Marianne Wept: An Interwar Timeline

Apocatequil

KnightofTempest said:
Holy shit, are you actually doing the Intermarium? I literally have not seen that done before without ASB involvement.

I regret that I only have but one like to give!
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I'm not actually sure that what I'm going to do there, but the Intermarium concept itself will play a major role whether or not it is ever realized.
 

zert

Well the Enlarged Polish Commonwealth is big. Now if it can hold onto all that territory is another thing. I have the feeling that many Ukrainians and Belorussians may have some different opinions.

At least for now they have Baltic ports to receive weapons and supplies from the French and British as available.
 

KnightofTempest

zert said:
Well the Enlarged Polish Commonwealth is big. Now if it can hold onto all that territory is another thing. I have the feeling that many Ukrainians and Belorussians may have some different opinions.

At least for now they have Baltic ports to receive weapons and supplies from the French and British as available.
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It depends on what portion of Ukraine. The Western bit is pretty polonophilic. Even the central bits around Kiev had pro Polish partisans in the 20s. It's the East where Poland is likely to run into trouble, a lot of ethnic Russians live there.

Belarus. . .well that depends on who wins the Civil War in Russia. . .
 

Apocatequil

Red Spring​

The Winter of 1919-20 saw a brief stabilization of the German Civil War. East Prussia was firmly in the grip of the Nationalist DNVP-backed insurgents, as was Saxony, Baden, and Northern Bavaria. Southern Bavaria was held by the remnants of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg and Kurt Eisner. The Brandenburg Republic maintained control over the Northern regions of the country, and Lower Saxony and Thuringia were contested by the Republican and Nationalist factions. Britain was investing heavily in the Brandenburg Coalition's army, while the Soviets were sending what they could spare from their own war to support the Communists in the south. The Nationalists had the upper hand early in the conflict, thanks to their material and manpower advantages; however, the Government forces were proving resilient, with sustained British arms and funds turning the tide over the following months. A major issue for the Nationalist army was that they lacked a rigid command structure, instead consisting of an informal coalition of Freikorps and militias that had sprung up in the Summer of 1919. The exception was was in East Prussia, where the Nationalists had declared Königsberg the capital-in-exile of the German Empire and continued to follow Wilhelm II, despite the fact that he was living in the Netherlands and had made no comment on the movement.

This lack of organization would prove disastrous in February of 1920. The Nationalists did not recognize the Treaty of Versailles, and thus viewed the current Anglo-French control of the Rhineland to be an illegitimate occupation of their country. Most of the Freikorps would avoid antagonizing the British and French, as they realized that an invasion in Germany's current state would be catastrophic. However, some overzealous members supported retaking the Rhineland in order to legitimize the movement. Few of these members were so delusional as to think that they could defeat the German Government as well as the French and British simultaneously, rather, they believed the Western forces would lack the resolve to continue the conflict and evacuate the territory easily. Thus, on March 7, the Freikorp Lichtschlag, a group of 2500 men under the leadership of Oskar von Watter, conducted a raid on Cologne, which killed 10 British soldiers and precipitated the Ruhr Crisis. Berlin immediately disavowed the attack, calling the Freikorps "rogue fear-mongers". The East Prussia shadow government, however, could not disavow the attack without implicitly acknowledging Versailles. They remained silent on the issue. Britain had been searching for an excuse to intervene in the conflict, and this seemed to provide a perfect Casus Belli. France, too, was eager to re-engage Germany before they could recover. It was, of all nations, Poland who intervened on behalf of the Nationalists. Piłsudski wanted the conflict the continue as long a possible, as it would damage Germany's ability to attack. At the same time, it wanted the Nationalists to lose the war, as a Republican or Socialist Germany would be less likely to attack than a nation of irredentist imperials. It made this case to France, which also wished to damage Germany's war machine. The two nations agreed that the war should be made as violent and protracted as possible. However, Poland feared that direct intervention could unify the nation against the invaders, paradoxically strengthening Germany. France, in turn, would consign itself to holding the Rhine, and would pressure the British to do the same. Ultimately, the British provided aid to the Republic in every way they could except direct intervention, including providing funds and intelligence, as well as blockading East Prussia and mercilessly destroying any Nationalist militia unfortunate enough to wander into League of Nations territory. The French and Polish meanwhile, would sign a mutual defensive agreement against Germany, informally known as the Warsaw Pact.

