Though the four worlds had different histories, they shared enough history that the century of misfortune that had afflicted the world's most populous nation was a commonality. And in each, the country was divided as part of the legacy of foreign meddling and internal squabbling over what had once been the Empire of the Great Qing. Now there was chaos and strife under heaven, a struggle to be the one to unify the most populated country in human history and claim it for whatever cause they saw fit, and deliver unto the people of China whatever bounty they believed they were deserved.
In the World of the Raven and the Bear, the Northern expedition was a success, with the Kuomintang and their Communist allies pushing far to the north and routing the then internationally recognised Beiyang republic of the Zhili clique. They would then hold against the alliance of the Fengtien, Shandong, and Shanxi cliques, at least, up until the Japanese intervened out of alarm that the Sunist-Communist coalition lead by Wang Jingwei and his followers was approaching its interests in northern China. The Imperial Japanese Army, using modern tanks and motorised formations routed Jiang Jieshi's forces and drove them out of the forbidden palace, pushing them all the way to the Huang He, or Yellow River and allowing their aligned warlords to select a new "President" and "Prime Minister" of the "Republic of China".
Old man Wang Kemin would be given the position, though in truth he was little more than a puppet for the real power in the Beiyang Republic, Zhang Zhongchang; who had "graciously" accepted a chance to move his base of operations to Beijing and leave Shandong in the hands of a trusted subordinate. Zhongchang, who had cut himself off the opium habit after the central plains war could lord authority over even Japan's toady in chief; Liang Hongzi who would, despite his personal scepticism of the eclectic futurist ideology of Japan still bleats pro-concordist ideology whenever prompted. With a Japanese-trained and equipped army the new Beiyang government would, from 1930 onwards, wage low level conflict and skirmish with the Wuhan and Nanjing based Republic of China supported by the Soviet Union, and after the 1933 Red May Revolution; the United Republics.
In Manchuria, the Qing dynasty would be invited at the behest of Japan to serve as a frontman for the Concordist vision of Pan-Asianism, while the Fengtien clique would in truth, remain the power behind the scenes that kept the "Manchurian Empire" running with greatly increased Japanese support. While it would come at the cost of a claim to all of China, meetings with Shimoi Harukichi and Shumei Okawa, the great ideologues of the New Japan and the new Asia would personally charm the Zhang family enough to go along with it, enrapturing them with a vision of being a piece in a great Asian puzzle that would truly bring to light the power of the orient and surpass the occident once and for all.
While Britain and France would do business with both Beijing and Nanjing, simply choosing the odd stance of labelling one "Chinese Peking" and the other "Chinese Nanking", Germany and Italy, hoping to court the Japanese Empire's favour; would back the Beiyang Republic. However, while the Beiyang Republic would face its own internal squabbles between warlord factions who either wanted their own fiefdoms expanded or more power from behind the seat of the presidency, things in Nanjing and Wuhan would only get spicier as the factions of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party found themselves squabbling continually.
In the communist party, Chen Duxiu, Wang Ming, and Zhou Enlai would frequently argue over the direction of the communist movement. With supporters such as Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhang Wentian up for grabs, the successes of the Communist party in getting Jiang Jieshi marginalised within the Republic's government through the support of Sun Yat Sen and Soong Qingling as well as the conditionality of support from the USSR and UASR had seen it spread wide across the country with ever growing dual power. Farming communities of peasants, urban communes of workers, and many Soldier's soviets had all been part and parcel of the growing revolutionary wing of Chinese politics, but whether to take an American, Soviet, or self-inspried direction was a matter of hot contention.
And while Wang Jingwei was currently predominant in the Kuomintang, Soong Qingling as ever, remained a thorn at his side; needling him for his contentment with "social nationalism" rather than a more revolutionary direction and urging him to take a stronger stance on the rights of women and a more international direction for politics. Meanwhile Li Zongren, who had de facto taken control over much of the apparatus of the right of the Kuomintang from the disgraced Jiang Jieshi took issue with Wang Jingwei's continual deferment to the Comintern without even pushing for membership in the organisation by the Kuomintang so that the ruling party of China could at least guide the Comintern to Chinese directed and Chinese dictated directions to suit Chinese interests.
All however, agreed on a need to reunite China at long last, hoping to bring an end to generations of conflict and realise the dream of so many; China one and indivisible, and never again the slaves of the west. Perhaps a friend, but an equal, not a subject. But as Concordism and Communism grow in popularity in China's politics, many disagree who would be the best friend for that bold step into the future. The traditional right and the parochial sections of the left seemed to be dead ends. Something bolder, more drastic would be needed to truly bring an end to the century of humiliation and allow the Dragon to roar once again.
In the Kaiserworld, with Imperial Germany's support, the Northern Expedition was smashed in the favour of the Zhili clique, and the Qing Emperor Pu Yi restored to serve as in essence, a frontman for the Kaiserreich's desired order in China in 1925 and 26. German support and weapons would help the Zhili extend nominal control of most of China save for Mongolia and the still defiant (and Japanese supported) Fengtien, but also see a new age of economic exploitation. Though the investment of the world abroad into the stabilised Chinese Empire did bring about a new era of prosperity, it also saw China having to give up even more concessions to the Legation Cities and the German AOG; the Aufsichtsrat der Ostasiatischen Generalverwaltung which would serve as a reminder of whom the Chinese economy was really meant to serve.
The sale of Chinese cities to German corporate interests in particular was driven by Sun Chuanfang, perhaps the most widely hated man in China for his shameless toadying to the white man. To work with the Reichspakt and to make money with them was tolerable, to sell off Chinese land for the Germans to rule directly as their own sovereign territory was unforgivable. And not a day went by that dozens of conspiracies to make him atone for his sins in blood were not formed. Furthermore, outside of the core Zhili territories, Wu Peifu and Pu Yi's control over China largely existed on paper. There was peace between the regional warlords, in the sense that there was mostly just peripheral banditry, but the regional warlords all maintained armies ready and rearing to have at it.
The League of the Eight Provinces was on paper, the most loyal part of China to the Qing Emperor in the forbidden palace outside of the Zhili core territories proper. In practice, Sun Chuanfang had ambitions to replace the Confucian Marshal at the helm of the German sponsored system that had seen China become a "Neokolonie", a state that had nominal independence from the Kaiserreich but whose economy had a magical habit of draining into Berlin's coffers. Surely for nothing but very legitimate, mutually beneficial reasons that are absolutely in the best interests of the Chinese people, and not at all the collections of Konzerns that dominate China's economy whenever it isn't the Japanese or Russians doing so instead.
Within the League of Eight provinces was a collection of restive movements, such as the Left wing remnants of the Kuomintang who saw a path towards a Chinese form of Socialism or the Federalist movement which admired the system of the United States; though of course having its own ideas for how to work what was still seen as a progressive dream by many outside of America who were less aware of the sheer magnitude of its rot as most who did not follow the politics of the world's largest federal liberal democratic republic all that closely. And for those who were aware of the great sickness befalling the United States, it was believed that the mistakes of the American experiment could guide towards a better, stronger Federation.
But there were also movements firmly loyal to Germany, the beneficiaries of the great Imperial restructuring of the economy who holed up in Nanjing. They had grown rich and prosperous from the "Qing decade" that had seen a general end to the worst violence in China and a prolonged period of Legation League investment and economic involvement in China, and greatly admired the German system as a matter of fact. They had hoped to take the government down a pro-German path in the hopes that if they could just toady up to the Kaiserreich in the right way, they could get the same wealth they personally received for everyone else. The people whose wealth only grew more tenuous were simply those who could not make it in the society of the future, and would be crushed beneath the wheel of history.
And in Anqing were those who hoped to take China under the direction of a Japanese style Liberal system, and were eager to cooperate with the Japanese of their world to make that real. TO be part of a brotherhood of asians, to practice democracy in their own way, and to build a system under their own auspices without the unwanted and unwelcome influences of the Europeans or the Unconfucian ways of the Federalists or the Socialists. A China for the Chinese, and a rebirth of the values of the Xinhai republic and revolution that were perverted by those who had led Doctor Sun Yat Sen astray and convinced him to take the roads of foreign temptation.
