexico went haywire when all revolutionary factions, instead of arguing and infighting between themselves, bound together and were helped by Leon Trotsky and Pancho Villa. Mexico itself went Villaist, a form of rather authoritarian socialism (although not quite as authoritarian as the USSR of OTL). Baja California and a strip of coast in Sonora were occupied, and the Yucatan was made into an US puppet. And then,
The new powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Bulgarian Empire (which even gained some colonies), the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and to some extent also Japan.
However, the situation did not remain stable for long. And the most important, if not the first, brick to fall was, ironically, not in one of the defeated countries, but in the most powerful country in Europe: Germany.
It was, however, not as powerful as some people thought, as Wilhelm II. had contracted Spanish Flu in early 1918 and died of it on March 26 of the same year. Wilhelm III., his son, was unexperienced as an emperor and didn't prove too competent for this rule.
It began with a general strike of the Ruhr area mineworkers on March 2, 1918. Anti-war elements that wanted to retreat into isolationism and those that were at first for the war, but now tired of it, joined the mass demonstrations. Wilhelm II., anyway wanting to implement reforms, called new elections to the Reichstag, and they were held after his father's death on May 1, 1919 (May 1 had become a public holiday only weeks earlier as part of a reform package).
And since it was Labour Day, and the strikers experienced huge sympathy waves, the KPD won the most votes. Wilhelm II. didn't accept that result, but the KPD then performed a March on Berlin as most people thought the election legitimate (which it was, since it was free and fair). A true civil war was mostly avoided for several reasons:
- The Army which could have fought was in a shambles and defections were the majority of the Army as they were just tired of fighting, so there was nobody to fight the revolutionaries. Well, a few forces, but still...
- Also, Kaiser Wilhelm III.. (Wilhelm II. died of Spanish Flu in early 1918) was reluctant to sign military orders
- The revolutionaries, calling themselves the Spartakusbund or, for short, the Spartakisten, were well-organised with Rosa Luxemburg and especially Karl Liebknecht as their leaders.
- A certain Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov had gone from Switzerland to Germany in 1918 before going to Russia, and so, the Reds had help.
- The March was also a general strike, and worker's councils took over many firms all over the German Reich.
General Strike in the Ruhr Area, March 1919.
Nevertheless, some loyalist and far-right forces, namely people like Lüttwitz, Kapp and Ehrhardt, fought the Red threat even after the Vereinigte Deutsche Arbeiterrepubliken (VDAR) are proclaimed on said March 18, 1918. The bloodiest skirmishes are known as the Battle of the Allgäu. Conservative remnant armed forces waged open war against the, now mostly Red, Army and Police forces in the Allgäu and Schwäbische Alb hilly regions. For example, the local Red Army and a division of the old Army which had not deserted faced each other in the Battle of Ulm and were actually on equal footing. The Red Army only won when reinforcements from the Northwest and East arrived.
When they know they have no chance against the Reds, the old armed forces, in September and October 1919 retreat into the hilly regions of the Allgäu (anywhere south of Kempten) and waged guerilla warfare. The last pockets of resistance could only be extinguished in mid-1921 near Obeerstaufen, Garmisch-Patenkirchen, the Erzgebirge, and some die-hards inside Berlin.
Yes, Berlin was one of the very few cities seeing gruelling house-to-house urban combat during what is sometimes, though rarely, called the German Civil War. Other regions seeing quite fierce guerilla combat were the hills of the Harz and the Erzgebirge.
The Imperial forces fled to Mittelafrika, although to the shock of the world community and especially the Imperialists, the Western African gains announced they would stay loyal to the government in Berlin. The former Entente were forced to recognise the new government in Berlin
In 1920, Lithuania had also succumbed to a Spartacist win in the elections. The same happened in Denmark, which had become a quasi-puppet kingdom allied to the German Empire in 1917 with the Versailles treaty. Finland became a very social democratic, quasi-Spartacist commune, too, after a win of the Spartacist Party.