The decision not to attack, while frustrating to some French Nationalists, proved wise in the end. November of 1919 in France had seen the beginning of "les Années Rouges", or "the Red Years", so called because of left wing agitation and general strikes. These strikes ground French industry to a halt, and were only exacerbated by the Ruhr Crisis. It was entirely possible that a resumption of hostilities between France and Germany could have sparked a full-blown revolution in France, in the style of the one Germany had only barely staved off. The strikes, which had originated in northern Italy the preceding July and spread throughout the Mediterranean, were in protest of poor economic performance, high unemployment, and poor working conditions. In Milan and Turin, some leftists went so far as to form factory councils, taking control of industry and organizing into Syndicates. Similar actions were taken in France, particularly in the south. Mussolini, ever the opportunist, allied himself with the wealthy factory owners in order to put down the uprisings. In doing this, the Fascists would be forced to compromise some of their ideals in order to appeal to the conservatives in Italy. Most notably, they embraced Conservative Italian institutions such as the Monarchy and the Catholic Church. They also took positions appealing to "Family values", such as opposing women in the workforce. Though fascism had become much more conservative, it maintained its revolutionary character, supporting revolutionary action to maintain law and order. This absorption of the Conservative faction increased the power of the fascists dramatically, causing membership to skyrocket to 250,000 by 1921. It was this new Fascism that would be exported into other countries in the following years.

The withdraw of Poland from the Russian Civil War had allowed the Bolsheviks to push Denikin south from Moscow, though Kolchak's Siberian army continued west. The danger from the south had passed, but now Trotsky's Red Army was dealing with a danger from the east. Kazan, Pezna, and Saratov all fell to the Whites, which allowed a union between the Siberian army and Southern Army. This left the White Army spread extremely thin, allowing Trotsky to initiate a counteroffensive in June of 1920, shattering Denikin's army in the south and retaking territory lost the preceding years. Most of the Caucasus region remained beyond the reach of the Red Army, and with the Whites in disarray, newly independent nations such as Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the North Caucasus, and the Kuban Republic emerged. These anti-Bolshevik forces would attempt to retain independence throughout the war, to varying degrees of success. Similarly, the states in the Baltic would make peace with the Soviets in the Spring of 1920. The Red Army turned its attention towards Kolchak, who was now by far the most powerful anti-Bolshevik force in Russia. Trotsky made early gains on the Whites, but the exhausted Red Army struggled to push east of the Ural Mountains. While Kolchak's army failed to defeat Trotsky's, he had a lot of territory to fall back on, and his army remained intact.
 
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zert

Nice to see the update. Still lots of chaos i Russia and Germany, and events are still fluid till the outcome. Just who will stay in power I wonder.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

With the new Poland extending so very far into the Ukraine, how does it not hold the tiny strip of land between it and the Black Sea? Or the chunk up against Romania.
 