And beneath it all was the Millenarian religious sect of the Shangqing Tianguo under the Yiguandao cult that syncretised Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism into a new blend of ideology that envisioned a way to restore China to greatness and to at last ensure that all under heaven was back in the places they belonged to. A China free of Opium, of unrighteous rule and banditry, of oppression and immorality, and of unwanted foreign domination.
The China of the Uncrowned Earth was the most divergent, affected by the stalemate in the Russo-Japanese war that saw Russia claim the Heilongjiang and the Jilin provinces as part of "Zheltorossiya", Yellow Russia; when joined with Transamur and Russian Outer Manchuria. While Japan would claim the southern provinces of inner manchuria; Fengtien and Rehe; as part of the domain of the Mantetsu railway company, the outright loss of Manchuria to foreigners would see the Qing dynasty fall even sooner than in the other two worlds, with the Republic's struggle to be born leading to tragic collapse later on in the face of provincial armies and foreign interference.
The general collapse of the world order as it was once known in the aftermath of the Great War hit China hard, as foreign capital withered dramatically in the aftermath of such a calamitous human disaster. As France withdrew from Asian affairs and allowed Japan to fill the void; drawing in Indochina into its sphere as the "Empire of Annam" and Britain reeled from the collapse of the Raj and the Russian Empire dealt with the abortive attempt at a Republican Revolution, China shattered. Then it shattered again with the Kuomintang being unable to agree of who or what could fill in the massive shoes of Sun Yat Sen. In each of the five provinces lay a different vision of the Kuomintang and what it would offer to society.
Within the Fuijan government would embrace a revisionist, patriotic vision of Socialism pushed forth by the Minsheng wing of the Kuomintang, Hunan a pluralistic progressive democracy with a strong alliance between the Progressive and Socialist wings of the KMT on one side and the CPC on the other, Lingguang a fiefdom of the National Revolutionary Army, Yunnan the personal domain of Tang Jiyao, and Nanjing an increasing hotbed of the reactionary wing of the Kuomintang in conflict with the Worker's movements in the major cities and the peasant movements in the countryside. Particularly with many looking for something more radical than what the Kuomintang had to offer.
The nominal government of China, the Beiyang government currently dominated by the master of Shanxi; Yan Xishan who had seen off the attempts of the Mantestsu company and the Japanese Empire to carve out a larger slice of his domain, was not in a well way. With long years of civil war between the southern Kuomintang and the northern Beiyang, the country was often beset by famine, and many grew tired of the long hours of labour and the endless changing of hands between one despot or the other. The Beiyang Republic and Kuomintang were both urbanising and industrializing quite quickly with the money being poured into them, turning the country into an eastern recreation of the horrors of the great war as armies with an overabundance of manpower but an underabundance of hardened armour try to break the cratered wastelands dividing them.
Though the Beiyang government and its cliques seem secure, whispers of discontent have been riding high. The Chinese Creation Society, a Futurist organisation born of the pain of the rapid transformation of Chinese society and the trauma of seemingly endless warfare and the rapid but poorly controlled process of mechanisation; has grown more and more prominent in China, seeking to form an alliance with the Communist Party in the hopes of creating a newer, more modern China, one with a totally transformed culture in dedication to the Socialist and Bolshevist ideal in the mould of the Kavakz' Society's Transcaucasian Federal Societ Socialist Republic, or Bogdanov's Zheltorossiyan Soviet Collective.
The peasant-based Red Spears also hoped to cast down the present order, seeking to impale the landlords upon ten million angry men and women's sharpened bits of metal and establish a socialism of the peasantry and the rural peoples of China; perhaps even the world. To seize the means of cultivating the land for their own enrichment and to till the soil and reap its bounty as they wanted and planned, rather than at the relentless pace demanded by warlords seeking to win a civil war that seemed to be without end.
But within the peasant societies also lay the far stranger Yellow Sands society, who with the family of the last holder of the Ming Dynasty's mark of legitimacy had come to declare the Republic itself to be sick and flawed, that the problem with the monarchy was not that it was a monarchy; but because it was fundamentally unchinese, and only a return to the glory of the Great Ming could soothe the pain in China's soul.
The events in China would start to spiral with the sudden and as most would say, richly deserved assassination of Sun Chuanfang by Chinese patriots in the Kaiserworld as the Chinese economy was rocked by the collapse of the Reichsmark and the Black Monday crash, with Sun becoming an easily visible and blamed embodiment of everything that Anti-Germanists in China hated about the current way things were run. No sooner than Sun had died than the League of the Eight provinces shattered all at once, with the Kuomintang raising the banner over Fuijian and starting its march northwards, seeking to beget the Socialist Republic of the three principles that had been denied to China for too long.
At the same time, the Federalists quickly made their claims apparent in Guangdong, with Chen Gongming having the Qing lapdogs in the province quickly dealt with and cast out so that the Federalist society could take power in the provincial capital of Guangzhou. Anqing and Nanjing would themselves quickly have a violent falling out while for the time being, it seemed Hunnan at least would ride out much of the storm.
With the worldmerges so new, the initial thought for extrauniversal political consequences was not really on the mind of the revolutionaries. But news travels quickly in the modern age, and the British Empire and the Uncrowned Earth's United States were not entirely idle. While the Uncrowned Earth's United States had a minuscule and continually defunded military and so far, weak to nonexistent economic ties with the other worlds, Acting President Norris; as he sought to build a coalition in the current Four-Party system; sought to build economic ties while he also hoped to push through the Fiat currency amendment to stabilise the economy. Fully aware that he had a golden opportunity to push through the sort of progressive legislation he wanted without worrying about his electoral prospects; he wanted to get in an open door policy and get jobs in the US building things. Not weapons and warfare as he despised such things, but money, credits, and industrial goods he could do.
America needed something to export to in order to clear out the funk afflicting the economy. Market expansion could recover the rate of capital and allow for the spending that would be needed to bring back the economy. And as Norris had no intention of running for another term, he had no real concern for whether this would hurt his electoral fortunes in the presidency. Once he was done with this position, he would return to his position in the senate and hope that his people would accept what he'd done for the country.
He would sell this to the American populace as a way to get work and to get American goods on the markets of a democratic revolution revealed to the nation by what was surely an act of God. Get people back in the factories and working for decent wages and fair hours while helping those suffering from tyranny rebel against the crushing fist of the German Empire; which was a more understandable factor than Nazi Germany. Film crews and newsreels were sent out to gather information about these otherworlds and stir the sympathetic strings of the hearts of the average American.
The British worked on a somewhat more cynical calculus. The Kaiserliche Marine of the kaiserworld's Kriegsmarine was a potential threat to the Home Islands, a vast, bloated monstrosity with an absolutely alarming number of battleships; including a number of ridiculously huge monsters financed surely by stealing the wealth of Britain's own colonies languishing under the Hun's yoke. If the Qing were being supported by the Kaiserreich which had spat out a fleet that could potentially threaten Great Britain itself, then Britain would be against them. So the Anqing and the Federalists were both only natural to support.
While a third red scare brought about by the simple existence of Syndicalists and Communists in these other Europes was being threatened by the traditionally scaremongering British press, the cold logic of the Empire's strategic departments was that so long as the America of the Uncrowned Earth remained stable, they would be able to at least partially check the UASR; while the Union of Britain was a Britain without her Empire and thus surely a shadow of the potential of Insulisrael; or whatever the British wanted to call their island now. The kaiserreich however, was a bitterly known factor that would have to be opposed by any means necessary.
Only the Serpent World's China was largely united, save for a smattering of territories aligned with the Japanese Shogunate under the auspices of the Yellow Sands society.
The Communal Worker's Federation of China was the most populous socialist entity in any of the four worlds, born of a Qing Empire that better crested the waves of modernisation, only to crash downwards when a proletarianising society forced to serve to put down a major uprising by the fellowship of true life ended up turning that experience towards ending the days of Emperors and birth a Socialist Republic built on the models of Syndicates of Labour that had grown into widespread counter societies in the time of rapid industrialisation to serve as a workshop for capitalists looking for massive amounts of cheap labour. Though the outside world had tried to put down the Labourer's Revolution of 1923-1925, they had not succeeded, and swiftly joined by Russia and much of Asia, China had become a stronger, richer, and freer nation than the Emperors could ever dream of.
