The Imperial Shadow Council: Japan in Darkest Hour

[Chief Savage Man]

Chapter Twenty Four: Operation Shogun (April 16 – July 26, 1942)

Entente planners knew that they would not be able to hide the preparations for the assault on Europe forever, but their luck had held through April. French strategic thought had been focused on the pursuit of a massive offensive into the Middle East, to gain oil lost after the recapture of Texas and to try and deny resources to the ever growing Entente industrial base that was bound to outproduce the Internationale in the long run. The arrival of over a hundred Entente divisions forced a stalemate instead. The French knew that a massive force was in their path, but what were not so sure about what national armies were most prevalent in the Eastern Command.

This began to change when the French made their first attempt at breaking the lines in Iraq. The experienced French commanders and veteran troops believed they had a good chance of breaking through the enemy line.

Their expertise was thwarted by the sheer scale of the defensive fortifications around Karbala that had been built in the weeks since the two armies had settled into the stalemate.

The French called off their first attack on Karbala after just a few days, having taken nearly thirty thousand casualties, including losing sixty-one tanks. What they also found was that there were hardly any Japanese or North American divisions. The French command had assumed that, based on underestimates of the size of the new Asian Entente armies, North American divisions were the ones shoring up the lines in the Middle East.

The realization that the Japanese and North American armies were not in the Middle East caused the neutral powers of the world to recognize that something was afoot. The Vozhd in particular was keen enough to see what was about to happen, and he decided that he wanted a piece of the action.

A Russian proposal for a grand bargain that would return Western Europe to the Entente while Russia would seize Eastern Europe. The Minseito absolutely refused to consider it, but also did not wish to publicly provoke Russia at that point in time, so the proposal was ignored and would remain classified until 1985.

As spring rolled into summer, the ideal invasion dates for the longest possible summer campaign came and went, as the Entente logistics network was overworked.

Finally, the Entente decided that a date needed to be set, and they decided that the invasion would launch immediately after the newest Japanese armored and motorized divisions arrived from the Home Islands, in late July. It was not optimal timing, but it would have to do.

While the passage of the optimal dates led some in the Internationale to be optimistic and believe they had until 1943 to prepare for an invasion, most commanders were not fooled and resorted to novel strategies to try and put the Entente off balance for as long as possible.

The Italian raid of Alexandria served as a distraction that pulled away Indian cavalry divisions earmarked for the invasion of Persia, but the Italians did not have the naval power to support a large invasion force.

More effective for the Internationale was the continued support of the Algerian rebels who declared victory in their war of liberation after seizing Tunis. The Entente continued to shun National France especially now that they held naval bases in Egypt.

About a week before the Japanese armor was scheduled to arrive in England, the Persian Gambit was given the go ahead. The main force meant to drive to the Caucasus was about half the size as originally planned, but the arrival of more French divisions on the line in Syria meant that more of the intended invasion force had to be left where it was to hold the line.

The Entente was cutting it close, as Turkestan was in a state of collapse by July.

In the end, their timing turned out to be very good, as the power of Turkestan to resist was shattered, but the Russians were not too close that they would cross the Persian border before the Entente could secure it.

A force of Burmese, Taiwanese and Indian infantry moved to do just that, while a mobile force of Chinese, New English, Indian, Japanese and Australasian divisions struck the main blow.

Most divisions pushed northwest towards Baku, while the Chinese divisions peeled off to secure Teheran.

The only resistance the Turkestan could put up to protect their vassal was one battered infantry division pushed south by the Russians.

The Australasian armor pushed ahead of every other division in order to scout, and found that Azerbaijan and Armenia were virtually undefended. Every French division in the region had been sent to try and break the line in Iraq and Syria.

The Entente conquest of Persia would cost virtually no blood or treasure.

The maneuver caught the Internationale by surprise, and their attempts to break the stalemate became more aggressive. They suffered more than fifty thousand casualties in a second attempt to take Karbala.

The attack on Turkestan did have one major consequence, in that it informed the Russians that their offer of a grand bargain was not going to be accepted, and so they retaliated by declaring more puppet states in the territory claimed by the Republic of China.

The advance Australasian light armor entered Baku without resistance, cutting off the only rail link between the French forces in the East and their homeland.

The very next morning, Operation Shogun begun. The first sign of invasion were the waves of aircraft which took off from Southeast England.

The pilots found that Amsterdam’s garrison had been redeployed to Bruges, and that the city was wide open, and so the American transports which had delivered the new Japanese armor to England were given an escort and told to crash the harbor. Amsterdam was a massive harbor, and the urban center of the Netherlands. If it could be captured without a fight, it would get the invasion off to a good start. The other two attacks on Dieppe and Bruges launched as planned.

The Bruges landing commenced an hour before the Dieppe landing. British and Canadian marines, backed up by Japanese armored divisions, attacked the Dutch defenders. The Dutch had never had a formidable army, but the veteran infantry they did had had been lost in America, and so poorly trained recruits were up against experienced marines.