Apocatequil

Red Winter
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Conservatives responded rapidly and harshly to the leftist revolts. Strikers in Northern Italy were beaten, harassed, and intimidated by paramilitary groups, acting independent of the government but often in cooperation with industrialists and factory owners. The workers did not surrender, however, and street violence continued to escalate throughout 1921. This conflict came to attention of the international community, particularly in France, which experienced similar conditions to Italy. A number of far-right newspapers that had been formed during the Dreyfus Affair supported the paramilitary groups and vehemently denounced the leftists as traitors to the nation, chief among them Action Française. Gradually, the Italian Fascism bled across the border into France, where anti-socialist groups sprung up in response to the unrest. Like in Italy, these groups were socially conservative and pro-Catholic. Unlike in Italy, they were split on monarchism. The fascists in Italy had been anti-monarch before the revolts, but changed their position to support King Victor Emmanuel III to gain the support of the conservatives. The French fascists, on the other hand, could not agree on whether there should even be a monarch, let alone who it should be. The primary fissure within the French Fascist movement centered around the attitude towards the French Revolution. There were those who idolized the Revolutionary period that followed in which France dominated Europe, and those who believed the Revolution to be a mistake and advocated a return of the Bourbon Dynasty. The first group was further split into those who opposed monarchy in general and those who supported Napoleon and advocated the return of the Bonaparte Dynasty. The disjointed movement lacked the political power to enforce its will on the populace, and even together the far-right was not powerful enough to eliminate the socialist movement. The were plenty powerful enough, however, to harass them much as they had in Italy. Labor leaders were assaulted, striking workers beaten, homes were vandalized, and fights broke out in the streets. The Fascists rallied the right wing to their side, declaring that they were engaged in a war for the soul of France, and the socialists wanted to abolish the nation altogether. These paramilitary groups, called "blueshirts", received a surprising amount of support from the conservative institution by preying on fears of the "Red Menace". General Phillipe Petain expressed support for the movement, as did conservative members of the French Parliament. Others, such as President Poincaré and Marshall Ferdinand Foch, sympathized with the groups aims but opposed their violent tactics. Journalist and nationalist agitator Charles Maurras responded by saying that violence wouldn't be necessary if the French government were able to conduct the war competently and secure a real victory. This reflected a general attitude among the right that the Republican government had failed to protect France during the war and secure its safety afterwards. By January of 1922, the Socialist revolts were dead, and the Fascists were a political force to be reckoned with.

Even as the French Fascists pushed for an invasion of Germany, the prospect became less and less likely as the civil war gradually wound down. The insurgents found themselves declining throughout 1921, as the government forces increasingly outgunned them, and Freikorps returned to government loyalty seeing that the war was lost. The Socialists, too, were beaten back by their two rival factions, often with extreme brutality. Among the nationalist army (and even in some groups in the government faction), the Socialists were demonized as evil and anti-German. Rosa Luxemburg and Kurt Eisner, the two most prominent members of the KPD, were both Jewish, and Luxemburg was an ethnic Pole. Jews and Poles were ostracized throughout Germany, in some cases being blamed for the loss of the war. The Freikorps, in particular, acted extremely anti-semitically, attacking innocent Jews and vandalizing their property. This violent persecution of Jews was held up as evidence of Germany's animal-like brutality by the French and Italians, and used as justification to attack the country once again. Mainland Germany had been retaken by November of 1921, though the country remained deeply divided and the German Empire still survived in East Prussia. The final fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic came on October 30th following a siege in Munich. Kurt Eisner was shot and killed in the ensuing battle, and Rosa Luxemburg's beaten, lifeless body was thrown into the Isar river and found two days later, nearly unrecognizable. The bulk of the fighting now behind them, the Brandenburg Republic set about reuniting the disparate parts of the nation.

Despite their best efforts, the fissures that appeared in Germany appeared to be irreconcilable. Influential right-wing theorist Alfred Roth published "The Jew in the Army" in 1919, laying the foundation for the "Stab-in-the-back myth", which claimed that Jews and Socialists had caused Germany's defeat in the Great War. "The Nation Betrayed", published from exile in Stockholm in 1924, went further, and accused the democratic government of Germany of being little more than an Anglo-French puppet run by crypto-socialists who wanted to destroy Germany from the inside. It pointed to the Treaty of Versailles, as well as the Republic's military campaign that prioritized the defeat of the revolting Nationalists over the Communists. It claimed that the SDP had colluded with the Allies, the Communists, and the Jews in order to seize power, leaving a broken Germany in its wake. Other nationalists and imperials would pen similar attacks on the Brandenburg Republic and liberalism in general from exile.

