Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

[Miss Teri]

(Special thanks to @Traveller76 for allowing the use of their piece)

Excerpt from The History of Religion in the United Republics, general college textbook

The Trinitarian Church [by @Traveller76 ]
Trinitarianism is Christianity with its sleeves rolled up. It is not afraid to get dirty. It is not afraid to work with the sick, the poor, the illiterate. It is not afraid to go to the ends of the earth, to the jungles and deserts, to the city slums and forgotten villages. It does not discriminate against the dark skinned farm worker daughter or the lighter skinned merchant's son. It teaches all, helps all, loves all and gives all. Why do we do it? Because we can, because we should, we live in each other's happiness and not in each other's misery. To hear children laugh, to see the spark of learning in someone's eyes is worth more to me than all the gold in heaven and pearls in the sea.

Comrade Tomas Pentti, Trinitarist Service Committee (Retired), The Struggle for Liberation (1970)

"The two men came into our town one day wearing dark suits and ties with white shirts, sunglasses and hats hauling suitcases. One was tall and skinny, over six foot tall and one twenty, one thirty I say. The other was about five five and about one sixty. So both of them walk into the cafe and I walk over to them to take their order. I see the tattoos on their hands, the skinny one had ELWOOD on his right hand and the fat one had JAKE on his left. I thought, oh Marx, some reactionaries escaped from prison and me being a good looking girl of eighteen would be kidnapped. Yes I read the romantic magazines to pass the time, what girl didn't. Anyway. The fat one asks me if we serve fried chicken. I tell him we serve the best damned chicken in the state. He orders four chickens, not four pieces, four entire chickens. The skinny one just wants dry white toast. Both order sweet tea. I take their order and start moving to the phone thinking I can get the switchboard to call the State Militia when I look in the mirror. I was concentrating on the hands. I didn't notice the Roman Collars. They were priests!

So I pour two glasses of tea with ice and head back to the counter and place them in front of them. "So, Comrades, what brings you here in all this heat?" The skinny one takes off his hat and sunglasses and I am looking into the greenest eyes I have even seen. "We're on a mission from God and the People" he says in a flat Midwest voice.

That is how I met my Comrade Elwood Greyson, Trinitarian Brother, my future husband and his brother Jake, also a Brother."

-Adwoa "Mama" Grayson, Diary of a Southern Town, 1988.

Timeline of the Trinitarian Church

July 2, 1928: A papal edict is issued, aimed at the growing involvement of U.S. Catholics with the socialist movement. It harshly condemns socialism and laborism, and instead encourages humility and charity as an alternative. Known members of the Workers' Party are to be explicitly denied communion. This begins what is called the Catholic Splintering as liberal and conservative wings of American Catholicism are soon formed. The Liberal or Reform faction would continue to work with socialism and laborism, arguing that to ignore the plight of the poor and working classes and why they were in that situation lead to stagnation.

When we give bread to the poor, we are called saints. When we ask why the poor have no bread, we are called communists.
-- Brother Bartolomé Fabio, Reform Minster

The Conservatives counter with Matthew 22:15-22:

15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"

18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

21 "Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Basically stating that the Church and Catholics were becoming too involved with politics and were neglecting their missions to assist their communities. While attempts were made to mend the divide, many believed it was too little and too late.

By the time of the Second Civil War the split had become wider and wider with each year. A third faction also formed, born of militant Agnostics tired of the divisions in the Church. Both Orthodox and Reformers would serve and die on both sides of the Revolution as both soldiers and civilians. With the end of the war and the success of the Revolution, many of the conservatives formed the Underground Churches which received some support from the Vatican. Most of the support is smuggled in from Canada, especially Quebec. Many conservatives are smuggled out along an underground railroad and form the Catholic Church of the United States in Exile.

The Reformers would soon become the Trinitarian Church.

February 8, 1935: The Red Trinitarian Ecumene, commonly called the Trinitarian Church, is founded by a congress of delegates from pro-separation Catholic parishes across America. Espousing a radical re-interpretation of Catholic social doctrine that would later be named liberation theology, the Trinitarians uproot much of the Catholic remaining hierarchy of the Church in America.

1935-1940 would see the rapid development of the Ecumene, fusing together left-wing splinters of Methodist, Catholic, Unitarian and Universalist groups. In 1936 the first Church Convention would be held in Philadelphia, which would see the voting and adoption of the Trinitarian Covenant, the establishment of February 8th as a Church Holiday and recognition of the blood shed by Catholics and Christians during the Second Civil War and Revolution. A yearly convention would be held and would be open to any member of the church to attend in order to adopt and revise church policies to prevent stagnation.

The Covenant was debated and passed after four days and would set the tone for the policies of the church. Many Catholic titles were reformed or abolished, with members referring to each other as Brother or Sister or Comrade. Each church would be organized as a syndicate under an elected council. Instead of Combines based on a particular industry they would be organized along Provincial lines under an elected committee. One Manifold composed of elected representatives from the Combines would be created to organize aid and support to various Combines and Syndicates based on need and reports. Priests would be allowed to marry and have children and women would be allowed to serve. Stances against discrimination by race and sex and economic status would be included and the church would work with all it's powers to end such relics of the past.

The beginning of the World Revolutionary War would see the expansion of the Church into all sections of the UASR as Trinitarians moved across the country for war work or would serve in the military. While the military prohibited Chaplains as 'reactionary throwbacks' many units would have a Brother with a good knowledge of the Bible lead 'discussion groups' and provide counseling for their fellow soldiers. What started as a primarily Northeastern urban based church in 1940 would have syndicates in all Provinces and cities by 1945.

Other Christian branches

Other churches found things hadn't changed in the face of the Revolution. The Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers, of which President Herbert Hoover was ironically a member) and the Mennonite Churches, both of whom were persecuted by the Whites for their pacifism mostly sided with the Revolution, and participated in conjunction of socialist and Trinitarian groups in rebuilding and reforming the country following the Red victory. The Amish were left alone with their traditions and their farms handled like other small family farms across the country.

Mainstream Protestant Christianity in America was organizationally shattered by the Revolution. The Episcopal Church's attempt at neutrality endeared it to neither side. While many of its clergy and lay members performed important humanitarian relief work in areas devastated by the war, many of its churches were pillaged, and clergy arrested by both Red and White forces. The Episcopal Church's stance against segregation in particular put its Southern branches in the crosshairs.

In the Deep South, this erupted into full blown religious sectarian conflict, as members of conservative congregations collaborated with White forces to terrorize and murder liberal and black congregations.

When the Red Terror reached the Deep South, the reprisal by the Extraordinary Commissions was ruthless. As MacArthur's forces were being scourged from the continent, many of the church militants were left in shallow graves.

In spite of its ongoing official ties with the Church of England as part of the Anglican Communion, repression against the Episcopal Church softened. In spite of the official policy of state atheism, most soviets as well as the All-Union government had very little desire to spend any energy antagonizing the faithful now that the war had been won.

A 1935 decree by the Presidium ordered the return of most confiscated church properties for use by their congregations. In New Afrika, the Episcopal Church, along with other black protestant churches, were officially recognized as victims of the White Terror, and given a place at public memorials "The Long Night" period of the African Diaspora.

Fringe Christian groups would prove more difficult to align. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) was led by 75 year old vehement anti-Communist Heber J. Grant, advised by fellow anti-Communists J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay. Grant aligned with MacArthur, urging Mormons to fight against the Communists. Clark and McKay led White militias in Utah. (notably, Clark was ultimately responsible for the death of Utah organizer Big Bill Haywood) However, while the leadership was aligned with the putschists, the rank and file were divided equally. Many , long influenced by the efforts of those like Haywood, rejected Grant's call and instead signed with the Red Army. Many within the Church organization also opposed Grant's open allegiance to MacArthur, at least in attempting to stay neutral in accordance with the new peace with the government.

As Utah was captured towards the end of the war, and Grant and McKay were ultimately forced to flee, establishing the "Latter Day Saints in exile" from London, (Clark was captured and tried for the death of Haywood and various civilian casualties), more leftist membership filled out the ranks. Ex-Senator Reed Smoot was recruited as the new President. While also anti-Communist, he was pragmatic enough to realize that the Reds were likely to win. Thus, in the closing months of the war, the Haywood Pact was conceived and signed. In exchange for concessions (the ban on black priests was to be lifted and Salt Lake City would be renamed to Haywood City to honor the late socialist hero), the Union government recognized the LDS Church right to exist and for its practitioners to be unmolested, at least as long as they didn't actively oppose the government. Some sections of the Church, loyal to Grant, opposed the signing and split off to form a fundamentalist Church called "The Third Convention"[1], whose militant faction was the Sons of Moroni, a section of the Sons of the Rocky Mountains.

Afforded less consideration was the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The former was regarded with suspicion because of their anti-medicine stance. Jehovah's Witnesses would have many conflicts with the Union government over their insularity and abstention from volunteer work. Adherents of both would find themselves stonewalled within the bureaucracy because of these beliefs, despite technically being recognized.

Judaism

The Foster-Reed program was successful in bringing thousands of persecuted Jews from Europe to America. They would either join the already large immigrant Jewish communities in America or build their own in new places they were settled in. The UASR would have the highest percentage of Jews in the world by the end of World War II.

Many immigrant Jews retained their own religious traditions within their own branches. However, a small minority, allied with long time activists, explored the possibility of a socialist Judaism, tying stories of radicalism and uprisings scattered throughout the Tanakh, Midrash, and Jewish legend with a strong sense of social and economic justice.

Islam

Islam in America grew in the early pre-revolutionary period with immigrants from the former Ottoman Empire, as well as Eastern Europe and India. After the Revolution, Soviet and Ethiopian Muslims also began emigrating to America. Most Muslim communities within the resettlement program were placed in the Midwest and South, where they would largely congregate on ethnic and religious lines. The AFNR was home to many African Muslim communities, including converts. Many Africans would embrace Islam, a pre-colonial religion for many African cultures, as an alternative to Christianity, considered imposed on them by white colonialism. In 1937, a large mosque was constructed in Atlanta to symbolize this change.

The majority of immigrants coming into the United Republics were Sunni, and most immigrants remained traditional in their practice of Islam. However, some theoreticians, taking influence from the Trinitarians and the pillar of Zakat began to conceive of a more "layman" oriented Islam, which was charitable and socialist in its outlook. While not taking off immediately amongst more traditional immigrant communities, it gained some converts, especially as immigration increased.


Buddhism

Buddhism became a more common religion in North America as it was introduced by the increasing number of immigrants from East Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With many Asian-Americans becoming involved with the social institutions aligned with the Workers' Communist Party in the 1920s (alongside European immigrants), their religious practices would gain a visible presence in broader American society, and would gain widespread recognition following the Revolution.

Most Asian Buddhist immigrants were Mahayanan, but with a closer relationship with the Soviet Union , some Tibetan Buddhists from Mongolia and Tuva also began immigrating. The unique culture of Tibetan Buddhists, highlighted in magazines like People's Geographic, and their perceived pacifism got the attention of some white intellectuals. Adherents like Theos Bernard would make Tibetan Buddhism a fashionable religion amongst lower apparatchik and rehabilitated bourgeois.

Hinduism/Sikhism

Prior to the Revolution, the majority of Indian immigrants to the US were of Punjabi in origin. They would become known for their distinctive turban, part of their Sikh religion. Among Asian WCPA sections in the West, Punjabi Sikhs (intertwined through marriage with Mexican immigrant community) would become one of the most militant, serving with distinction during the Civil War as part of the Ghadar Party or the Shivaji volunteer brigades.

After the Revolution, Indians from other parts of the country, mostly political radicals or independence activists, began to settle in America. Some would note the success of Trinitarians in uprooting the traditional hierarchical structures, and advocated Hindus try to dismantle the caste system in the same manner. "Dalit Socialism" would later gain traction back in India

Some Hindu gurus would find traction with some Americans dissatisfied with both Christianity and socialist atheism. Fascination with Hinduism and Hindu concepts slowly grew in some communities on the coasts during the First Cultural Revolution, with even former GenSec Upton Sinclair expressing interest and meeting several gurus during his post-office life.

Other


The Moorish Science Temple, a Chicago-based fringe African American group influenced by Islam founded by Noble Drew Ali, was relatively young at the time of the Revolution, having been founded a mere 20 years earlier. It held that African Americans were descendants of "Moors", who were in turn descended from Moabs. The group promptly used this as a means to uplift many African Americans coming during the Great Migration. By that point, Ali had died under mysterious circumstances (officially tuberculosis, but many speculated that he died from injuries sustained by police) in 1929. After his death and the resulting power struggle, the Church was under the control of David Fard-El (formerly Wallace Dodd Fard by most accounts)[1], who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ali.

Fard-El took the ideology of the temple even further, holding that white people were the creation of the scientist Yakub, that Africans were the true Tribe of Israel and Jews were imposters. Fard-El would expand the organization before and after the Revolution, bringing it to Detroit, Minneapolis and New York. Expanding on a previous practice to add "El" or "Bey" to the end of a name, Fard-El proclaimed that practitioners could change their names to X (to symbolize their unknown family names before slave owners changed them) or to Arabic names.

Ultimately, while Fard-El would ultimately fail to gain many followers with most Africans becoming WCPA supporters, they would garner a small following with Garveyites and Caribbean immigrants. Many would disagree with Fard-El, and some would split off to form the "original" Moorish Temple, which was closer to Drew Ali's original vision, and aligned with the Revolution as an ultimate uplift for black Americans. They would gradually drift towards mainline Islamic practices.

Caribbean immigrants also brought an assortment of their own native religions to the AFNR, including traditional Voodoo and Santeria, as well as the new religion of Rastafari, which worshipped the exiled Emperor of Ethiopia and espoused Garveyite ideals of black empowerment and nationalism.

The rise of Native ASRs like Sioux, Sequoyah, and Apache facilitated a revival of native religions and practices. Massive cultural celebrations and holidays were made to make these cultures and religions more formal.





[1] The name comes from an OTL splinter group in Mexico
[2] OTL, Fard's leadership claims were rejected, so he went to Detroit and changed his name to Wallace Fard Muhammad. He would find a new organization there: The Nation of Islam

 

[Spartakrod]

Notable Events, 1939​

January 1st: New Years day celebrations in France are marred by the outbreak of a fistfight in the General Assembly over a particularly heated debate in an emergency session on whether to break with Britain and move towards the Soviet-American camp to contain the German, Italian, and Japanese threat or stay the course and trust London. This argument is eventually won by the latter camp after several injuries.

January 1st cont: Future Commissar of the Soviet Navy and globally respected Bolshevist theoretician Valery Sablin is born.

January 6th: The Culture Secretariat formally announces its boycott of the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo in response to the ongoing Sino-Japanese conflict. The Soviet Union and Sportsintern support this action. European Olympic committees, as well as Cuba, announce their intentions to still compete.

January 13th: In one of Australia's worst-ever bushfires, 102 people die, 4.9 million acres burned to the ground, and entire towns get obliterated in the state of Victoria. This becomes known as Black Friday after the fact.

January 16th: The last of the True Democrat Ten, Joe Starnes, is convicted and sentenced to life, as were the rest of the defendants.

January 20th: Commander Columbia half-film (named for its halved runtime of 45 minutes to allow for more digestible double-features) "Transamurian Troubles" sees Amanda Aaron pitted against the forces of Imperial Japan and dark kami who would seek to spread the Empire's dark influences into the Russian hinterland.

January 24th: 26,000 people die in an 8.3 magnitude earthquake, which remains the single deadliest earthquake in Chilean history. Aid and recovery is sent from most of the Comintern to help in the cleanup and recovery efforts.

February 9th: The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Italian Parliament, is formally abolished and replaced with the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations, representing industries rather than geographic regions under the corporatist structure of the fascist state.

February 15th: Conscience of a Freedom Fighter, a collection of essays by Alcatraz prisoner Barry Goldwater, is published by Doubleday, to success outside the United Republics.

February 16th: The Argentine government's Popular Front convenes for an emergency session regarding the possibility of war with Brazil. This will lead to the months-long "Green Sun" war games that determine that Argentina and Chile will likely require an American expeditionary force to repel Brazil.

February 20th: Subhas Chandra Bose and PC Joshi announce that the Congress Socialist Party will merge with the Communist Party of India to form the Indian Workers' Party. The new Comintern backed party will advocate complete independence from Britain.

March 2nd: Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli is elected to succeed the recently deceased Pope Pius XI, taking the name Pope Pius XII.