Japanese and British marines attacking Dieppe found just a single French garrison division, which had been heavily bombed by Entente aircraft.

The Dieppe garrison had been unable to prevent the beach landings, and then had been surrounded in the city of Dieppe itself. They surrendered within four days of the initial landings.

The Amsterdam landings went off as expected, with two Japanese armor divisions seizing the city virtually unopposed. The Dutch populace, victims of a French-backed Totalist coup, regarded the invading liberals with a sense of relief more than anything else.

The port of Amsterdam allowed more divisions to pour in, and the first divisions that had landed moved inland to seize Arnhem.

Dieppe was under British control a few days later and was ready to take in reinforcements.

Bruges, which had been expected to be the easiest landing of all, turned out to take the longest, though it would not take remotely as long as the Cornish landings had.

Now that Japanese armor was ashore in great numbers, it was time to see just how effective Sakai’s doctrine of mobility would be. The Entente had successfully cut off the bulk of the Internationale army from the homeland, and their tanks would be able to travel on the good Western European roads quickly. Armored divisions were dispatched from the Netherlands proper to take the Bruges defenders from the rear. Optimistic assessments of coastal defenses had turned out to be accurate, and now the Entente aimed to put ashore as many divisions as possible. Operation Shogun was a success, but the war was not won just yet. The major French cities needed to fall in order to cripple the Internationale war effort, and the Entente had to try and capture as much territory as possible before winter, or opportunists, came.

 

[Deus]

Good going!

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Chapter Twenty-Five: A Bridge Too Far (July 29 – August 28, 1942)

By the end of July, the invaders had seized not only the French capital in Paris, but other major cities such as Brussels and Cologne.

English ports worked around the clock, as a massive queue of divisions waited to be loaded onto transports and ferried to the Low Countries. Armor and mobile divisions were sent first.

The sudden appearance of a few dozen highly mobile divisions in flat terrain, as well as the destruction of the Dutch army in America, meant that the Totalist state of the Netherlands was destroyed in about two weeks.

The invaders adopted a raiding posture, making bold and unprotected moves in order to capture territory and cut rail links before enemy forces could deploy against the invasion.

With just over half of the total invasion force landed, the supply chain of the invasion was already straining under the pressure.

Nevertheless, the invaders pushed forward, moving to link up both beachheads and to create a pocket around Calais.

As infantry landed in greater numbers, the invasion began to establish a coherent front. Japanese mobile assets continued to push south and east at high speed, while arriving infantry moved to conquer France’s industrial heartland.

In the south, an opportunity arose to form a pocket of enemy forces. The most heavily fortified region in Europe was the former boundary between France and Mitteleuropa, and so the maneuver-focused Entente wished to see these regions surrounded and attacked before they could be reinforced from Germany or the rest of France.

Wallonia and Luxembourg would surrender about a week after the fall of the Netherlands.

The planned pocket was formed with the capture of Nancy and Strasbourg, but the Second Armored Corps was eager to push just a bit farther south and cut off France from the rest of the Internationale.

As the pocket in the east formed, thirteen Japanese mobile divisions landed near Bordeaux unopposed.

Unfortunately, the pocket was brief lived, as French infantry finally began to appear to try and hold Reims. Outnumbered seven to one, they still managed to frustrate the advance of the American infantry and Japanese armor.

The Entente was finding itself with a rapidly expanding and convoluted front once again, and the destruction of the Calais pocket helped to simplify the situation.

The German military was finally appearing, redeployed from its defensive positions against Russia. While commanders in Germany itched to charge forward to Berlin, the orders came down to seek to establish defensive positions along the river Weser in order to avoid complicating matters further while the scramble for France was ongoing.

As a part of the scramble, Japanese motorized divisions captured Toulouse and moved with haste towards the home base of the Communal Navy, Marseille. There they forced the French fleet out, where the battleship Auguste Blanqui was sunk by Japanese carriers.

With Marseille captured, the second goal in the south was the capture of Lyon.

One thing that took the Entente by surprise was the arrival of German armor, clearly inspired by French designs. Conventional wisdom was that there would be too much mistrust of Germany for France to share too much technology with them, but the threat of the Entente had clearly driven France to seek to mobilize German industry to its greatest effect. The German armor took back Mainz and cut off seven highly valuable Japanese divisions to the south.

American infantry sought to create a more stable link to the cut off Japanese armor, and so attacked Verdun.

They simply could not move fast enough to keep up with the pace of modern armored warfare taking place to the east. Japanese armor in Strasbourg would soon find themselves in both a familiar and unfamiliar situation. They were outnumbered, but this was often the case. They were also, however, outnumbered by tanks, something that had never happened before to a Japanese armored division.

The division could not hold the line on its own and so it pulled back rather than continue to be swarmed by the German armor.

At the same time, Japanese motorized divisions holding the eastern approaches to Essen were under heavy attack from Hannover, and so they pulled back as well. The Entente could afford to give up space in Germany so long as they did not pull back all the way into France.

