Major political and military events, 1943
January 1: Japanese and Insulindian troops, supported by the IJN, take Port Moresby.
January 2: The last UN holdouts against the Italo-Turkish invasion of Mandatory Palestine capitulate. The resistance is forced underground and much of its leadership flee to UN-held Transjordan. Meanwhile, German plans are drawn up for the construction of what would become the concentration camp "KZ Akers" in the Turkish-held north.
January 3: The Regio Esercito launches Operation Octavian, a desperate attempt to take Khartoum and link Italian forces in Egypt to their holdings in East Africa and secure lines of communication with the distant colony.
January 5: Haiti and Quisqueya (formerly the Dominican Republic), after some years as Associated Republics, both officially become Autonomous Socialist Republics within the United Republics. John Reed arrives in Port-au-Prince, and is photographed meeting and shaking hands with Haitian Premier Jacques Roumain and Quisqueya GenSec Juan Bautista Ducoudray Mansfield.
January 6: After taking disproportionate casualties in the campaigns for Italian Cameroon and Spanish Guinea, dissatisfied Belgian soldiers in Leopoldville stage a coup, expelling Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans. After much vacillation, they declare allegiance to the nominally-neutral collaborator government established by SS-K Salfrank in Brussels. Rykmans' decision to align with the UN-member government in exile instead of the (legally contiguous) Brussels government had been controversial-to-unpopular with the Belgian Congo's powers-that-be, so the coup received little pushback within the colony. UN plans for a response immediately begin to form, while the Comintern instructs the Communist Revolutionary Movement of the Congo to begin armed resistance.
January 7: Inventor Nikola Tesla dies at age 86 in his home, a converted flat at the Hotel New Yorker. A team from the Joint Research Directorate led by MIT engineer John Trump retrieve much of his papers and designs due to "security concerns".
January 10: With the Balkan insurgency growing into a perpetual annoyance, Italian, German and Chetnik forces launch Case Grey in an attempt to destroy Gorkic and Tito's communist partisans.
January 12: In the first meeting of the Franco-British and American General Staffs, plans are drawn up for Operations Clearinghouse and Diadochi, the liberation of Italian East Africa. D-Day is set to be no more than two months after the halting of the ongoing Italian offensive. Plans for the re-seizure of the Congo and Western Mediterranean are proposed as well.
January 16: The end of Operation Pallas; INTREV forces have succeeded in retaking the approaches to Stalingrad, but most of the German Sixth Army has escaped encirclement.
January 17: After a three-day conference, the Imperial Japanese General Staff decide to delay the invasion of Hawai'i in favor of raiding into the Indian Ocean to cut the Commonwealth forces straddling the Straits of Malacca from the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet.
January 18: The Othello Network in Somalia begins its transition to "active measures" - sabotage, assassination attempts, and raids on armories will seed confusion and panic in the colonial administration before the joint Entente-American liberation.
January 20: With the last of the production woes sorted out, the Gloster Meteor F.3 formally enters service within the RAF, with 616 Squadron being the first to receive them.
January 24: Japanese troops occupy the Torres Strait Islands
January 29: With the Regio Esercito halted at Sohag in Egypt and Jebel Aylin in Sudan, Operation Octavian ends. With the failure of Operation Octavian and fighting in Kenya bogging down into trench warfare, East Africa settles into a stalemate.
February 1: Oberkommando des Totalen Krieges halts offensive operations in the Caucasus, shifting to a defensive stance. Close of the winter campaign season. Planning for a spring offensive, Zitadelle, to reduce the Stalingrad salient and push beyond the Volga, begins.
February 5: After encountering much resistance from "Red Jangali" fighters and revived Cossack battalions of the Iranian NLA reinforced by Soviet and American troops, the southernmost forces of the eastward Turkish offensive slowly proceed through Iranian Azerbaijan and reach the outskirts of Tabriz. Meanwhile, Turkish forces to the northern flank rampage through the Armenian and Georgian SSRs while the Royal Iraqi Army crosses Iran's western border and marches towards Ahvaz in southern Iran.
February 9: The Rengo Kantai transits the Sunda Strait, steaming for British Ceylon
February 11: Liren Sun lands with the 3rd Australasian Division "Meatgrinder" in Port Sudan as part of the preparations for Operation Diadochi.