March 7th: Created out of fear that the Brazilian population does not properly understand the homosexual threat, the first in a series of lurid propaganda reels are published by the Guarda Verde itself to educate the populace on homosexuals and the need to eliminate them. Chillingly, these videos emphasise that there is no cure save death.

March 10th: The Justice Secretariat formally announces a blanket ban on the True Democrats, citing "security concerns." John Nance Garner resigns from the party (joining the DFLP), and the leadership voluntarily surrenders.

March 13th: New DFLP Congressional leader Harry Truman releases a statement supporting the ban on the True Democrats. Rumours circulate of a new "United Democratic Front".

March 16th: Iranian Crown Prince Mohammed Reza, son of Reza Shah, marries Princess Fawzia Fuad, the oldest daughter of King Faud I of Egypt and sister of Prince Farouk. Harry Bennett (assistant to Henry Ford) and Rudolf Hess are among the guests.

March 20th: Flora Mandebaum, a transgender Soviet-American and Civil War volunteer, undergoes vaginoplasty at the Institute for Sexual Science, newly offered after months of replicating old research from its German counterpart. As the first American to undergo sex reassignment surgery at the Institute, she receives major attention from Libertine and other publications.

March 21st: Georgy Malenkov ascends to the position of the second secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, winning out against Andrei Zhdanov who instead takes the position of the head of the Propaganda Department.

March 25th: Agent X, starring Gary Cooper as a counterintelligence agent loosely based off John Dillinger, is released, featuring the titular Agent X fighting the "Black Legion".

March 26th: General election in Turkey: Turanist and Neo-Ottoman parties ally with revanchist Kemalist factions in the Republican People's Party to create a new Turkish nationalist coalition, sidelining moderates in the previously dominant Republican People's Party.

April 2nd: Woman on the Moon, an English language remake of Fritz Lang's 1929 silent film, is released, directed by Lang himself and written by Willey Ley. The film takes notable influence from American and Soviet rocketry experiments and concepts, including ones by Robert Goddard and Konstatin Tsiolkovsky.

April 10th: Popular American radio game show Dr.IQ debuts.

April 13th: Commander Columbia's next instalment: Mission to China is released. The film actually outdoes its predecessor in gross and is often considered the entrypoint into the series for much of the moviegoing public. Written in large part by Chinese American fantasist Hu Geming with Samantha's cooperation, the film draws particular attention to the brutality of Japan's attack on China in support of Anti-communist warlords.

April 14th: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is published, telling the story of the struggle of Okie farm workers during the Revolution.

April 18th: Paramount and Terrytoons announce a new Greek mythology epic film called "Pandora", in the wake of the success of animation in America and Europe.

April 21st: French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a secret non-aggression pact. In exchange for ceding Eastern Europe to the German sphere of influence, Germany renounces claims on Alsace-Lorraine and signs a commercial agreement that will limit German autarky and open up avenues for French exports, particularly of coal and steel.

April 30th: The World's Fair opens in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York. The Fair features pavilions from 10 nations, as well exhibits showcasing advancements of science and technology under socialism, including an automated communal home and a large demonstration of a futuristic city(now with automation) called "Futurama". William Foster's speech opening the Fair is televised, the first time for a speech by any public official.

May 1st: In a surprise radio address, Premier Foster allows prominent Spanish leftists Andreu Nin and Buenaventura Durruti to make his annual May Day radio address. The two proclaim that the battle in Spain is "far from over". Behind the scenes, Reed and Nin discuss potential evacuation plans in case the stalemate is broken.

May 2nd: Batman, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, debuts in Detective Comics #27, in a story where he investigates the "Clan of the Cross".

May 4th: The execution of John Rankin is carried out in Chicago's Haymarket Square. Rankin stands silent, simply hissing "Sic Semper Tyrannis", in his final moments.

May 6th: A militant for the German American Bund, Veit Reder, is caught attempting to bomb the premiere of Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

May 7th: Japanese forces in China launch a thrust into Soviet allied Mongolia in an undeclared border war in what Baron Araki hopes will be the successful start of a northward strike against the USSR before the Americans can intervene. Clashes between Soviet and Japanese soldiers begin almost immediately.

May 9th: An Advisory Committee on Uranium and Neutrons is secretly set up by the Defense Secretariat to oversee experiments involving both. Among the early recommendations for uranium procurement, along with mining in the USSR and importation from the Belgian Congo, was to investigate possible uranium mines in the Apache ASR.

May 13th: Germany begins its invasion of Poland following an ultimatum for the Danzig Corridor and Upper Silesia.

May 15th: Riding the wave of increasingly anti-Nazi films is All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the book by Erich Maria Remarque, starring Peter Lorre in the lead.

May 17th: Hallie Flanagan, head of the Public Theatre (a part of the Academy of Arts and Science) protests the imprisonment of author Isaac Babel by Soviet authorities. This starts a minor row between the Public Theatre, the Soviet government and the Secretariat of Culture.

May 20th: A coalition of Italian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian forces begin the invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

May 22nd: The Soviet Union invades Poland from the East without a declaration of war. They quickly occupy and annex Ukrainian and Byelorussian speaking areas.

May 24th: At the behest of Premier Foster, the Congress of Soviets votes to declare a state of unlimited emergency. The decree is unusual in that the opposition, chiefly from the DRP and DFLP Christian pacifists, agree to abstain rather than vote against it.

June 1st: Under the rule of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and the Iron Guard, Romania formally begins the enactment of anti-Jewish measures. More severe pogroms soon follow.

June 4th: The MS St. Louis, a cargo ship carrying 901 Jewish refugees, lands in Miami, Florida after being turned away at Havana. All refugees, as well as the crew and the captain, Gustav Schröder, are granted amnesty within the United Republics.

June 6th: Henry Winston announces his resignation from the position of Secretary of Public Safety. J. Edgar Hoover returns from retirement to replace him.

June 7th: Mexican Cristero and Synarchist forces in its west are dealt a harsh blow by the deaths of much of its leadership in a surprise raid on their headquarters that essentially decapitates the counter-revolutionaries. Though there will be insurgent activity for months afterwards, the west is mostly secure now.

June 9th: At an emergency session of the Revolutionary International Military Command (REVCOM) that serves as the military alliance structure underpinning the Third International's gathering of parties; furious discussion is held on whether to declare war on Japan for its invasion as Japanese troops penetrate deeper into foreign soil. Notably, the Chinese government's usual observer Liu Renjing speaks their mind; citing a fear of open REVCOM intervention in the war in China escalating out of control and bringing possible British or French intervention or harming the government's legitimacy by playing into the National Republic's propaganda that they are a tool of Communists.

June 10th: The last Yugoslavian forces surrender and the country is formally dissolved into the Italian Empire

June 12th: The Baseball Hall of Fame is established in Cooperstown, New York. The inaugural class is Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Satchel Paige, and the late Lou Gehrig (killed in the Revolution). A statue of Gehrig is erected outside.

June 12th Cont: Zeras the Hammer, part of the wider setting established for Commander Colombia makes his debut, though less broadly successful than Mission to China, makes a distinctive impression on the African-American population of America who come to be enamoured of the black deity-like figure.

June 14th: The last Polish forces surrender to the German invaders, and Poland is forcibly annexed by the Third Reich. Polish President Władysław Raczkiewicz commits suicide shortly after the surrender.

June 15th: Longtime WCPA Party leader William L. Patterson is shot by a mysterious assailant in Brown, New Afrika, and dies a short time later. The rump Sons of the Confederacy, now under Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, takes responsibility for the assassination.

June 20th: Morris Hillquit International Airport opens in Queens, New York, becoming the main airport for the Metropolis Autonomous Republic.

June 21st: The Jewish population of Poland begins to be corralled into Warsaw as part of Nazi racial programmes while the General Government of Poland meant to pave the way for Polish integration into the Reich begins.

June 24th: Riding the wave of the success of Superman, Joe Shuster begins his own hard science fiction comic called "Star Squadron".

June 27th: Japanese forces engage in a large tank battle with their Soviet counterparts off the town of Nomonhon. The battle carries on for hours before Japanese forces are forced to retreat by Zhukov's hidden reserves.

July 1st: The Presidium promulgates a decree announcing the beginning of military general mobilisation. Active Militia members are mobilised for service in the general armed forces duty for three-year terms. An additional six-hundred thousand reservists are also called up. It is the largest peace-time expansion of the standing army in American history.

July 2nd: The First Annual World Fantastik Convention (WorldCon) is held in conjunction with the World's Fair. In addition to science fiction fans and authors from throughout the country (including new blood like Robert Heinlein and Isaak Ozimov), a notable guest is Alexei Tolstoy, whose own science fiction had been wildly successful in the United Republics.

July 4th: Captain America, the comic book creation of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, makes his dynamic debut punching Hitler in the jaw.

July 7th: Crisis in Michigan, a loose retelling of the Revolt of the Cadres with many of the names changed, debuts in theatres.

July 11th: The "Provisional Republic of the Chinese Nation" escalates its provision of slave labour to Manchukuo to one and a half million per year to meet Japan's industrialization targets in a secret meeting with the Kwantung Army and Tokyo government, most of them from territory seized from the Republic of China. Most will not survive.

July 13th: The conflict between the Public Theatre and the Soviet Union continues when the Theatre stages Mikhail Bulgakov's Batumi, based on the early life of Joseph Stalin. Secretary of Culture Louise Bryant announces that the play will be closed after one performance. Flanagan resigns as head of the Public Theatre, under-reported pressure from John Reed.

July 17th: In an emergency session following a hung parliament after the deaths of important Social Democratic politicians in an aircraft crash incident blamed on Communists, Gustav V of Sweden announces the dissolution of the Social Democratic government of Per Albin Hansson, and appoints a rightist coalition government under Konrad Hallgren and the National Union of Sweden; which includes both Fascists and ultra-conservatives.

July 20th: The first issue of LifeTime magazine (a collective merging the properties of the late Henry Luce, including Life and Time Magazine ) is published in Metropolis.

July 25th: A large air battle takes place over the skies of the Russian Far East and Outer Mongolia as both sides muster increasingly larger commitments of men and materiel to the ongoing undeclared war. American planes from the Star Walker squadron are also deployed, helping to win the day in the developing furball.

July 26th: The Daily Worker publishes an article revealing the existence of a secret pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union negotiating spheres of influence in Poland, effectively splitting the country between them.

July 28th: King Kong vs the Harbinger debuts in American theatres, featuring the Gorilla's fierce struggle with a sinister machine awakened from the depths of the ocean.

July 29th: The Wild Party, based on Joseph Moncure March's 1926 poem of the same name, sparks considerable controversy due to its overly lewd and bacchanalian depiction of a Roaring Twenties Hollywood party.

August 2nd: A Public Safety unit attempts to confront Bull Connor in a Mobile hotel, but after a shootout, he escapes.

August 5th: In response to an Ultimatum by Mussolini to allow Italian troops to occupy the country to "ensure its defense against communism" Metaxas of Greece capitulate when word that no assistance from Britain or France will be forthcoming as the Greek army faces collapse after months of fighting the Turkish army over the Constantinople international zone and a Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia. Greece will disappear into the Italian Empire in the next few days.

August 8th: Richard Gregg and Jeanette Rankin resign from the Central Committee. While they cite "internal disagreements", many speculate the two's pacifism and the preparation for a war in Europe was the main reason.

August 11th: To Mars and Back, an animated scifi epic releases in theatres. The Film will ultimately fail to make much of an impact with relatively mediocre reception both popularly and critically due to its often overloaded story and overly busy scenes save for its innovations in animation techniques that will be studied later.

August 13th: The Soviet Propaganda ministry starts a campaign to fully shift the ire of the Soviet people towards France, Britain, and Japan in the hopes of directing Germany towards the west while the nation prepares for war and turns its eyes eastwards.

August 15th: The Wizard of Oz, a musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum's beloved novel of the same name, is released by Culver City Collective. The film features animated characters and sequences from Hyperion Animation.

August 18th: Kim, an epic adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's novel, is released by MGM, directed by Victor Saville and starring Errol Flynn (fresh off the success of Gone with the Wind) and Freddie Bartholomew. Notably, it is filmed in India in locations listed in the novel.

August 22nd: A game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds at Ebbets Field becomes the first baseball game broadcast on television by the experimental MBS TV station.

August 25th: Warner Bros and Columbia release their own version of The Wizard of Oz, taking elements from later books and having a more straight-forward approach, similar to the 1925 film.

August 28th: Suffering a meltdown, Frank Whittle gets put on leave for the remainder of the week and the following week as the Power Jets W.2 enters full production.

August 31st: The August 31st incident nearly sees the further escalation of the Mongolian incident (more crudely known as the "Mongolian Clusterfuck" by John Reed) as the Soviet pacific fleet is ordered to shadow a Japanese battleship division looming near the Transamurian shore with submarines for many tense hours before both naval formations are called back.

September 1st: Argentina announces a sweeping series of deals with the governments of Peru, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile to consolidate and share resources. Most notably, it includes assurances that if one is attacked; it will be an attack on all. With tensions with Brazil increasingly high, this is seen as a necessary guarantee of safety.

September 5th: Japanese forces are being rapidly driven back from their gains by Zhukov's skilful usage of his assets; particularly his familiarity with tanks, including the American armoured "Medusa regiment" from the UASR lead by Brigadier General Saren McConnell* dispatched to aid its Soviet ally.

September 7th: Lincoln Motors opens up the impressive Johannesburg Arsenal in South Africa as part of an endeavour to create jobs and bolster the empire's military readiness. The massive factory complex will produce much of the Commonwealth's vehicles in the war to come in its numerous assembly lines and is warmly welcomed as "a wonder to rival the Suez" by Jan Smuts.

September 9th: Mexican authorities announce the discovery of an attempt by German-Italian agents inserted via Cuba to spark a fascist uprising in occupied Honduras. The conspirators are detained for questioning but will eventually be found guilty and executed.

September 10th: Indo-Greek Nazi sympathizer Savitri Devi publishes A Warning to Hindus, urging Hindus in India to reject "foreign" influences like Islam, and embrace Hindu nationalism as an "Aryan religion". The book gains the endorsement of VD Savarkar, head of the Hindu Mahasabha, and becomes a key part of the "Hindutva" movement.

September 13th: Italian Animated Film "Advance Italians!" is released to demonstrate the ever forward marching nature of the Italian people from the days of Rome onwards by following the history of an unbroken family line from the founding of the eternal city to the newest son's meeting with Mussolini, who is portrayed as a benevolent and loving figure.

September 15th: Gildardo Magana succeeds Emiliano Zapata as the Premier of the Mexican Socialist Republic as the now sixty-year-old revolutionary wishes to create a tradition of short premierships. Magana inherits a rapidly modernizing nation that some are praising as the model developing socialist republic, but still is seeking to put down the last of the Cristeros in the west.

September 17th: A motion of no confidence for the Foster Central Committee following the revelation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fails to reach a majority in the Central Executive Council, with Foster (along with Harry Truman) convincing a majority to follow the Soviet party line for the time being.

September 18th: Oil production in Arabia triples from the figures the year before. Much of the oil will be stockpiled by buyers rather than sold for consumption as war is felt to be increasingly near. Significant Italian investment into the project ensures that Il Duce gets more than his fair share of the cut.

September 19th: Production of Aircraft begins in the Salsbury Aerocraft Plant installed as part of the "dominion industrialization" project. The enormous factory is staffed by more than ten thousand workers who will create both civilian and military aircraft.

September 25th: The undeclared war for Mongolia comes to an end as the IJA loses the stomach for its planned conquest of the Russian Far east as its soldiers are driven back into Japanese controlled Inner Mongolia and Manchukuo. Despite the enthusiasm of the Kodoha and Araki for the conquest; Chichibu takes a more pragmatic view and instead wishes to secure Japan's gains in China before trying again when the opportunity presents itself. An agreement brokered by Molotov ends the conflict, but tensions between Japan's burgeoning Co-Prosperity sphere and REVCOM will remain extremely high. At the same time, this conflict will result in the Nomonhan Research Report the next year, which would lead to a comprehensive overhaul of the Japanese military towards a more modernized, well-equipped one instead of relying on spiritual mobilization.

October 1st: Frida Kahlo announces her resignation from the Central Committee of the Mexican Socialist Republic. It's believed her deteriorating romantic relationship to General Secretary Diego Rivera is the primary reason.