This Nationalism took the form of a collection of "Völkisch" movements, derived from the word "Volk" or "people". The word had overtones of folklore, tribalism, and ethnocentrism. The centerpiece of the "Conservative Revolutionary" movement, völkism was popular among the upper classes, the former aristocrats, and the educated elites prior to the 1920s. Volkism had predated the Great War, having arisen out of Romantic Nationalism in the late 19th Century. Under the influence of Fascism, volkism made efforts to appeal to the working class of Germany, styling itself as "Volkish Socialism". Founded in 1920 was the "Völkischsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" or VSDAP. The VSDAP advocated the reunion of ethnic Germans abroad, specifically in Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Further, the emphasized the "Uralt Kampf", or "Ancient Struggle", which they believed to be an ongoing war between the Germanic people and the Romance people. According to the volkists, this struggle had begun nearly two millenia prior at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, and the successor of the Romans was now the French, the eternal enemy of the German people. The VSDAP held that peace between Germany and France was impossible, as the two groups had irreconcilable differences and the war would end with one as the ruler and the other destroyed. This concept would ironically become popular in France as well, with a number of blueshirts referring to themselves as legionaries, and a coalition of Bonaparist blueshirt groups naming themselves the "Roman League" in reference to this concept. The United Kingdom was becoming increasingly concerned about the rise of the far right on the continent, finding it nearly as problematic as the far-left. Despite the victory of the Democratic forces, authoritarian nationalism remained alive and well in Germany, as powerful as ever.
 
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zert

Nice to see an update. Things are looking bleak in Germany, Italy, and France. Just how might the US and Russia react to this developments?
 

Apocatequil

The April Revolution
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Lenin's control over Russia was hanging by a thread as of 1921. Though the White Movement had been driven into Siberia, the gruesome remains of the Russian Empire had been torn apart by nationalist rebellions. Independent states existed in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, North Ingria, and Karelia in the North, while the Southern parts of Russia were similarly chaotic. Central Asian States had defected as well. The Emirate of Bukhara, for example, had become independent for the first time since 1873. The Bolsheviks now maintained solid control over only a core of ethnically Russian territories West of the Urals. Lacking oil due to the loss of the Southern Regions to nationalists, the Red Army was slowly coming to standstill. The public support of Lenin's policies had declined significantly since the start of the Revolution, particularly War Communism. This, combined with increased hostility towards other far-left factions and an overall failure to conclusively win the war culminated in left wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks themselves. A patchwork of different groups began to seize power throughout the country in the Spring of 1921. The Red Army, which was spread thin and still combating White forces in Siberia was unable to stop the rise of the third Russian uprising in half a decade. The April Revolution had begun.

The first of these revolts was the Green Army, led by Alexander Antonov in the Tambov Governate. Drawing its support mostly from the peasantry, the Green Army opposed the Soviet confiscation of grain, which had caused famine in the region. Proving themselves to be surprisingly well organized and prepared for conflict, the Green Army was a formidable power in Central Russia, even going so far as to infiltrate the Soviet Cheka. Less than 300 miles from Moscow, the Tambov Uprising posed an existential threat to the Russian SFSR. Meanwhile, the Mahknovists continued to run rampant in the south, being rapidly pushed North from the Polish client state of Ukraine, and the resurgent Mensheviks and Left SRs gained support from disillusioned Bolsheviks.

The next blow to the Soviets came a week after the beginning of the Tambov Uprising, in the Gulf of Finland. Sailors of the Soviet Baltic fleet rebelled, along with peasants around Petrograd. They had a number of harsh demands for the Soviets, including new elections to the Soviets, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, the end of grain confiscation, the release of all Socialist political prisoners, and the abolition of political sections of the armed forces. After a five day conflict, the Kronstadt sailors took control of Kotlin Island, and Petrograd fell to rebels shortly after. With the old capital of the Russian Empire in rebel control, and the new capital in Moscow in jeopardy, the Soviets had no choice but to withdraw the Red Army from the East to confront the revolution. This allowed the White Movement breathing room to regroup and recuperate.

