Different timelines on the precipice of very different world wars, different timelines marked by different forms of revolution and reaction, where history took wildly different paths to arrive at peculiar destinations. Some well known, some not, some made by me and now all brought together in a cross-over timeline written by myself and my wife, though feel free to contribute if you please.
We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — "true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery" - Iosif Stalin
Nobody could really explain the hows or whys of these things called "worldmerges", to bring different realities together in such a way that one can transit between places that meet certain conditions. Whether they are permanent faultlines, the uninhabited open ocean, or between two iterations of a country or area on a similar "wavelength", Liberal to Liberal, Reactionary to Reactionary, Socialist to Socialist and so on so forth; it would allow for different iterations of a certain blue-green ball of rock and metal from the sun to interact. How and why, nobody knows. Perhaps none ever will know. But on the first of January, 1936, it was reality.
Nobody could definitively say who was the first, beyond that it was probably people trying to chase after strange electromagnetic signals only to find that by seeking the source of these signals, they would find themselves in strange worlds. Worlds where history zigged rather than zagged, and worlds where different roads were taken to produce familiar, yet strange results. But there would be a commonality noticed, each had a very different outcome for the first world war. They would soon be named for the most distinctive features each bore.
"Ravenworld" to refer to the timeline where Germany was defeated in the first world war, where Lenin and the Bolsheviks rose against the Russian Empire on that fateful November day in 1917, and would be joined by the Americans in 1933; where Germany descended to Nazism out of spite and fear, Italy to Fascism out of resentment, Japan to futurism out of fanaticism and bloody-minded optimism, and Brazil towards Integralism out of terror and uncertainty. Britain and France scheme together for ways to save a dying world order, but perhaps have made deals with devils they cannot hope to contain.
"Eagleworld" for the dominant position Imperial Germany landed upon by sheer accident through its victory in the first world war mostly through the fortuitous French revolution and the withdrawal of Republican Russia, followed by the British syndicalist revolution of 1925 that allowed Germany to, perhaps clumsily, staple its own hegemony atop the prior Anglo-French system. However there are foes both new and old who look hungrily upon the Kaiserreich's order with envious eyes, or revolutionary aspirations to bring an end to the reign of the reichsadler, as brief as it has been so far.
"Bearworld" for the world that would be born of a great war that had no winners, of a militarily defeated France, only for the Russians to break the Austro-Hungarian Empire and prompt a revolution in Imperial Germany before the tired Russian people began an attempted, scattered, and disorganised uprising that while ideologically incoherent, forced the Empire to come to a dead halt, and retreat to its core territories. Futurism in France would arise in response to the discrediting of both ordinary socialism and the old reactionaries while China bogged down into an industrialised nightmare between the leftist South and reactionary North and the United States retreated deeper into isolation.
And finally "Serpentworld", where the Crown from the Gutter was lifted up to form a United States of Germany, the revival of Bonaparte's Empire remained in place in an alliance of opportunity with the new German State, the more successful liberalisations of the Russian and Chinese Empires would see a great syndicalist revolution of the 20s to shake the world to the core, including a bitter British civil war over its restricted franchise and extreme control measures that would give rise to the British State to preside over the ashes and seek its revenge against those who had taken advantage of its moment of weakness in collaboration with the Japanese Shogunate, the Italian and Spanish Kingdoms, and an America dominated by Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh following the December Plot.
A world of Reds and Revolutions, a world of the Kaiserreich, a world of a Flood of crimson Blood, and a world still yet to feel its first great war.
...
Hot on the heels of the strange signal, the Kharkov, a sleek, modern Soviet heavy cruiser and his brother the Sevastopol, the Light Cruiser Ullan-Uda,,and their two destroyer escorts Gnevny, Grom, and Gremyaschy; all four designed with the aid of the Union's American allies began to surface, following the electromagnetic activity that their radioman had been detecting. Counter-Admiral Oleg Mikhailovich Gradenko would rub at his beard as the heavy cruiser pushed through the choppy winter waters of the North Seas, on a patrol heading southwards from the arctic ocean that had seen then trailed by British warships, the Kriegsmarine, and Norwegian coastal defence vessels.
An American patrol consisting of the Battlecruiser Toledo, the Aircraft Carrier Gettysburg, the Heavy Cruisers Hammer and Anvil, the light cruiser Mayflower, and the destroyers Gear, Wrench, Bolt, Compass, and Sprocket had also joined up with them. It was a formidable concentration of naval power, and one that made some people nervous, but they were what was available on hand to investigate, descending from the arctic ocean into slightly warmer waters as the show of naval strength kept in touch with nearby submarines that were out on reconnaissance. A patrol of this size was officially for large scale training operations, unofficially it was to explore whatever was on the other side of the "faults" in force.