October 3rd: The Garda Síochána, the national police force of Ireland, carry out arrests of over forty people across the country accused of being high-ranking members of the IRA, including three members of the Dáil. Organized under the codename Operation Snakes, the arrests take place as part of a government crackdown on left-wing Irish republicans, who continue to reject the 1938 constitution and the office of the Governor-General.

October 10th: A euthanasia program for people with disabilities or mental illness begins in Nazi Germany.

October 11th: HMAS Excalibur, the first "Super Cruiser" to be built by the new Elizabeth Shipyard at Sydney; is launched as a show of force by Australia. With its large 9.2 inch guns, the 15,000 tonne warship is a rival to anything short of a true battleship or cruiser at sea and after its commissioning the next year; will be made the flagship of the Australian navy even when the slightly larger carrier HMAS "Merlin" is commissioned in the same year.

October 12th: A plan is put in place to more than triple the size of the Brazilian army in a year by Integralist Brazil's highest offices. Massive military preparations are made as fear sinks into the hearts of the continent afraid of its traditional sovereign's ever-increasing bellicosity. Boaventura plans to quintuple the size of his ever-expanding Guarda Verde as they make greater usage of prison labour to build facilities that will be largely controlled by the paramilitary to house its ambitions.

October 13th: Beloved staple of British animated entertainment, James the Jester, debuts in theatres for the first time in the short James and the Wonderful Machine where his antics lead to a rather annoyed inventor getting the inspiration to build his machine.

October 15th: Soviet animated film Truth in Print is released, the film features a young wizard named Sasha Ivanova who seeks to share the teachings of their cloistered order with the wider people to make their lives better, and her struggle against the entrenched and often reactionary bureaucracy.

October 17th: Frank Capra's Comrade Smith is released in theatres, starring Jimmy Stewart as an idealistic Party cadre recently elected to the Congress of Soviets, but encountering corruption and dealing with growing discontent in his home district.

October 18th: Japanese naval expansion plans are intensified once more with a new order for even more ships coming from the headquarters as more shipyards come online in the Empire's territories furnished by the looting of resources from China and financial capital from Italy and Germany. Of key importance in the new plan is the expansion of the Destroyer and Cruiser fleet to ensure adequate protection for Japan's vaunted capital ships.

October 19th: Japanese war games on the outcome of a war with the Comintern conclude. The results indicate that the key to victory will be Germany keeping the bulk of the armies of the Soviet Union busy while Japan prepares for a massive blitz to drive America out of the Pacific to be initiated with a crippling first strike at Pearl Harbour. Then the Soviet territories to the North will be conquered once America is no longer a threat, to be used as living space for the Japanese people. In the event that the western degenerates are unable to provide the resources for this, the far right nationalist movements in Asia that Japan is already funding will need to play their part.

October 25th: Commander Columbia half-movie "Alaskan Avenger" debuts, featuring Amanda Aaron defending Alaska from the encroaching Canadians and British who seek to menace the indigenous and worker population of the ACSR.

October 27th: The Japanese Type 99 O-Ro Heavy Tank is introduced to devastating effect in one of the Chinese war's largest tank battles so far, proving to be largely impervious to the guns of much of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army while its cannon shattered bunkers and pierced Chinese tanks with contemptuous ease.

October 31st: First recorded use of the Katyusha MLRS outside of the Soviet Union itself as Chinese forces launch a counterattack to attempt to stymie the traitor and Japanese offensives around Wuhan.

November 1st: King Edward and Wallis make another appearance in Berlin, where Edward is taken on a tour of an armaments factory by Henry Ford himself. The visit is criticized by politicians across the spectrum in the UK.

November 3rd: King Edward and National Socialist and Fascist League head William Joyce make a joint appearance in Trafalgar Square, agitating against war in Europe.

November 8th: Richard Sorge, Tokyo correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, meets his friend Generalmajor Eugen Ott, the German military attache to Japan, for dinner and drinks. In their conversation, Ott reveals in confidence the existence of Fall Teutonische, the planned summer 1940 invasion of the Soviet Union.

November 11th: "Facility Three" in Manchuria is completed at the cost of more than thirty thousand dead. "Facility Three" is at the time of its completion; the largest tank and armoured car manufacturing complex in the world at the time of its completion; encompassing multiple factories; and will produce two-fifths of all armoured vehicles used by the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the war with the capacity to make use of tens of thousands of workers at a time. More than a half-million more workers will die inside of its halls to produce the vehicles for Japan's war effort before the war's end.

November 13th: The Italian garrison in Libya and East Africa is increased significantly to ensure that the wealth being extracted from Italy's largest colonies remains secure in the face of possible communist or Africanist subversion. Major sweeps for remaining insurgent activity are also quietly launched.

November 15th: A German spy ring is exposed in upstate NY. Several ex-Bund members are arrested. J. Edgar Hoover warns of a "Nazi fifth column" slowly infecting the nation.

November 20th: Savitri Devi and her husband Asit Krishna Mukherji meet with VD Savarkar and fellow Hindutva advocate M. S. Golwalkar, Chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Bombay to discuss a possible Hindutva alliance with the Japanese to ensure Indian independence. Devi and Murkherji are subsequently dispatched to meet exiled nationalist Rash Behari Bose and Japanese Army Major Iwaichi Fujiwara in Tokyo.

November 25th: Emma Goldman (in one of her last public appearances) and Jeanette Rankin speak at a New York peace rally to protest the build-up to war. Goldman states her opposition to wars between states, Rankin appeals to the lives lost during World War I and the Revolution.

November 27th: Baron Sadao Araki, one of the most powerful men in Japan and ally of Prince Yasuhito makes a speech in Japan urging its people to prepare for a war more grim, terrible, and awe inspiring than anything to have ever come before. One that will see all threats to Japan cleansed and the stains of impurity forever washed away from Asia. The "cleansing of blood" speech draws muted disquiet and alarm from much of the rest of the world but is met with enthusiasm in many right-wing pan-asianist circles such as the Hindutva movement.

December 1st: LifeTime Magazine names Vyacheslav Molotov as its first Man of the Year, for his roles in various foreign policy events.

December 7th: Jiang Jieshi, who had been missing for a month, reemerges as the "Chief Protector" (護国主席, Hùguózhǔxí) of the "Provisional Republic of the Chinese Nation". This sends shockwaves throughout China as the "Red Napoleon" had defected to the Japanese. Why this happened would not emerge until after the war, but nevertheless this greatly weakened the Chinese Republic as many rightists also defected or engaged in resistance against the Left-KMT and CCP.

December 8th: In the wake of Jiang Jieshi's defection, Wang Jinwei appoints himself into the role of Commander-in-Chief. His appointment is met with some apprehension within the military, given his relative inexperience on warfare.

December 10th: Captain Marvel, created by CC Beck and Bill Parker, makes his thunderous debut in Whiz Comics #2.

December 15th: Premier William Foster, DFLP head Harry S. Truman, and DRP head Robert Taft jointly announce the DFLP and DRP will not contest the next year's elections, instead endorsing the Foster-Kantorovich government. Foster looks noticeably nervous throughout the conference.

December 17th: King Farouk causes international confusion by stealing King Edward's pocket watch in a royal visit to Egypt, resulting in an irritated Edward trying to chase Farouk around his palace for about thirty minutes before giving up.

December 21st: In the midst of the Yuletide holiday, Foster meets with Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromkyo, Foreign Secretary John Reed, and Harry Truman for secret "foreign policy" discussions.

December 25th: At a winter holiday event, Leon Trotsky runs into Nestor Makhno by chance in the midst of a party resulting in "history's most profoundly awkward silence". While Trotsky remains convinced of the righteousness of his actions against Makhno, the two do not break into a fistfight as was feared.

December 26th: Heinrich Himmler concludes a discussion with Cristiano Boaventura during the master of the Guarda Verde's visit to Germany where the two arch-homophobes engage in a horrific debate on the proper response to the homosexual threat and their differing religious views. Himmler passes on much of his antisemitism to Boaventura, while Himmler also comes away convinced of Boaventura's belief that sapphic women are as great a threat as uranian men.

December 31st: Vladimir Triandafillov is dispatched on a year-long mission to the Union of American Socialist Republics to deepen ties and teach Soviet military theory, particularly deep operations. Among his most apt pupils will be George Patton and Saren McConnell.

 

[Miss Teri]

(Special thanks to @Libertad for some help in doing this)
The 1940 Olympics

The 1936 Olympics were considered both a success and a failure depending on the point of view. The IOC and the sports division of Comintern, Red Sport International (Sportsintern) viewed the games as a successful integration of the Soviet Union and the United Republics into the Olympics, with Spartakaids providing excellent training to bring athletes to the level of international amateurs. To many others, including the head of the American Olympic Association-in-exile Avery Brundage and the planners of the Berlin games, the Games had gone horribly wrong. Not only did Brundage fail to prevent the UASR from participating (preventing his own exile athletes from gaining prominence), but their Jewish and Black athletes like Marty Glickmann and Jesse Owens beating out German athletes had ruined the attempt by the Nazis to promote their racist, antisemitic ideals.

Regardless, Tokyo was chosen as the host of the 1940 Summer Olympics that same year, with Sapporo hosting the Winter Games. However, concerns arose over the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the Republic of China the next year. The dominant Kodoha faction saw the Berlin Games as a model to promote the ideals of bushido and their titular Imperial Way and their vision of a Japanese lead pan-Asian alliance.

The lead-up to the 1940 Games saw similarly intense debates within the halls of the American government and Sportsintern on whether to participate. Already, Comintern was providing strong support for socialist factions in the Republic of China. Unlike with the Berlin Games, with the ongoing conflict in which Comintern was actively involved, it was felt that it wouldn't be worth participating until hostilities ceased. Thus, the 1938 Spartakaid in Chicago (the last held before the events were cancelled with the onset of World War II), was less focused on Olympic training and more on public health promotion. The Spartakaids would be promoted by some as an alternative Olympics.

The Culture Secretariat, with the support of Sportsintern and the American Olympic Committee-Mainland, announced their boycott in early 1939. This was motivated both by the conflict in China and the focus on the build-up for war with Europe.

In the meantime, many other Olympic Committees announced their own commitment to participation. Manchukuo, which had sent long distance runner Yu Hsi-Wei to the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, assembled a new, full team to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. The Japanese-backed "Provisional Republic of the Chinese Nation" under Jiang Jieshi set up their own separate Olympic Committee and was then invited by Japan to send a team to compete (the Comintern-backed Republic of China deciding to boycott), as did the de facto Japanese-controlled Dutch East Indies, marking their only participation in the Olympics. The Indian team ,at Japanese insistence, held their own flag (a tricolor flag with a spinning thread) for the event rather than that of British India, creating friction with the British administration (and even some in the Independence movement who opposed involvement in the Tokyo Olympics). The Philippines, an Olympic participant since 1924 as a US territory and now under joint British and Japanese protectorate status since 1934, also decided to send a team to Tokyo with the increasingly powerful Japanese lobby to the Quezon government playing an important role despite President Quezon's initial refusal.


Brundage, seizing the opportunity, proudly announced that "American-occupied Havana" (a term conceived in the 1936 Games to distinguish them from the United Republics) would participate in the Olympics in Japan (this time around under the Stars and Stripes banner). Germany and Italy made similar promises, and urged the "Spanish State" to establish an Olympic committee and send a team due to Comintern-supported Spanish Free Soviet Republic joining the boycott (even organizing a "People's Olympiad" to serve with the Spartakaid in 1939). This will be the only time the Falangist government participated in the Games. With enough participants, in spite of the conflict in China, the Games would go on as planned.

The Olympic Torch relay (innovated in the last games) was going to utilize a fairly unique method at the time for transporting the Olympic Torch:a non-stop flight aboard a Messerschmitt Me 261 Adolfine long-range aircraft, provided by Germany. The flight managed to be successful and the Torch was delivered safely.

Seizing on the precedent set by Leni Riefenstahl, a film was commissioned examining the set-up of the Games and the Opening Ceremony, emphasizing the austerity and prowess of Japanese industry. Kajiro Yamamoto and his young assistant director, Akira Kurosawa, were tasked with making the film.

Concerns resurfaced following Operation Teutonic and subsequent declaration of war by the United Republics in May of 1940, a few months before the Games were to start in September. There was discussion in the Reich's Sports Office to withdraw, but ultimately it was decided that a strong showing might bolster international opinion as the invasion of the Soviet Union continued. More pressing, the shipment of American troops into Vladivostok could potentially disrupt the arrival of athletes. All athletes were made to go around Europe and the Soviet Union to prevent any accidental deaths. Canadian athletes were permitted to pass through Los Angeles to reach New Zealand to get to the Games.

The opening ceremony in Tokyo saw a rare appearance of Emperor Hirohito. However, still incapacitated from his assassination attempt, his brother Yasuhito, Prince Chichibu spoke in his stead. Yasuhito noted how fortuitous that the Olympics would come to the city on the 2600th anniversary of the ascendance of Emperor Jimmu, which saw the formation of the Empire of Japan. He then spoke of the long history and resilience of Japan, before segueing into a more traditional mediation on Olympic spirit. Following Yasuhito's speech, the Olympic Torch was lit, starting the Games.

Without the presence of the UASR and the USSR (which had gotten the top two most medals in the 1936 Berlin Games), Nazi Germany got the highest medal count while the United Kingdom got second and host country Japan third. The The biggest success of the Games for Japan, however, was the propaganda value of showcasing the country and its successful rise as a world power.

The 1944 Olympics were to be held in London. However, in the four years since the last one, most of the participating countries had since become embroiled in war, so, much like in 1916, the Games were formally canceled, and London would be given the opportunity to host in 1948, if possible.

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from Winston Smithers*, Record of the Polish War, (Oxford: Osprey Books, 1988)

Following the conclusion of the Franco-German Non-Aggression Treaty, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop swiftly delivered Hitler's demands to the government of the Polish Republic on the 19th of April. The initial demands were outrageous, perhaps even impossible. Hitler demanded that Poland cede territorial control of the Danzig corridor and extraterritorial access rights to the Free City of Danzig.

This alone would effectively reduce the republic from sovereign state to German satellite state cut off from the world market. Had French guarantees been worth the paper they had been printed on, it would have been stubbornly refused. So on a cold morning on the 20th, President Władysław Raczkiewicz sent a telegram in reply, indicating a willingness to negotiate based on this initial proposal.
[...]
While Hitler entertained the diplomatic offers, the armed forces of the Polish Republic continued to mobilise for war. Since Franco-German rapprochement began last year, the Polish Army had been preparing for this contingency. Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły had proposed forming a "national redoubt" in eastern Poland, heavily fortifying the Vistula River to hold out against the Wehrmacht while aligning with the Soviet Union against German expansion.

Such an option had been literally unthinkable just a year before. But in spite of the military soundness of the strategy and the desperate disparity of forces between Poland and Germany, the government of the Second Republic rejected it as defeatist. The fear that once Soviet soldiers were allowed on Polish soil, they'd never leave was all too real, and the political cost of abandoning half the country and most of the heavy industrial zones to Germany was far too high.

President Raczkiewicz instead modified the planned defensive works. While the formidable Vistula would be used in the north, the new Rejtan Line would extend north-south from the approaches to Lodz to Krakow.

With enough time, it might have resembled a second Maginot line. But as the troops of the Polish Army dug-in during late April, it was incomplete. A system of strongpoints, heavily fortified with concrete bunkers, heavy guns, and overlapping fields of fire, covered most of the lines of communication. But much of the line consisted of improvised earthworks hastily constructed.
[...]
Hitler took the unusual step of meeting with Raczkiewicz in person in the still neutral Free City of Danzig, though it too was under a Nazi Party administration, albeit one that had not yet had the means to do away with the institutions of democracy and free press. Raczkiewicz had arrived on the 25th of April expecting serious negotiations to take place, and was hopeful that war could be avoided, even if it meant serious compromises.

He did not expect Hitler to dramatically raise his demands, adding the "return" of Poznan and Eastern Silesia as well as military basing rights in Poland itself. The German delegation clarified after the stunned Poles asked the interpreters if they heard this right, stressing that these demands would be met or there would be war.

The terms could not be accepted. Nor could Poland win the war on its own. Raczkiewicz addressed the nation that night, telling them to prepare for the fight of their lives. He continued to hold onto hope that British or French intercession could at the very least force a peace settlement that retained Polish sovereignty.
[...]
On the morning of the 13th of May, without a declaration of war, German armed forces crossed the border into Poland. Citing a series of false-flag attacks on German civilians in Silesia and Danzig conducted by the Waffen-SS as a pretext, Hitler declared that "the long night has fallen on the Polish subhumans." Fall Weiß would be the prelude for the dynamic, mechanised war that would soon swallow all of Europe.