February 19: Patrolling seaplanes spot the Rengo Kantai 180 kilometers off Ceylon's southern coast. The Eastern Fleet sallies to meet the Japanese interlopers.
February 20: After losing two light carriers, three cruisers, and many more smaller vessels to Japanese carrier planes and night attacks, the broken Eastern Fleet retreats to Mombasa. The Japanese bomb Colombo with impunity, and shore parties wreak havoc along the coastline before returning to their ships.
February 21: Turkish forces begin operations to envelope and encircle Yerevan with the intent of pushing Soviet and Iranian troops to the Caspian. The Provisional Revolutionary Defense Committee in Tehran orders mobilization of troops to secure Tabriz as well as reinforce Ahvaz in preparation of Iraq's steady advance.
February 22: Operation Tannhäuser: In a plot orchestrated by the German Sicherheisdienst (SD), a cell of White American exiles successfully detonate an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil truck bomb on the Brooklyn Bridge. While the plot fails to drop the span into the East River and blockade the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the heavily damaged bridge is closed to traffic for safety reasons.
February 24: The planned refueling of the Rengo Kantai at Mogadishu is prevented by the joint WFRN-Royal Navy blockade of the Italian-controlled port.
March 4: After considerable delays, Operation Wu begins with attacks on the Jiangist flanks in Henan and Anhui.
March 7: Despite the flanking attacks failing to meet their objectives, the NRA's Yangtze Force begins its drive on the Yangtze Salient.
March 9: After a productive fortnight of convoy raiding - with Japanese ships going so far as to sight the east African coastline and the northern tip of Madagascar - the Rengo Kantai returns across the Sunda Strait to begin preparations for campaigns in the eastern Pacific. The fleet's reports of unexpectedly high WFRN and United Republics Merchant Marine traffic in the Arabian Sea disquiets the Imperial Japanese General Staff.
March 13: Operation Providence begins, with Brazilian forces engaging in a broad front offensive against the South American Compact with its Bolivian and Paraguayan allies.
March 14: The night before the expected beginning of the American invasion of Somalia, the Othello Network and Somali Communist Party begin an uprising in Mogadishu.
March 15: On schedule despite Japanese raiding, Operation Clearinghouse begins at 0400 local time with air bombardment of Italian coastal fortifications from the WFRN carriers Gettysburg and Ranger. WFRN Marines land north and south of Mogadishu as the Othello Networks active measures culminate with the Somali Communist Party leading a revolt in the city.
March 16: Operation Diadochi begins. Operation Nicator, the counteroffensive from Sudan, launches at 0500. Operation Cassander, the push north from Kenya, launches three hours later. The Royal Marines land and sweep through British Somaliland in Operation Soter.
March 18: The Somali Communist Party proclaims a Worker's Republic, with elections for a constitutional convention scheduled as soon as fighting in East Africa ends. Until then, a Revolutionary Provisional Government will govern Somalia. Delegates from the WFRN Marine Landing Force and Operation Othello, including Amadeo Bordiga, are in attendance.
March 19: British Somaliland is cleared of Fascist troops. The Petainist garrison in Djibouti raises the white flag.
March 20: Ecuadorian troops make the Ten-To-One offensive into the Peruvian department o La Libertad, with Velasco[1] hoping to knock Peru out of the war by putting Lima under threat while Falangist Bolivian troops attack Ayacucho.
March 21: The Italians break at the Battle of Kassala after being driven out of most of Sudan. Entente forces enter Ethiopia and Eritrea as the Fascists are routed.
March 25: United Front troops get within sight of Wuhan before being forced to withdraw by Jiangist counterattacks.
March 27: Bogged down by Jiangist defenses, the United Front's New Second and Fifth Armies are hit on their flanks by crack Japanese divisions. They will be encircled in a matter of days.
March 28: The last Italian troops evacuate Somalia, with the newborn Somali Red Army at their heels.
March 29: Commonwealth forces surround and take prisoner most of the Regio Esercito in Kenya at the Battle of Marsabit. South African units held in reserve march into Ethiopia, completing the encirclement of the Fascist colony.
April 2nd: 18 year old Albert Munimori is killed by a paranoid militia conscript Vic Terry in Fresno, California. The resulting fallout and trial would expose increasing racism towards Japanese Americans.
April 5th: The Japanese military administration in Burma hands off nominal power to the State of Burma, led by Ba Maw.