The Kalmar Union still exists and, although there are some demonstrations currently and the Kalmar Union has had to democratise very much, and although they were allied to Germany, has not yet fallen to any far-left (or far-right, for that sake) ideology.
Germany's system of government, calling itself Spartacism, is the ideal model of a Soviet Republic: The country is divided up into Arbeiterrepubliken, of which there are currently eleven:
Berliner Arbeiterrepublik (Berlin)
Preußische AR(West Prussia)
Ostpreußische AR (East Prussia)
Sächsische AR (Saxony)
Elbische AR (Elbia=East Germany)
Küsten-AR (North-West Germany)
Arbeiterrepublik Rhein-Ruhr (Rhine and Ruhr)
Alemannische AR (Alemannia=Baden-Württemberg)
Bayerische AR (Bavaria)
Elsäßisch-Lothringische AR (Alsace-Lorraine)
Luxemburgische AR (Luxembourg)
Every Worker's Republic (AR) has, according to it's population and updated every 7 years by means of a census, a number of representatives in the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung (German Assembly of Soviets). This system is valid in every Worker's Republic, too, and in every province and so on, down to the lowest representation levels, the Kreise. There is a second chamber, too, the Rat der Arbeiterrepubliken (Soviet of the Worker's Republics)
Elections only ever take place at the local, or at the most at regional, level, but never at the national one. When one representative of the German Assembly of Soviets, who is always of one Kreis (county), dies, steps down or otherwise falls out, there is a local election, only in that constituency. If one representative of the Soviet of the Worker's Republic dies or something, he is reelected (only) from that AR.
There are no parties or other such competing organisations in the two chambers, and only the will of the individual representative count. Also, you need a majority in one or both houses to get a law through. Anybody can run for an office as long as he is (currently) over 24 years old, and anybody can get elected.
The communist nature of this state is ensured not in the politics (which are basically a highly grassroots-oriented democracy, as it also includes the right of every Kreis council to initiate laws and the possibility, no, the obligation to hold referendums on “important national issues”) but in the economy. But no, it's not a state-planned economy as you may expect, but a rather syndicalist model: Worker's Councils (Arbeiterräte) manage every firm, and they are obliged to run the firm in the interest of the workers. And as the councils are elected, within the firm, every 4 years, no such council would dare not run it in the interest of the workers. However, one can still climb up the career ladder and the basic laws of supply and demand are still valid. And if one Worker's Council becomes somewhat too exploitative, there are still the unions who have as much or more power as they had at the best times of Arthur Scargill...
So the VDAR might not be seen as communist by all readers, but I do see it as that, because it is a true “dictatorship of the proletariat”, i.e. a grass-roots democracy at its best. A dictatorship cannot really form here, since the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung and the Rat der Arbeiterrepubliken always govern together and there is also an independent justice system. Also, there can be no single-party state as there are no parties at all. Karl Liebknecht was head of the Deutsche Arbeiterräteversammlung, together with Rosa Luxemburg, but these two positions were really primus inter pares.
But the situation in France was grim: The Versailles Republic was imposed on France by the German-led Central Powers. Brittany was made independent, as was Corsica, and a Basque area was put under administration of the Council of Nations (CoN). The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources, and it was instable due to food shortages, shortages of nearly everything. Okay, the worst starvation went away soon after the war as trade was resumed all over the world, but still, rationing remained in place. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and sought to overthrow the Republic and do so themselves. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian, autocratic state like the 1871 Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for France's defeat in World War I.
In the next five years, the central government, assured of the support of the Defénse, dealt severely with the occasional outbreaks of violence in France's large cities. The left claimed that the Social Democrats had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, while the army committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against striking workers.