And with the rise of Lindbergh's America, the might of the Shogunate, and the British State, the French, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Germans were surprisingly willing to open their coffers to bolster potential cobelligerents in what some fear would be a truly great war unlike anything the world has ever seen, further accelerating the rise of a Republic of Labor and Virtue, and the Speaker of the Assembly of Labor; Cai Hesen has already made overtures for his plans to help promote Socialism in Asia and provide a path towards uniting Syndicalist and Communist efforts to counter imperialism and capitalism.
This of course meant that they were immediately interested in the fate of the divided Chinas, and hoped to steer them towards the path of worker's revolution in a rapidly changing world as soon as they were made aware of the situation on the ground. Heavy equipment which they manufactured at their facilities in particular, they felt would be of great help to progressive forces in the warring Chinas against their reactionary counterparts. Especially pertinent when the Russian Empire, the Kaiserreich, the American State, the Shogunate, and the Concordists were all dead set on arming these reactionaries for war.
The four worlds' socialists of course, had their sympathies towards the significantly left-shifted Kuomintang. Small in territory yes, but arising in some of the most populated territory in all of China. While the other Chinese of course did have their own commitments to worry about as well as the countering efforts of other powers to deal with, shipments of aid could be arranged in short order through glide-shifted versions of the channels with which their own respective Chinas received; or the simple long route in the case of the European Syndicalists or the Free Indians. Another socialist China was a great prize indeed, even if the odds against them seemed rather long indeed.
Battles were already being recorded emerging out of the confused chaos of the death of the league of eight provinces, and things would only start to get more complicated as Concordist Japan began to take note. The Asiofuturists of Japan were intrigued by the possibility of expanding their influence into another China, full of potential converts ripe for embracing the future envisioned by Prince-Regent Yasuhito and his acolytes. While it was deemed to be unlikely to turn the tide in the Japanese revolution int he world of the Uncrowned Earth, this fred the Japanese to instead show their strength and power to another Earth; arriving at Peking with a display of force and a delegation from Manchuria to get their foot in the door, offering the Qing a potential alternative to German puppetry.
But this was hardly the only China being affected. As the Japanese revolution began in the Uncrowned Earth, the seemingly victorious Beiyang Republic found its far abroad armies receiving reports of the Guominjun, Creation Society, Red Spears, and the Yellow Sands Society all deciding to rise up now that the threat of invasion and incorporation into Mentetsu had passed.
Frantically, the Beiyang sought to pull forces back to defend their positions, leaving the Japanese of the world of the Raven and the bear to take advantage of the situation to slide into Mantetsu and Annam to reinforce and seize what they saw as valuable positions to prepare for the Empire. While from the sheer strength of the revolution in the home islands visible in the Japanese revolution in that timeline it was clear they were going to lose sooner or later, the concordists had their eye set on the Empire. Quick, short operations would ready the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy for its future operations, and the fleeing loyalists to the Imperial Throne were; loyal to Araki as they were; easy additions to the Imperial Japanese Navy and the fleets of the Shogunate, easier than they would be with a Japan to report to anyway.
That is not to say that the Imperial Japanese Army was uninvolved in the Japanese revolution, but that committing the entire army on a war footing was not yet in the cards; and that ultimately; this other Japan was another country having a civil war, rather than a part of the fatherland to defend to the death. Of course, they couldn't just pass up on the opportunity to propagandise about it. That would be disgraceful. But they could make plenty of other gains, such as trying to lean on anti-communist fears in the Chinas, and push their own model of pan-asianism as a salve for it in turn. One that might see the east match and surpass the west.
After all, look at the besieged Beiyang who were dealing with an assault so sudden and unexpected and so multidirectional that the Kuomintang could barely get a clear idea of what was going on itself. Beset by Christian Socialists in the Guomindang, Futurist Bolshevists in the Creation Society, and Peasant Rabble in the Red Spears. If Yan Xishan wanted help to survive the storm, he would surely have to offer something to the Japanese Empire, the one, true Japanese Empire. The only salvation for their problems that wouldn't involve kowtowing to Russia or other westerners.
Savinkov of course sought to stake his own claim, offering potential support to Xishan out of a fear of the Japanese Concordists, and also a great distaste for any possibility of Drozdovsky getting a foot in any further than they did. Naturally, this terribly confused Yan Xishan who only grew more baffled when delegates from some German regime bearing a swastika also started making offers, but with the situation collapsing, he would try to simply go along with what he at least, understood was the situation and try to milk everyone making him offers for everything they were worth.
The Russian Empire though would not remain laggard forever. Prime Minister Drozdovsky's whole policy was built around settling the far east and making Russia as much of an Asian power as it was a European one, hoping to gradually bring the east up to the population density of the west. The present situation, where China was in complete chaos with the potential for godless socialists and degenerate liberals to threaten the eastern flank; was entirely unacceptable. However, Mongolia was shattered into many warlord zones, and already there were rumours of intervention that might further spread the scourge of Communism and Syndicalism, things that would not do, and could not be allowed without a Russian response, including a mobilisation of the Imperial Russian Army to start probes into western China and begin sending Russian mercenaries to assist the Beiyang cause.
In the world of the Raven and the Bear, the discoveries of the otherworlds brought about substantial disturbance to say the least. Stalin found the extremely heterodoxical Bolsheviks of Transcaucasia and Zheltorossiya almost as bewildering as an existing Russian Empire and Savinkov's "National Populism" or the simple existence of a Syndicalist Russia. He also found the potential disruption to the longstanding policy on China alarming, and asked for a special emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist international to discuss matters.
Speaking at length to his American counterpart, the General Secretary of the Worker's Communist Party of America; Earl Browder (even if Browder was very much the junior of Chairman Kantarovich and especially Premier Foster), Stalin voiced concerns that the situation in the four worlds was to put it lightly; chaotic. If these conflicts in Japan, Korea, two Chinas, Arica, Peru, Ethiopia, Arabia, Madagascar, and beyond were linked conflicts, they would be called a world war. And they would deserve the title more than the Great War for their incredible geographic spread.
He worried that, with the USSR still busily building up, that this storm of conflict may lead to a premature quarte-global war, and that something should be done to ensure that they remained local conflicts. The provisions for an International Volunteer Army that would be able to maintain some distance from the national armies of the Proletarian world may be of use in allowing for intervention without providing causus bellis. Something that Browder agreed on.
China however, should be supported, to present a possible threat to the reactionary Russias of these otherworlds, that had the Man of Steel so particularly worried. The way the Glide worked remained not entirely understood, and he was fearful of spies from the Empire or the Federal Russian People's State might do in the Soviet Union, and has his misgivings about Syndicalist Russia, and while he was interested in working with the Kavakz Society and the Vperedists, everything he read of them convinced him that they were to put it lightly; heterodoxical beyond belief. The Vperedists offered an avenue to reach into the mess of China yes, but the thought of listening to Bogdanov's ravings made Koba break out into hives.
The Creation Society was some of the most active Socialists in that China, but they were Vperedists themselves, believers in the transformation of society for transformation's sake, and the Communist Party of China was increasingly embracing their mode and style of thought. This was...concerning to say the least as he was unsure of whether such an approach would even appeal to a heavily peasant based society, though he would be the first to admit to himself that he; nor his fellows of the centrist faction of the Bolshevik party; were not familiar with all the facts in this particular case. More information was needed.
And it would be needed soon, because it was becoming increasingly clear in his conversations with Mikoyan, Yezhov, and Kaganovich that the China situation was a microcosm of the fact that as the Americans would say "the shit has hit the fan". While he was having Molotov and Litvinov try to work on trade deals with the Syndicalists and Bearworld Communists that were already providing even further technological and mechanical assistance while Soviet resources flooded the INFOR, ULAPAC, and Rotfront, he had Yezhov try to check what may be going on inside.