However, strings of retreats were bad for morale. Canadian armor in the Saar region was also forced to pull back from its attack on Metz before abandoning Saarbrucken altogether. The Entente, only three weeks into the conflict, felt like they were losing the initiative.

While this mood permeated the command structure, nobody was particularly afraid that they would be battled back into the sea. The problem was that the Entente was war weary and far flung, and quick victories in Europe were helping to paper over the problems in the alliance. A victory in Essen would have to do for now.

The Entente needed to destroy France and put up a united front that could push east in unison, and the arrival of 20 divisions in Bordeaux from Canada and the Pacific States put the remaining French defenders in a hopeless situation.

Everything in this phase of the war was about delaying reinforcements from France’s allies long enough to destroy France, and the Japanese motor divisions which had captured Marseille adopted a raider posture, moving to invade the Italian industrial cities of Genoa and Turin and lay waste to the infrastructure which Italy would use to reinforce their ally.

Nobody was worried about the Internationale defeating the Entente, not anymore, but there was still the risk that any of the major democracies could pull out of the war effort. A huge embarrassment could cause the collapse of a government and for ill-timed elections.

The potential that developed in Colmar of three whole Japanese armored divisions, prized constructions of the Japanese war machine, being surrounded and destroyed certainly had the potential to destroy the credibility of the Minseito.

The Japanese armor, able to be countered and delayed by the equally mobile German armor, had no choice but to bunker down in Colmar and wait to be rescued. There was an enticing potential of catching the German armor in the original pocket, but the Imperial Japanese Army, in the first time in its life as a modern mechanized force, was learning that it needed to know when to be patient and careful. Overzealous advance was giving the IJA an opportunity to snatch a brutal defeat from the jaws of certain victory.

 

[Mitsuru]

Saarbrücken is an awful place anyway. Nobody likes Saarbrücken.

 

[Deus]

Gripping stuff

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Chapter Twenty Six: Untitled Chapter (August 29 – October 8, 1942)

The danger to the Colmar pocket was brief, but it did require the diversion of divisions from the south and west to reinforce the position. While the armor could have pulled back, doing so would have opened up a route for German forces to link up with Italians in the south, an area that only had scattered Japanese raiders rather than a coherent Entente front.

The Entente’s mad dash inland had spiraled somewhat out of control with a long and convoluted front, and it was a priority to collapse the Lorraine salient so that the various forces surrounding it could be used in an advance into Germany.

One of the pitfalls of an international alliance was the competition for glory, and so the armies of five nations in the north could not be held back from an advance into northern Germany. All of the constituent armies were beholden to politicians back home who all wanted their nation to have its own specific victory. While Japan was the preeminent authority over all Europe, a headline that the USA was marching on Hamburg had value of its own.

The advance in the north could not go on at the pace the Anglo(-Canadian-Transamurian-New English)-American commanders wanted, because the Japanese failed to hold Mainz against German counterattack, giving the Lorraine salient a more stable footing.

None of the setbacks could change the fact that the French industrial power had been broken. The long supply chains that moved the products of the French industrial machine to the grand armies in the Middle East were disrupted, and Germany scrambled to pick up the slack.

Slow victory by starvation would not suffice. The Minseito was under political pressure for a rapid victory, and Sakai’s doctrines dictated that the enemy should not be allowed to settle in along any front. The largest remaining uncaptured and undamaged French territory was the northwest, and the Entente attacked from the east and south.

Sakai doctrines would also suggest that it would have been best to separate the enemy into multiple pockets, but the geography of Brittany acted as a funnel, and it seemed inevitable that the French would be pushed all the way back to a last stand in Brest.

Meanwhile, the Entente had secured Bremen and surrounded Essen.

This made the Entente feel confident that the Low Countries were secure. Belgium was restored to its original borders, and the Queen finally re-established Her Government in the Netherlands. Reverting the territory to civilian government also helped the heavily burdened Japanese supply chain.

The capture of Geneva allowed the Entente to pull back from Colmar, but underestimation of how quickly the Italians would be able to advance caused the Japanese to send nine divisions back to hold the Alpine fortifications standing between the German and Italian armies.

The other response was to redeploy the largest Canadian force in Europe from its operations in the Poitou region to the south so that the Italians could be pushed out of France permanently.

The Internationale’s best chance was to link up Italy and Germany before the Brittany pocket was destroyed and the Entente divisions there could be deployed to the east.

The chance was, despite Germany’s unexpected resilience, still slim. Frankfurt fell in September.

The Entente continued to move towards Munich and Bohemia, in the hopes of separating Germany into two. This would be the last favorable terrain for Germany to defend itself, before the Entente armor reached the plains of Prussia and Bavaria.

With the noose tightening, the most logical location for a bloody last stand in the salient would be the fortified and tough terrain around Nancy. Japanese armor flooded into Lorraine to try and evict the German armor before that could occur.