In the face of total collapse, the Bolsheviks agreed to make some concessions to the Greens, Blacks, and Kronstadt Sailors(who were now styling themselves as the "Free Socialist Army"). However, it was too little too late, and the radicals refused to capitulate. Trotsky was forced to confront the Green Army, which had gained control over large swathes of territory in stretching from the Don to the Volga. The Red and Green forces met for the first time outside of Penza. The Green Army contained about 20,000 regulars and at least 70,0000 local militia fighters, while Trotsky had under his command 65,000 exhausted soldiers. Use of poison gas by the Soviets was harshly condemned internationally, and further galvanized popular support against the Soviets. Despite a string of military victories against the peasants, the Red Army was unable to endure guerrilla resistance and mass defections of troops to Antonov's army. April 30th saw the first victory of Antonov's army over Trotsky's. With the Red Army in shambles, Moscow itself fell on May 12th, 1921. Lenin was killed in the struggle, though Stalin escaped and went into exile in Turkey. The Russian SFSR was replaced by the Union of Working Peasants (UWP), led by Antonov. The Red Army still existed, however, and it made one final bid to restore Bolshevik control in Moscow. Leon Trotsky, now the default leader of the Bolshevik forces in Russia, made a drive for the capital. The Battle of Moscow was fought through June of 1921, and saw the decisive defeat of the Red Army. They conducted a shattered retreat southwards, no longer exercising legitimate control of any of their former territory.

These developments did not go unnoticed to the White Army, who surged back across the Urals in August of 1921. Kolchak's control over his armies was not as firm as he believed, however. The Whites had had issues with unity previously, and had been hampered early in the war by a weak command structure, low popular support, and ideological disagreements. The only thing holding the coalition of forces together had been hatred of the Bolsheviks. With Lenin deposed and Russia in disarray, many of these forces abandoned the alliance altogether. The Cossacks in the Kuban and Don Republics made peace with the UWP, while areas in the far-East established their independence. Kamchatka, Chukotka, Tungus, Green Ukraine, Yakutia, and Transbaikal all abandoned the White Movement to its fate in the Summer of 1921. Still, Kolchak soldered on, under the assumption that the Green Army would be defeated easily and Russia could be restored. The White Army initiated an all-out assault on Moscow, even as their grip on the territory they held was steadily loosened. The White Army was so weak by the time it actually saw battle that the army broke down mid-fight, the last pieces of the movement scattering across the countryside. The Provisional Government of Siberia reasserted the power it had handed over to the White Movement. The Russian Civil War officially ended on November 12th, 1921. With over 4 million deaths, the war had killed more Russians than the Great War. The new order in Eastern Europe was still fluid, with over a dozen new countries emerging and the titan that was Russia in ruins. The future of the region was uncertain, but not without hope.
 

zert

Good to see this alive. Thanks for the update and looking forward to how well the Greens can maintain their power.
 

Apocatequil

Rebirth of a Nation
​
"No more shall Italy be suffocated. On this momentous day, we may begin to sweep away the filth from our nation, and restore the glory that was ours. Today, Italy is reborn!"
-Benito Mussolini, upon appointment as Prime Minister of Italy​

By January of 1922, the instability that had gripped Europe since the Great War appeared to be nearing its end. After three successive governments were deposed in Russia, the Civil War had ended. Germany, after seeing over a million casualties, had coalesced behind the Brandenburg Republic. The Turkish War of Independence had resolved in a Turkish victory and the establishment of a Republic in Ankara. The one exception to this trend, however, was Italy.

The National Fascist Party had burst onto the political scene two years earlier by suppressing labor riots on behalf of the upper class. Since then, Mussolini had amassed supporters, established political connections, and plotted the capture and subjugation of the Italian state. This much was declared by Mussolini himself in March of 1922, as he organized a March on Rome. Capitalizing on yet another strike, the blackshirts marched throughout Italy, promising to restore "Law and Order". They demanded that Mussolini be appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel III. The King complied, and Mussolini became the 27th Prime Minister of Italy. The Fascists immediately set about entrenching themselves in the Italian political system with acts like the Acerbo Law, which granted two third of the seats in parliament to the winner election winners given they received more than 25% of the vote.