Yezhov was also worried about potential threats from within, like Koba was, educated by the fearful conditions of the twenties of the possibility of assault from without by means of agents from within. Smirnov and Bukharin no longer worried him quite as much as they once did, the calculus had changed. But as Yezhov said, there were now sources of potential infiltrators who could speak fluent Russian and blend in almost perfectly. And while he did play the part of the good comrade with the Futurist Bolsheviks, he remained unconvinced by the enthusiastic embrace of the pie in the sky visions of cosmism and technology fetishism.
And as for the others..particularly regarding the complex and dangerous situations in China, he spent many late nights thinking about how to deal with the crisis in the far east. Stalin would confide in Wang Ming; his most ardent supporter in the Chinese Communist Party and another attendant in the meeting at Moscow that he was concerned that in the excitement over the new worlds; people were forgetting that the revolutionary fortress also needed to be secured. The Creation Society in the Uncrowned Earth's China was nice to have, but he was hoping for something less...ungrounded in general.
Still, it would ultimately come to a decision by the Politburo and the Presidium, as well as the Committee of the Supreme Soviet; to dispatch aid to China. Kaiserworld's Wang Jingwei would have his tanks; as would the creation society of Tian Han and his "Marxist Constructivists". And they would have a lot more, but it would not be unlimited support just yet, especially when word came to his desk that Kaiserworld's America had; much to the GRU and NKVD's expectations; collapsed into civil war when attempting to have the Army "mediate" negotiations just led to gunshots and arms being taken up once the familiar face of MacArthur repeated history in another world.
It's great to see so much attention given to China. It's often overlooked in a lot of alt history, or done poorly. This is an absolutely massive amount of work. Any one of those timelines alone would be impressive, but all three in one post is a hell of an achievement. What an absolutely chaotic clusterfuck that's been unleashed. The radical and weird communist societies that arose from Russia are definitely strange. Completely ungrounded in most theory, they operate off vibes and technological fetishism for its own sake. Stalin is correct that instead of rushing wildly into every possible conflict they should focus on securing their own countries first, though obviously Voscom can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Stalin is correct that the Cosmism and technology fetish may not endear the Chinese communists in RF to the still largely agrarian society in the region and infiltration may be a problem given the USSR is still young and insecure. Hopefully something can be worked out since while I can understand the mindset of wanting to secure what you already have, OTL it led to great failures and mistakes.
The Divided States of America: The Kaiserworld American Civil War 1936-1937
"MacArthur just cannot help himself no matter the reality, can he?" - Premier Foster upon being told that Douglas MacArthur caused a civil war in another version of America
The assassination of Huey Long's Son Palmer Long by the Ku Klux Klan in an attempted hit on the Kingfish himself; proclaimed a "Syndicalist in waiting" by the Klansman who killed him was often regarded as the unofficial beginning of the Kaiserworld's Second American Civil war. This act, which shattered Long's faith in the system once and for all saw the breaking the standoff as militias and supplies were raised to protect one set of territory or the other after Douglas MacArthur started to try to crack down on all "seditious conduct" by means of terror and violence.
It was for the men and women in the halls of the Capitol in the Uncrowned Earth something to fear and dread, while in the Palace of the Congress built in the United Republics it was seen as a golden opportunity. Big Bill Haywood*, the would-be presidential candidate of the Socialist Worker's Party of America, while a bit long in the tooth; thanks to breaking from habits that would have fed into diabetes and alcoholism, was in good enough spirits to take charge in the call to arms as militias and sympathetic national guard units formed to guard the seizure of coal and power infrastructure readied for the fight.
Movements organised by the Klan, by Longist Minutemen, by the National Guard or the Sons of Liberty and more rose up all across the country. African-American and Indigenous groups seized whatever guns they could, counting on support from the opportunistic UASR that saw a chance to repeat history as the WFRN laid the lines of siege around the country.
The UASR of course, had a natural advantage to intervention in the conflict, given that this alter-USA was a simple glide away while the Bearworld USA had a deeply dilapidated military and the Serpentworld Federal American National State was principally deployed for more distant wars with its garrisons in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. Meanwhile the UASR was preparing for the mother of all battles in North America with British Canada and so had plenty of mobile assets arrayed in combat formation in places coterminous to where the Combined Syndicates were. The advantage of surprise wouldn't last forever, but it wouldn't have to, once enough territory and resources were secured for the Alter-Reds, the other intervention forces would be doing so at a disadvantage. Foster declared that the area would be kept under the "protection of the revolutionary navy to prevent imperialist incursions into the American landmass".
And with Norris abhorring the idea of throwing the minuscule Uncrowned Earth American Army into the meatgrinder, there was not likely going to be much opposition to this until the FANS moved forces to deploy to theother America. What would this would essentially mean in practice is that the opposition to the Combined Syndicates of America and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the United States of America would be left largely cut off from the outside world for the most part, though with a game of chicken being planed with the American National Navy to see who would have the stones to make the first move when they pulled heavier assets away from more distant postings to menace the civil war.
Whatever plans for intervention that Edward may have entertained were immediately, mercilessly squashed as soon as he was informed that doing so would both be unsupported by the United Kingdom, which was still in the process of building a land army capable of waging a long continental war; and would be met with retaliation by the Worker's and Farmers Revolutionary Army of America. One that Canada would have no chance of victory against.
Once again, Edward would have his political ambitions squashed by the poisoned chalice of reintegration with a functioning British Empire, leaving the dejected King to sulk in Buckingham palace after being in essence; dismissed as an unruly child by Lord Halifax. Triply so when McKenzie King told British command that in no uncertain terms, he was not going to have Canadians die in a colossal war in a far more populous country with no realistic exit plan. Canada had already sold off much of its navy to provide warships for the dominions of the empire, and even if it were intact, they would have almost certainly lost a naval war with the WFRN in style; while also likely sparking a world war Canada would likely be overrun in.
And the Imperial German Navy would find that the waters of America were now being patrolled by ships bearing the Red and Black banner. The Kaiserliche Marine would then quickly back down and settle for setting up bases in the Dominican Republic after being invited by the Anti-Syndicalist government of the eastern part of Hispanola, with even the bloodthirsty warhawks of the Kaiserreich unwilling to take on the Vladivostok Compact until they got a better idea of what they were working with. While they were willing to push with the American National Navy in deadly games of chicken, the worry of sparking a wider conflict kept most of the navies crowding around America shores well behaved.
And of course, non-americans intervening was always a dangerous gambit given the negative effects on legitimacy that being perceived as a foreign puppet had. Nevertheless, everyone did send volunteers and equipment as they felt they were able to through the blockades of the assorted navies gathered. However, MacArthur's putsch before an election was even properly organised had done much to devastate the legitimacy of his national salvation league. New England and the west coast had rejected his leadership straight away, and the Constituional America Republic had decried him as far too limpwristed to get the job of purifying America done and the Long aligned populists and progressives decried his "shameless kowtowing to the elite".
The UASR however, would find the insistence on Syndicalism within the CSA to be annoying, frustrating, and to some, borderline heretical. Thomas Mann and Pouget instead of Lenin or Marx, and Premier Foster quickly came to dismiss his otherworldly counterpart as "bizarrely obsessive" after a brief conversation purely to satiate his curiosity about what another iteration of himself might be like. However, as the Combined Syndicates of America were not tied to the Third International, there were no direct means to rebuke or influence it beyond leaning on it with aid and advice.
The isolation of the non-CSA elements of the civil war had an immediate effect, as did the sight of the WFRN's warships off the coast. In the midst of the coldest winter yet recorded in American history, the provision of coal and heating to the Provisional Revolutionary Government as well as shipping excess loads of foodstuffs to keep the revolutionaries and the populace in general fed.
While Norris' USA lacked the massive military industries needed to send weapons, he would send food supplies out to "fellow, if otherworldly Americans" as part of a Farmer's relief package to get their produce bought and sold to needy mouths and get work going once again. Desperate to get work going once more, Norris would be rewarded by signs of life in the long stagnant American economy once more, even as papers reported quite frankly confused information about what was going on in the otherworlds; attention fixated on the developing civil war. All while also trying to get an idea of what both the UASR and the FANS were capable of, observers and attaches trying to get a read on the burgeoning conflict and its fluidic lines.