The terrain allowed the clever Germans to make the Japanese fight for every inch, at least until Canadian armor attacked from their rear and forced them to give up the advantageous terrain and the last corridor of escape for the Germany trapped to the northwest.

With all hope of escape snuffed out, the bloody battle of Longwy came to an end with American victory.

The salient collapsed none too soon, as the Italians in the south were seizing more defensive terrain.

By the end of September, the Brittany and Lorraine pockets were totally destroyed, and the Entente had well over two million men ashore.

Only a week later, two new pockets were formed: one in Baden contained a precious German armor division.

The other formed around Marseille and consisted several Italian infantry divisions. The West was basically won a mere ten weeks after the landings in the Low Countries. It was all a tremendous victory to be sure, but amazingly, the rapid conquest of Europe would be eclipsed by the news in the East. The battle there had gotten even bloodier.

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Jaded Empire (July 25, 1942 – January 24, 1943)

A prominent commentator in Japan gave a speech during late summer in which he praised the capture of France as one of the “least brutal” defeats of an enemy possible. While he spoke, over a million men collided in the latest chapter of the bloodiest front since the Weltkreig.

The fact that a Japanese commentator could believe those words at the very same time a battle raged that would claim over two hundred thousand casualties highlighted the divide that was emerging in the Entente. It was entirely unintended that the Eastern Front would end up being the most brutal, but while the Japanese and the Anglos stormed Europe in a series of dashes and maneuvers, millions of Entente soldiers, primarily from China and India, fought a war every bit as violent as the Weltkrieg.

The massive casualties for little territory did not make for good news, and so the Entente tried its best to emphasize the stunning victories in Europe over the dreary bloodbath in the Middle East.

This was sound logic, but it did not go over well in some of the Entente nations. Little mention was made of the epic struggle in northern Lebanon where nearly 700,000 Entente men tried to break the French redoubts in the mountains.

Another reason the Entente didn’t want to emphasize these battles is that they seemed rather embarrassing. This grand army was unable to utilize roads effectively and moved slowly into battle, and the command structures of new armies in China and India were poorly equipped to handle such a massive number of men.

Every battle was wildly bloody, and no breakthroughs were being made. While the captures of European capitals caused Japan and Canada to strike up victory parades, the fact is that this enormous French army needed to be dealt with and that hundreds of thousands of Entente men could die doing it. The fact that it largely was not Japanese or Anglo men doing the dying was a major source of potential division. The battle could not go on like this forever.

An Internationale attempt to break out to the east, following the final collapse of Turkestani authority, created the opening that the Entente needed. An all out assault followed on northern Lebanon, northern Iraq and northern Syria.

The much needed breakthrough came in El Hillah. The diversion of so many Internationale divisions east to Kut meant that the Entente could finally make progress and hold the territory it was pushing the Entente out of.

The Internationale seemed to recognize they had overextended as soon as they had captured Kut. Unfortunately for them, the Entente had planned for an Internationale push towards the Gulf.

The offensive succeeded in two of the three zones of attack, the most important being El Hillah. Kut was cut off, and the Entente was prepared to seize a decisive advantage on the front by destroying a French corps there.

Chinese reserves came up to capture several French divisions.

The Japanese had learned to love the wildly successful breakthrough, and so many observers expected the Entente would overrun the enemy now that a crack had been opened. But there were too many enemies here, and the huge formations of Chinese infantry were not the same as the Anglo-Japanese armor divisions that could move up quickly and seize territory. After a summer of violence, many divisions were completely exhausted.

The French, sensing an opportunity, abandoned Homs to the walking dead Entente divisions marching towards it. When the divisions arrived, they were immediately set upon from Internationale positions of strength in Kurdistan and Aleppo.

The slow and steady grinder of the past few months had carried an unacceptable cost in lives, and the Entente was not intent on seeing Homs fall back to the enemy. The longer the bloody trading of territory went on, the angrier the Entente partners got as they felt Japan and Canada saw their boys as expendable fodder for French cannons. The momentum had shifted, and it could not be allowed to shift back.

~*~*~*~

The massacres in the East drove the armies in the West: the alliance was under strain, and every day by which the conflict could be shortened would pay dividends in less bitterness in the postwar. The best armies of the Entente had been committed to the West, initially because it seemed it would be the harder target, but now their speed and expertise was being used to set about destroying the industrial base which supplied the massive army in the East.

Pockets in Freiburg and Marseille were destroyed.

Operations followed to capture Genoa and Munich, resulting in the encirclement of another German armored division in Stuttgart.

Another source of strain amongst the allies was the question of postwar governance. The United Kingdom, which had seemed the grateful ally eager to follow through on Canada and Japan’s global plans, was now beginning to assume some of its former posture. They had control over Paris, and so they had their own vision for how France should be governed (and punished). Japan’s supply chains were buckling, and some kind of civilian government needed to exist in the territories now secured from Internationale recapture. Accompanied with promises that reunification could occur later, Brittany was granted independence.

Occitania followed.

German territory was not inviolable either, as new governments were set up in Luxembourg and the Rhineland.