April 10: Governor-General Amedeo di Aosta surrenders and declares Addis Ababa an open city, and Emperor Haile Sellasie leads the victorious Entente Army into the city. Mussolini has the Viceroy of Ethiopia sentenced to death in absentia.
April 13: Americuban forces land in the Guianas to help surround General de Lima's Brazilian troops.
April 16: After much preparation, southern Turkish forces of the eastward offensive begin their assault on the Tabriz garrison as the bulk of the Iranian North Army is preoccupied with the ongoing defense of Yerevan. In the coming week, a steady flow of NLA and other INTREV units will arrive in Tabriz to reinforce the garrison.
April 18: The Caribbean holdings of the Franco-British Union are consolidated into the West Indies Federation, with Kingston as its capital. While it nominally remains a colonial federation under direct rule from London, robust provisions for Home and Majority Rule are implemented.
April 21: The Government House in Jerusalem, the nominal seat of power for the Axis occupation forces in Palestine, is destroyed by a PFLP truck bomb. In the next two weeks, Axis troops will respond with reprisals against the civilian population which will become known as "Bloody Passover".
April 29: After more than a month of brutal fighting, the last United Front units in the Anhui cauldron are liquidated. Their compatriots in Henan follow three days later. Both provinces fully fall into the hands of the Reorganized Government.
May 1: On the tenth anniversary of the Second American Revolution, Chairman Earl Browder calls for a moment of silence, commemorating both those who lost their lives fighting for the people in the Revolution, the lives lost during the war, and those still currently fighting for the people "...from the fields of Europe to the waters of the Pacific."
May 3: In an attempt to break the building stalemate as Operation Providence loses steam, the Brazilian armed forces make use of a neurotoxin developed with the aid of Germany and Japan known as "Sarin Gas". INTREV forces unprepared for poison gas break in a terrified rout at the hideously lethal invisible agent.
May 5: Unternehmen Zitadelle is finalized. It will be the hitherto largest, most concentrated combined arms mechanized offensive in history.
May 11: Hoping to rescue General de Lima's pocketed troops, the Guarda Verde deploys Sarin Gas against Allied forces in Guiana.
May 14: Flush with Japanese arms and bribes, the Ma Clique launch an invasion of Xinjiang. Facing them is the United Fronts ZWT Garrison and the divisions of Sheng Shicai, the Soviets' pet Warlord.
May 15: Grozny is fully evacuated, with German forces taking severe casualties - III SS Korps is nearly completely eradicated by sheer attrition, and its survivors are folded into the 8th SS Mountain Division of VI Armeekorps. Partisan forces continue to harass and bleed out the occupiers, spread thin thanks to both the casualties and Zitadelle leaving the Armeekorps understrength as an occupying force.
May 20: MI6 agents confirm that Mola's general staff plans to launch his attack on Portugal on the twelfth of June in three echelons. With a fully mobilized army of a million men, albeit depleted in their military strength by the extremely pyrrhic Gibraltar Offensive, they are to face about two thirds their number in the 1st Allied Army Group, Expeditionary.
May 22: Sarin gas is deployed in the Andean front to repel initial Colombian advances against Ecuador and Chilean forces against Ecuador, break stalemates at the front, and try to widen the strategic depth of the forces attacking Peru, accompanying earlier usages of Phosgene. It has now become abundantly clear that the Brazilian army will now use chemical warfare as standard operating procedure.
May 25: At the Chumamji Machine Works main plant, the majority African work force wildcat strikes in protest of racism from the majority white factory committee break down. After a day (and sanctions from the UAW), new administrators (majority black) are appointed and a new workers representative is elected to address the concerns. Despite the quick resolution and lack of evidence, Public Safety Secretary J. Edgar Hoover believes that "black organized crime" in the Negro Soviet Republic is responsible for the wartime strike.
May 28: Zitadelle begins with Guderian's northern sector offensive.
June 3: In the Los Angeles Naval Shipyards, a group of Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and Punjabi ship workers go on strike over continued racial bias amongst supervisors and wage gaps. Despite sanctions for violating their "no-strike" pledge, the strike ends after two days after a negotiation which saw wage gaps eliminated and new elections for supervisors.
June 6: Ma forces are repelled from Xinjiang, but not before reaching the ZWT and tearing much of it up, closing traffic for weeks.