However it was clear that MacArthur was not at all ready for the degree of air supremacy the CSA would be enjoying. With the Canadian border being locked down by PRG friendly militias outside of the New English Emergency Government's territory and the Mexican border being under the control of Socialist Zapatistas and Agrarianists, the skies would belong to the reds and blacks. Aluminium monoplanes far superior to anything in the inventory of anyone else involved in the war save for small handfuls of modern aircraft would patrol the skies regularly, exercising tactics of tightly coordinated bombardment with the benefit of radio communications to devastate many a position with rocket, machine gun, and bomb.
The Federal American Nationalists had plenty of Aircraft to give to the Constitutionalists, but without the experience of a proper great war, their aircraft were often more experimental than practical. Metal triplanes built on the assumption that more wings meant more turning ability which of course meant more dogfighting capability frequently found themselves gutted by Soviet and Council aircraft that would rush, fire away, then keep on going ahead without stopping in lethal boom and zoom runs.
Airships still being used in a military capacity loaned to Bill Murray's constitutionalists were big, intimidating, but not particularly unstoppable as autocannon equipped aircraft and flak cannons aimed for the more vulnerable components while easily outpacing or warding away parasite escort craft, and the "quad-stitcher" halftracks armed with four 23mm autocannons would make dive bombings by their parasite craft a one-way trip. And while the aircraft sold by other powers were more sensibly designed, there were just not enough of them to prevent the skies from becoming a sea of red.
There were some fumbles here and there. The realisation that San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles were not the hubs of the Sino-American community they were in their own timeline and that the Kaiserworld United States was short about fifteen million people relative to their own America resulted in a disappointing early showing in trying to spark revolt in the southern Pacific States under the Sacremento Government. Similarly, Huey Long's populistic American Unity government was a fierce competitor with trying to pull at the sympathy strings of the working poor American man, and even with the relatively limited skirmishing between PRG and Longist troops, there was a sense of uncertainty as to which direction the Kingfish would go while he was locked in a mortal struggle with the Constitutionalists and the Government of National Salvation.
Though it resulted in a stalled midwestern offensive, it wouldn't slow the pace of things in the east coast or Oregon; the latter of which would be seized by WFRA troops flying the Provisional Revolutionary Government flag. They were Americans after all; hardly anyone would notice, and the volunteers from the America of the Red Flood would be massively materially outmatched while the Allied troops dispatched were simply outnumbered. Volunteers with rifles from home cannot match the might of tanks and aircraft, and the UASR was far more willing to enforce its blockade than most were willing to contest it. This was after all, American soil; and only Norris and Lindberg's Americas were in a position to have ships contest it with anything resembling regularity. Albeit with a smaller, less well funded Navy that more often than not contented itself with delivering fuel and humanitarian supplies; particularly with Norris' hatred of the idea of contributing more American lives into a civil war. Meanwhile, it was starting to become apparent to the Nationalists that they needed to winnow away the more...extravagant ideas untested by the crucible of actual conflict, especially as their forces near Ohio were overrun.
As word came of the final fall of the Imperial Japanese government of the Uncrowned Earth in March of 1936; with the rival Japanese governments instead deciding to exploit the fall of that government rather than back it up, the war in America was starting to intensify with the melting of the snows and ice from the polar storm. New England. New England's emergency government had been overrun after attempting to pincer the Revolutionaries with the Government of national salvation and receive a strong negotiating position; only for a "loaned" WFRA tank corps to simply bulldoze through its formations and allow the "People's Liberation Army" to fill the gaps. The western government of national salvation had similarly been overrun by the combination of Revolutionary, Klan, and Black militia movements tearing through its core territories of Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina,
Some of the fastest military advances in human history had taken place over months of the war as yet another MacArthur's government collapsed in dramatic fashion, in the east coast their forces were harried by black militias and Appalachian hillbillies aligned with the reds, all while trying their level best to attempt to stop the forward momentum of mechanised formations with more than a thousand tanks in a single offensive push towards D.C. By April Southern New Jersey had collapsed alongside inner Pennsylvania.
By May New England had surrendered half its territory, with the outmatched militias and national guard units having succumbed to the deadly effects of tank shock in the face of armoured cohorts that shot at or simply ran over troops with no experience in anti-tank warfare, submachine gun armed shock troops dismounting from their transports shortly after to hose down anything left standing after the ground was churned by artillery and aircraft. By June Albany had flown the white flag, with the rout of more than thirty thousand troops having taken out the national guard core of the New England government's armies. By July, Maine had given up as paratroopers seized its capital, and New England was functionally out of the war, freeing up troops for elsewhere.
Things were similarly dire for the National Salvation Government, with a ring of steel rapidly closing around the Potomac to prevent a coherent retreat southwards and to block the constitutionalists off from the capital. The siege of D.C was waged less out of a lack of ability and more a desire to capture the capital with a minimum of lives lost while the western offensives were in full swing following the failure of the July counteroffensive by the Western Macarthurists and the Pacific Government. With no industry, no hope of relief, and with Bearworld's Americuba's promised aid being stymied by the presence of the WFRN's blockade and Britain's lack of stomach for an active intervention while they were managing the absorption of even greater colonies and dominions, the government of national salvation's Washington based forces would have to make another humiliating retreat, pouring into Ravenworld's Cuba with a fresh wave of yumas that nobody but the exiles was happy to see and a headache for Lindbergh and Norris for what to do with the exiled America.
Though western command still fought on, they increasingly folded into the Sacremento government when it was starting to be clear that MacArthur had left the building and that there was really nothing stopping the tidal wave of tanks and halftracks or the endless scourge of aircraft. While Norris' America had provided more proper guns and vehicles now that some of its industries had reawakened, his America was gearing up for election season and Norris was deeply unwilling to commit America to anything when he was an unelected seatwarmer.
While he would allow those who wished to flee to do so, this was more of a hindrance than a help, as many soldiers simply transported themselves to the Bearworld's America to desert, figuring that when the jig was up to this degree they may as well spare themselves the trouble, who was going to punish them for it anyway? Much of the Navy similarly refused to fight, either fleeing to alters or turning themselves over to the Socialists. Standard model battleships were not at all suited for realities of fast, radar directed warfare, and after the sinking of the USS Arizona and its division by dive bombers launched from the Kitty Hawk and the Shiloh in the San Francisco bay and the mauling of the last survivors of its division by the Battlecruisers Toledo, Antietam, and the battleships Comintern, Emancipation, and Soviet Power as well as the CSA commandeered WLNS "Joe Hill", "Blair Moutain", and "Mother Jones" against the USS Mississippi, Idaho, New York, South Carolina, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and Delaware in a massive surface action near Alcatraz.
The climax of months of pacific naval warfare, Labor Day 1936 would be met with the surrender of the Pacific Fleet on the bridge of the Rhode Island, the colossal American super battleship's hull scuffed with shell impacts and bomb damage and now a war prize for the Worker's Liberation Navy whenever they could repair it. San Francisco and Sacremento themselves would fall not long after, with the last remnants of the Sacremento government coalescing around Los Angeles as the noose was wrung tight around the city of Hollywood. With a city of a million people to think of, the mayor would give up the ghost, and sign the surrender orders handed to them by Oliver Law.
This would leave the "Constitutionalists", dominated by Klansmen and Old Democrats who refused Huey Long's populist overtures, appeals to Republican tradition, or the "anti-constituion perversion" of the federalists; nevermind the socialists. The day of the rope would be coming, but increasingly it would be coming for them, as Black militia dominated areas of substantial size found themselves receiving; once the Red Americans figured it out; aid from the other side. Weapons, training, and often heavy equipment in the black belt areas that the Constitutionalists hoped to purge of the uppity black man who did not know his proper place.
The Klan had terror on its side yes, but white sheets or black hoods made for easy targets, and given the ad hoc; confused nature of the uprising, they would be facing enemies with immensely more material firepower than they did. "Tank divisions" of up armoured tractors with machine gun nests built into them to supplement the multi-turretted or sponson riven monstrosities given to them by the Federation were so much fodder for purpose-engineered vehicles created by the UASR and either given or "loaned" in the form of intervention forces. Forces that had so far proven to be generally unstoppable as the weeks rolled by and the sense of confusion regarding the Glide began to fade. A general idea of its rules was formulated, and that allowed for a period of rapid, sneaky intervention that would see city after city be cut off or overrun across the country.