From his bridge, Oleg could see the nearby Gettysburg. Part of his brain rebelled at the idea of the Gettysburg being the centrepiece of this fleet, and not the Toledo with its big guns. But the warship had Admiral Raymond Spruance aboard, so it was the de facto flagship of the fleet, as well as the detached patrol elements that were sweeping the edges of the formation. And in a sense, he was also his commander. The Counter-admiral sipped from his warm tea, wondering if there was any truth to what he was told.
It was not like the Stavka to send him out on a joke, so he figured that he wasn't just being fed wild rumours of submarines finding themselves in other worlds or aircraft finding themselves going through distortions that brought them through entirely different patterns of weather in an eyeblink.
"Comrade Admiral, do you think we'll be at war?" The Captain of the ship asked, a younger, fresher-faced man by the name of Sergey Moskvin who couldn't have been more than a boy when the revolution came. It would explain why he asked as if he was hoping for action.
"Sergey." He said in an avuncular manner, briefly putting down his hot cup of dark as coal tea.
"I would sincerely hope not. Life is brief enough to not be cut even shorter by a bloody death." He explained, but his thoughts were interrupted by a series of exclamations and profuse, profane mat.
Taking a look through his binoculars and guessing where his men were shouting at excitedly, he saw aircraft starting to fade into existence, sort of like smudged glass growing less and less smudged until it was fully clear to reveal planes that were not there before.
"Fuck...it is real." He said, unable to stop himself from swearing in surprise.
"Comrade?" Sergey asked.
"The planes are here. We should be getting word from the Unionists soon." He said. Many in the Soviet Union preferred to refer to the North American Union of Socialist Council Republics as "Unionists" much as how the Soviet Union frowned on referring to the country as "Russia" when it was meant to be a union of many nations, not just one of Great Russians; him being among them. It felt to him to be the more communist thing to do.
And it was not like he was going to have a scarcity of time to waste...it would take some time waiting for the pilots' information to be processed before they could act on it.
But they would not have to wait for long,
Much larger shapes began to emerge from the worldmerge, some from the south, more from the west. The first sets of ships struck him as rather...French and British, one looking to him to be far more German, and the last was Russian yes...but strange Russian just a bit more Tsarist and yet...not quite, waving a black banner that brought the Makhnovites of old to mind. From what he could tell, none of them seemed to be operating as if they were any more familiar with each other than he was with them.
Flags of the Free Socialist Council Republic of Germany, the Socialist Worker's Commonwealth of Britain, the Communal Worker's Republic of France, and the Combined Zavkoms and Mirs of Eurasia
He swore, not to a god for he believed in no such things, but simply to relieve his sense of surprise. He could only hope, as he saw the ships start to approach close enough that he could clearly see their flags through his binoculars, that they weren't going to start a shooting war.
The briny waters of the North sea in the month of January were cold in a far more insidious and dangerous way than anything that the arctic winds and snows could bring. To sink in waters like this was to die a miserable death as every last gram of heat was leeched out of you into the unforgviging embrace of Veles. It was a fate that made his spine feel like it was trying to dance out of his skin, uncontrollable shakes and shudders rolling through him even though he was rather warm with his coat and the heated interior of the ship.
"Are you afraid comrade?" Sergey asked.
"Of a dip in these waters? Yes." He replied.
"Have our comrades reported anything so far?" He asked, looking to one of the radio officers who kept rapt attention to his headset before looking towards the admiral and shaking his head.
"No comrade, though at the very least it seems that they are not aliens. We can communicate." He said, getting a nod in response from Oleg while he grabbed his cup of tea and took another deep sip, letting the overpowering scent of tannin fill his nostrils and the dark fluid fill him with a vigour far more powerful than any American coffee he'd tried. Let the English dilute their tea with milk, he would take of the black brew strong and pure.
Taking a look through his binoculars after putting his tea away, he used his sailors' eyes to gauge the fleets he was looking at, as far as he could tell, the German-seeming ships that bore a red banner with twin hammers and a sword had no more familiarity with the...French and British vessels he supposed; approaching from the South. The French and British vessels though, seemed moved with an intimate sort of familiarity that only came of a long and fruitful alliance, while the strange Russian ships moved with cautious confidence.
If only he could tell what was being said...he was here in case things got hot, the diplomats were all aboard the American Carrier, so all he could do was wait...
He took a look at a watch given to him by his uncle, who had lead men during the revolution. He had kept in maintained despite its age. A reminder of an earlier time informing him of how much of the present was passing by every moment.
Moments turned to minutes, as the lead warships, a battleship bearing German writing and an aircraft carrier of what he assumed was British make approached the Gettysburg and boats were exchanged to meet aboard the American ship.
At last, Oleg's musings would be interrupted by his attached Commissar, a cleanshaven man who wore his peaked cap well, tall and muscular...Vasily Vladmirovich Vodnik, a man who could quote the General Secretary as easily as he could breathe, and one who could easily be described as handsome, a man who looked younger than his years, but one who more than a few trusted only somewhat more than the NKVD attache.