Aside from smaller corps sized "operational groups" intended to delay and harass the German advance, the bulk of the Polish Army was concentrated into six area armies manning vital sections of the Rejtan Line. At full mobilisation, the Polish Army assembled 39 infantry divisions (nine of which were lower strength reserve divisions), eleven cavalry brigades and three motorised brigades.

Germany would commit 75 divisions to the invasion, including ten Panzer divisions. In a departure from Czechoslovakia a year prior, the Panzers and their supporting motorised infantry divisions were separated from the main field armies. Instead, they were concentrated into Panzergruppe, with relative independence of action under the army group headquarters.

While the Poles would field 210 obsolete tanks, the German Army would commit nearly four thousand tanks, a majority of which were the modern medium Pzkfw III. This twenty to one disparity in armor would be compounded by a near five to one disparity in aircraft.
[...]
The war began with the rapid destruction of the Polish Air Force. The Luftwaffe continued round-the-clock operations, bombing civilian and military targets that were helpless to resist. The Polish delaying troops, mostly cavalry, fought desperately to delay the advance and destroy lines of communication.

Meanwhile, the tanks remained behind the infantry, chomping at the bit, as the bulk of the German forces advanced twenty kilometers a day through the countryside choked with fleeing civilian refugees.

The heaviest fighting began on the fifth day, as the German army began assaulting the defensive works of the Rejtan Line. The four Panzergruppen began their assaults, achieving breakthroughs south of Lodz and at Moblin from East Prussia. The Polish defensive line broke at the hinge between Army Lodz and Army Krakow. Fighting retreats turned into a rout.
[...]
By Day 10 of the invasion, Panzergruppe 1 under General Heinz Guderian linked up with Panzergruppe 3 under Generalleutnant Georg-Hans Reinhardt east of Warsaw. The link up trapped three Polish armies, Lodz, Poznan and Warsaw, into a cauldron. While the battered Army Krakow began preparations to relieve the pocket, the troops of the Soviet West Front crossed the eastern border.

Declaring that the Polish state had ceased to exist, Stalin stated his aims were to "protect Byelorussian and Ukrainians citizens" now rendered stateless, the invasion confirmed rumors of a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact carving up eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered Polish forces not to contest this action. Envoys were sent in an ultimately vain attempt to get the Soviets to join the war as a co-belligerent. The fate of Poland was sealed.
[...]
Polish forces continued to fight on for two more weeks. The tightening noose around Warsaw ultimately collapsed effective, coordinated Polish resistance. While German forces regrouped to recover from the unexpected logistical strain of the war, diplomatic efforts continued. Protests and strikes in France against the perceived collaboration in German conquest and the "blood money" won from the Franco-German commercial agreement would ultimately collapse Daladier's embattled government, placing the Left Bloc under Leon Blum back in power.

It was this forlorn hope that pushed President Raczkiewicz to continue resistance even after Marshal Rydz-Śmigły broached the subject of seeking terms on the 25th of May. Blum had opposed appeasement, and it was still possible that France could honor the pact.

But however much Blum wished to, he could not find the political capital, especially within the French Army, to obtain a declaration of war. Following the receipt of France's final diplomatic note on the 8th of June, Raczkiewicz offered an armistice to begin discussing terms of surrender. Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt accepted the ceasefire, only to immediately break it to further consolidate Army Group South's position. This charade continued until German forces were mere blocks from the Presidential Palace, and the final instrument of surrender was delivered.
[...]
Following the official capitulation, it is sometimes said, the real war began. The Długa wojna, "the Long War", began with the partition. Dissidents from the Second Republic, the Polish Socialist Party, the Polish Communist Party, the German Socialist Labour Party of Poland, and the General Jewish Labor Bund, formed a government-in-exile under the banner of the "National Liberation Front" (Narodowowyzwoleńczy front). The NLF denounced the leadership of the Republic turning to collaboration in the "General Government" puppet state set up by Germany.

While the government of the USSR received them with marked indifference, the the UASR offered funding and resources for official operations based in Metropolis, and pushed Stalin into providing some lines of communication to the underground in the General Government. The porous border between the regions newly annexed to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs became the harbinger of things to come, as most of Poland's Jewish population found itself deported and force marched eastward, along with significant portions of the Polish intelligentsia.

The brutality of German occupation would be felt immediately. Unlike the Czechs, who Nazi ideologues considered to be Germans with a false national consciousness, Poles were denigrated as subhuman. Thus, following the surrender the Nazi government declared that Poland had ceased to exist, rendering all Polish citizens stateless subjects.

While Hitler wished to enact the harshest measures immediately, he was cognizant of the need to maintain a positive image as Germany prepared for the Drang nach Osten. While Germany outright annexed just over half the territory it occupied, the remaining section, from Warsaw extending southwest to the new Soviet frontier, was reorganized as the General Governorate for the Polish Territories. While it would be administered by a Governor-General directly appointed by the Reich government, in this stage it functioned more like a puppet regime, with the right-wing Polish National Democrats invited to serve in a subordinate role.

These dangled carrots helped appease the diplomatic pressure from Britain, and also massaged world public opinion of Germany while promoting compliance with German occupation measures. In this immediate period, only the socialist left would maintain underground resistance.

The occupation measures would still be infamously harsh, to the point where no amount of flattery and collaboration regime could disguise them. In the directly annexed territories, a system of racial classification was implemented. Those of provable "German blood" who had collaborated were given German citizenship, and enriched by land and property taken from Poles. The various other degrees of "German" were subject to re-education when these carrots proved to be insufficient. Those who had their German blood "polluted" by Polish blood, and who had proven to be resolutely "Anti-German" in national consciousness were to be deported, along with the rest of the Poles, into the territories of the General Government, save those who were conscripted for industrial or agricultural labor.

In the General Government, a system of forced industrial labor was implemented under the auspices of Front Ford. As more men were conscripted into the military and the war economy further geared up, Germany faced a crisis in industrial and agricultural labor. The gap was to be made up by men and women conscripted in Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, and Poland.

At this stage, the zwangsarbeit system was brutal but not actively murderous. Owing to the relatively good international trade relations Germany enjoyed, food rations for conscripted laborers was between ten and twenty percent lower than those enjoyed by German nationals, depending on profession. But their work hours were longer, and they faced draconian restrictions on their private lives.

Polish forced laborers were paid less than half of their German counterparts, and received little to no social benefits. They could not attend German church services or otherwise socialize with Germans publicly. Sexual relations with German women was punishable by death, and they had no privacy in their barracks. Many ordinary comforts, such as alcohol, were contraband and if found the workers was subject to corporal punishment. It must be stressed that these conditions only worsened from the high point in 1939-40.
[...]
The shockwaves from Fall Weiß would ripple outwards, setting the stage for the Second World War. The most immediate outcome was the rapid diplomatic realignment of the Baltic states. The republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had frigid diplomatic relationships with Germany at best in the 1930s. The ultimatum for the return of Memel, the conquest of Poland, and the racial animus against Balts and Estonians, had accomplished what decades of Soviet diplomatic pressure could not: rapprochement between the Soviets and the Baltic states.

On 18 August 1939, the military dictatorship of Antanas Smetona conceded to Comintern demands to allow free elections in the spring of 1940. The Lithuanian Communist Party, as well as other parties banned by the regime, would be legalized and allowed to contest the election. As a concession, Soviet election observers were rejected in favor of a delegation composed of representatives from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the United Republics. While no agreement was made on army or naval basing, a basic commitment to collective defense was made.

Once Lithuania caved, the rest of the Baltic states soon followed. President and Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis relented under Soviet pressure. A similar commitment was made for free elections, but Ulmanis was more amenable to military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Already economically attached to the Soviet Union, the ever rapacious Germany would only want to further extend its reach to the relatively wealthy small nation.

In Estonia, the unpopular regime of Andres Larka established by the Vaps movement collapsed after several weeks of unrest in Tallinn. A grand coalition of the National Centre, the Settlers Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the now above ground Communist Party took office under the restored 1920 Constitution. The new government under August Rei signed a mutual defense treaty with the USSR on 20 October 1939.

In Western Europe, British and French perfidy greatly sharpened the political divide. In the United Kingdom, the ruling Conservative and Unionist Party threatened a major split. A bloc of Conservative MPs, led by Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, had broken with the government over the tacit support of German expansion. Joined by a number of MPs from the Liberal Party, this bloc broke the National Government, and reduced Prime Minister Edward Wood's majority.

The controversy generated by the "Fascist Unionist" bloc within the C&UP mounted and in spite of their growing strength Prime Minister Wood reshuffled the cabinet in November 1939 to remove their most public sympathizers from ministerial positions. It did little to improve the domestic political situation. Communist-aligned groups within the trade unions were making considerable gains agitating against the export of war materiel to Germany, arguing that the oil, rubber and steel will one day return to Britain in the form of Nazi bombs. With Labour attempting to hold the impossible line of "neither appeasement nor militarism", the Commonwealth Workers' Party was making dramatical organizational gains in Labour's traditional strongholds.

In France, the government of Leon Blum held a razor thin mandate. Blum hoped to improve his odds following elections scheduled for May 1940, but his current supply-and-confidence agreement with the SFIC (French Section of the Communist International) was tenuous. If the increasingly militant communists made significant gains, some in his own party feared they'd begin an insurrection. Even if they did not, it might be impossible to maintain his government.

Political support for rearmament remained broad, but there were many in the republican right who had once advocated opposing Germany who now switched to appeasement. The French Army general staff informed Blum on 2 November 1939 that it did not have any confidence in its ability to successfully stop a German invasion through the Low Countries without Great Britain.

In the Comintern, all major plans for a decolonisation war against the British Empire were shelved indefinitely. At bilateral Soviet-American defense meetings in August, the two country's military attaches began developing a framework for American assistance in a future Soviet-German War. But these talks were limited by the official stance of Stalin's government to avoid any appearance of violating the non-aggression treaty with Germany.

While the Soviet Union began loosening the leash on the Red Army, beginning rehabilitation for officers who'd been forced into retirement or sentenced to hard labour in Siberia, the ongoing expansion and armaments plan was not significantly modified or accelerated, with Josef Stalin overruling the recommendations of People's Commissar for Defence Kliment Voroshilov. In Politburo talks, Stalin was almost in denial about the apparent failure of the triangulation strategy with Germany. Stalin was still convinced that he'd ultimately outplayed Britain and France, and that Hitler would use the respite they'd granted him to strike a crushing blow against them and avenge the Versailles diktat.

In America, the mood was more somber. Expecting a potential British-German military alliance against the Soviet Union, the Central Workers' Government voted to mobilise for war. The resulting resolution was referred to the full plenum of the Congress of Soviets for ratification on 1 July 1939. The resolution inducted all militia members into active duty service in the Armed Forces, and established a three-year universal service requirement. The economy shifted to a war footing, reorienting most of the civilian economy towards the production of war materiel. Rationing, wage and price controls, and compulsory recycling of important raw materials would begin in the fall.

 

[Miss Teri]

A Study of International Liaison Department Missions to the Global South Prior to the
World Revolutionary War (DeLeon-Debs:ResDev Corporation, 1972)

The ResDev Corporation is the Research and Development section of the Military-Industrial Complex, a federation of American state defense corporations. Incorporated in 1951, ResDev provides the Workers' and Farmers' Revolutionary Army and REVCOM with research and analysis on a variety of topics, ranging from nuclear weapons in space to nuclear wars to secret operations behind enemy lines. ResDev also acts as the public face of the Military-Industrial Complex, publishing its research widely and focusing on a variety of topics also pertaining to civilian government functions, such as health care and economic planning. The following was prepared as part of a study of the growth of communist movements in the Global South

[...]

With Comintern's newfound independence from Soviet foreign policy, the OMS [otdel mezhdunarodnoy svyazi, or "International Liaison Department"] would undergo its own changes. With the increased influence of Solon DeLeon and American communists in the organization, [incumbent leader Osip] Piatnitsky was replaced by J. Peters, an Hungarian-American WCPA organizer, who had acted effectively as a Comintern liaison within the party and director of "underground activities". Peters brought with him several other operatives from the WCPA underground, including John Abt and Alger Hiss, to reorient the organization to align with the new outlook of world revolution. They were to focus on building ties with communist parties worldwide and push a more subversive line to ensure success.
They would see only minor success in the Latin American revolutions, with the bulk of support coming from the WFRA and local organizers. However, by the late 30's, their energies would be utilized in regions regarded as having the highest potential of revolution, being regions of high social or economic tensions. Most were colonial regions in the Global South, mostly run by the British and French empires. Indeed, between 1937 and 1940, several "missions" by the OMS were established in these regions to help build the local Communist parties, establish an "underground apparatus", and build the resources needed for a revolution. Helping coordinate these efforts was J. Edgar Hoover, both after his retirement as Secretary of Public Safety and his eventual return to that office.

The missions were made to the following regions, among others.

Algeria ("Sinbad")

The Communist Party of Algeria originally started as an extension of the French Section of Communist International (Section française de l'Internationale communiste, SFIC), and was eventually recognized by Comintern in 1935.

As an extension of the French party, it would largely support its stance on continued French rule over Algeria. This and its majority Pied Noir membership did not endear it to the majority Muslim population. OMS identified the possible riff as a stumbling block towards allowing the population to radicalize.

Thus, Operation Sinbad was to build up the support amongst the Muslim population. The task was made slightly difficult by the decimation of the local proletariat during the Great War, when young Algerian men were sent to the mainland to work.

Still, Sinbad had some minor success organizing wildcat strikes and successfully recruiting more Muslims into the organization. It was also relatively more successful in the region partly because the PCA was legal and supported the continued presence of the French.

However, the PCA would find itself in competition with the Algerian People's Party (Parti du Peuple Algérien, PPA), a left-leaning nationalist party formed in 1937. The PPA was banned after its formation, but found itself far more popular amongst the populace for openly advocating for independence, and superceded the PCA in some regions.[...]

OMS would gradually come to see the PPA as the main vehicle for radicalization, and the SFIC's (and by extension the PCA's) pro-Dominion position insufficient. Following the war and from the beginning of the (as of writing) ongoing insurgency in Algeria in 1954, OMS has been supporting the PPA's successor organization the National Liberation Front (Front de Liberation Nationale, FLN) and has been directing the PCA to support them and independence from Franco-British rule.

Egypt ("Ozymandias")

OMS identified Egypt as a potential fascist hotspot, especially after the Italian occupations of neighboring Libya and Ethiopia. Indeed, the local press was increasingly pro-Italian and pro-Hitler, lauding the industrial accomplishments under fascism. Furthermore, the sovereigns Faud and Farouk were seen as pro-Italian, as were members of their government. Thus, it was necessary to ferment revolutionary thought to counteract this sympathy.

The problem? The local Communist Party had been repressed after strikes and conflicts with the ruling Wafd Party during the mid-1920's, and Comintern had failed to reinvigorate it in the past. Indeed, Egypt would eventually be represented in Comintern by the Palestinian Communist Party. However, with the American Revolution, reviving a communist party in Egypt was seen as more possible now than after the strike.

Thus, "Operation Ozymandias" was to essentially rebuild the Egyptian Communist Party from scratch. By the late 30's, most of the very small communist activity had centered on universities and the European emigre community, both of which were starting points for Ozymandias. Luckily, there was already somewhat of an organization in Ithiad Ansar Al-Salam or Union of Peace Partisans, founded by Swiss emigre Paul Jacquot-Descombes. Said organization was roped into the renewed efforts to revive the Communist Party.

The Egyptian Communist Party was reformed in a secret conference in Alexandria in 1937. Given previous attempts had failed in part because of overt Comintern involvement, it was decided to instead make their involvement more discreet. The leadership would consist of younger activists recruited from universities, often from the middle and intellectual class as well as many Egyptian Jews, and the membership of the Union of Peace Partisans.

Later prominent leaders of the ECP, including Hillel Schwartz, Youssef Darwish, and Henri Curiel would be among those recruited during this initial meeting.

Ozymandias would work to build this party up, recruit more activists to round it out, and build relationships with local unions. It would also publish various journals and newspapers to combat covert attempts by the Italians to pump up their propaganda and influence in Egypt.

By 1940, a sufficiently large, more robust Communist Party had arisen, in spite of continued state oppression and the rise of fascist sympathizers under Maher Pasha.