Enormous vehicles better described as land battleships than sensibly designed tanks got stuck in the mud or waiting for spare parts or vehicles able to pull them out of their ditches. Sponson mounts were picked off by anti-tank gunners who recognised them as weaknesses while the sweep of aircraft from above only grew more and more frequent. Many constitutionalist ships were sunk at the battle of Ossabow Island, though they had managed to take some of the CSA ships with them, there wasn't exactly a buyer's market for replacement ships and the Federation fleet found that its turtleback armour scheme was a liability at long range for all of its dominance in naked eyeball range duels.
While Alfalfa Bill's home state of Oklahoma had managed to break through to the rest of the Constitutional American Republic's territory with the aid of Nationalist troops, they were running threadbare on their own troops and the FANS was starting to regard this as a waste of its resources when it had to prepare its military with the experience of this test run of a world war. With the massive tank battle of Shellby Alabama ending in a disorganised rout with a haphazard mishmash of German, Italian, FANS, and Imperial Russian equipment being swept aside by WFRA vehicles outside of those who had found strongpoints to try and leverage the firepower of the Federation's heavy tanks to best advantage, Alfalfa Murray was running short on hope and long on ways his life could end.
Knowing that many would be looking for him, especially as word of the war crimes that the Klan had gotten up to with his blessing, he decided to skip and bounce out of town to go hide in Lindbergh's State while encouraging others to also flee to Federal American National State or to Germany and White Russia.
The diehards of the constitutionalists would not be welcomed in Cuba, with MacArthur already trying to deal with a flood of other "National Salvationists" and it was clear that Norris, who had no love for the Klan, would not welcome a flood of armed gangsters in his America. By the time of the first snowfalls of the year, the battle had already been won.
By June, all that was left was Huey Long's government, and Long wasn't fool enough to hope for a sudden miracle after a lengthy and brutal war with the Constitutionalists and Feds saw him expend a great deal of blood and treasure. The Kingfish would instead, surrender in the hopes of amicable treatment and would, against the recommendations of the UASR; get it. Though this significantly annoyed DeLeon Debs-Commune, it would please those in Chicago who were just thankful that this conflict was as brief as it was with the last shots being fired in January 1937. It was bloody, with many massacres, people freezing or starving to death, and outbreaks of cholera and polio and other diseases that were able to spread in absence of vaccination and medical regimens, but it was only a year long, somewhat longer than the Ravenworld American civil war due to the greater injection of foreign equipment and fighters, but shorter by far than the war of the states nearly a hundred years ago. With a million dead, the time for war had to give way to the start of a new constitutional convention in Chicago, and to see the birth of a new, Syndicalist Giant.
*I'm mixing elements from Vanilla KR, Home of the Brave, Up with the Stars, and some of my own take. Hence the split between the Klan dominated south and the Longist sympathetic south and midwest, the rise of the Black Belt revolutionaries, and the Feds getting split. As a general rule, I'm just going with the broad strokes and if you want to contribute, feel free to in order to fill some blanks or propose your own entries and fanfics to fill out stuff. I also admittedly am not hugely interested in deeply detailed revolutionary war stuff and tend to prefer to give them broader strokes than my general wheelhouse of interstate conflict and post-revolutionary politics. Such as the upcoming shitfest arguments between the two revolutionary Americas.
Well it seems like another leftist America has joined the fray. The real question is how it'll look under syndicalism and KR's version of Foster. I can't imagine how well/poorly that's going to down. I wonder if we'll see a split between them, though I doubt one would happen so quickly, if it does at all.
Okay. First impression. Interesting premise. But as Ukrainian I hate just how easy Communists achieve supremacy in every conflict. (I may have read Chinese part through the diagonal). (Out of three my personal bias is on Kaiserreich side. Because an independent Ukraine is a thing in that timeline)
Okay. First impression. Interesting premise. But as Ukrainian I hate just how easy Communists achieve supremacy in every conflict. (I may have read Chinese part through the diagonal). (Out of three my personal bias is on Kaiserreich side. Because an independent Ukraine is a thing in that timeline)
Aside from the horrifying amount of atrocities the German Empire no doubt is already committing and it's colonial sphere, the massive economic turmoil and existence of the Communist and Völkisch Germany(s) is probably going to lead the Kaiserreich down some really bad paths.
It's Ukrainian satellite state, presumably already being heavily exploited is probably in for some real bad times...
Aside from the horrifying amount of atrocities the German Empire no doubt is already committing and it's colonial sphere, the massive economic turmoil and existence of the Communist and Völkisch Germany(s) is probably going to lead the Kaiserreich down some really bad paths.
It's Ukrainian satellite state, presumably already being heavily exploited is probably in for some real bad times...
Excerpt from "Kaiserworld in Chaos:The rise of the Teutonic Society" by Ivan Cazarin (Raven and Bear), Bryant Institute, Metropolis ASR - 2022
The German Empire of Kaiserworld's economy was in tatters from the gold shock and the black Monday crash as the colonial investment bubble came home to roost in dramatic fashion. The Kaiserworld's would-be hegemon, already flying so close to the sun, would in essence, pour incendiaries onto the wax of its wings by tying the money of so many of the petit-bourgeoisie into the hands of speculative investment in colonial gambles. The simple fact of commodity-based currency is that when the supply of currency rises, so too must its price fall. And when the value of the gold that each reichsmark represents falls, the Reichsmark itself declines in value.
In the sort of economic apparatus established by Hitler, who could institute a countermeasure by fiat, this can be mitigated. In the Kaiserreich whose banking institutions were given more independence from Berlin as a liberalisation measure under "free market" policies established after the end of the Ludendorf autocracy; there would be no such easy relief under the current system. And with the triumphant but constrained geopolitical situation of Kaiserworld's Germany; with vast colonies that were perilously easy to interdict in any direction; there were already ample spaces for radical rightists of both populist and aristocratic strains to rise like foam to the top.
"We are surrounded on more fronts than the physical. The godless menace of atheistic revolutionaries menaces us from other worlds while our economy is leeched by obese speculators, and Judeo-Masonic financiers." - Rudiger Von Der Goltz
Rudiger von der Goltz, self-proclaimed hero of the eastern front and warrior adventurer, had formed the "Friedreich the Great" society which had advocated for a return to absolute monarchy and the dissolution of the Reichstag as well as a far harsher stance on the "Red and Black menace which ever menaces fair Deutschland" and a return to a "simpler, more godly economic system, practiced in the Germany of Old, when our Empire was more holy." While many in the aristocracy and haut-bourgeoisie weren't necessarily unsympathetic to an absolute monarchy under the Hohenzollern dynasty, many were much more sceptical of his rambling about Guilds and Manorialism, deeming it a symptom of a madness born from spending entirely too much time trying to pacify the United Baltic Duchy's endless and almost certainly Russian supported insurgencies and spending a bit more time than was healthy visiting the relics of the Teutonic and Livonian Orders.
Following the Worldmerge however, he became a man possessed, convinced that God had chosen him to enact a purification of Germany that would return it and its Austro-Hungarian sibling towards the purity of the earlier era, to undo the "travesties of 1848 and 1789 once and for all" in his words. A profoundly old man who had grown steeped in strange forms of eclectic Germanicism in his time suppressing the anti-kaiserreich uprisings in the east, Rudiger made himself the face of "Reaction, in its purest form for our volk and fatherland". But perhaps what made him especially heterodoxical amongst the German far right, even to the Nazis who in their brief time being aware of this otherworldly version of the seventy one year old man; was his advocacy of a compromise with Savinkov's Russia regarding eastern Ukraine and Belarus to form an alliance with him against "Liberalism and the Communard conspiracy" which he viewed as the chief threats.
This, coupled with favouring the Belgrade pact over Germany's traditional ally of Bulgaria and the Cairo Pact over the Ottomans after being charmed by Arab orientalist societies in his earlier interwar years; made him something of a maverick, who had acquired a large cult of personality around himself amidst those who loved his tales of adventure and dashing romance dealing with Kaiserreich's many enemies that he codified in autobiographical novels and even commissioning fictional stories based on his adventures or endeavours he wished he undertook. Coming to be known as the "Hero Count", the graf of der Goltz' society grew explosively after the worldmerge.