"Comrade, come with us, the Soviet Union requires your presence in these negotiations." He said, prompting the Counter Admiral to raise a brow.
"I've not been informed of much." He replied, holding his hands behind him.
"We will inform you on the way, but you need not say a whole lot, Comrade Maisky will handle it."
"Isn't he supposed to be in London cavourting with the English?"
Vodnik smiled. "Well, we have Englishmen here, do we not?"
Picture of the first meeting between UoB and USSR personnel aboard the Gettysburg.
Interesting premise for a new TL! I was always curious from reading your Dual Order Quest/TL just how things might have turned out if a world merge had happened earlier in history. Will be interesting to see how a first multi-world war between all these timelines turns out.
This is a great concept and I eagerly look forward to seeing how it plays out. It's nice to see that already the major socialist powers are coming together. Red Flood Germany's got its work cut out for it, so it needs all the help it can get, while the Syndies need war material that America and Soviets can now supply. The description of Imperial Germany's ascent to power as an accident is fitting given how terrible their situation and command was in 17 to 18. They basically stumbled into winning the war. Their relationship with the Nazis will be interesting to see play out, since the latter has no interest in restoring the monarchy. Reds and Red Flood Wilhelm II might move over to KR to enjoy retirement, then get pissed off dealing with himself. Or worse he might agree with everything he says to himself. I can imagine a lot of Jewish people in KR Europe are going to be suddenly very concerned about their status in Europe. Hopefully Jewish people in Reds can flee to other timelines to escape persecution.
All those civil wars, unstable nations, and politicking are now going to have outside influences on them. I could see the Russian Republic in KR immediately cracking down on any leftists left to try to prevent another attempt a a revolution and the Red Flood Russians doing the same thing. Spain is going to be flooded with aid, in every timeline, though I feel that in KR at least France will just invade outright. It's got no reason to remain neutral after all.
As discussions started in earnest in the weeks of January, it was clear to the revolutionary forces at play that the Vladivostok Compact and the Rotfront and their associates were an eight hundred kilo bear in the proverbial room, the combined powers of the Soviet Union, America, Germany, Brazil, Hungary, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Cuba, the People's Republic of Denmark, the People's Republic of Norway, Mongolia, Tannu Tuva, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Dominica, Hindustan and two Chinese United Fronts represented an enormous concentration of manpower, industry, and resources.
While the Syndicalists of the Kaiserworld had access to the high seas and support from many neutrals they could not measure up to the VOSCOM, and the Ulaanbaatar Pact of Serpentworld while strong, were strong but novice naval powers. The INFOR of a Britain and France without their Empires, Norway, and half an Italy, even with support from a distant Chile, Patagonia, Mexico, and Nicaragua to the west and Free India and Egypt to the east; along with a generally favourable opinion from America, Russia, Iran and a few others paled before the might of the Communists.
From Serpentworld there was the Combined Zavkoms and Mirs of Eurasia and the Combined Suweiai and Gongshe of China as well as a sundered India and smaller powers such as Gran Colombia, Burma, Mongolia, and Siam to balance the scales somewhat, but they were principally land based powers still getting used to stretching their sealegs. While impressive monuments to the possibilities of Syndicalism, they were faced with challenges that would require certainty that their theories on naval warfare could bear out, theories untested by a great war; for none happened in their timeline.
Hardly ideal for syndicalism to assert itself as the new hegemon of the worker's movement then. Especially when it was clear that the Marxists of the Bearworld and Ravenworld were quite likely to agree on a great deal.
If the INFOR, ULAPAC, and Rotfront wanted the assistance of the VOSCOM, and they did, they would do well to at least listen to the Bolsheviks and Harpers. Even if some chafed at the summation of their revolutionary efforts as valiant; but lacking in strength. Oswald Mosley, whom the Rotfront's representatives were as surprised to see as anyone who had seen a dead man would be; and whom the VOSCOM's representatives raised an eyebrow at the presence of; in particular was not enthused for the idea of "subordinating our Syndicalist achievements to the demands of Marxist outsiders who understand not our system nor our situation" as he declared when the deputy chairman arrived in the Ravenworld's Hamburg, the easiest and quickest place for everyone involved to reach on short notice.
He did not rebuke the Marxists or gush into overly rosy praise for the Syndicalists of the Haunting Spectre, he was much too clever for that. Rather, he stressed that there needed to be an atmosphere of cooperation and coming together, rather than a programme handed down on high by those who had only understood the situation for a week or two. A few noted the Syndicalist International of Worker's Movements was often happy to give recommendations and "recommendations" with the lure of their substantial technological expertise and industrial power or the resources and manpower of the ULAPAC when it suited it, including Mosley himself. But so far such sniping was deemed unsuited for the air of the Hamburg Socialist Conference.
The Syndicalists would not budge on submission to the Comintern line, nor would the Communists accept submission to the Syndicalist doctrine. However, there was a great desire to work together, recognising at the very least that if they didn't they would all hang together and that given that the Cominterns were party organisations and the Syndinterns were worker's federation organisations; technically there was no conflict if they coexisted.