June 10: After months of skirmishes and build-up, troops loyal to the Divine Government of Tibet march on Lhasa. The First Battle of Lhasa begins.
June 11: Enraged by directives from London to implement Home and Majority Rule, the soldiers and government of Madagascar mutiny and declare for Pétain.
June 12: The Battle of Portugal begins as the Spanish Army crosses the border following Salazar's blunt refusal to break with London out of a belief that Germany will lose this war as it did the last and a sense of obligation towards the Anglo-Portuguese treaty. Allied reservists kept ready in Africa, Canada, and Britain receive orders to prepare for transfer to Europe to reinforce the Allied Expeditionary Force.
June 15: General de Lima's forces, out of bullets and supplies, surrender en masse to General Wavell's forces, with just shy of a hundred thousand Brazilian soldiers surrendering to their Commonwealth counterparts.
June 22: The German main effort against the Stalingrad salient begins.
June 29: Lhasa falls, but not before the Kashag is able to evacuate to the lowlands. The ZWT is cut. The United Front is forced to rely on the "Himalayan Road" - tenuous aerial supply from India over the mountains - and not-insignificant domestic industry built with Soviet and ComIntern aid.
July 1: The I SS Panzerarmee breaks through the final defensive belt, colliding with the American 2nd Guards Tank Army in a meeting engagement near the town of Grachi.
July 6: Spanish offensive operations are "temporarily halted" as Allied superiority in firepower, mechanisation, and air cover prove to be entirely insurmountable despite a significant numerical advantage by the Spanish. Bernard Montgomery, seizing the opportunity, begins his counter-attack immediately, declaring that "as Napoleon found ruin in this peninsula, so shall Hitler."
July 7: Hitler orders the suspension of offensive action at Stalingrad. The INTREV counteroffensive, Operation Jupiter, begins.
July 12: Grozny is retaken with minimal effort, with non-SS soldiers simply surrendering rather than engaging INTREV forces.
July 20: A raid in Atlanta sees both black nationalists Sufi Abdul Hamid and Abdul Bey-El (leader of the "Reformed Moorish Science Temple"), and benefactor, gangster Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson arrested for "reactionary activities," specifically criminal gambling and attempting to form a Garveyite anti-communist group within the NSR.
July 30: Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, makes a plea to the Franco-British Cabinet for more aid to the region of Bengal, which is undergoing a severe famine, already resulting in millions of deaths. The war cabinet does approve shipments of aid, but it proves inadequate due to diversions to the war effort.
August 1: INTREV forces besiege the German-held city of Rostov, driving a wedge between Army Group Volga and Army Group Caucasus. Land and naval evacuation of the Axis forces begins.
August 3: The Siege of Tabriz is broken as Iranian troops, accompanied by Kurdish peshmerga fighters and newly-relieved Soviet and American forces, push the Turks back. Panicked, the Iraqi army begins its "Greatest Push" against Ahvaz just before the Iranian South Army arrives.
August 4: Portuguese troops seize La Coruna in Galicia while Canadian soldiers move towards Cordoba, starting the siege of Sevilia while en route. The main Franco-British Army, making astounding gains, breaks open the Sanjurjo Line that blocks the path to Madrid itself.
August 6: Desperate for troops for the Eastern Front, Hitler abruptly transfers the duties of Generalgouvernement Serbien to the Italians. While a puppet "Kingdom of Serbia'' is rapidly established, communication failures between the withdrawing Germans and incoming Italians provide ample opportunities for Tito's partisans. Taking advantage of the chaos, they establish multiple base areas across and beyond Serbia, and will prove impossible for the Italians to dislodge.
August 10: Operation Saturn begins with simultaneous offensives on Kharkov and the occupied Donbas.
August 17: The Wright Committee, named for chairman Richard Wright (formed in the wake of security concerns amid the strikes in Chumamji and Los Angeles, the Munimori death and the racial bias that sparked them) releases their "Report on Racial Attitudes in the United Republics." While noting the immense progress undertaken over the past 10 years with regards to race relations, the "Wright Report" also notes that there are areas (especially in the heavy industries necessary for the war effort) where racism and bias still exist and gives recommendations as to how to mitigate such bias and ensure equality. The report is ultimately classified due to concerns that it would damage the image of the United Republics, but privately implements some of the suggestions.