The first challenge to the Versailles Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the government of Brittany in Rennes and declared the creation of the Brittanian Soviet Republic. The uprising was brutally attacked byforces of the Divisions libres, which consisted mainly of ex-soldiers dismissed from the army and who were well-paid to put down forces of the Far Left. The Divisions libres was an army outside the control of the government, but they were in close contact with their allies in the Defense.
A putsch took place on 13 March 1920: 5000 Divisions libres soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Jean-Claude Marat, a right-wing journalist, as chancellor. The national government fled to Clermont-Ferrand and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Marat government collapsed after only four days on 17 March.
Putschists during the Marat Putsch of March 1920
Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Divisions libres ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the PSF leaders did not want to lend support to the growing PISF and PCF, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of PSF supporters by the reactionary forces in the Divisions libres on the instructions of the PSF ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group that could have withstood the Ethnist movement. Other rebellions were put down until March 1921 in Haute-Alpes, Normandie, and the Vendée.
In the early post-war years, inflation was growing at an alarming rate, but the government simply printed more and more banknotes to pay the bills. By 1923, the Republic claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty, and the government defaulted on some payments. In response, Germany and Belgian troops occupied the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, France's most productive industrial region at the time, taking control of most mining and manufacturing companies in January 1923. Strikes were called, and passive resistance was encouraged. These strikes lasted eight months, further damaging the economy and the social life.
The strike prevented some goods from being produced, but one industrialist was able to create a vast empire out of bankrupt companies. Because the production costs in France were falling almost hourly, the prices for French products were unbeatable. Stinné made sure that he was paid in dollars, which meant that by mid-1923, his industrial empire was worth more than the entire French economy. By the end of the year, over two hundred factories were working full-time to produce paper for the spiralling bank note production. Stinné's empire collapsed when the government-sponsored inflation was stopped in May 1923.
In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 franc; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion francs.
A commemorative medal for the hyperinflation in France.
Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fuelling a period of hyperinflation. The 1920s French inflation started when France had no goods to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this meant payments within France were made with worthless paper money, and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon banknotes were being overprinted to a thousand times their nominal value and every town produced its own promissory notes; many banks & industrial firms did the same.
The value of the “Paper Franc” had declined from 4.2 per U.S. dollar at the outbreak of World War I to 1 million per dollar by May 1923.
This led to further criticism of the Republic. Reparation payments resumed, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais was returned to France under the Locarno Treaties, which defined a border between Germany, France and Belgium.
Further pressure from the right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch, also called the Lille Putsch, staged by the PPTEF (Parti Populaire des Travailleurs d'Ethnicité Fran[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]çaise[/FONT]) under Émile Chandonne-Golaz in Lille. In 1920, the French Ethnic Party had become the Ethnic French Popular Workers' Party (PPTEF), and would become a driving force in the collapse of Versailles. Chandonne-Golaz named himself chairman of the party in July 1921. On 8 November 1923, the Association marseillaise, in a pact with Raymond Poincaré, took over a meeting by Norman Prime Minister Jean-Paul Chapuisat at a beer hall in Lille.
Émile Chandonne-Golaz, the Swiss immigrant and leader of the PTEF
Poincaré and Chandonne-Golaz declared that the Versailles government was deposed and that they were planning to take control of Lille the following day. The 3,000 rebels were thwarted by the regional authorities. Chandonne-Golaz was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason, a minimum sentence for the charge. Chandonne-Golaz served less than eight months in a comfortable cell, receiving a daily stream of visitors before his release on 20 December 1924. While in jail, Chandonne-Golaz dictated Mon luttre, which laid out his ideas and future policies. Chandonne-Golaz now decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power.