It was much too soon to form anything particularly concrete, but Hamburg would see the Hamburg declaration, delivered on the Ides of January, stating that the Socialist movement was now stronger than ever, and for whatever differences there may be, there would be an effort to collaborate. And a cheeky decision to amend the slogan of "Workers of the world, unite!" to "Workers of all worlds, unite!". Something that at the very least, everyone could agree on was necessary to remove any confusion.
That being said, Stalin and other leader figures of less fully industrialised countries; particularly many observers or delegates from those who had yet to hold the reins of state power also pushed for as to be expected; assistance with industrial development and growth.
Delegates at the Hamburg Conference listening to a Dutch speech
It was a valid question, the growth of the industrial resources of socialist movements surely meant that there should be more devoted to allowing those in need of catching up to do so. Especially when they had much to offer in return for comradely aid and the INFOR, ULAPAC, and Rotfront both could do with a great deal more resources than they already had. The Soviet Union with its seemingly unlimited natural wealth was a natural target for this, and Stalin knew it.
Calculations would of course, need more time to be fully worked out, but the numbers were quite favourable on the current five year plan finishing massively ahead of schedule, farther than it already was with generous American investment and reciprocal exchange as well as access to the goods and services of much of Latin America and improved relations with the Nanjing government of China. With more resources, particularly delivered from European powers using short routes via gliding, much more could be done. And of course, the Union would not ask for these things for free, the motherland had much to give back after all.
And it was willing to lend its services in providing expertise for the development of under-industrialised powers who may need some idea of what starting from much less than what the industrialised revolutionary powers had to work with will entail. Especially great attention was paid to the openly Socialist government of the Hindustan Socialist Government in the Red Flood, under Shirpad Amrit Dange as well as the Kuomintang and Communist movement in the China of that same Earth. This, as well as other potential revolutionary movements, could lead to something could great indeed, should they be able to flourish with the right sorts of support.
Sympathisers such as the Kuomintang or the Free India government would of course, also be accommodated, with the hopes that by drawing them firmly into the Socialist orbit, they would end up fermenting the conditions for a more complete transformation of society along socialist revolutionary lines later. It would also of course, signal to the anti-colonial movements that even if they were not fully on board with the program, they could still expect substantial support both in the lead up to revolution and also in the rebuilding that would come after to turn extractive colonies into flourishing and free countries.
...
"Verdammte Scheiße!" - Chancellor Kuno Friedrich Viktor Graf von Westarp upon being told that the Gold Market has just collapsed
The thing that a Gold Standard economy hates more than anything is the disruption to the world's gold supply. Usually this means a possible massive reduction in supply due to accident, a country closing itself off, major mining strikes, or the like. Generally, most countries in the era of the gold standard regulated their extraction of gold to ensure stability in currency value, and barring dredging up the Spanish treasure ships from the ocean floor it wasn't like that there was going to be a great many ways to rapidly increase the supply of gold.
This system has its flaws, but it does lead to generally stable currency values for the most part. That is, unless suddenly say; there are now three other earths worth of gold and the enterprising businessmen looking for new markets have come back with news that there is in fact, a much greater quantity of gold to have to factor into the calculations that determine the value of your currency. Combined with particularly reckless speculatory investment by common German citizens into assorted imperial projects in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and the informal empires in China and South America; and then suddenly you have a sudden panic at the gold market.
As details of how the worldmerge were still being worked out by the middle of January 1936, the panic at the Berlin Stock Exchange would take hold with almost immediate effect, and ripple out elsewhere. Whereas the British Empire of the Reds and Red Flood timelines had already created its own system to innoculate itself from massive fluctuations in gold availability in response to the Red American revolution of 1933 and the financial systems of the Red Flood Earth were already comprehensively shattered by the sheer chaos of the post-war period and the Haunting Spectre economies had sought to move away from the gold standard out of earlier strategic concerns and lacked a clear hegemon in any case, the German Empire of the Kaiserworld had its own ideas.
It had sought to claim its place in the sun and make itself the head of a global economic system. The Wilhelmshaven system that it boasted would bring about peace by bringing the dastardly Americans, Brutish Russians, sinister Syndicalists, and conniving Japanese to the table while leaving the unrecognised Entente remnants out. It dreamed of a global financial system predicated on the supremacy of Berlin and the orbit of the "international community" around the "Superpower" as it proclaimed itself.
The Chancellor would learn that God, as many ascribed the worldmerge to, must have had a rather great fondness for repeating the story of Icarus. The German government had looked too closely at the possible military implications and the possible money to be made by extending its world system further; that it had realised that the speculative bubble it was already atop was not going to respond well to inflation.