August 24: After weeks of tension and mishaps with the lieutenant in charge, (including getting lost and ordering the practice shelling of a British owned island near Bermuda), crew members of the Americuban submarine chaser US PC-435 mutiny, seize control, cast the lieutenant out to sea and defect to the UASR. The lieutenant, one Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, is picked up, and dishonorably discharged due to the magnitude of his failure.
September 4: Unternehmen Wotan, a renewed German/Swedish/Finnish encirclement attempt of Leningrad, begins.
September 10: With the ongoing famine, the resulting devastation to the local economy and increasing discontent over the tepid response by the Franco-British government, a riot breaks out in Calcutta against the local colonial administration. Soon, the riot attracts hundreds of thousands of people, most rural farmers affected by the famine, overwhelming local authorities.
September 11: Imperial Japanese Army, Reorganized NRA, and United Mongol State troops begin the invasion of Shaanxi Province.
September 15: Striking from newly-established bases in Croatia, Yugoslav Partisans seize the crucial Turjak Castle from Italian, German and Chetnik forces in Slovenia in a shocking victory. The spoils include many tonnes of ammunition, supplies, and even tanks kept in storage.
September 17: East and South African troops, fresh from the liberation of Ethiopia, cross the Mozambique Channel with WFRN and Royal Navy aid in the invasion of Madagascar.
September 20: MS Golwalkar and the RSS quickly emerge as leaders in the ongoing Calcutta rebellion, eventually gaining enough support to seize parts of the city. VD Savakar, head of state for the "Azad Bharat", arrives to assume leadership of the rebellion. Together, the two announce that a new nation, one built on "Hindutva" (Savakar's term for having the quality of "Hinduness") will be forged from this rebellion, and "the sheer indifference of the Franco-British administration to the suffering of millions will not go unheeded." The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha are sublimated into the Azad Bharat, which is renamed the "Akhand Bharat" (United India). The rebels begin targeting local mosques and churches alongside the local government.
September 24: Reorganized Government armor attacks kettle the main body of the New Third Army around the ancient city of Xi'an. The Siege of Xi'an begins.
September 25: Operation Bracken, the counteroffensive up the Nile, begins.
September 26: Outnumbered and outgunned, the last Pétainist holdouts in Tananarive surrender. Sporadic fighting in the Madagascar highlands continues for a few weeks before finally sputtering out.
September 28: The last United Front troops left outside of Xi'an retreat from Shanxi in disarray.
September 30: With Allied forces in Egypt nearing and resistance activity spiraling out of control, Axis forces in Mandatory Palestine make the decision to begin complete evacuation. The so-called "Holy Land State" is dissolved the very next day and the coming month would see all of Palestine liberated and plans for Allied offensives into Syria and Iraq drafted.
October 1: To support the efforts of Savarkar and Golwalkar in Calcutta against the "murderous British regime", the "Indian National Army," led by AK Mukherjee and backed by Japanese garrisons, enter the Manipur region from occupied Burma, and seize control of the capital Imphal. The Japanese Invasion of India begins.
October 3: Entente and Egyptian forces push the last Italians out of the Sudan, freeing up divisions for the push north.
October 4: The National Committee for a Free Germany (Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland) is formed. Whilst the NkFD maintains a notionally liberal-nationalist line it is de facto an arm of the Comintern. With newly promoted Generaloberst Ludwig Renn and Ernst Thälmann as co-chairs, as well as de jure commanders of the German Exile forces in the WFRA. The Committee represents the KPD-in-exile taking on the de facto role of a government-in-exile with even the notionally liberal members such as Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel recognising the foremost role of the KPD.
October 5: Japanese bombers attack Calcutta in support of the Savakar-Golwalkar rebellion, bolstering them as they take over more of the city. Among the victims of the bombings is an Albanian-born nun and missionary named Mother Teresa.
October 10: Chinese partisans attempt to stage a multi-division uprising around Beijing, but are crushed by the Daehan Expeditionary Battalion led by Colonel Kim Seok-won. He is promoted to Major General for this deed, but sent back to Daehan to avoid being a target for terrorism. He is now put in charge of training the first generation of the Daehan Republican Army's field officers.
October 13: Italian forces are pushed out of Egypt by the Franco-British Army as Operation Bracken ends in a wild success.