The Nizza Revolt took place in January 1923 in the Nice Region (Savoie Territory, Savoia). The region, located west of Mont Blanc, was detached from the French Republic by the Treaty of Versailles and became a mandate of the Concord of Nations. It was placed under provisional Piedmontese administration until a more permanent solution could be worked out. Piedmont wanted to unite with the region (part of Piedmont Minor) due to its large Italian-speaking minority of French Piedmontese and major port of Nizza (Nice) – the only viable access to the Mediterranean Sea for Piedmont. As the Conference of Ambassadors favoured leaving the region as a free state like the Free State of Corsica and Sardinia, the Piedmontese organized and staged the revolt. Presented as an uprising of the local population, the revolt met little resistance from either the Savoie Police or the German occupying army. The rebels established a pro-Piedmontese administration, which petitioned to unite with Piedmont citing the right of self-determination. The Council of Nations accepted the fait accompli and the Savoia Region was transferred as an autonomous territory to the Republic of Piedmont on February 17, 1923. After prolonged negotiations a formal international agreement, the Nizza Convention, was signed in May 1924. The convention formally acknowledged Piedmont's sovereignty in the region and outlined its extensive legislative, judicial, administrative, and financial autonomy.
Flag of the Republic of Piedmont, used before and after the unification with Savoie (Savoia).
Russia had five years of brutal civil war, in which Czarists, advocates of the Old Order, and Mensheviks formed a temporary alliance in which the Mensheviki soon gained the upper hand. They were supported by Germany and Japan to combat the red Bolsheviki during war time, Japan was promised Sakhalin as a reward. One charismatic, but middle-ranked party functionary of the Bolshevik movement, nobody important, was lost when the house of Iosib Besarionis Dze Jugashvili in Tiflis, in independent Georgia, now allied to the Ottoman Empire, burnt down with all inhabitants dying on May 8, 1918. It is suspected that this was done by either Mensheviki or Ottoman agents, or both of them in cooperation. Other important battles were the Battle of Petrograd and the Battles of Bishkek and Fergana, which defeated the last stronghold of the Bolsheviks in the Pamir Mountains.
Russia's Capital is, as a compromise demanded by Germany and the Bolshevik remnants, neither in Moscow nor in Petrograd/Leningrad (which now belongs to the Kingdom of Ingria anyway), but in Nizhniy Novgorod.
Czarist and Menshevik factions are at an uneasy peace, having given the post of President to a Czarist supporter and the one of Prime Minister to a Menshevik supporter, . However, the Prime Minister, who was the head of government, changed extremely often and seemed to mostly be at the mercy of the President. However, the latest holder of the office, Aleksander Kolchak, was a general of the Army and had lead the Provisional All-Russian Government, returned to Head of Government function in December 1922. He is charismatic and has already shown heavy signs of governing independently from the President. Kolchak, however, is also affiliated with the Ethnist faction in the RSDLP, and he has renamed the city known as Volgograd into Kolchakgrad, effective January 1, 1924, and rumour has it that he wants to abolish the post of President and once again wants to become Supreme Leader of Russia...
Aleksandar Kolchak
In 1922, Austria-Hungary, which had been bolstered by the winning of the war and the reparations payments, started to collapse. Yes, the war had been won, and it had not been forcibly broken up, however, the system was very unequal and very much geared towards Vienna and, to a much lesser extent, Budapest. Especially the Slavic peoples (Croatians and Bosnians) have no say in the federation whatsoever. There were mass demonstrations, sometimes even violent acts of protest, against the government and it's rather undemocratic policies ever since the Great War was over in 1917. At first, they were sporadic and could be shaved off by a relatively minor act of reform. But protests got viral in 1920/21 with peaceful mass demonstrations in nearly every major city from Innsbruck to Temeschburg, but even these protesters gave in when the government democratised and appeased the protesters. Now, Czechs, Slovaks, and Romanians were represented equally with Austrians and Hungarians in the Imperial Diet. But still, the South Slavs and Galicians had no say in the Imperial Diet.