India ("Gunga Din")

While the then-banned Communist Party of India (CPI) was the officially sanctioned Comintern party in the region, OMS recognized that the socialist inclined Indian National Congress had a wider range across the subcontinent and a greater potential to radicalize and achieve independence from British rule, especially with the formation of the Congress Socialist Party, a left wing faction, in 1934. However, the party was currently under Fabian socialist Jawaharlal Nehru, and the leadership largely supported and espoused the non-violent Satyagraha philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi, viewed as "anti-rationalist" and "spiritualist" by some on the left.

To this end, the CPI was directed to abandon its once-staunch anti-Gandhian and anti-Congress stance, and began to align with the Congress Socialist Party to radicalize Congress. Helping was the recently released former CPI leader MN Roy, who urged communists to join the Congress Socialist Party.

Under Operation Gunga Din, OMS officers recruited both native Indian communists and Indian exiles in the United Republics and Soviet Union to help this shift even further. They organized drives for the CSP and promoted leftists within Congress elections. With most communist parties in India illegal and underground, Gunga Din also provided significant funds and organizers to these underground parties to help their illegal operations and to fund the Communist affiliated All-India Trade Union Congress. Subhas Chandra Bose, an activist in exile in the United Republics since 1935 was singled out as a potential unifying figure for the disparate left-wing nationalist factions, and in 1937, was smuggled back into the country, where he rejoined Congress. OMS hoped that Bose could potentially lead the Congress away from Gandhism and more in a Marxist direction, allowing for revolutionary thought to spread further. Bose himself, while still mostly nationalist, had become very enthusiastically impressed with the example of American communism and saw it as a model for a Revolutionary India, advocating as much .

The Hindustani Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), still dealing in more aggressive action against the Dominion, were still opposed to Gandhian non-violence and despite their increased pro-American stance, felt the Popular Front strategy would be insufficient. Bhagat Singh, the leader of the HSRA, denounced the decision, and pledged to "continue the struggle against imperialism by all means necessary." To that end, Bose and journalist (and OMS recruit) Virendranath Chattopadhyaya met with Singh and fellow head Chandrasekhar Azad to iron out any differences. While the meeting failed to get their support, Azad and Singh agreed to privately urge support for Bose, while OMS agreed to help set up the HSRA's underground operations

By 1938, while the CSP had become thoroughly radicalized and Marxist thanks to its communist members, the leadership of the INC largely remained loyal to Gandhi and Nehru, who were suspicious of Bose and his ties with the communist party. Bose tried to run for Congress president in 1938, but lost to Gandhi's ally Pattabhi Sitaramayya. With the rift between the Gandhian and socialist faction in Congress growing, Gunga Din shifted gears. Instead of trying to convert the Indian National Congress to the left, it would instead use the network of underground operations and left-wing parties to build a radical alliance of left-wing groups to British rule. Bose attempted one final time to shift the INC to a pro-America position, through an editorial in the party newspaper. However, that only widened the rift.

Bose would see the Congress, under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru, as insufficient to achieving independence, and eventually began negotiations to create a new party with the CSP. The left wing parties allied under Gunga Din, including the CPI and HSRA, joined in negotiations on advice of OMS, and Bose and the CSP would eventually leave the party en masse in December of 1938.

Gunga Din would provide funds and agents as Bose and the affiliated parties attempted to build the "All-India Forward Bloc", which would be a mass party for left wing Indians opposed to British rule and wanting complete independence, with significant ties to the All-India Trade Union. These efforts paid off on 10 February 1939, when the "Indian Workers' Party", modeled on the Commonwealth Workers' Party in Britain, was formed. As the de facto legitimate front for the CPI, it was officially made a member of the Third Communist International several days later.

Indonesia ("Komodo")

The Communist Party of Indonesia was among the first communist parties to be established in Asia. However, the organization lacked a base of party militants and connections to the broader class. Misjudging their strength based on the appeal bourgeois-nationalist rhetoric, the PKI became involved in the disastrous July Uprising in 1936. Consequently, the party was banned by the Dutch colonial government and its activities were thoroughly suppressed by the colonial garrison. However, enough party members survived in exile, under Comintern veteran Tan Malaka, Alimin and Musso remained to reconstitute the Party in Chengdu, Moscow and Hawaii.

In the meantime, the Dutch had entered a deal with Imperial Japan to "co-manage" the Dutch East Indies in a "consortium", which eventually resulted in de facto Japanese control of the islands in 1938. Thus, OMS sought to build an underground apparatus for the PKI to actively resist Japanese rule.

Operation Komodo was, in effect, a funding of underground elements and armed resistance to Japanese rule. PKI exiles were trained by Comintern military officials and smuggled back to enact raids and encourage sabotage of Dutch and Japanese stations. The International Red Aid also clandestinely helped many political prisoners with their legal defense.

However, with the total destruction of party infrastructure, effective uprooting of remaining underground cells by the notorious PID (Politieke Inlichtingen Dienst, Political Intelligence Department) and internment of most political prisoners to remote areas such as the notorious Boven Digoel camp, the idea of a total revolution against Dutch-Japanese rule was out of the question. For the time being, minor acts of sabotage and smuggling would have to do before a revolutionary war could liberate them.

Despite these hardships, by 1940 an underground movement, the Geraf, or Gerakan Rakyat Anti-Fasis (Anti-Fascist People's Movement) was established. Nominally a nationalist organization with an anti-Japanese bent, the organization was a front for the illegal PKI to organize strikes and other such underground actions and Japanese rule was met with more difficulty. With the outbreak of the Second World War the party in exile also helped in organizing IVA volunteers, and perhaps ironically, working alongside with the British as they entered the war in Southeast Asia. [...]

These efforts would be instrumental in gaining mass support for communism in the region in the lead-up to and during the war as the tide turned against the Japanese and their Indonesian collaborators. Indeed, the political tensions and current PKI insurgency can be traced to this early support.

Iran ("Scheherazade")

Reza Shah Pahlavi's regime in the Imperial State of Iran was identified by the 1935 OMS circular as a probable threat to the USSR in the event of future hostilities with the British Empire. Reza Shah had done little to improve opinions of his state by warming relations with Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, Iran maintained crucial trade relations with the USSR, something the urban middle strata depended on.

Reza Pahlavi had overthrown the Qajar dynasty in 1925 and proclaimed himself Shah of a modernizing, secular regime. With the revenues provided by the Ango-Persian Oil Corporation, Reza Shah had been somewhat successful in this endeavor, but the British military presence in the Near East combined with so much extraterritorial control of the oil itself undermined the Shah's attempts at independence.

Ultimately the Shah's regime could appease no one. The tribes in the rural regions were subject to increased interference. The traditional power of the clerics was threatened by the new secular regime. The urban middle class chafed against the imperial bureaucracy and the subaltern status in the British sphere of influence. And the growing working class and petty-producer peasantry were being squeezed under the labor required to support the splendor of the Imperial State.

The situation in Iran was deemed ripe for revolution, and in 1936 OMS established a Near East section, chaired by Kermit Roosevelt, operating out of the American consulate in Tehran. Kermit Roosevelt's experience in Army Intelligence during the First World War led to his recruitment by the People's Secretariat for Public Safety, into the nascent MDSS. He spoke Farsi and Arabic fluently, a "token of a misspent youth," and in spite of his perceived political faults as a brother of a prominent DRP politician, Roosevelt was credentialed as part of the diplomatic mission to Tehran.

Operating as a "legal" with diplomatic cover gave Roosevelt additional tools in cultivating a network of allies in Iran as part of Operation Scheherazade, massaging the opinions of liberal intellectuals in the capital and providing diplomatic pressure to ease the work of "illegals" in the operation in organizing trade unions and networks within the army.

Scheherazade provided funds and organizational talent to spearhead the formation of the Party of the Masses of Iran, or Tudeh. The new mass-based party would serve as the public face of the underground Communist Party of Iran.

But most importantly, Roosevelt found sympathizers in the army. Young men like Colonel Ahmad Zirakzadeh had become inspired by the success of modernizing socialist revolutions in the USSR and Latin America, and had sought to bring the fruits of Bolshevism to their own country.

Philippines ("Bernardo")

The Philippine Left had significant power beforehand thanks to its close association with the independence movement and its close relations between the Socialist Labor Party of America, the International Workers' Solidarity Union and the Congreso Obrador Filipina (COF) during the country's time as an American colony. The political wing of the COF, the Workers' and Farmers' Party of the Philippines (PMMP, also known as the People's Party, PMP), held mass appeal to common Filipinos, thanks to the use of nationalist-populist rhetoric of leading figures such as Benigno Ramos and Lope K. Santos that merged the socialist programme with the cause for independence.

Things would come to a head in the ensuing American Revolution of 1933, which became a "go signal" for the PMMP (dubbed Sakdalistas after their newspaper, Sakdal, "to accuse") to initiate the Red February uprising, as the Revolution's Philippine front. Unlike in the other parts of the old United States' territorial empire though, the Philippine Islands failed to turn Red, with overt Japanese and British intervention happening. The failure of Red February and subsequent suppression of the Sakdalistas (whose influence was limited only to Luzon) became a window of opportunity to the OMS.

Operation Bernardo was initiated with the collaboration of exiled leaders Benigno Ramos and Crisanto Evangelista. Recognizing the close association of Leftism with the anti-American independence movement, it became imperative to reestablish the Sakdalistas as a moderate front org based on that idea: by co-opting the nationalist movement, the new Sakdalistas could help stem out a possible rise of fascism in the newly established Philippine Commonwealth.

Through the close collaboration of the OMS and the Sakdalistas, the Patriotic Movement (KM) was born. A "popular front" approach was laid out: there will be a main Front party, the Party of the Masses (LM), that will organize various sectors of society into mass organisations, mainly the workers (KMP), the peasants (SAMAKA), women (KK), and the youth (MPKP). In the long term, the KM was a strategy of dual power, forming a social backbone to restore the Sakdalistas until a second uprising is possible.

To further its agenda, its symbolism, rhetoric and imagery was made to echo that of the Katipunan, and its central front party, the Party of the Masses (LM) is to articulate this new populist ideology. The LM's official programme, "National Democracy", was an (admittedly) peculiar chimera of DeLeonism and Fabianism meant to be a cover for the Sakdalista's political aims. The true core of the Sakdalistas however, the PMMP, was secretly refounded in Ilocos Norte as the Communist Party (PKP) by the surviving central committee. Learning from the failures of the failed Red February, a militia was also formed, the People's Volunteers (KB, Kasapi ng Bayan) which served to provide mutual aid, self defense training and protection for the poor.

Narrowly avoiding persecution, the KM would prove to be the most dominant force in the Philippine left, and later the independence movement. By the 1940s, their influence had become strong enough to reorganize its militant and civilian sections into the People's Army (HUKBA) and the Revolutionary Democratic Councils (KDR) during Japan's invasion.

Somalia ("Othello")

OMS had identified "the lynchpin of African decolonisation" in Italian East Africa. Agitation in the present "Italian East Africa" would not only secure one of the more economically developed regions in Africa for the international revolution, control of the Horn of Africa and the seas around it would block the transit of the Red Sea, rendering the vital sea lane to India through Suez impassable.

J. Peters' Africa Commission also favored the investment of resources in covert operations in East Africa due to the large number of Italian exiles available to be utilized as intermediaries and case officers. Since the Italo-Abyssinian War, a rush of Italian land speculators and business interests had been flocking to East Africa, swamping the small community of settlers with unfamiliar faces.

OMS would recruit heavily from the recent Italian diaspora in Metropolis. Established as "Operation Othello" on 17 July 1937, the operation would scout and recruit sixty-eight Italian and Italian-American communists to serve as principle case officers. Recruits were trained in intelligence fieldcraft by the MID. Officers were given cover identities established through networks of informants in the Italian Mafia in Cuba.

Case officers were inserted gradually over the summer of 1938 representing various commercial interests. Many eagerly jumped at the chance to get back in the fight against Mussolini. Others joined because of an earnest effort to do their part in the international struggle.

[...]Amadeo Bordiga, whose influence extends beyond his work for OMS, was recruited to work as a courier for Operation Othello. His work would be typical of the project. OMS obtained him a Cuban passport with the cover identity of "Bartolomeo Mazza", an Italian immigrant engineer raised in the former United States and now stateless after the events of the Red May Revolution.

"Mazza" would represent a small architectural firm looking to get in on the Italian land rush in East Africa and Libya. With this cover, Bordiga and other agents assigned to the project would be able to make clandestine contacts with Somali workers and nationalists.

[...]Aside from gaining important intelligence about the disposition of Italian and British military assets in the area, Operation Othello laid the groundwork for forming a cohesive resistance to the Italian colonial administration. The underground Somali Communist Party would form among this network, with its core membership base in the rapidly growing capital of Italian East Africa, Mogadishu, particularly among the dockworkers and new migrants drawn into the city's new industrial enterprises and the new railway projects.

Othello also served as a means of identifying and cultivating future cadre leadership within Somalia. The time had proven ripe; the thin layer of affluent Somali compradors had been alienated by the heavy handed nature of Italian colonial rule. The utter failure of the largely tribal and religious based resistance movements such as the Dervish movement that petered out in the early 1920s, had demoralized traditional means of resisting colonial rule. In the 1930s, the Communist International stepped in to provide the only road forward.

As the network spread into British Somaliland and the Ogaden region in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, Operation Othello gained new contacts within the Zapité colonial auxiliaries in IEA and the British Somaliland Constabulary. Promising secondary school graduates in Mogadishu were recruited to attend the Communist University of the Toilers of Africa in Birmingham, New Afrika.

While the Italian colonial administration worked to stamp out labor organisations, the Othello mission itself managed to go unnoticed. The large influx of settlers, coupled with the state of corruption in the Fascist state apparatus enabled the well trained and supported organizers to avoid raising alarm bells. Even as Italian East Africa was mobilised as part of the broader Fascist war efforts in 1939 onwards, the existence of the Othello network remained secret.

The success of the operation owed largely to the ability of the network to push agitators away from acts of immediate resistance to more innocuous movement building. Thus, the Othello network was able to transition to active measures once fighting spread to East Africa in the World Revolutionary War...

South Africa ("Cagn")

The potential response from the Union of South Africa, a Dominion of the British Empire dominated by a white settler minority, was viewed as a major concern by the OMS in the future development of decolonization in the African continent. As the most industrialized country in the continent at the time, it was considered a dangerous lynchpin of probable reaction in the region. Therefore, it was considered vital to focus on undermining the white minority regime from within. Simultaneously, because of its increased industrialization and the mechanization of farms (causing many to work in factories), it had a sizeable working class by which to radicalize, which made it a potential hotspot for revolution.

OMS identified several groups with the sufficient resources and outreach to oppose white minority rule: their own representative, the Communist Party of South Africa, itself increasingly influenced by American DeLeonism and Langston Hughes' conception of a "nation of nations", and had been multi-racial and supportive of a "Native Republic" ideal, on encouragement from Comintern; The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union, influenced by the Industrial Workers of the World; the South African Labour Party, which focused on the white working class; and the African National Congress, a black nationalist, leftist organization.

Operation Cagn, therefore, sought to unify these disparate groups to a cohesive leftist alternative to the National and United Parties. The core cadre for Cagn would be drawn from the South in the UASR. White Southern communists, who'd learned to overcome the color line in the labor struggles of the 1920s and the partisan war of 1933, would provide the outreach to white working-class groups. Black communists, meanwhile, would be the liaisons to the CPSA and ANC.

Operation Cagn brought crucial monetary and training resources to the struggle against white minority rule. Since South Africa was currently still under a liberal United Party government, organization could occur more openly, with the current political consensus in Pretoria wishing to maintain relative labor peace and avoid another Rand Rebellion.

Overall command of Operation Cagn was given to Major Walter Garland, an MID intelligence officer, until his reassignment in October 1940. Garland identified the three primary strategies of Operation Cagn in his July 1937 memorandum: subvert or otherwise destroy the Labour Party, forge an alliance between the CPSA and the ANC, and unite the disparate trade unions into a single federation that organized workers across the color line.

Early work within the Labour Party concluded it to be a lost cause. With its more moderate wing already splintered into Jan Smuts' United Party, the rump of the party-leadership were resolutely white nationalist. Instead, work was shifted to identifying constituencies amenable to cross racial solidarity while focusing resources on the African, Indian and the mixed-race "Coloured" populations.