October 16: The Secretariat of Labor, alongside interest groups within the WCPA, including the ANC, the Asiatic Council, and the Jewish Labor Bund, launch an initiative to combat "racial animus", through the use of books, films, and comics. The goal of the initiative is to allow workers to recognize their own biases and recommend ways to combat them and create a more equal workplace.
October 20: The Indian National Congress passes a resolution to support the war effort against the Japanese backed Akhand Bharat regime. With secret assurances by the Comintern that they will support a left wing rebellion against the Indian Commonwealth not long after Germany is defeated, Subhas Chandra Bose also orders his Indian Red Army to rise up against the "Futurist-Chauvinist horde" of Savarkar. He forms legions to that end.
October 25: Long Yun has defeatist cadres within the Kuomintang, Chinese Public Interest Party, and CPC arrested with the aid of Lin Biao, Feng Yuxian, and Peng Dehuai who form the so called "Gang of Four" that demand the implementation of war communism "without hesitation or reservation" until victory. With the blessing of KMT, ZZD, and CPC officials, they end all exemptions for labour or military drafts and cease the last exemptions from expropriations maintained for the sake of relations with the FBU.
October 31: As American civilians celebrate Halloween, world leaders including Clement Attlee, Georges Catroux, Vyacheslav Molotov, Diego Rivera, Alfredo Palacios, Soong Qingling, Douglas MacArthur, and John Reed meet in Cape Town to discuss the United Nations' grand strategy.
November 2: Japanese forces seize a series of small outposts in the Leeward Hawai'ian Islands, destroying communications and radar facilities and seizing small bases to pave the way for the main invasion force.
November 5: The Cape Town Conference, the first grand meeting of the United Nations, ends. The elimination of Brazil from the war to free resources for the other theaters is agreed to as a priority. Following from there, Germany and Italy are to be defeated with all due haste to deal with the Co-Prosperity Sphere without distraction. Fascism, Nazism, Concordism, and Integralism are to have no place in the post-war world, with the United Nations essentially agreeing to forever exclude these movements from acceptable international politics.
November 8: Xi'an falls after months of starvation and brutal aerial bombardment.
November 11: Franco-British forces overrun Madrid, capturing or killing over 60% of the First Spanish Army while the rest flee in disorganized panic. Mola, fleeing from the city, desperately cables Mussolini, Hitler, and Pétain for aid as the Spanish army rapidly begins to collapse in the face of a war it cannot fight while Montgomery declares "the cowardly Spanish Falange and the inept hooligans it calls an army shan't last another year."
November 20: The Royal Navy makes its triumphant return to the Mediterranean after a month of clearing and re-dredging of the Suez.
November 25: Volksmarschall Erwin Rommel is dispatched to the Spanish front with reserve German forces, with orders from Hitler to forcibly assume command of the Spanish and Axis French coalition forces. Rommel is ordered to hold the Seville-Cordoba-Bilbao axis at all costs.
November 27th: The siege of Cyprus ends in a humiliating Turkish defeat as the last Turkish transports retreat before the reinvigorated British defenders as the returning Mediterranean fleet crushes its Turkish counterpart.
November 30: Overtures from the National Peasants Party (Partidul Național Țărănesc, PNȚ), and the National Liberal Party (Partidul Național Liberal, PNL) in Romania are shot down by the Franco-British. Even with the victory in Cyprus, the Entente has no way of supporting the liberal Romanian opposition. This defeat in negotiations forces Iuliu Maniu of the PNȚ, and Dinu Brătianu of the PNL to return to negotiations with the Communist Party under the aegis of King Mihai.
December 1: With the backing of Japanese bombings and victories in the East, Savakar, Golwalkar, and the INA manage to gain control over Calcutta. A new "United India" government is formed within conquered Bengali territory, with Mukherjee (the only Bengali in the leadership clique) as the head of state and Savakar becoming Prime Minister. Many Muslims and Christians are killed as the Akhand Bharat secures control and many more are forced to flee the city.
December 6: Desperate to try and keep resources from the now intransigent Yugoslavia flowing, the Wehrmacht and the Regio Esercito launch Operation Gewitter in an attempt to deal with the now exponentially growing Partisan movement.
December 7: The Japanese bombing campaign in India expands with attacks on Madras and British Ceylon.