Prices went for a rollercoaster as confused information was leaked into the Berlin stock exchange by those who wanted the information before anyone else. Leaks became rumours, rumours became panic, panic became chaos. Chaos that would not kindly stop in Europe. While the Vozhd of Russia closed his gates and the economic Daimyos of Japan scrambled to ensure the Zaibatsu would ride rather than be smote by the storm, the impact on the new world and the United States of America would be anything but gentle.
The American economy had been long struggling in the Eagleworld. Despite German boasts that it had been subjugated to the Kaiser's system, this wasn't quite the case, though it was happy to simply devour whatever money Germany threw at it while pumping funds into Russia and the Syndicalists to counterweight the Reich. It was however, suffering from the twin effects of the 1925 British revolution and the break up of the British world system it was tied into as well as the 1929 Wall street crash. The "Black Monday" crash of 1936 was a minor detail however, nothing compared to the much more serious "gold sprint".
The representatives of the American government in the Uncrowned Earth's World had barely even reached Herbert Hoover's office before they got sight of their first riot. The price of bread had risen again, and Hoover was too slow to do something about the companies playing with the costs to chase margins on a sheet. It was not an unfamiliar sight to the delegates of the America of the Red Flood, but the word that Hoover had tried to force the Canadians into also paying for Britain's wartime debt to try and inject cash into the economy only to be rebuffed struck them as a bit odd. They'd never tolerate such uppitiness from the Canadians, especially Canadians trying to pretend to be British.
"We'd have sent the envoy back home tarred and feathered for that degree of disrespect" as Cordell Hull would say, citing the British government (potentially no longer) in exile's conditions of "not until a return to the Home Island is affected" which struck the American delegates as a fancy way of saying "never."
But just as shocking was the America of this world of the Kaiserreich responding to such a blatant insult with...nothing. Even when they could have destroyed what existed of Canada's economy with the stroke of a pen they chose to do nothing but a verbal condemnation and preformative tariffs on goods the Canucks hardly exported to begin with.
The Jeffersonian America of the Serpentworld however, looked upon this sick, diseased America and sneered, contemptuous of what it saw as a dying Republic, much like the Republic it had killed before to birth the National American Citizen's Federation. The UASR of course, saw all the signs, because it had been there before, knowing fully well where these signs could lead.
Weather however, is a funny thing. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause tumult and turmoil to devastate cities when that stirred air births a hurricane elsewhere someday. The continents may be in the same place, the people mostly variants of each other, and the geology largely the same; but they had done different things which had lead to differing side effects. Air had been fed with different inputs, and the mysterious quantum mania of the so called "Glide" between worlds had its own poorly understood effects.
All of which conspired to produce a rather typical winter in the UASR that year, a somewhat chillier than normal winter over the NACF in the Haunting Spectre's America, an unusually mild winter in the Red Flood's USA; and the coming of Khione's arctic wrath in the Kaiserworld's America. Perturbances in the polar vortex where the coldest, bitterest air on Earth lingers spilt downwards across the great channels of the great plains. Temperatures dropped to degrees that only polar bears would find palatable and the ice raced south.
With the dustbowl in recent memory, and coal mining disrupted from the shuttering of many power plants from companies going belly up, there was bound to be trouble. Where there was once the dustbowl was now the "Reign of Winter", and even the great lakes saw ice cover their surfaces almost completely as the killing cold came to town. The Happy New Year was nowhere to be found, and with heat being cut and people out of work; there were going to be corpses.
At the point of equality, that is to say where the Metric and Imperial temperature scales come to the same number; negative forty degrees; it takes five to ten minutes for hypothermia to develop, and an hour to die if exposed. And there were many who would be exposed to frosts not seen since the little ice age, long before the United States of Amerca had ever been founded. The industrial states' unions sought to seize power plants for themselves, to keep the electricity and the heat running at any cost, the Midwest sought to find whatever could burn, the west coast huddled, and the deep south found homes entirely unprepared for a chill of this magnitude.
Chill and the deluge. Snow where it was cold enough, bitterly unpleasant rain where it was not. Unseasonal and intolerable, the weather would lay bare issues in the United States not ready for disruptions to the routine. Coupled with the economic downturn from the sudden and violent collapse in gold value though? Now that was a particularly spicy barbecue, especially when companies panicking over the seizure of power stations or trains to ship coal to heat homes at risk of being turned into icy tombs by the dropping temperatures.
Not helping things was that the international community, greatly expanded as it was, was slow to respond. The British, because they were more concerned with Canada than anything to do with the uppity yanks anyway; with the exiles in particular doing their best to kiss the ass of five new londons to pray for a return to; and to be quite frank the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia cared even less. Other Americas would be too busy keeping their own houses in order; with Andrew Mellon trying, largely in vain, to stop the ship of his presidency from sinking as further austerity proved to not be the vote winner he'd have liked it to be, meanwhile Moseley's American Union Republic was busy trying to purge the ranks of potential enemies within.
But there were powers that cared; ones that saw opportunity and had, in its efforts to scope out its alters; saw there was the potential for something great indeed in that alter.