This work was aided by warming relations between the UASR and the British Dominions, part of the carefully coordinated charm offensive to drive a wedge between them and the Empire. In South Africa, this would be aided by the establishment of the South African/American Friendship League (SAAFL), founded by left-wing intellectuals with contacts in the trade unions. SAAFL distributed propaganda, at the behest of Operation Cagn, to mollify white fears of a race war in South Africa. Using the prosperity brought by white/black cooperation in New Afrika as a setpiece, SAAFL hoped to push white workers away from white nationalism.

These were admittedly very rosy, idealized depictions of the state of race relations in the UASR, but enough to serve as the basis for struggle among a white working class that felt increasingly betrayed by the industrialization of the Dominions.

The mechanization of agriculture and the expansion of major mining, industrial and shipping interests in South Africa had resulted in the breaking of the small white landholder class, and the ballooning of urban populations. Demand for industrial labor greatly exceeded the available white population, even with the trickle of emigres from North America. Black and "Coloured" labor had to be pulled into the cities and mining towns, and the post Rand Rebellion labor peace was totally unsustainable.

The work on establishing a congress of South African trade unions began in earnest in June 1939, with the expansion of the shipbuilding industry in Cape Town. The project, the outcome of the UK's "Dominionisation" policy, had encouraged the Dominions to expand their native defence industries. In South Africa, this meant not just the development of a native arms industry to supply small arms and artillery, but also the establishment of a South African Navy to be supported at least in part by domestically produced corvettes for anti-submarine and convoy escort duty.

The government would use a mixture of legal and extralegal measures to suppress the formation of cross-racial trade unions with some success until South Africa's entry into the Second World War, when the government finally gave recognition to the South African Council of Trade Unions, which would quickly subsume the remaining holdouts due to its central position in managing labor relations with the war cabinet.

 

[Aelita]

Sharpened Sickle: the WFRA Prepares for War

Operation Red Banner, the 1935 joint exercises with the RKKA provided the first major refinement of the experience accumulated in the Civil War. Conducted in corps level field operations as well as army level war game simulations, and supplemented with a host of scientific testing, Red Banner put the new army through its paces.

The results identified the major areas of deficiency in the WFRA. Still a young army finding its footing, there was tremendous room for improvement. On an organizational level, the Army still was structured much as it was as the ad hoc army of the Civil War. The officer corps was free of dead wood, but still building up its young and passionate core. The NCOs and enlisted men were courageous, but the science of modern combat on the tactical, operational and strategic level was still being worked out.

In 1935, the WFRA had just short of 800,000 officers and enlisted, though of that number a sizeable fraction were still in training. The core of the Army's fighting strength were its thirty infantry divisions, organized into ten corps.

One third of these divisions were between half and three-quarters strength in men. They were further hindered by a lack of standardization in infantry small arms, artillery and motorization, though these problems were already being worked out. The field armies of the Great War existed only as minimal headquarters for organizational purposes, attached to each of the planned defense districts.

Each corps headquarters had sizable support brigades for artillery, reconnaissance, engineering, and anti-aircraft duties. To supplement the corps in the attack, each corps maintained a corps mobile group, consisting of a tank brigade and a mechanized cavalry brigade. Additional battalions of infantry support tanks were dispersed into some of the corps.

Red Banner proved what many patrons of the Tank Arm had already believed. The Unified Military Doctrine's concept of deep operations had received additional validation. By masking intentions through concealment, disinformation and emulation, the Red Army could achieve superior correlations of forces at the chosen point of attack. Carefully timed with the resulting tactical breakthrough, mechanized forces would move through the breach and into the enemy's operational depths to sever lines of communication, secure important ground, destroy logistical concentrations and achieve encirclement of enemy forces.

These operations were too complex to be organized on a corps level. While corps level mobile groups had important tactical utility, the depth of enemy formations limited the effectiveness of such penetrations.

These operations would have to be conducted on the army or front level to achieve optimal penetration into the enemy's rear area, and require greater concentrations of tanks and mechanized infantry. Existing equipment was not fit to purpose. The tanks of the mobile group would need greater armor and firepower to protect themselves against the expected proliferation of anti-tank forces. They would require additional infantry to screen their attacks and to hold ground for exploitation.

The line infantry would need additional support to achieve its tactical breakthroughs. Close support artillery and heavy tanks would be needed.

---

Stavka formalized a new series of Operational Requirements in 1936 to supplement the new infantry rifles, machine guns and mortars already entering service. In addition to the planned new tanks, armored infantry carriers, assault guns, self-propelled artillery and attack aircraft were ordered.

In anticipation of this new equipment, the Army would be reorganized under new, standard tables of organization and equipment. The existing corps would be reorganized as rifle corps. The corps level artillery assets were strengthened, while the existing mobile groups were detached. In their place, the corps would receive a breakthrough heavy tank brigade.

The breakthrough tank brigade would consist of three battalions, each of three thirteen tank companies, for a total of forty-tanks per battalion. Regulations specified that the tank brigades were to train extensively with the corps infantry. In operations, the battalions could be detached to each support an infantry division, or combined to support a single main-effort.

Two or three rifle corps would be combined into an army. Under this arrangement, the army would be the main operational formation for the time being, though the 1937 edition of FM 100-5 would ominously note that this was a transitional arrangement until the establishment of front-level operational requirements. As such, much of the logistical train would be organized under the army headquarters. With this reorganization, all logistical related activities were centralized in the WFRA's Intendance Arm, and all major field formations would now have a deputy commander for supply immediately subordinate to the commanding officer.

The field army would support army-level objectives with organic support from aviation and artillery assets. Exploitation into the operational depths would be conducted by the army mobile group, consisting of a mechanized corps and supporting assets.

In spite of their name, under this schema the mechanized corps were actually divisional-equivalent units, consisting of two tank brigades and a mechanized infantry brigade. The tank brigades themselves consisted of three tank battalions. Each battalion had two companies of tanks and a mechanized infantry company.

The formation of the mechanized corps came soon after the Wehrmacht formed its first Panzer divisions. These parallel developments were not intended to counter one another; the Revolutionary Military Council in 1936 still saw the UK as its primary strategic opponent, and imagined the support of Soviet operations in central Europe as a secondary concern. They instead expected to fight in Canada and across North Africa in their blows against British imperialism.

The first mechanized corps were not as tank heavy as the first Panzer divisions. Each tank battalion had twenty-two medium and eleven light tanks, resulting in a brigade strength of one hundred tanks supported by organic infantry. On the march, each brigade would be supported by one of the infantry brigade's battalions.

The field manuals of the tank brigades stressed the importance of effective cooperation with infantry elements, a lesson learned harshly in the Civil War, where many tank units had been wasted in attacks without infantry support. The tanks and infantry trained together for the support of the operational objectives in attack and defense.

---

The modernisation of the Red Army would proceed rapidly in the years following. Building on the lessons of the Civil War and ongoing experience gleaned from intervention in the Spanish Civil War, the Revolutionary Military Council structured equipment, doctrine and training to favor flexibility, mobility and firepower. The triangular infantry division was the army's backbone, and with the reforms of 1936-7, it would emerge a fully motorised formation, allowing not only a solid logistical base, but also the means of rapid redeployment of a full regiment.

At the base, the infantry platoon was the embryonic combined arms team, consisting of 3 thirteen man sections and a mortar team led by a lieutenant. The belt-fed MG-5 general purpose machine gun formed the core of the section's firepower. In its light bipod configuration, the MG-5 was portable by a single man. His assistant would carry an extra barrel and assist in the operation of the gun.

The riflemen of the section would engage in fire and maneuver armed with M1 Garand semi automatic rifles. Both weapons utilized the 7 x 51 mm intermediate cartridge, firing the 8 gram M37 ball in the vicinity of 840 m/s. In spite of being much lighter than the standard ball for the 7.7 x 63 mm from M1903 Springfield, the boat-tail shape ensures long range terminal performance isn't impaired. The gain is lighter ammunition and weapons that are more controllable with less recoil, allowing the section to carry more firepower and utilize it more effectively.

The most important innovations, though, were less the weapons themselves and the tools that enabled the weapons to be utilized effectively. Each platoon commander had a radioman and a backpack carried M38 two-way radio. Each level of headquarters had signals detachments suited to its communications needs, including encrypted telegraph radios at regiment level or above.

The radio not only allowed faster and more accurate communication on maneuver, it allowed the rapid shifting of tactics based on the situation, and a shift away from pre-planned artillery barrages to a faster, more dynamic targeting of artillery support, a doctrine which continued to evolve and be refined into the war.

The expansion of signals was paralleled in the mechanised forces. Each tank or armored infantry carrier would have a radio-set. Soldiers trained not only on the effective usage of signals, but also on the tactical and operational need for radio silence.

---

In addition to the comprehensive planning by the General Staff's Military-Industrial Committee to rapidly mobilise the UASR and her allies' industry, natural resources and labor for a war economy, the Revolutionary Military Council worked diligently to prevent the calamity that had befallen the National Army in the Great War, where masses of poorly prepared, ill-led men were slaughtered on the Western Front.

In 1934, the Revolutionary Military Academy at West Point began a major expansion. A sister institution, the Hans Kahle Military Academy in Harlan, Kentucky, was established. A system of military boarding schools was established to fast-track willing volunteers for a future as officers and NCOs. The polytechnic secondary schools and the Pioneer League youth movement would also provide basic physical and military education for the nation's youth.

These primarily recreational matters would go a long-way to preparing the youth coming of age in the workers' republic with the basic skills that would ease the transition to military life. A population already proficient with the basic use of firearms, comfortable with their use and cleaning, and who had learned the basics of bushcraft could be more rapidly advanced to more substantive military matters.

Major innovations in nutrition, as well as public programs for community canteens and other means of food support were spearheaded as much by the military as social welfare groups. The Great Depression had left the population underfed and scrawny, to the point where Stavka identified it as the leading national security issue.

Ensuring youths were eating healthily and exercising, comfortable handling firearms and camping led into the final component: the creation of a large pool of reservists. The nation had a modest pool of reservists already, from the millions of men who served in the Great War as well as the several million men who'd served in the National Guards during the 1920s and early 30s under the Selective Service Act of 1921. But they had trained for a different army, and some of them were getting advanced in age. They were inducted in the second and third reserve categories, based on age.

Beginning in the fall of 1934, the UASR established a system of universal military service. Upon graduation from secondary school or reaching the age of majority, all men and women would serve six-months in the Armed Masses Militia, an auxiliary force of the WFRA. An adjunct system was established in the nation's universities, providing basic military training for students who would be mobilised as specialists. The system existed to provide the raw material the military would draw from whether as volunteers or to be mobilised in the event of war.

The large facilities established for training recruits, as well as the command infrastructure for this training, would be utilized to rapidly expand the military in the event of war. In tandem, the WFRA began establishing cadre forces for new divisions, able to be rapidly expanded into new units.

---

By virtue of America's mercantile interests and her total dominance of the North American continent, the Navy has historically been the senior service. The Army might undergo crash expansions in periods of crisis, but it was the Navy's priorities that endured even in peacetime.

This was true even in the era immediately after the revolution. The WFRN still absorbed the greatest share of outlays, beginning a naval arms race against both the British and Japanese empires. This calculus changed overnight, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

By the summer of 1938, the gap between perceived and actual threats became apparent. For all the provocation from the naval arms race and the militarization of the border with Canada, the growth in British arms spending was highly restrained. Britain remained committed to its traditional doctrine of limited war, and would not risk its treasure fighting total wars in North America or continental Europe.

By contrast, the German Reich was militarizing with reckless abandon, and had poorly concealed its intent to engage in a wars of aggression and settler colonialism in the east. Regardless of Soviet actions or intentions, the Nazis were intent upon waging war upon them.

Britain had no intention of joining, let alone leading, a broad anti-communist crusade. It was, however, more than happy to use Germany as its catspaw. British and French capital continued to pour into the German Reich, and with the termination of guarantees on Czechoslovakia, it appeared that the threat of German dominion on the continent was an acceptable price to secure the empire without going to war.

On 16 July 1938, the Central Executive Council held a secret session to vote on mobilizing for war against Germany. While this would not be a declaration of war as such, the national economy would move to a war-footing, and the two-tier system in the military would end, with Armed Masses Militia conscripts being inducted directly into the military.

The vote failed based on the counsel provided by Soviet ambassador Konstantin Umansky that the Soviet government was pursuing a non-aggression pact with Germany that was certain to delay war with the Soviet Union, and could ensure an inter-imperialist war over continental Europe.

A more modest expansion of the WFRA was instead authorized on a purely voluntary basis. Through recruitment drives and re-enlistment, it would expand by almost 400,000 soldiers, to just over 1.5 million men by year end 1939.

Concomitant, there was a major expansion of Army Ground Forces and Army Air Forces field formations. The tank and mechanized infantry brigades were expanded into full divisions. The much enlarged mechanized corps were moved from the army-level headquarters to serve as the basis of front-level mobile groups. The field armies would maintain a mobile group of 1-2 tank or mechanised divisions plus supporting brigades.

[...]

With the fall of Poland on 14 June 1939, the direction the next war would take became apparent. If France and Britain would not go to war over Poland, then the German drive to the east would continue, non-aggression pact or not. The Revolutionary Military Council indefinitely suspended all core planning for Case Sepoy, the planned offensives against the British Empire, and refocused all resources for Case Nevsky, the contingency plan to support the USSR in a defensive war against Germany and her allies.

Based on the assumption that war, one way or the other, was inevitable, and that a major German offensive could begin within ten months, on 30 June the RMC gave its official recommendation to the CEC to begin mobilising for war.

At 10 A.M. the next day, Premier Foster gave his address on the matter. Broadcast by radio and television, Foster's address warned of the alignment between Germany, Britain and France, citing the revocation of guarantees to Poland and the unprovoked war of conquest as proof that war could be imminent. While carefully steering away from any talk about inevitability, Foster argued instead that a strong and profound determination to defend the revolution could deter further aggression.

The CEC voted that afternoon to mobilise for war. The vote was unanimous, with the small opposition from Christian pacifists in the DFLP and the DRP agreeing to abstain rather than oppose the measure. In immediate terms, it mobilised the entirety of the Militia into active military service, and established a three-year universal service obligation. An additional 600,000 reservists were called up.

This spike in global tension rippled outwards. In Canada, the government of R.B. Bennett used the resulting political crisis to declare a state of unlimited national emergency, through which he and the cabinet could govern virtually by decree. The Permanent Active Militia was restructured in August into the Canadian Army, and began conscription for the defense of Canada. The federal and provincial governments began surveillance and repression activities against the Workers' Party of Canada, especially the Francophone section Quebec by the provincial government of Premier Adrien Arcand.

In the United Kingdom, the government publicly downplayed the threat of war, but the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Samuel Hoare had issued instructions to the Royal Navy to prepare all measures necessary to ensure the freedom of British merchant vessels, an instruction understood by the professional leadership of the Royal Navy to prepare for an American policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

By contrast, the government of Nazi Germany paid little attention to these developments. As planning developed for Operation Teutonic, both the senior Nazi leadership and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht considered American involvement to be a non-issue for their operational objectives. The messy outcomes of the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts, and the assumptions of Nazi ideology had assured that victory could be achieved after a quick, brutal campaign. Once the door was kicked in, the whole rotten structure would come tumbling down, and by the time the decadent Americans could get involved, they'd have already taken Moscow.