December 10: Darjeeling is captured by the INA. With most of the Bengal region secured, Savarkar (on the advice of Mukherjee's wife Savitri Devi) sends emissaries to neighboring Nepal, Bhutan,and Sikkim. He notably sends a large delegation to wartorn Tibet to support the Nagqu government, declaring solidarity with fellow "Dharmists".
December 12: Erwin Rommel arrives in Iberia with the Deutsches Iberia Korps and reserves of Petainist and Italian troops, the latter under Prince Amedeo of Savoy, to stiffen the collapsing Falange, and makes plans to recapture Madrid while the FBU focuses on Andalusia.
December 13: Dhaka is captured by Savakar's forces with the aid of Matsui Iwane's Army Group South East Asia and the Thai Army of the West. Six weeks of massacres, rapes, and looting will follow as the INA's troops, riled up on Islamophobic rhetoric and their appetites whetted by earlier battles, indulge in a sanguine bacchanalia of brutality.
December 15: Darwin is hit by heavy bombers based out of the Insulindian province of Iryan Barat[3] in the largest air raid yet to hit Australia. White phosphorus incendiaries ravage the city - enlarged by years of development meant to turn the Northern Territories into a lynchpin for British pacific naval strategy - and of a population bloated by internal migration in search of work, more than a fifth burn to death.
December 16: The INA delegation arrives in Lhasa to begin negotiations with the Divine Government. Following them is a small MID-GRU observation squad, including Maxine Kaplan and Svetlana Zaitseva.
December 17: With news of ongoing atrocities against Muslims emerging from Bengal, the All-India Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah makes the announcement that they would support the war effort and encourages its members to join. Jinnah, in a stunning move, begins making appearances with Congress leader Nehru and Governor-General Mountbatten to help recruitment efforts.
December 20: Allied strategic bombing of Türkiye begins with a five hundred bomber raid on Ankara meant to disrupt the transport of supplies into the near east. The Ankara firestorm kills more than sixty thousand Turkish civilians.
December 21: Brazilian forces are driven out of 90% of Argentina and the entirety of Uruguay with the conclusion of Operation Godspite. Commonwealth Forces even cross into Brazil itself from the South just as Wavell's forces have been invading its north and amphibious operations by the WFRN Marines have pillaged parts of Brazil in distraction raids.
December 25: The Siege of Leningrad finally ends.
December 27: Rio de Janeiro is bombed by British planes operating from Uruguay for the first time. In the daytime, this raid is followed by ships of the Franco-British South Atlantic fleet shelling the city directly on the same day.
December 28: After drawn out negotiations, an underground meeting of the Romanian opposition, including representatives from the PNȚ, PNL, the Communist Party (Partidul Comunist din România, PCdR), and King Mihai's court agree to form the National Democratic Bloc (Blocul Național Democrat) as the front shifts against the Axis. While Iuliu Maniu of the PNȚ, and Dinu Brătianu of the PNL are not enthusiastic about the BND, they see it as the best mechanism to remove the increasingly vicious Legionary Government. [4]
December 31: The Rengo Kantai, flushed with victories, steams towards the Windward Hawai'ian islands with an invasion force in tow…
[1] Minor Retcon to the Peruvian revolutionary war with Velasco coming into power in Ecuador and seizing significant swathes of Peruvian territory to establish a land connection to Brazil and acquire a resource base for his infrastructure projects while Bolivia makes its own move to acquire a coastline. The Bolivian Falange under Bernardino Bilbao Rioja takes power, promising to control the new territories and use it to build Bolivia towards greatness. The remains of Benavides' followers reluctantly accept this in exchange for a promise to restore them to power should they conquer Peru. Chilean and American seapower as well as the strength of Peruvian guerillas help keep the somewhat isolated Socialist Union in the fight.
Chile, due to being established by Putsch between an uneasy coalition of Military Socialists, Trade Unionists, and Communists with a significant anti-communist section of the population and military, is unable to directly intervene at the time and spends significant time consolidating its position, though by the war there is a significant fear that if Chile starts losing the war badly enough they'll be countercouped by the rightists.
[2] Managed to escape the fall of the Gilan Republic, returned to Iran with Ahmad Zirakzadeh's free officer coup and the Soviet incursion into Iran and was voted in as a unity option President.
[3] Indonesian name for West Papua.
[4] Minor Retcon to Romania lore with the Iron Guard coming to power following the failure of the Royal Dictatorship from 1933-1939.