And when a Bosnian extreme nationalist and madman by the name of Zvjezdan Ibisevic assassinated Minister of the Interior Leopold Waber and minister of Finance Alfred Gürtler on May 27, the Schober Ministry, anyway plagued by the need to save money and disagreement between the Socialists (ÖSDP, Österreichische Sozialdemokratische Partei), the extreme Communists (AFPÖ, Arbeiter-Fortschrittspartei Österreichs) and conservative factions dominated by the CSVP (Christlich-Soziale Volkspartei) fell into crisis over who should follow Gürtler. The Chancellor Schober and his CSVP, supported by the Austrians and Czechs, insisted on a CSVP man, and the ÖSDP, supported by most minorities wanted their candidate for the job, Ferenc Hidegkuti from Hungary, to get the job. Schober stepped down on June 22, as did President Breisky.
Johann Schober, last non-AFPÖ Chancellor of Austria who was democratically elected.
And this moment where the Empire of Austria-Hungary was without government was used by many groups to rise up: Hungarian nationalists in Hungary, Romanian nationalists in Transylvania, Ukrainian nationalists in Galicia, Bosnian nationalists, Croat nationalists. However, to many's surprise, workers and far-left elements dominated the streets of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and even some parts of Hungary.
As the Great War was over, everybody that had armies or troops to spare helped their favourite side in Austria-Hungary. And Ukraine was the most successful of the smaller nations in supporting the Galician rebels, only surpassed by the success of German support for their comrades. The Germans had agreed with the Austria-Hungarian rebels in a secret protocol that, in return for all the help, the VDAR would get the Sudetenland.
And due to the already-achieved reforms, the nationalist movements were never as strong as in OTL and so achieved relatively little, especially against the communists/Spartacists/AFPÖ who promised the constituents full democratic representation in the Imperial Diet. Thus, the more time passed in the Austria-Hungarian Civil War, the stronger the communist movements became.
Very soon, units of the regular Army and police forces also started to defect and, as German, Romanian, and Ukrainian troops helped the rebels, the rebellions were exacerbated against a valiantly fighting and rushedly reforming Emperor Ferdinand I. (yes, he lives here!), however, this time, the Spartacist rebels did not give into appeasement. Poland fell in a quite brutal civil war in 1922-1924, whereas Estonia and Livonia, in response to their communist movements growing, drifted more and more to the right as they became rather autocratic anti-communist.
In Asia, little changed in China, although Xinjiang independence movements gain more traction and are supported by Russia, and the Indochinese were treated way better by the VDAR than by their former French overlords.
Generally, this is a time of great instability in many regions of the world, and this will not change any time soon. The guns fell silent in Europe. But not for long...
Britain was, although it didn't have to cede too many territories, so totally insolvent and defaulted on all loans immediately after the surrender that it could only be prevented from full civil war by harsh authoritarian government measures, combined with an austerity package never seen before or since. Also, it had to grant home rule to Ireland and sell British Somaliland to Austria-Hungary. And those conditions did not get any better, austerity package after austerity package followed. And in the 1921 general election, the Labour Party gained a slight majority, but not the totally ruined Conservative Party got the second spot, but the PBE (Party of the British Ethnicity), a newly founded party of after the war. And radicals of this party, around Oswald Mosley and Lord Harmsworth, planned a coup. As the Labour government increasingly got taken over by hardline syndicalist unionised people, and wanted to reform Britain into a Syndicalist state, on April 2, 1923, there was the coup as the PBE hardliners had gotten much of the army and navy, and of course King George VI., on their side. Oswald Mosley became Prime Minister and, as his first act of government, has taken away home rule from Ireland. Canada went even more independent, but Australia and all of Southern Africa has declared loyalty to the government of Mosley.
In India, a puppet government was installed, but it shows signs of breaking up very soon...
Also, in Italy, which was forcibly democratised, the far right "Fascista" movement, with a basically Ethnist policy and under Benito Mussolini, rose in prminence. As opposed to OTL, they participate in the elections and have, already in the first 1922 Prime Minister election gained third place with 23,8 % behind the Socialists with 51,2 and the conservative Partito Populo with 29,2 %.
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