Appendix: 1938 Tables of Organization

Spoiler: Tables of Organization

Infantry Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Infantry Regiment
  • 3 x Infantry Battalion
    • 3 x Infantry Company
      • 3 x Infantry Platoon
        • 48 men, 3 light machine guns, 1 x 57mm mortar
      • Weapons Platoon (45 men)
        • Machine Gun section
          • 12 men, 2 medium machine guns
        • Mortar section
          • 17 men, 3 light mortars
        • Anti-tank rifle section
          • 9 men, 3 anti-tank rifles
    • Weapons Company
      • 2 machine gun platoons
        • 44 men, 6 medium machine guns
      • Mortar platoon
        • 40 men, 6 x 81 mm mortars
    • Anti-tank platoon
      • 3 x 57 mm anti-tank guns
  • Cannon Company
    • 6 x 75 mm howitzer, 2 x 120 mm mortars
• Artillery Regiment
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
• Anti-tank battalion
  • 3 x anti-tank company
    • 12 x AT-57
• Assault gun company
  • 3 x gun platoon
    • 4 x SA-76
• Political Commissariat

Total: 16,500 men, 380 light and medium machine guns, 54 anti-tank guns, 24 infantry guns, 12 assault guns, 72 artillery pieces

Mechanised Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Mechanised Regiment
  • 3 x Mechanised Battalion
    • 3 x Mechanised Company
      • 3 x Mechanised Platoon
        • 3 x Rifle Section
          • 1 MC-36 half-track, 1 x 12.7mm HMG, 1 x 7 mm LMG, 12 Men
        • Mortar section
          • 1 MC-36 half-track, 1 x 12.7mm HMG, 1 x 81 mm mortar
      • Weapons Platoon (45 men)
        • Machine Gun section
          • 12 men, 2 HMG
        • Mortar section
          • 17 men, 3 x 81 mm mortars
        • Anti-tank rifle section
          • 9 men, 1 x 14.5 mm AT rifle
    • Weapons Company
      • 2 x machine gun platoons
        • 44 men, 6 medium machine guns
      • Mortar platoon
        • 40 men, 6 x 81 mm mortars
    • Anti-tank platoon
      • 3 x 57 mm anti-tank guns
  • Assault gun company
    • 3 x assault gun platoons
      • 4 x SA-76 assault guns
• Artillery Regiment*
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Tank battalion
  • 3 x Tank company
    • 3 x medium tank platoon
      • 4 x T-4 medium tank
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
  • Armored car company
    • 13 x SV-5 armored cars
  • Light tank company
    • 13 x T-3 light tanks
  • Mechanised company
• Anti-tank company
• Political Commissariat

Total: 17,450 men, 162 medium mortars, 36 assault guns, 40 medium tanks, 72 artillery pieces

Tank Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Tank Regiment
  • 2 x Tank battalion
    • 2 x Medium tank company
      • 3 x medium tank platoon
        • 4 x T-4 medium tank
    • Light tank company
      • 3 x light tank platoon
        • 4 x T-3 light tank
  • Mechanised battalion
  • Assault gun company
    • 3 x assault gun platoons
      • 3 x SA-76 assault guns
• Artillery Regiment*
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 GMC-4 self-propelled guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 GMC-5 self propelled guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
• Anti-tank company
• Political Commissariat

Total: 12,800 men, 90 light tanks, 166 medium tanks, 72 SPGs

Breakthrough Tank Brigade

• Brigade HQ
• 3 x Heavy Tank battalion
  • 3 x tank company
    • 3 x tank platoon
      • 3 T-5 heavy tanks
  • Maintenance company
• Service battalion
• Machine gun company
• Engineer company
• Reconnaissance company

Total: 94 heavy tanks, 1,850 men

Mechanised Corps

• Corps HQ
• 2 x Tank Division
• 1 x Mechanized Division
• Corps Artillery
  • SP Artillery Brigade
  • AAA regiment
• Material support brigade
• Engineer regiment
• Maintenance regiment
• Corps Reserve:
  • 1-2 Independent tank battalions
  • 1 Mechanized Brigade

Combined Arms Army

• Army HQ
• 3-4 Rifle Corps
  • 3 x Infantry Division
  • Corps Artillery
    • 1-2 artillery brigades
    • Anti-tank brigade
    • AAA regiment
  • Material support brigade
  • Engineer regiment
  • Corps Reserve:
    • Breakthrough Tank Brigade
    • Machine gun battalion
• Army mobile group
  • 1-2 Mechanized divisions
  • 1-2 Tank brigades
• Army Reserve
  • 1-2 Infantry Division
• Army Artillery HQ
  • 2-4 Artillery brigades
  • 1+ separate artillery regiment
  • 2-3 AAA regiment
  • 2-4 AT brigades
• Material Support Group
  • 2+ Material support brigades

 

[Aelita]

China Cannot Be Conquered!

December 7, 1939

Chungking, Republic of China

It had been very stressful for the past few months. The Japanese and their warlord puppets had managed to spread their tentacles to Wuhan, and now the Republic had evacuated to the stronghold of Chungking. The chaos was compounded by the disappearance of Chair Jiang Jieshi of the Supreme Council of National Defense in the midst of the retreat. For now, Vice-Chair Zhou Enlai was holding things together, even as the vultures like Wang Jingwei were maneuvering to take the vacant position.

Just where was the Commandant? As much as things did not go well in the past few years, it was never really the Commandant's fault when things come down to. The European capitalists had empowered the Japanese devils with near unlimited funds, and the Northeast had turned into an industrial hell sucking up half a million souls to fuel the output of infernal machines that were grinding up the brave soldiers who would become human bombs to keep even a single bit of dirt free. Exactly how was any one person to hold against such a daunting challenge? If that damn Wang was Chair, China would likely have already become conquered like what some previous Japanese monkey tried to do during the Ming. Zhou would never blame his dear Commandant for not liberating all of China.

There was a loud crash as a guard stumbled into his office. "Vice-Chair! Come quickly, there is something you must listen to!"

Intrigued, Zhou followed to the common room where a crowd was gathered around a radio shouting out a broadcast. "…The historical mission of our National Revolution will be fulfilled…"

It, it was the voice of the Commandant! Zhou pushed through to get close to the radio. Just where was the Commandant! Where was his dear speaking from! For all those months!

"… but by a dispirited and cowardly minority within the governing class and society of the time. Today, those evil forces are the Communists and the traitors who have been seduced by the poison..."

All suddenly fell silent at the words. This was the military leader of the Republic? Jiang Jieshi, who everyone here followed with all their heart, the shining wall against the barbaric hordes? He who managed to hold out against all the warlords trying to tear apart China? He who was the capstone in the KMT-CCP alliance that held despite all the clamoring for a purge by the Rightists? He who weathered the economic depression caused by the Americans when they devalued silver and strangled the Chinese people? He who held back the constant waves of the Japanese and their puppets, with all their industrialized steel daggers constantly stabbing into the heart of the workers? Just what was going on here! How, how was this possible!

Zhou suddenly felt dizzy and started falling backwards. Several caught him and sat him on a chair to recover. In the haze of semi-consciousness, Zhou looked at a poster on the war. It was of his Commandant standing firm with the people of China against the Japanese devils attempting to crash down like a series of Tsunami.



"…The cheers and rejoicings of our armies and people here have their deepest meaning in this upcoming new freedom of our long-oppressed compatriots. As such, I take upon the role of Chief Protector of the Chinese Nation, and will do all to work towards eradicating the Red Plague and liberating the nation! CHINA CANNOT BE CONQUERED!"

The speech ended, and some announcer was talking about the next speaker, some Japanese general. All of that did not register for Zhou, for his lover had gone over to the Japanese. His dear Commandant, a traitor against China… the sky had fallen upon him.

Someone came into the room, and Zhou recognized that weasel face: Wang Jingwei. "Ah, Vice-Chair Zhou, I figured you would be here. I've come to notify you that I am now the Chair of the Supreme Council of National Defense."

Zhou leap from the chair and grabbed Wang's collar. "You knew you fox! You knew what the Chair was doing yet did not inform us! Is this how you repay the kindness that allowed you to still be the political head! You good-for-nothing Zhang Bangchang!"

Others around Zhou pulled him off Wang. The latter coolly dusted off his collars and smirked at Zhou. "Ah, also, you will be replaced from the Vice-Chair position. I believe our Communist comrades need a few more commissars on the front, and you have been picked for such an esteemed role. Please pack up and go, time is scarce." Laughing, Wang left.

Fighting back tears, Zhou had only on thought on his mind: "Commandant, my Commandant, this must be some dream. Why have you forsaken us.

Full text of Jiang's Speech

"Right will triumph over might-this great truth which we never once doubted will be vindicated. Our faith in justice through black and hopeless days and long years of struggle will be rewarded. The historical mission of our National Revolution will be fulfilled.

We are fighting this war for our own national existence and for freedom to follow the course of national revolution laid down for us in the Three Principles of the People. We must instruct our people to take lessons from the annals of the Song and Ming dynasties. The fall of these two dynasties was not caused by outside enemies with a superior force, but by a dispirited and cowardly minority within the governing class and society of the time. Today, those evil forces are the Communists and the traitors who have been seduced by the poison.

I think of one very serious problem-how to make the peoples misguided by communists and their insidious supporters admit their mistakes and defeat, and recognize that our struggle for national independence, democracy and the welfare of all the people is more in harmony with truth and human rights than their struggle for land and power by means of violence and terrorism.

The enemy's evil designs on China will be thoroughly crushed. The people of China suffered and sacrificed more each year as our long war of defense went on. But the confidence that we would emerge victorious also grows from day today. Our fellow countrymen in the enemy-occupied areas have endured a long night of devastation and disgrace. However, they will be liberated and will see again the White Sun in the Blue Sky. The cheers and rejoicings of our armies and people here have their deepest meaning in this upcoming new freedom of our long-oppressed compatriots.

As such, I take upon the role of Chief Protector of the Chinese Nation, and will do all to work towards eradicating the Red Plague and liberating the nation!

CHINA CANNOT BE CONQUERED!

---

Note: this piece was requested by me from @Sumeragi , but since she cannot post right now and the posting must move on I've gotten her permission to post it here with her attribution.

 

[Spartakrod]

Production

Preliminary work​

Part of the success of the Commander Columbia animations in meeting the imposing deadlines put upon them was that much of the design work had already been done long before the work was approved. Certainly far more demanding than Hyperion's slate of just one film every year in the same timeframe. Animated shorts and graphics were also demanded, as well as assistance with the production of propaganda. And if it weren't for the massive amount of manpower thrown at the task, and money being no object, it probably would have been impossible.

Buoyed by foreign animation talent from the Soviet Union, China, and Latin America coming to America to gain experience and providing added manpower, the production process was to hit the ground running. To keep in accordance with labour laws regarding work hours, work on the films were done in rotating shifts and split amongst multiple teams working on different films. Overall creative direction would be left to Samantha, Spartak, and Samawal, and the three quickly sought to cultivate a lasting structure of coordination to effectively manage the resources given. Individual talent would come and go, but the underlying structure was to a rock and anchor for the whole of production.

With the animation race fully underway, America looked to Samantha's work to solidify America's position as the unquestionable leader within the field. With Fascist Italy's "Adventures of Pinocchio" having been the first animated feature film to be released in 1936 and other countries racing to produce more content in the media with ever-expanding breadths of techniques and technologies behind them, it was felt that the work that the Ruby Orchestra was doing would be necessary to provide America with a cultural tour de force to show that America's cultural industries not only had not faltered from the disruption of the revolution but had arisen stronger than ever.

Samantha and her team kept pace with the developments of animation work outside of the country, always poring over any details of the projects of other nations that they could find. The chief rivals identified were, of course, the lavishly funded programs of Germany, Italy, and Japan as well as the sponsored companies within the British and French Empires. Perhaps their fiercest rivalries though were with the Anglo-Canadian production of "Arthur the Second", the Japanese production of "the Saga of Susanoo", and the German film "The Knight of the West."

Even the scripts of the films were subject to acts of industrial espionage in an attempt to get a better idea of what each studio was up against. There was an unmistakable air of competitive fervour, and while the shift system and the rotating pool of animators from around the world would keep things moving, there was an undeniable degree of pressure on the staff assembled for the projects. But fortunately, as was mentioned before much was already done.

The first four films; Commander Columbia, Commander Columbia: Mission to China, Zeras the Hammer, and Blood and Iron already had a great deal of the script work done, and would generally require only modest editing to fit political realities and incorrect predictions about the course of geopolitics. Samantha had already expected that war would be coming to the Soviet Union, as did most of those working in the Ruby Orchestra.

Most had also figured that the enemy would be barbarous and brutal, based on their own experiences with the White Army, and Germany's past record when it came to dealing with dissent. Furthermore, the propaganda department saw value in portraying its expected enemies across the ocean as dangerous and terrible foes who would have to be confronted by all means available. The war to come was meant to be the final conflict

This in hindsight, made the decision to focus on figures who evoked death, darkness, and past Axis savagery such as Siegfried's clear evoking of the Teutonic Knight and Koschei's skeletal frame and skull face visage a wise one. The enemy was not simply of any conventional grade of evil, but something that was terror and death incarnate. The culmination of more than a thousand years of brutal colonialism and the destruction of native peoples to build empire, and the darkest, cruellest flower of human philosophy yet seen.

Despite what is commonly claimed however, it was not the invasion of Abyssinia that convinced the "Ruby Orchestra" to focus most of their ire on the fascist bloc over the Liberal powers under Britain's umbrella but instead a recommendation by the Proletkult Federation to put "Fascist Autocracy" at the forefront. It was felt that it would be best to ease audiences, especially still Anglo and Francophilic sections of the population into the conception with villains that everyone could agree on despising with even the True Democrats accepting the anti-fascist policies of D.C.

Countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France were widely regarded as preferable to the threat of the autocracies and oligarchies that dominated Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Japan. Thus it would be preferable to focus on the easy enemy at first, and as tensions surely ratcheted up towards confrontations; reveal the underlying menace of the British Empire and its allies.

Of course, reality has an odd way of not meeting expectations, and the great war with Britain would never come.

Animation Revolution​

However, another obstacle facing the team was one solidly in the technical realm. Animation was generally thought of as rather "slow", with nearly all action in animation being firmly in the realm of slapstick. In order to create the clash of the gods that she desired, the Ruby group would have to create multiple innovations in the field of animation that would still be important today, all meant to convey the speed and power of its combatants.

The new technology of multiplane cameras was pushed to its limits to depict frenzied, high speed, and high-intensity melees between the series' gods and devils, but perhaps most important were a number of "cheats" developed in order to properly convey the violent velocity of each struggle between deities.

Drawing characters as long and quickly animated motion blurs to depict enormous speed without having to show it, or even moving so quickly that the only thing truly visible would be vague movement lines and points of impact or single still shots of collisions and clashes. Judicious usage of "slow-motion" made by devoting many additional frames to a movement to briefly slow down the action to let it be absorbed by the audience as it unfolded and emphasize certain shots, or having the characters move "normally" while everything else moved at a snail's pace around them.

The illusion of rotation would also be utilised to create the impression of added motion and disorientation after consulting with practitioners of various forms of combat who felt that authentically breakneck combat should leave observers as breathless as the combatants themselves. Paired with sufficiently powerful sounds such as samples of explosions, gunshots, and whipcracks, the assault on the senses would leave an impression of godlike power and an appreciation for raw, high-speed violence. Something that would appeal to a nation that had just emerged from a civil war and had born witness to an explosion of revolutionary action around the world.

But beyond animation techniques, making her action sequences also required making each movement and frame in a fight look good. Extensive studies of historical combat manuals and interviews with those historians who specialised in recreating the martial technique of bygone ages were mixed with studies of typical stage and live-action fighting techniques as well as fencing and combat training courses and perhaps most unusually, dance choreography. Realism would be used or discarded as per what looked better to the eyes of the "troika" of Samantha, Samuel, and Spartak.

Perhaps ironically, the animation revolution they created also sparked inspiration in European futurists; particularly within the depths of Fascist Italy. The emphasis on speed and violence drew some interest from the artistic and political movement despite Samantha's personal abhorrence for them. In their brief time in the sun at the fringes of Fascist Italy, the Futurists would compile a number of homages that drew from the artistic work of the trio; moulded to their personal vision. Such would, in turn, inspire Samantha to write a scathing attack against futurism as a belief system.

The Characters

Amanda Ariel Aaron ​

(All art done for me by F4ARTz)

Also important to their work, of course, was the characters. A mythology without its gods and heroes or its devils and monsters is essentially nothing. In spite of superficial similarities, Columbia of the Ruby Orchestra was the inverse of Siegel and Shuster's Superman, and while developed contemporaneously neither significantly influenced the other's inception.

Superman was the "New Soviet Man"; an alien who was all humanity could be in the future through science and reason. Born of science fiction, Superman was an adult to embody humanity perfected. Columbia was the "myth of god"; a deity who walked the earth like the pantheons of old and embodied something precious to humanity. She was a youth to embody humanity's potential and the hopes of a young nation. Amanda Ariel Aaron and the other American champions would be a new, proletarian American pantheon, with her Columbia alter ego serving as Jupiter Optimus Maximus for a new country, holding the hand of her comrades in virtual wedlock as they battled rival gods, heroes, and monsters.

Her armour; the Crimson Clad; was designed off of Graeco-Roman patterns due to America's fondness for the visual motif. In essence, a new age hoplite clad from head to toe in armour, decorated simply but obviously to bear the emblems of the new America. At the centre of her musculata chest plate would be the winged red star, upon her circular shield known as Eolon was the hammer and compass of America, upon her spaulders would be her own personal symbol; an esoteric horned circle created for her by Samantha herself to embody both unity and ferocity.