As tensions and malaise set in under the surface of the glories of battlefield victory, a car crash on the road to Saxony would end the life of Japan’s armored maverick, Koji Sakai. Sakai was admired as one of Japan’s finest generals, despite his rumored involvement in the attempted coup a few years back. The somberness around his death would not help the attitude at home.

His comrades on the battlefield honored him the best they knew how by continuing to implement his doctrines. Pacifican and New English reinforcements brought in to bolster the Italian front allowed an earnest attempt to surround and destroy the Italian army.

The Japanese and Anglos in Germany moved to surround Berlin and prevent it from being used as a fortress.

Japanese armor, once they secured the southern approaches to Berlin, were free to plunge deep past Silesia to East Prussia and beyond.

Berlin, completely surrounded, fell to American troops after a brief battle.

 

German resistance would concentrate in the north, particularly around Hamburg.

The threat of Denmark being a formidable place for a last stand in Northern Europe was not serious, as the Entente could land divisions in Denmark if necessary, but George Marshall, perhaps the finest general in the whole world, would see to evicting the Germans from Kiel.

The fall of Hamburg and Danzig caused the Germans to surrender to yet another foe.

The Japanese reorganization of Central Europe began apace, as Germany was broken apart into four pieces, once again until “peace allowed for talk of a permanent political settlement on the Continent.” At the same time, Japan sought to curry favor with the minor puppet states of the Internationale, by restoring them to their previous status without change.

Byelorussia would fall only a few weeks after the Baltic States.

Italian attempts to set up a strong defensive line in the northern Apennines were prevented by a quick follow up assault on Florence after the capture of Parma.

The defeat in the north led to a rapid collapse of Italian resistance, and Rome was set upon in mere weeks.

Naples and Rome were under control soon after, leaving only Palermo as a major city.

As Japanese advance troops rushed across the Straits of Messina, a major Shakai-supported strike broke out at home. The facts were that the Shakai Taishuto were gained popularity based off general economic discontent and resentment of the war. The glory attained by these rapid conquests were of increasingly little interest to the average Japanese person at home, who mostly wanted their friends and family to come home from the war, and for the rationing to end. Fortunately, it would all be over soon.

 

[Deus]

How in the fuck is the international able to supply that number of men in the middle East? And how is it possible that those men still have fighting spirit left? 

Mysteries of Darkest Hour I suppose.

 

[Chief Savage Man]

How in the fuck is the international able to supply that number of men in the middle East? And how is it possible that those men still have fighting spirit left? 

Mysteries of Darkest Hour I suppose.

Turkey and Bulgaria are probably using all of their IC to produce supplies for the army there, and they do have free reign to send convoys from Ukraine to Turkey across the Black Sea, so I'm not surprised they can stick around. And chalk it up to revolutionary fervor??

The move to cut them off was more about preventing them from redeploying seventy divisions to crush the landings than anything else. If I had been more aggressive about sinking Internationale convoys then perhaps they wouldn't be able to ferry supplies either.

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Zenith (November 14, 1942 – July 28, 1943)

The capture of Sicily was followed logically by the invasion of Malta, which was carried out, appropriately, by the United Kingdom.

This led to the final surrender of the Italian Republic and the reestablishment of the Federation, which now consisted of the entire nation, barring the Austrian territories.

The victory over Italy came and went with barely any notice in Japan. The fact is that the alliance’s leader was in a state of domestic turmoil unseen since the attempted coup. The Taishuto had

With military victory all but assured, military production was scaled back dramatically, and rationing ended, as the Minseito hoped to quiet the discontent as the election of 1944 approached.

While the Minseito struggled at home, friction arose between the Entente members. When socialist stay-behinds successfully launched a rebellion that seized control of British-occupied Paris, Japan castigated the UK for their lax attitude towards securing France.

Japan then unilaterally announced they would be taking over responsibility for Paris, infuriating the British.

With Japan in control of the capital, the Minseito went ahead with establishing a provisional government for France. While its unknown if the Minseito intended this as underhanded power grab, the British believed that Japan was attempting to freeze them out. “Europe belongs to Europeans” demonstrations broke out across the United Kingdom in protest of what was alleged to be a Japanese plot to subjugate Europe to Japanese economic interests.

The strain on the Entente was growing, and so the Entente needed victory in a bad way. Luckily, they had the mobile armies in place to take advantage of the Internationale’s collapse in Europe.

Japanese, Australian and New English mobile armies had the perfect operating space in Ukraine, and the armies in the East looked forward to the expected massive redeployment of the armies in the West to destroy the French Army in the East for good and end the war.

Japan’s reliance on India to stem the French invasion of the Middle East had a cost, as India began to establish client states, beginning with Persia. Japanese capitalists saw this as a negative development, but there had been no strategic alternative at the time.

While overall victory was assured, the Entente generals still had an important strategic problem: how to defeat the French host without having to fight a bloody battle all the way to Istanbul. Hundreds of thousands had already died, and some Entente members were threatening to pull out if they suffered particularly heavy casualties in the next battle.