Fascists in France, meanwhile, were in disarray. In December of 1921, a Fascist council was called in Paris, named the "First Congress for the Preservation of the French Nation". Claiming to represent the entirety of the French Far-right, in reality many of the anti-monarchists marginalized or excluded. The conference was dominated by Legitimists, who supported Jaime de Bourbon, Duke of Madrid, for the throne of France. The Orléanists, who backed Phillippe, Duke of Orleans, were generally opposed by the other fascists, as being overly liberal and sympathetic to the Republicans. The Bonapartists were represented primarily by the Roman League, a collection of blueshirts who subscribed to the "culture struggle" theory of history advanced by the German Volkists, in which European history was defined by a clash between Latin and Germanic cultures. They also supported many of the liberal positions of the Orléanists, but they made up for it with extreme militarism and hypernationalism. Of the various factions, it was them who most resembled Mussolini's movement in Italy. As well as these three factions, there were a number of monarchists who would support any claimant to the throne, but opposed Republicanism. This group made up a plurality of the monarchists. The stated goal of the conference was to unite the various pro-Monarchy groups into a single movement in order to better enforce their will upon the Republic.

The anti-monarchists, after being snubbed by the Congress, resolved to force their way into the arrangement. This led, predictably, to conflict between the two groups, escalating into violence in some cases. Tensions peaked on December 15th, when Charles Maurras, a monarchist author and journalist for Action Française, suggested in a speech that the anti-monarchists were agents of the Republican government. He went on to imply connection to the Germans by pointing out that the VSDAP was anti-monarchist, and accused them of being German sympathizers. Within the French far-right, this was about as serious of an accusation that one could make, and the anti-monarchist responded by rioting. The violence spilled out into the streets of Paris until it was suppressed several hours later by the Parisian police.

Though the far-right was weakened by the events of December 15th as a whole, it was most destructive for the anti-monarchist right. Prior to the event, they had been a dominant force in France, and the government was controlled by Conservatives, albeit much more moderate ones than those who took part in what became known as the Thursday Riots. Afterwards, however, many prominent anti-monarchist right-wingers were imprisoned, and the ideology was severely delegitimized. The Fascist movement emerged from the conference more disunited than ever.

Meanwhile, Poland continued to tighten its grip on Eastern Europe. Following victory over Belarus in the Polish-Belorussian War in 1921, the Poles established Międzymorze, in theory a loose alliance of states commited against Russian and German imperialism, but in practice was dominated by Poland. As of 1922, the alliance included Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, and Poland invited various other states in Eastern Europe to join. Lithuania refused to join, and in fact had no diplomatic relations with Poland as a result of the Polish-Lithuanian War of 1919-1920, as well as continued Polish control of the historic Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Międzymorze faced opposition from within Poland itself, both among leftists who viewed it as imperialism, and nationalists who opposed multi-cultural federations. Still, they failed to halt the project, and by 1922 Poland had established a hegemony over much of its historic territory.

This was simplified by Russia's inability to project power beyond its own borders. Unlike the Bolsheviks, the Green Army did not have a single, well defined ideology. Antonov himself was a former Bolshevik who had abandoned the party due to the policy of War Communism, but remained an adherent to the basic tenenets of Leninism, including support for a vanguard party. Other Greens, however, were Left Communists who opposed Leninism, while others were anarchists, Mensheviks, Socialists, and Social Democrats. The wide array of competing ideologies with the UWP Government, combined with Western countries reluctance to cooperate with the UWP, made the Union unstable and difficult to control. As a result, the UWP posed little credible threat to the newly emgered Republics in Siberia and the Caucasus, though this did not stop politicians within these states from using the threat of Russia for political gain. The Kuban and Don Republics, for example, formed close relationships with Crimea and Poland, though they stopped short of joining Międzymorze.
 

zert

More political turmoil and chaos in Eastern Europe. France getting mayhem between the factions. Which country will next fall to infighting?
 

Apocatequil

Trixtor said:
So much chaos. It's beautiful.
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That's not even everything. I've completely glossed over the Turkish War of Independece, the Irish Civil War, the Mesopotamian Revolt, the Greco-Turkish War, the Mexican Revolution, the Hungarian Revolution, the Rand Rebellion, the Mongolian Revolution, and the Chinese Warlord Period because they've gone more or less as IOTL. For the most part, the larger changes have been contained to Europe, but that could change at some point in the future.
 
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