The North American Union of Socialist Council Republics, with Premier Foster facing challenge within the WCPA for leadership in the near future; had decided to flex its foreign policy muscles to offer a helping hand to other Americans in need. The depression was a fading memory in the UASR and the country had been revived under a Red and Black Banner, and the WCPA, while grumbling under its breath about "Trade Union brainedness" when holding talks with the Socialist Party of America, of course; understood the potential of another America waving the red banner, and the concerning possibility of what could happen if the ANS made its moves.
There was of course, immediate grumbling about sedition, about foreign invasion and of course, complaints that were quite adjacent to the usual spiels about Jewry, Masonry, Queers, and whatever other personal bugbears people were willing to spin into blame for their perdicament as long as it didn't involve blaming the current system. But while the UASR's Foreign Commissariat was looking keenly into other potential revolutionary situations elsewhere in the worlds; such as Spain, Central America, and Peru in its own world, Japan, Iran, and Cisleithania in Bearworld, India and Latin America in the Haunting Spectre, and now America and Argentina in this world; there was of course, going to be a bit of a bias towards the potential for another revolution in another America.
The Central Executive Committee of Foster had taken some time to verify the reports that had flooded in, that was only sensible, but they didn't leave even the smallest scrap of information regarding the Socialist Labor Party of America's situation. Especially when the possibility of intervention from other powers was as high as it was. William Haywood's SLPA was met with regularly, exchanging information as well as what to expect across the campaign trail and what would happen if they won. These conferences were more than just busywork however, it was an important means of gauging capabilities and limitations. In short they were starting to get an idea of what they could do, especially as the ability for the planning of the economy to deal with the shocks of the capitalist world allowed them to act without paralysis.
Especially as, just as the situation reports on the Japan of the Bearworld hit the desks of the leadership of socialist movements around the three worlds, it had to be amended; because as the result of a conflict with the Beiyang government of that world and an attempted putsch by a pretender to the throne who regarded Emperor Yasuhito's desire to negotiate with the general strike in Japan to get them back to work quickly as weakness and cowardice had started to reach their ears new and more pertinent information had arrived.
The Japanese workers in that cold winter day of the 22nd of January, 1936 had decided to take up arms in revolution, racing ahead of the Americans of the Kaiserworld who were on the brink as Hoover tried to send in the troops to provide "overwatch" over the negotiations between the unions of the Combined Syndicates of America and the bosses while America first militias and the Klan were starting to get rowdier and rowdier.
"Didn't even have a chance to get cozy", as Foreign Commissar John Silas Reed would remark, reading through the flurry of information filtering into his office from a confused Main Reconnaissance Directorate. The outcome in Japan was...surprisingly quite optimistic for a short war, especially as the still liberal Japanese Empires of Eagleworld, the Shogunate of Serpentworld, and the Futurist regime of the Japan of his own world were also largely in the dark about the inner-workings of the Empire.
It was clear to him then, that aid should be sent, and quickly before the forces of reaction in Asia mobilised once they had their economic house in order and a firmer view of the situation. It would perhaps be a bit premature, but the Central Executive Committee and the Presidium had agreed on a course of action. Molotov had signalled that the USSR would follow suit in Japan and...apparently Korea too, if the GRU's intel was accurate. It so very rarely wasn't, and while connections with other socialists were on the threadbare side, it was enough to know that while there were plenty of often noisy disagreements, there was a general consensus to help revolutionaries where they cropped up.
I'm guess we'll see more effects elsewhere, but it definitely feels like initially its a bigger disruption to KR and RF than Reds. Going to be really interesting to see where it goes from here.
Seems quite doubtful that the liberals and socialists will have any sort of detente/understanding come the First Multi-World War, considering how belligerent the socialists would seem to them by their overt intervening in Red Flood Japan and KR USA. In fact, it might very well primarily be a liberal vs socialist Multi-World War, considering that the socialists and liberals seem massively more willing to engage in these sorts of grand alliances. The reactionaries might come to a sort of 'mutual understanding', but even then that almost certainly will not include all of them, and indeed I suspect for the most part they'll stick with their own pre-established alliances/empires.
KR took that polar vortex rather well. It died a few days after the weather hit rather than the second winter started. It might have survived too if it hadn't been run by Hoover. Red Flood is such a mess Reds and KR are going to be watching in shock and horror once the ball really gets rolling.
"Even if what you are saying is true, I cannot have you launching a war of reclamation with a fleet this ramshackle. Nor will we support it." Stanley Baldwin put down the cup of tea he used to wet his throat once again, looking disinterestedly at Lawrence Moore Cosgrove, a man from this "Kaiserworld" Canada.
"I suspected as much." He replied, half blind from an injury in the great war and doing his best to conceal this fact.
"Rather than waste battleships on starting a world war, the exiles can return home to us, to our Britain." He said, also hosting Sir David Kelley in the very same room with him, the man from the World of a Red Flood calmly partaking in some of the Indian tea that he gathered was less commonly available than in his own world.