Therefore, the plan was to capture Aleppo and attempt to encircle the enemy armies in Kurdistan.

Another sixty thousand casualties were suffered in taking Aleppo, but the French were finally and permanently on the run.

Northeast Syria would fall soon after as the Entente was finally able to sustain an assault in this theater.

The climactic battle would be in Mosul.

The socialists knew they were beaten but revolutionary fervor and martial pride led the eighty four divisions to attempt a last stand against the one hundred and sixty attacking Entente divisions.

Bravery could not substitute for adequate supply, and so the French in Mosul fought until they ran out of bullets, and then surrendered. Fortunately for the Entente, the French exacted a toll of “only” forty-seven thousand casualties, a relatively moderate figure by the standards of this bloody front.

The destruction of the Communal Army opened open the pathway to the remaining Internationale holdouts: Turkey and Bulgaria.

Istanbul would fall only a few weeks after the Battle of Mosul.

Bulgaria was too disorganized to even attempt a proper defense, and were abandoned as the very last remaining Communal French forces prepared to meet their end in Thessaloniki.

Bulgaria fell, and then there was only one city left to take.

General Barbe, who in the absence of higher command believed himself to be the last remaining authority of the Commune, would travel under a flag of truce to the Korean Army and offer surrender, not just of his army, but for the entire Commune.

The revolution, or at least this most spectacular incarnation of it, was finished.

India began implementing a vision for a new Middle East.

There were no revolutionary powers to use the long-oppressed region as a proxy for their greater ambitions.

There was no German Empire that would seek to control the pathways to the Far East.

There was only the Entente.

And the Entente was the largest alliance the world had ever seen.

Unfortunately, it was doomed.

 

[Deus]

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Zenith (November 14, 1942 – July 28, 1943)

Unfortunately, it was doomed.

As things are with things that are too big and constructed for only one purpose.

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Postscript One: An Ominous Sunrise (September 19, 1943 – January 1, 1947)

Japan is now under AI control and I am observing as Bhutan.

As the summer of victory passed into an autumn of peace, the Entente planners believed they were entering a period where they needed to mop up some loose ends. Socialist pressure in Japan meant that Japan would not take part in the repression of the Algerian revolution, which had effectively become an Algerian state, having been allowed to take over the entire Maghreb. Fortunately for the embattled French colonial regime had other allies willing to help.

British and American forces landed to crush the Algerians.

By the end of January, it was all over. The Entente believed that peace was at hand.

The exhausted Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, retired, passing the reigns off to Louis St. Laurent.

After King’s departure, commentators the world over wondered if the Entente would survive without his influence. An orderly transfer of the Maldives from Australasia seemed to signal that the Entente would coast along without one of its most important leaders.

But then the dominos began to fall. Indonesia was first. Outraged that their troops had been used in the Middle Eastern bloodbath rather than to liberate the Netherlands as they had agreed, Indonesia pulled out of the Entente.

The Caribbean Federation was next.

And after years of being scorned by Japan, National France left as well.

Japan braced for more departures, but they could not expect the next departure. The United Kingdom, long assumed to be so indebted to Japan for its liberation that they would not deviate, resented Japan’s influence over the Continent and left the alliance.

South Africa followed suit, irritated by what they saw as Japanese meddling in the colonial African order.

The most consequential departures were to come. China, infuriated by the lack of action against Russia and the high body count it suffered in the Middle East, pulled out of the alliance.

They immediately began to do exactly what Japanese strategists had feared all during their alliance: call for Manchuria to exit the Japanese sphere.

And there would be no great southern counter-weight to an independent China. Upon the first sign of tension between China and Japan, India immediately announced that it was forming its own bloc stretching from India to Bulgaria and that it would remain neutral in “great power affairs.”

India itself would see a leftist government very ideologically similar to the Chinese one sweep into power. The next decade would bring great advances in India as the government stayed out of foreign wars and worked to expand healthcare, education and infrastructure not only in India but throughout the bloc.

This left the Japanese in control of an array of far off European puppet states, slowly but surely rebuilding. However, other European powers, including the United Kingdom, were very reluctant to engage the former territories of the Internationale in trade as they saw the entire network as a project by North America and Japan to economically colonize Europe. Turnabout, in their eyes, was not fair play.

The recovering United Kingdom, now independent of the Entente, would pursue its own economic policy and attempt to cast itself as a leader of a free and independent Europe. The coming years would see tensions in Europe as the Continent sought to integrate with its logical partner in Britain without offending its trade partners in Japan and North America.

Canada remained as Japan’s last true ally. Every other nation not under Japan’s political control had left the Entente, but the core of the alliance had always been the bond between Tokyo and Ottawa, and each nation hoped they could build a global order despite the recent shrinking of the Entente.

The only other power centers of note were Russia, evil and ominous as always, and South America under La Platan dominance.