Already a major thorn in the side of the traditional establishment and something of a personal annoyance to the Hohenzollerns who; save for the Crown Prince Wilhelm the Third; rather detested the idea of actually directly managing Germany. More power was always nice, but the expectations and burdens of absolute rule in the dictatorial style was something that would drain away time for the pleasures of being the Imperial family of the great empire. This would not dissuade him or the Friedrich the Great Society whatsoever as they; though notably without the direct presences of himself or one of the up and coming stars of his movement; Waldemar von Pabst in response to the declaration that the Kaiserreich had no plans to intervene in the civil wars of "other continents" on the seventh of April, 1936, would start a march on Berlin, also citing the arrest of Horst Wessel; a prominent supporter of Rudiger.
Baronet Waldemar von Pabst,
The chornomorphic event of 1936 had already sparked a certain mania in the count, and he assembled his followers to attempt to make his takeover. The police in Berlin, already dealing with bread riots and demonstrations protesting the high price of milk and eggs, were not at all ready to deal with Rudiger's freikorps* storming of the Reichstag, presently in session to debate a bill of public works to try and resolve the unemployment crisis in the reich as well as intervene to support the Korean Monarchy in the Uncrowned Earth currently split into a three sided civil war only for a flood of unruly mobsters lead by Rudiger's supporters such as Ernst Rohm and Hermann Ehrhardt to break the door. The Count made his announcement of the beginning of a new German era, proclaiming that "Germany will be reborn, as a nation devoted to God, Empire, and Kaiser", to the bewildered observers from the world over in a surrealistic experience.
Rudiger would turn out to be more right than he expected.
"His majesty has made it clear that the present insurrection is no better than Syndicalism or Communism, you are to stand down, or be made to stand down" - Supreme Admiral Erich Raeder
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, supreme commander of the Kaiserliche Marine would receive orders carried by Otto Kretschmer directly from the Emperor himself that the current insurrection was to be crushed with all due force, with Wilhelm himself offering to lead the charge against the troublemakers in a fury at this blatant display of unruly thuggery done in, ostensibly, his name. Something that the Kaiser would not tolerate anymore than he would stand for the public pointing out his withered arm. Raeder's marines, together with soldiers from the Berlin garrison of the Heer and the personal Imperial Guard of the Kaiser himself, would ride into the masses of Freikorps with orders to put down the incident.
Wilhelm the second was angered not out of political reasons, being a reactionary man with a noted antisemitic streak perpetually paranoid of freemasons and esperantists; but out of personally being insulted that someone would dare presume to disrupt a system that he was already quite comfortable with and powerful in by trying to overturn the whole thing all while proclaiming that it was done in his name. Something that he would not abide by or stand for as the Guarde du Corps started to open fire on the freikorps whenever they refused to move out of the way, the Emperor riding from atop a tank to make his presence as obvious as possible.
The Freikorps would be crushed, and Rohm and Ehrhardt would both be swiftly put to death for treason against the Empire and dereliction of duty, though the bulk of the Freikorps and the Fredriech the Great Society would get away with relative slaps on the wrist in the interest of reconciling the factions within the German army and bringing about a restored sense of peace as the 7th of April incident calmed down and the requisite arrests were made. While Rudiger and Pabst would be questioned, they would escape notice for the time being, merely having inspired rather than directly leading this most egregious attack on the German system.
Instead, one of Rudiger's rivals in the German far right would rise to the fore instead. Instead of the Friedrich the Great society, instead, the Teutonic Society would rise. A society in the German business, political, economist, academic, and military worlds which had advocated for a more moderate, technocratic and bureaucratic vision of radical national conservatism as opposed to the outright reactionary dark revolution envisioned by the Friedrich the Great Society and the maintenance of Imperial German hegemony as well as Germany's special destiny to guide the world as its long-deserved rising power. Centred around the German Fatherland Party known for its endorsement of antisemitism, antimasonism, and antiziganism; the Teutonic Society nevertheless had many fellows across the right wing of the German political spectrum, and was supported by those who believed that the armed forces needed a stronger say in the government.
"A Germany victorious is a Germany that will never become a nation of, by, and for the rabble. We are a sensible nation; not one of the degenerate creed of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; but of the new creed of Authority, Order, and Justice. Though some of our fellows on our aisle of politics had to be purged for opening the door to chaos, we shall endure, stronger, purer, and prouder than before." - Alfred Hugenberg after being appointed Chancellor by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Newspaper magnate and leader of the German Fatherland party, Alfred Hugenberg was the man that would take over the Kaiserreich with the permission of Kaiser Wilhelm, fulfilling his long-held dream of leading a "fundamentally counterrevolutionary and national conservative Germany" as the parties of Germany were consolidated into a singular "Imperial Emergency Coalition" that de facto ended the shortlived Tirpitz-Westarp Democracy and brought forth a new, "radically unradical" form of military regime in charge of the Kaiserreich. One that would seek alignment with Nazi Germany, not out of especially great love for "Peasantblooded" Volkische Populism, but out of a belief that it was the only way to shore up Germany's national defence against the red menace or the renewed threat of the hated institutions of Britain and America.
Together with his so called "partner in crime" and successor in the Teutonic Society; Manfred von Richthofen, Alfred sought to transform the Mitteleuropan system and the Reichspakt as a whole, and prepare the German Empire for its future in what he was certain would be another victorious war of teutonic superiority over the degeneracy of the west and the barbarism of the east. His "Teutonic Society" as his clique of radical nationalists was called, would concern itself with ensuring that the sun would never set on the German Empire, and that it would only grow larger in the future and beget the downfall of all those who envied or despised the Reich's ascendancy.
Manfred von Richtofhen
Alfred would seek to ensure a firm hand in the puppet states of German-dominated eastern Europe. On paper a union of "entrusted allies", in practice a crushed collection of informal colonies whose economies were utterly subservient to the kaiserreich's and whose populations were being subjected to a slow process of having the landless poor of the Reich settled in their hands at low prices as a measure to deal with poverty in Germany itself. They would be kept precisely strong enough to ward off Savinkov, and absolutely no further; certainly in no position to resist the plan of "gradual germanisation" (as opposed to the "crash germanisation" planned by Hitler's Germany) nor significantly challenge Berlin's vision for the future.
Democratic practices would be quietly and brutally quashed as part of the Hugenberg policy. The Hetman system of dictatorship would be expanded across the German sphere, with Putschs being organised at the behest of the consulates against the governments of Lithuania and Poland to remould them along the lines of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian dictatorships. The Pro-Russian and Fascist ViN would be savagely suppressed in one of the rare positive moves of the Hetman or the Berlin regime, but the OUN and the underground Liberal and Socialist movements would similarly be repressed by an intensification of police campaigns; all while promoting a program of "Wehrbauer" settlement of the east to help fortify the reich's eastern frontier.
But perhaps more than the fear induced by the Soviet Union, or the Free German Socialist Raterepublik was the concern formed by the Intermarium and the potential example it could set for anti-kaiserreich elements in Kaiserreich's domains. Many for example, worried about the possibility of Ukrainians seeing the Ukrainian People's Soviet Republic; a Popular Democracy at the fringes of the Rotfront's sphere of Influence in Europe that helped shield it from Imperial Russia headed by the young Left-Futurist Mykhail' Semenko who replaced the Agrarian Socialist Mykhailo Hrushevsky as part of a modernist clique set on a dialectical materialist and revolutionary futurist vision for Ukraine. This could inspire those not taken with this "Marxism-Leninism"** or with Syndicalism into potentially rising against their betters.
For one thing, even with the coal bearing east lost to Imperial Russia, the UPSR enjoyed a higher standard of living, and was not currently suffering drought induced famine exacerbated by an Imperial German backed program of grain speculation that would conveniently put the price of food out of the reach of "useless eaters" whose vacant properties could be acquired by agricultural concerns and the landless poor of the fatherland itself. The Soviet Union perhaps could be shielded against with the usual anti-russian propaganda, this USPR though posed a more interesting issue for the german dominated press to ensure the Hetman continued to be seen as the benevolent father of the true Ukrainian nation.