"What about ours? It's hardly fair for you to go and hog all the Brits." He said with a slightly jovial, jolly tone, getting a laugh out of Baldwin and then Cosgrove.
"We are representatives of the same Empire, under the one God. We cannot, even accepting alternate worlds; divide our interests. We are a commonwealth of nations, and an empire of every sea. While it may, I suspect, take much time to fully develop into something more, I think some manner of working relation is needed. A customs Union at the very least, as well as joint military programs." Baldwin's words were authoritative, even for a man who was not looking to be prime minister for a great deal longer given his deeply advanced age.
"It will take time to work out all the fine details, but I think we are on what is ultimately the same page in our path towards an Imperial Commonwealth of British Nations." He concluded.
"Is this all to deal with the reds?" Cosgrove asked.
"Possibly, though I can't imagine that they are the only threat facing our shores. Tell me more about these huns of your world, beyond what the documents say." Baldwin asked, looking to Cosgrove and reaching his hand out before also giving his attention over to Kelley. "And these...Futurists of France as well." He finished.
"Half of what seems to go on in "La Soleil" as they call it these days, appears to be more performance art than anything else. They vote on things at least, but morally they seem to have sunken into transgressive perversion even worse than Jerry. And as for Ivan, little comes out of Russia besides what Ivan's selling, little good anyway."
"The Russians were never much for liberty anyway. Fascist, Communist, Tsarist. Hardly seems to matter." Baldwin mused, nodding contently to himself. "Surely a product of their oriental upbringing, born of the Khans rather than enlightenment." He added while he took a look at the maps, including versions that showed informal areas of influence.
"And this "British State" business over in the "Haunting Spectre", what's that mess about? Looking at the state of this "republic's" empire makes a man want to weep." Baldwin asked.
"Suffrage war they call it, all while the Romanovs and Qing waved the Syndie banner, another Indian revolt ate a generation, then Bonaparte and the Gutter Crown kaiser helped themselves to the spoils. As far as we can tell, Francis Yeats Brown's in charge of that mess." Cosgrove said, sipping at his drink.
"Well, parliament wants to extend an arm out to the "Empire of the United States of Germany" and to the French Empire, so better learn to put pride for another world and time's empire aside for the good of the one we've got." Baldwin said as he gave it some thought.
"Churchill would like to call our project the "Commonwealth of Allied Free States", Mosley's more particular for the title of "Alliance of Democratic Nations and Peoples"." Baldwin said, looking over the papers of what could potentially be brought together if a new entente was signed. America, another France, another Britain, Spain, Italy, another Portugal, Scandinavia, Russia, Japan, Germany and others besides...there was potential. It wouldn't be that easy however, everyone had different goals, different visions, different aspirations, and many were of the opinion that great alliances did more to provoke than prevent war.
That got a sigh out of him. Perhaps they were right, with how useless the League of nations had been lately...but perhaps...no no he was getting distracted, he needed ot focus on the here and now. Let's see...
Mittelafrika...
Oh dear.
"...You're telling me the Germans run all of this as a single colony? This is a joke, right?" Stanley was...genuinely baffled by the giant blob of Mittelafrika, an undifferentiated mess that just reeked of idiocy or insanity.
"Hardly sir, and they've had the gall to steal our colonies when our motherland was indisposed." Cosgrove tried his best to present an air of giving a shit about the empire beyond its benefit to Canada, but Baldwin would forgive him of his this for now. Cosgrove was here to try and alleviate the dire economic isolation of the entente, starved of access to industry and rather literally starved to try and pay for a military that made Baldwin wince looking at the budgets for. It was hardly his fault for being self-centered, even if his Canada would; if it desired to sup at the waters of the Empire; have to learn some discipline again.
But to the more important matters at hand was this...thing...straddling a third of the dark continent giving him an aneurysm the longer he looked at this bespoke dark green blob simply labelled "Mittelafrika". He tried and failed to imagine how a single governor could even run a thing of Eight colonies, three "autonomous" kingdoms, and seven stolen colonies still being administered by captive britons. No this would not do, he mused, sipping at his tea with an irritated expression. The Lord Halifax or especially the ever bothersome Churchill would probably be incandescent at this particular outrage.
"Who runs this?"
"Why, von Goering sir."
That was a name familiar to him. Hitler's pet air ace, more loyal than Max Immelman and now more prestigious than the limping, cane needing Red Baron with no Barony. Von however, was new to him.
"A kingdom, or a prison?" Kelley said, looking over the map.
"I suppose that depends on one's perspective." He replied, folding his arms.
"A kingdom if you believe he'd be content with this. A prison, if you suppose he'd want to be more than just a Stadthalder of a supercolony." He said.
"Quite right on that." Kelley replied, to Cosgrove's shrugging.