Any hope of peace despite the end of the global Entente ended when China attacked Manchuria in the early summer of 1944. Despite their best diplomatic efforts, Vietnam, Burma and Korea remained loyal to Japan, evidently believing that China versus Japan was simply a choice of a master, and that Japan would be a more reliable one.

The latest chapter in the Sino-Japanese rivalry overshadowed a brief war where Venezuela pulled off a land grab against the isolated Caribbeans.

With much of the Japanese army still deployed in Europe, the Chinese made early gains, hoping to secure Manchuria and set up “legitimate” government before Japan could organize a counter-attack.

The Chinese advance would stall out during the autumn, and any strategist who had seen the Japanese in action at any point over the last eight years knew that this did not bode well for the Chinese. The Japanese had command of the seas, and a number of allies to call upon.

While Japanese reinforcements from Europe poured into Port Arthur and began to push the Chinese back, Japan’s allies carried out unopposed amphibious landings.

The hapless Italians would find themselves in a near constant state of disarray, while the Americans were content with holding the defensible Shandong Peninsula. Japanese forces would begin their own landings by the end of January of 1945.

By the end of February, international media attention was focused on the Italians that had managed to get themselves cut off and stranded in inland China, but most observers admitted that Japan’s army in the north was becoming too strong for China to push back.

This renewed war with China had disgusted just about everybody and led to an explosive situation in 1945. The Shakai Taishuto had accelerated its agitation with more strikes and protests as Japan found itself at war with a social democratic nation. When Shakai Taishuto urged Japanese workers to resist conscription, many of their leaders were arrested and they were prevented from running in 1945.

The Seiyukai and Minseito were seen as weak and foolish for having necessitated a second Chinese war in just a few years. Thus, with the support of the military, the hard right rose with a vengeance. The Kokumin Domei would sweep into power in 1945, with far reaching ramifications for Japan and for world peace.

Contrary to the mobility doctrines used in the past, the Japanese preferred a steady push across the entire front. They believed that the Chinese were weak and distracted by landings and the Vietnamese pushing up from the south, and that flashy maneuvers were too risky.

By summer, the Chinese army had collapsed, and it was all the Chinese could do to hold back the Vietnamese in the south while the Japanese rolled over China from the north.

In October, China was defeated. Again.

With popular opinion in Japan blaming the need for the second Chinese war on the Minseito’s permissiveness with the left wingers in China, China was mostly handed over to the Manchurians who would spread their military dictatorship all over China, with Japan retaining control of strategically vital ports and regions.

Through the end of 1945 and all of 1946, the Japanese sought to impose a new rigid order over East Asia. The ideal of a billion Asians standing shoulder to shoulder as equals was dead. East Asia was now a pyramid, with Japan on top, Japan’s loyal puppets in the middle, and the now colonized population of China at the bottom. Liberal delusions of equality amongst nations had led to this, according to the Japanese nationalists, and a firm hand would prevent it from ever happening again.

And after all of that, the bloodshed still wasn’t over.

 

[Deus]

Nice as Nepal.

 

[Chief Savage Man]

Postscript Two: Nothing Was Learned and No One Was Happy (1947-1949)

The Second Russo-Japanese War began in the dead of winter, a time that was not conducive to offensives from either direction, but nevertheless the first month of the war saw some minor gains for the Russians in Manchuria.

A strength of the Japanese army was its strong cavalry contingent which was able to make progress through the Gobi desert.

In Europe, a numerically large but inexperienced army comprised of new recruits from the “new Europe” of Japanese puppet states attempted to push back the Russians but stalled almost immediately in the winter conditions.

Estonia fell within six weeks.

Mongolia fell to Japan next.

Burmese troops entered Lhasa in February and toppled the Russian puppet state.

Japanese puppet state Laos fell to Russian incursion from Yunnan.

And finishing up the flurry of early annexations, Russia entered Riga and sent the nascent Latvian government into exile.

Russia would push back and re-establish their puppet in Tibet about three weeks after Burma put an end to it.

In the midst of the chaotic back and forth, Japan was securing an advantage. They had cut the Trans-Siberian Railroad and, true to Sakai’s doctrine, had separated European from Asian Russia, though the size of the “pockets” were ten or a thousandfold larger than the pockets the Japanese army was used to dealing with.

Japan, eager to prove to its Asian client states that it was a dependable master, landed several divisions to save Vietnam from Russian annexation.

Russian pan-nationalists in Transamur would betray the Japanese and surrender the state to Russia, though Japan still held Vladivostok.

In general, Manchuria was holding.

The push into Siberia had overextended however, stranding some Japanese troops hundreds of miles from support.

In the west, another operation was underway where the European army was trying to outflank the Russian army in Europe by way of Kuybyshev.

In the east, the Japanese tried to shore up the link between its enormous salient in Siberia and China, but failed to prevent Russia from cutting off a large pocket of Entente forces.

As summer rolled along, more rapid maneuvers were attempted, and the Russians were able to cut off four European divisions, and put many more at serious risk along the Volga.