Yan Gamarnik's Byelorrusian Social Ergatocrats, and Kaspuskas of Lithuania would probably be closer to the Uncrowned Earth German Socialists' model than the more "Vperedist" influenced Polish and Ukrainian movements, but also posed similar issues. They were of richer, more modernised countries that were considered fraternal allies of the Free German Socialists; whereas their counterparts in their own timeline were kept on a deliberate leash. Not to mention Ergatocratic Finland which pressured a vital part of the German sphere that supplied all-important nickel to the Kaiserreich's coffers.
Hugenburg's recourse would be to begin to court Imperial Russia, however much the idea rankled at many; and particularly Imperial Russia's proxy state; the rump Imperial German regime holed up in East Prussia that survived entirely through the threat of Swedish, Austrian, and Russian intervention and the country being a virtual barracks state with about ten percent of the male populace in the armed forces at all times, constantly setting up pill boxes, fortresses, and bunkers to protect a "cold and lonely outpost with more artillery batteries than factories".
While the Futurists in the France of that world disturbed Imperial Germany even more than the Nazis and Fascists of the world of the Bolsheviks, it was figured that for the time being there wouldn't need to be a formal alignment with them, especially when they were reshuffling the artistic regime after the sudden but perhaps fortuitous for Hugenberg disappearance of Artaud and Breton; giving room for the more rightist Carnalistes to fill the void as Augiers made his move.
To the new Imperial regime, the four worlds were a game of chess, to be played against many players, and by the time word had come of the fall of their own America to syndicalism; the centralist, militarist regime of Imperial Germany was now firmly locked into place, hoping to play its pieces in the game of China once again to assert Berlin's prerogative over the orient. The AOG intervention force to reinforce Nanking to demonstrate that German power, while perhaps staggered by Black Monday and the GOld Shock, was only growing stronger, while at home the militarization of the economy was hoped to provide the Panacea needed for the start of a recover just as foreign success abroad, such as the much-lauded destruction of the "Communard aligned Mau Mau" in Kirenya was propagandised as a triumph of German arms.
...
*The Irony in Rudiger leading a Freikorps crushed by the govt is deliberate
**Remember that my take on Kaiserreich has the October revolution simply not happen at all. The Left-SRs try to make an uprising when Kerensky accepts Brest-Livotsk, but are squashed, but the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party scarcely makes a peep; though Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike leave the country during the purging of the Left-Srs.
It's good to see Imperial Germany is still Imperial Germany, that is to say, a horrible imperialist state that formed the nucleus of most of the Nazi's ideas and policies. The game whitewashes it a bit too much. It is strange to realize that it's actually the senior partner in its relationship with the Nazis. It won its war, it's got its massive global empire and captive market. Baltics aren't having a good time at the moment, and neither will Ukraine in due time.
It's good to see the reactionary coup get put down. That is the odd thing about the Kaiserreich. It was genuinely fixated on legalistic bureaucratic procedure for the shit it did. Everything at the be orderly and keep to the system, which was set up to be unfair of course. Conservative regimes won't tolerate attempt coups from fellow reactionaries and nationalists because that violates the system. Goltz learned that lesson the hard way, as he deserved. He could have taken some notes from Hitler to see how it'd play out.
The creation of a militarist unity government isn't surprising either. The situation is chaotic, so democracy is suspended, and control seized by the establishment. It is a shame for the few democratic/constitutional regimes in the Pakt that got couped to establish native military dictatorships. Again, it's a weird thing in the game where Germany let's the countries get away with practically anything. It's also nice to see politics in the Pakt come back to affect Germany directly. Major figures in the Baltic Duchy aren't confined to the Baltics. They can travel, organized, and do shit. It helps make the timeline feel much more living and breathing than the game ever could.
Interesting to see a new player rise in the game, Teutonic Germany seems to be diet Nazis that happen to have a massive empire already to fuel their ambition, when WW2 happens the Nazis will be much harder to beat
The Kaiserreich's Prussian constitutionalist system was always designed to favour entrenched conservative interests; explicitly weighting the voting power of the non-working classes above that of the majority of society; and allow for the Kaiser or the military to toss the Reichstag out whenever the system was felt to be under any serious threat. Do remember that historically, the SPD should have had a plurality to majoritarian share of the Reichstag throughout much of Imperial Germany's existence but because of the way that seats in the Reichstag were apportioned specifically in bias towards the landlord and business interests of the Kaiserreich; was kept out of that position with often very direct repression aimed squarely at it.
As for Red Flood Germany being "smart", it's just described like that in the mod. The Germany of the Spartakist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany is; unlike the USSR of OTL; a highly industrialised nation that has its resource needs met by a network of friendly states and had a much less painful civil war to overthrow its prior regime. It didn't need to make the sacrifices of the Soviet Union to industrialize since it's already there. Red Flood also makes it pretty explicit that in terms of the influence that the populace has over the government; its perhaps the most democratic society in the world. Furthermore, I am a committed Historical Materialist; and there's little to no material reason for the Free Socialist Reterepublik of Germany to go down the same, very specific road in history that the USSR went down in our timeline; especially when that road itself required very specific circumstances to unfold in a very specific way.
Its allies are well-treated and amply supported and while it faces significantly more external threat than the Americans do; it's in a relatively comfortable strategic position all things considered. At least it was, until the internationalist and socialist (if not in a remotely conventional way) surrealist faction of the FNAG's leadership poofed and the anti-Ergatocratic German, Pro-Imperial Russian Pan-European Nationalist wing of the French accelerationists; the Carnalistes; were able to take the reins.
As for Ukraine, KR Ukraine is literally a puppet state dictatorship meant to be a glorified meat shield for the Kaiserreich and sell grain at high profits for German business interests no matter how many millions of Ukrainians die because the food is too expensive for people in Ukraine to purchase because 90% of it is destined for export. All while the Hetman, who is explicitly a German puppet with the Chancellor's hands firmly holding his strings, tells the Ukrainian people that this state of affairs is good and that they should learn to speak German anyway.
While Imperial Germany could be a less overbearing taskmaster, do you genuinely, honestly believe that Imperial German conservatives would negatively affect the profits their junker and business friends make off of exploiting their colonies and protectorates out of humanitarian concern for people they already see as inferior? They don't even particularly respect the British colonial administrators of the colonies they stole in Africa or Asia and Goering reintroduced Leopold II's "meet the quota or die" system in the Congo and mostly just gets weak protests in response.
Ireland had a population of eight million and still lost millions to the potato blight. You don't need a big population for mass death from starvation.
I have fairly direct access to the KR team through Krasnacht. The reason why the Pro-Savinkov ViN is popular at all in Ukraine is that Germany is a deeply abusive overlord of a puppet state it treats about as well as Britain treated Ireland. The Ukrainian Nationalist OUN notably doesn't want to be part of either the Reichspakt or reabsorbed into Russia and is willing to fight both the Reichspakt and the Moscow Accord at once if it needs to; and there's also significant Ukrainian socialist movements that want freedom from the Atamanate and the Reichspakt as a whole even if it means having to fight both Russia and Germany for it. A willingness to oppose both of their far more powerful neighbours at once does not come out of a happy relation with the Kaiserreich. The Hetman is popular with nobody in particular save for the Junkers and their compradors.
Meanwhile in Red Flood, west Ukraine has a mutually beneficial, rather than a parasitic relationship with Red Germany, who in exchange for the grain of western Ukraine; provides industrialisation and modernisation support that allows for Ukraine to develop a futurist movement enamored with the technology and machinery of the modern age.
Then they definitely need to redo their Kaiserreich wiki page because whoever wrote it has much different idea.
Also are you really saying that Hetman isn't popular with the army?
I will give you the potato famine argument. You still overblown it a bit. But okay. But Ukraine isn't Ireland. Even if 90% of grain is to expensive for average villager, we do grow other stuff, that just means much less bread products on the table. Also how exactly are they getting 90% of all grain grown in the country?