The hours were often filled with minutae ladened discussions like this. Baldwin wasn't going to see the end of these talks of creating one big Empire, which would surely take more time than he was willing to spend as Prime Minister, so he knew that he should spend his time carefully, getting the big agendas out of the way and then fretting about the hours until the end of his premiership on conversations like these; to get top level information into Downing Street's office, seemed like a good way to use that time without setting overly restrictive precedent for Mr.Wood, his hand chosen successor.
He did hope that he would at least live to see an election where the electorates of two Britains would vote as one at least, that would be nice.
...
The so-called Third Reich, a regime dominated solely by the National Socialist German Worker's Party, was having something of a field day. Adolf Hitler had, by fiat, ordered that the Reichsmark would remain exactly at the same value regardless of how much gold was available, and so far it seemed nobody was willing to contest that command in the January cold of central Europe. Furthermore, it would not be long before that the British and French to the west would be conceding the matter of the Rhineland. They had other, bigger digestions to undertake following this crisis of other worlds and could-have-beens.
To the Fuhrer and the inner circle of the NSDAP however, was the greater issue of the Kaiserreich, the Empire of the United States of Germany, and most especially the Free German Socialist Raterepublic. Challengers to the legitimacy of the Nazi state, and to Hitler's understanding of how this phenomenon worked which was of course soon the orthodoxy of the Nazi state, something that bore possible strategic risks to the territory of the Reich should any monarchists, federalists, or Socialists seize substantive amounts of terrain.
Monarchists meant that there needed to be a purge of certain disloyal elements of the right, those who would rather kiss the Kaiser's ass than see the real, genuine triumph of the third reich. The most valuable would be monitored and their loyalty forcibly re-affired, the less useful and incompetents would be given the boot and sent over to the Kaiserreich to start negotiations with the "reactionaries". For one thing, access to the Kaiserreich's naval technologies may be of use, for another, planting the seeds of Nazism could further the destiny of the herrenvolk.
As for the "Free German Socialist Raterepublik", the Nazi inner circle would carefully examine those revealed to be communists in the other world, but backed down quickly in the case of Goebbels at Hitler's own intercession. The Fuhrer knew Josef, and his Goebbels was no Bolshevik nor Maximalist. Still, lists had to be compiled, and plans had to be made.
The "Empire of the United States of the German Nation" though...successors of an 1848 revolution that triumphed, yet at the same time nauseatingly close to the Bonaparte's French Empire over the Brothers of the British State, and so blind to the Syndicalist threat to their east in a grand asiatic alliance. They would have to awaken them.
The Nazi state understood this to be a risk, and so had his men work on how to understand, and then master this power that seemed to bend to will; convinced that he could use it for the Reich's goals.
Also of concern to the Fuhrer's government were the frequent appearances of the "Vagabonds". People who appeared from what could not have been any of the four timelines, or who claimed to always have been from the place they appeared in, but lacked documentation and often had a somewhat exotic appearance. Hair like spun gold, eyes of odd hues, often even skin tones that seemed a bit off or ethnic features that didn't quite fit the ideas of racial science's categories. Of course, many were arrested on the spot, potential problems to the regime were so happily reported to the Police after all.
So far though, it seemed most had no intention of causing trouble, and the few who did were at worst pranksters or far more often; simply confused. Nevertheless, it required dealing with, and Hitler was nothing if not someone who liked to rule by impulse and the National Socialist German Worker's Party designed to obey its fuhrer instantly.
Put them to work to earn their place in the fatherland, he declared. As they seemed to speak the language of the lands they arrived in, they would understand the need to get to work in important positions being vacated by the mandate for the expansion of the armed forces. It is an inconvenient fact of history that one cannot run military war machines without industrial product, but one also cannot fight without soldiers, and that the sort of people who can do either sort of work are largely one and the same.
Perhaps curious was that reservoirs of resources seemed to refill in a similar manner. Oil wells once near emptied from curious pokings in the 19th century were refilling to full, and the production facilities of the black gold Germany extracted quite dry often decades ago were reporting very stable output with none of the usual fluctuations of drilling. Coal miners meanwhile, would dig one day, then find the coal back the next.
Unlimited did not mean infinite, the resources still had to be harvested, worked, and moved around. but to the Fuhrer whose mind was obsessed with the nitty gritty of such raw material trivia, it was of the keenest interest. The Wehrmacht had less interest in such things, and the NSDAP inner circle bemoaned the OKW's myopic focus on tactics over all other things. How could they be masters of Europe, of the world, with an army that cared almost nothing for strategy?
The offices of the Reich would order production to be stepped up within the limitations of the geography and existing infrastructure with a modification of the Four year plan, and would hear out the Panzertruppe on programs that would necessarily entail a massive amount of things that would need oil and oil products; such as synthetic rubber that would be a necessity to complete the vision of autarky.
Gears were turning in the Fuhrer's mind, and he had his eyes on a particularly grand prize. The world may yet be in reach.