The Japanese response was a major landing in Okhotsk, all the way on the Pacific Coast. The idea was a classic Japanese one, open a new front so that enemy forces would divert and relieve pressure across all fronts. However, the infrastructure in Far Eastern Russia was so bad that it wasn’t all that likely that the forces that landed there would have much chance to run wild.

They certainly would not have any effect in time to cause the Russians to give up the potential of a major encirclement of over forty European divisions.

The four divisions originally encircled on the eastern bank of the Volga were destroyed, but the large European force that captured Tsaritsyn dug in and waited for rescue, confident that the Russians did not have enough forces to flush them out. Meanwhile, the European army was beginning to gain traction and pull off encirclements in Ukraine.

Vladivostok fell in early August.

The Entente’s advantage came in sheer numbers and its weakness came in confusing international logistics systems and allied squabbles. No fewer than eight nations were trapped in Tsaritsyn, meaning that the encirclement was not just a tactical problem but a diplomatic one too.

Just as in China, the Italians attempted an ill-fated amphibious operation.

And the Russians successfully corner nine divisions in Courland.

By the end of summer, the momentum was decidedly in favor of the Japanese, who had created a much more stable link between China and their Siberian salient. They were expanding the front and the Russians did not have enough men or logistical capability to manage the enormous front that stretched from Vietnam to the middle of Siberia and all the way around to Manchuria.

Despite losing the smaller pocket, the larger pocket managed to reconnect with Ukraine proper, allowing the divisions around Tsaritsyn to escape. Once again, the prime Entente directive was to avoid catastrophes that would put the alliance at risk. Massive European casualties in a war that many Europeans saw as necessary was one of those catastrophes.

Russian hopes in Europe hinged on the capture of Grodno, a critical link between Europe and Ukraine, especially as neutral Poland would not allow the Entente to use its territory.

I was curious to see if there was an event like the one in the Mongolia game that would cause all of Fengtien to be annexed by whoever took Harbin. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened but alas, it did not happen.

Another winter approached and the Entente was making progress, but they would not be able to comprehensively defeat the Russians before it set in.

And so, the two sides agreed on a peace. I am now breaking character because this peace makes absolutely no sense and it absolutely sucks.

Russia gained Transamur, Estonia, Latvia and Laos and lost Mongolia, Tannu Tuva, the territory that would have linked them to Transamur (but not the tip of Kamchatka) and a hideous chunk of Central China. I absolutely hate this but if I let the AI roll on they probably won’t fight again, so fuck it, it’s over.

The nations that took the worst beatings were:

France: fought in two enormous wars and had their entire army destroyed.

Russia: apparently had a rough go of it against Japan as that was their only war against a major power.

Republic of China: bled heavily against the French and then was killed by the Japanese.

German Empire: Completely destroyed by France and Japan

Japan: Fought and won a zillion wars all over the world.

Qing: When you combine this figure with the Republic of China figure you see that China probably got the worst of it in this timeline.

USA: Lost the civil war and then provided a lot of infantry for Entente wars, including these last ones against China and Russia.

Britain: Lost half their army in Canadian adventures multiple times.

Ukraine: Actually, Ukraine may have gotten it worse than China because they were invaded by France, then invaded by the Entente and then had to fight Russia.

This is what exists of the Asian Entente. I hate it.

The big sprawling mess of Japanese puppets in Europe and Africa isn’t very satisfying either, especially since Japan lost Latvia and Estonia and the UK is gone.

North America is one big Canadian mess, except that the PSA is independent. Canada controls the USA as a puppet and never released Mexico.

India are surely the good guys now that the Entente has turned to evil and they are nationalizing things and trying to develop the Middle East.

Russia still survives with their far-right bullshit but with the most hideous borders.

I actually like the National France borders and that they occupied Corsica kind of as a fuck you to Japan for keeping the mainland from them.

The UK has the right idea, to hell with this bad Entente.

La Plata is a bona fide regional power but they somehow managed to lose a war against Chile.

There seem to be four great land powers in this order: Canada/USA, Japan/Fengtien, Russia and India.

The UK wants you to know that if you come near Britain with a ship there will be a thousand bombers coming to sink your shit. The weird country foci here are interesting, like India’s tactical fleet, USA’s CAS fleet, and the Czechs having the biggest force of interceptor planes in the world.

Somehow, Japan has zero carriers. I looked at the sunk ships list and there are all the carriers but nobody is listing as having sunk them (except the few that the British took down). I’m sure that means something but I don’t know what it is. The North Americans and British are the only true naval powers in the world.

Japan and Russia lead the killboards.

In terms of naval kills, the Japanese sinking the British carrier fleet puts them at the top, but France somehow got 7 as well. Italy getting two is surprising as well.

So in the end, the Entente is victorious but it won a dirty rotten victory that should leave nobody happy, but fortunately for all of us…

THIS IS THE END. THE COMBINED SYNDICATES WILL BE BACK SOON!

 

[Deus]

RIP