Her spear; Keyt Tsoymen and her sword Yichud both would be emblems of striking back at the repressor for people who would no longer be content to turn the other cheek against those who had pressed the boot down on their fellow man for too long. But while her armour was fully covering she notably had no secret identity, Amanda and Columbia were one and the same and she attached no separate persona to her war-clad self.

Out of her armour, she was a tall and strong but still feminine figure. Her long scarlet hair was largely unstyled, her fierce green eyes were brilliant and intense. Hers was an effortless sort of beauty, she looked good and clearly took care of herself but didn't care to doll herself up beyond the basics. Her black vest and oft dirty white shirt were strictly utilitarian while she preferred the comfort of a working man's trousers and boots to skirts and heels.

She was toned like a soldier, but rarely showed it off. Her face was girlish, but often dirtied or bloodied and her grins were often those of someone looking forward to a brawl just as often as they were from someone who was happy to be in the company of a friend. Her every impression would be of that of a fighter and a warrior, not a princess nor an academic. While clearly bright and alert, she carried a pugnacious and physical air to her and often seemed coy or smug.

Her personality was crafted from five factors; her thematic associations with the Element of Air, the Skyfather figure, long-lasting American idealizations of defiance, the new American dynamic ideal, and association with the Seraphic aspect of Gevurah. She was energetic, bouncing around from one idea to the next, constantly full of ideas, difficult to fully satisfy, and like the weather could whip up from gentle and pleasant to terrifying stormy rage in a heartbeat. She was a socialite, inquisitive, endlessly experimental, playful, and could talk about just about any topic that held her interest for hours but would groan and moan if put through something dull that demanded her to sit down and rest a bit.

But she was also something of a brawler who enjoyed the spectacle and challenge of a good fight for a good cause, and very often preferred to just cut to the chase and hit the foe in the face when possible; something born of America's embracing of the necessity of revolutionary war with Liberal and Reactionary powers. She was also deeply and staunchly confident, often to the point of arrogance. She actively does her best to banish self-doubts and defeatist attitudes for fear that so many other people look to her for her sunny optimism and pugnacious self-assurance that wavering would invite despair.

She was made to be sexually open and forward with her romantic interests. She would not be content to be simply courted by someone who caught her eye but would go as far as to actively pursue them if she fancied them. That was not to say that she was a complete inversion of typical tropes regarding romance, but that she was very much not a passive object of desire.

And while Samantha herself perhaps didn't quite intend for it, Amanda would be latched onto by the bisexual community for her often flirtatious interactions with women as well as men; something that writers who would make their mark on the character after Samantha stepped back from the helm would take farther. But one thing that was clear from the beginning was a general rejection of the idea that women should never display her sexual or romantic desires, rather Amanda Aaron wore her heart on her sleeve and was almost devastatingly blunt with her interests in other people once she was set on having them close to her heart.

With regards to the science of Marxism, she was written to be someone who had internalised the lessons of the revolution. Marxism was simply the lens she saw society through, much like how an astronomer would consult Einstein's theorems. She had charisma and force of personality, but she did not preach revolution like an academic but instead as someone who had made direct changes and improvements to the lives of others.

Helping people who could not help themselves, and offering them assistance in binding together so that they could stand stronger together. She would not only offer fish and teach people to fish, but would help the fishermen set up a union and build ties with their fellows and take their dues back from the parasitic owners who drove them to hunger in the first place. Her approach was eminently pragmatic, focused on praxis and in essence, an engineer of Marxism rather than a theoretician. She was not one to very often do something as unsubtle as directly quote leftist thinkers, but she would put theory to practice to make for a better world.

Amanda's religious background would be kept somewhat low key during Samantha Waver's run of predominance with the Ruby Orchestra. While she was outright stated to be Catholic Irish on her father's side and Ashkenazim Jewish on her mother's side she was not seen outright attending either Church or Synagogue. She would not be stated to be outright Atheist, and never really made her opinion clear regarding her fellow supernatural entities and whether it was appropriate to worship them. There were implicit details such as how she didn't really see a significant distinction between the supernatural and the normal; treating it as little more than an extension of conventional reality and while of course careful around the less powerful; never once considered herself separate from them.

But of course, her very power was meant to be deliberately awe-inspiring. She was both the Storm Goddess of the Revolution, and an internationalist Serifot that embodied Kabbalistic virtues (principally Gevurah) inspired by Samantha Waver's own Kabbalism and as such was someone of incredible power. In what crossovers she did with Superman and Captain America and other such characters, it was always noted that she was by far the most powerful of those modern mythic characters created to embody a new revolutionary America.

Whereas Superman began unable to fly and lacking later iconic powers such as heat vision and freeze breath, Columbia's spear was "more powerful than all the artillery in the world", her armour patterned off of primarily Graeco-Roman heritage "more resilient than all the battleships and tanks on earth", and her flight "swifter than light itself." So powerful was she, that when she sought to do battle without holding back, she would always bring it to the exaggerated realm of the Otherworld to spare the people from the destruction she could unleash by accident. No number of ordinary fascist warriors, no matter what tanks, warships, planes and guns they brought, could challenge her. But one does not send mortals to challenge Jupiter and Zeus, they send the Giants, the Titans, Typhon and Echidna. If she were Ra, she needed her Apophis.

Enemies​

Spoiler: CW: Swastika

Siegfried was chosen as her longest-running and fiercest rival precisely because his legend spoke of his invincibility. With the blood of Fafnir, only a small spot on his back could be harmed by any means. She could smite him with all her thunderbolts and fury enough to shatter the Himalayas, but he would not be budged. So to defeat him would require burying him beneath the proverbial Mt.Etna, outsmarting the fallen Teutonic equivalent of Hercules.

Through his resurrection by Dark Magic wielded by the SS with the powers of those who had exhibited the ten qualities of the Serifot and inverted those virtues in a ritual of human sacrifice to produce a Qliphoth in the flesh, embodying Golachab most of all. Now an invulnerable husk of malice and evil in slavish devotion to nazism with a twisted mockery of Jewish Kabbalah; he had become a being of pure darkness and utterly monstrous power that he would ruthlessly augment by any means possible. Far more powerful than he was in the past, he could go fully toe to toe with Amanda, and it would take all she had to throw back his unrelenting evil.

Styling him not after the handsome figure of Wagnerian opera but encasing him in armour like the wildest fantasies of the Teutonic Knights, heavily influenced by Sergei Eisenstein's corroborations with Spartak; he had a menacing aspect to him. Light seemed to be deadened in his Qliphothic presence as if his evil made even light itself grow a bit dimmer. The fanned horns of his helmet cast a distinctive shadow, the cross of the Teutonic knights was replaced by the Swastika and their holy white garbs were now Prussian feldgrau. His helm was designed based on a mixture of later medieval gothic helmets, Teutonic great helmets, Prussian Pickelhaubes, and German Stahlhelms, and his maroon and brown sword glowed with evil intent while dripping blood constantly, and to him the eagles would always flock, a sign of his presence even when he had yet to arrive. And from the blackest void of his visor would burn terrible flames like those of a funeral pyre, endlessly producing smoke-like factories.

Siegfried was a figure of tragedy in that he had once been perhaps noble, but as it is pointed out; even in his past life he had helped his allies commit the heinous crime of rape and descended into tremendous cruelty once he had taken his fill of Fafnir's treasure and power. As a Qliphothic abomination born of cruel sacrifice and filled with the mindset of hatred and autocracy, he had grown into a being of almost incomparable evil and malice. His new God was Hitler and his Germany, and he would see his fuhrer's will be done Perhaps he was not the traditional visage of the ubermensch, but he was the industrial, inhuman face of Fascism made bare, a metal man with a metal heart and a metal mind. His partnership with his former nemesis Fafnir; no longer seeing anything wrong with the Dragon's Greed; would be the proof positive of the sheer depth of Siegfried's fall.

Siegfried indeed, almost wholly overshadowed Columbia's most clear cut opposite in Fraulein Germania as part of a conscious decision to avoid portraying the national personifications of other cultures as inherently evil. Further driving this decision was the belief that most would not quite buy the idea of the highly patriarchal Third Reich allowing a woman to hold a status as exalted as Amanda would to America. Siegfried was also a figure that the Nazis had adulated through their patronage of Wagner's take on the Volsunga Saga, and showing the greatest hero of Germanic tradition in such a twisted and cruel light was felt to be ironically fitting.

Allies​

Of course, one cannot simply discuss Amanda's enemies without bringing up her most important allies. Chief among them is her lover, constant companion, embodiment of the Soviet Union and perennial heart throb would be Vladimir Valentinovich Volkov who would take on the moniker of Tovarishch Slava. Designed not to be the hulking bear or hyper-masculine new soviet man wall of muscle beneath his rather utilitarian and heavily industrial looking armoursuit one would expect from most foreign depictions of a young Russian man, he was instead a lean figured, soft spoken, bespectacled, gentle hearted and baby faced intellectual who whole heartedly embraced many feminine pursuits such as knitting (making his own scarfs), carving out nesting dolls, and less active pursuits such as writing, singing, dancing, botany, and playing chess. He was a gifted musician as well, and often spent large portions of his time composing music for his companions.



Nevertheless, Vladimir had a strong sense of justice and an ironbound moral compass. Though he'd prefer a quiet day sipping tea, cuddling with another person's warm body and hashing out issues of the heart, and tending to plants; he would take to his Hammer of the Earth in a heartbeat if something he cared for was under threat. Embodying the virtue of Chesed most of all, he was in essence, an earthmother to Amanda's skyfather, ironic given their respective genders. But such was always intentional, Samantha was interested in feminist literature attacking many gender norms for years by this point; and she saw much potential in representing the Russian people not through their brutish might; but for the gentle society of poets and chess players. To both break stereotypes surrounding the slavic peoples and the ideas of when men should be and show the world that the Russian was also a sophisticated and gentle soul as well as a good comrade.

Vladimir's somewhat lengthy golden hair with its distinctive "spread eagle" at his neck, his soft and boyish but agile and dextrous features, his humble but confident demeanor, his compassionate and supportive nature, and his slightly awkward but always earnest approach to socialisation were based on Samantha's own hopes for men. She had resisted many suggestions trying to make him more traditionally masculine in either design or personality, and hoped that in a time where women were more willing to question gender roles that he would be able to catch on. There was a certain truth to the claim that Vladimir was the product of what was at the time; the rare concept of making a male character primarily for female appeal; but he was always more than just a simple heart throb. His character was made to be strongly complementary to Amanda's, so that the two could have the sort of strong chemistry that would be necessary to embody the United Republics' newfound eternal friendship with the Soviet Union.

Her other two companions, Yang Yanyu and Miguel Mateo Morales; known as Koshih (革士) and El Valiente respectively in their divine aspects would embody Da'at and Netzach respectively. Whereas Amanda was Sky and Vladimir was Earth, Yanyu would be Water and Miguel would be Fire. One a nurturer, a teacher, a provider, and a diplomat; the other a firebrand, a rabble rouser, a fighter, and an energizer. While the whole of the group was creative and fond of building things in their own way, Yanyu was always looking for things to help others and herself; while Miguel loved the tools of destruction.

Yanyu would be a modern Chinese youth born and raised years after the fall of the Qing Emperor. Rather than backwards, mystical, and meek; Yanyu was someone who kept her fingers on the pulse of the fields of knowledge. She respected her nation's heritage but was not wholly uncritical of it and its culture, but has little patience for the ignorance of outside commentators. Always passionate about helping others, she always hungered for something new to learn that could put to use, and very rarely saw something that she didn't feel like needed some degree of fixing. That wasn't to say she wasn't wholly creative; often trying to think of entirely novel ideas and concepts that she could put to use. Though she put her all into the renaissance of the long declining Chinese nation, she often strode directly into outright overcompensation.



She was often gentle, always erudite, and generally soft-spoken, usually the most diplomatic of the quartet, but when whipped into motion she could show that water roiled into a storm had a wrath as terrible as any thunderbolt. Rather talkative and inquisitive, Yanyu liked to tinker with whatever was lying around and she pushed her perfectionist attitudes towards a passion towards always pushing peoples and societies to be better than they were., Though sometimes pushy, she tried her best to not be hurtful with her critiques, and made efforts to try to listen when others wanted to say their piece. In defiance of many dragon lady stereotypes however, she was honest, kept her expression readable and plainly obvious. She was cunning and guileful, but never deceitful regarding honesty as a chief virtue. She disliked keeping other people in the dark, even if it sometimes came at the expense of people knowing things they shouldn't. Many of her worst gaffes would even stem from her difficulty with keeping secrets or voicing the wrong things at the wrong time that the listeners didn't need to hear.

Yanyu was a more streamlined sort of beauty than the more physical and amazonian Amanda, with the figure of a champion swimmer with gracefully styled black hair in accordance to modern chinese tastes with unusual and brilliant purple eyes. She, like many young Chinese women in the 30s; dressed in manners that reconciled Chinese fascination with western culture with prevailing aesthetics. Ultimately with a bit more flair than the more plainly dressed Amanda, but nothing she wouldn't be afraid to get a bit dirty. For battle though, she would bring forth the Red Fortress armour. Combining both the aesthetics of old Chinese Cataphract armour as well as the hydrodynamic sleekness of warship hulls (particularly submarines), Whereas Amanda made use of a spear and Vladimir used a hammer though, she brought something that was both futuristic yet a reference to China's past glories at the same time; a rocket launcher based on the experimental launchers from the first world war; the so called fire-lance.

Miguel was spirited, fiery and energetic. A troublemaker and a firebrand, Miguel had a smouldering energy to him and a fiery passion. He often brought chaos and trouble where he went, though he did his best to try and direct it to good causes. Though like the fire he embodied, he could cause destruction without meaning to; he never meant ill. Though there were definitely times where his tendency towards mischief would lead to more trouble than he bargained for, and his devil-may-care attitude sat in a valley between being troubling and charming. He was someone like a trained circus snake, he might never bite you, he probably won't ever bite you, but you always want to keep your eyes on him because he's probably going to do something you don't want to miss. Pugalicious and often belligerent in his passion for destroying evil, he also liked to start fights even more than Amanda. To the point that often he needed to be reminded that the proper place of someone who wishes to be a hero is to help the needy more than to destroy the wicked.



Miguel rarely liked to not be in motion, and loved the attention placed upon him by others, and always tried to get the eyes of others upon him. He reveled in being the object of adoration or envy, and always tried to get the others to get the proverbial show on the road, disdaining plans that required too much in the way of inaction and patience when there were those in trouble who needed help. He hated sitting still and his character model was nearly always making little motions such as swinging his legs even when sitting still. He was restless, antsy and hated feeling useless. With a chip on his shoulder and something to prove; Miguel could never stand people doubting him. He also couldn't stand bullies and people picking on those who couldn't stand against them on an even footing. But most of all, he hated people who tried to cheat justice by hiding behind the letter of the law. A lover of chaos and an unstated anarchist; he preferred to flout regulations when they got in the way of what was right (and sometimes just out of principle) and would struggle with knowing when and where to bring his fire.

Miguel was an almost ethereal looking, lithely handsome and boyishly charming young man who had a roguish and impish countenance to him. His rather long messy, tousled and windswept ruddy brown hair frequently covered one of his blazing orange eyes. His olive skin made his mestizo heritage obvious, and his agile figure was shown off by his practical but still nice looking outfits. He usually had a bit more of his chest shown than the scarf wearing Vladimir, and tended to roll up his sleeves more often than not. He gave an air of knowing damn well that he was handsome, and making sure everyone else knew it too. When fighting, he'd take the appearance of an "armoured huasos", fiery patterned armour of relatively more slight construction than Vladimir's. Trains were often used as reference for Miguel's suit, particularly sleeker art deco vehicles to give an overall futuristic, ornamental, and fast feel to the "Jaguar Skin" armour. In his hands was his beloved rifle, the Judicator; a supernatural long arm that he was supernaturally gifted with, easily one of the finest marksmen humanity has ever produced.

Cast​

Judith Garland as Amanda Ariel Aaron
Andrei Abrikosov as Vladimir Valentinovich Volkov
Anna May Wong as Yang Yanyu
Ramon Navarro as Miguel Mateo Morales
Greta Gustafsson As Valentyna Zynoviyivna Taran (Soviet & scientist)
Lena Horne As Delanna Carter (One of Amanda Aaron's best friends, becomes the "American Diana" when Pandora's box is opened)
Keye Luke As Yan Hai (Another of Aaron's best friends, becomes the "American Apollo" when the box is opened)
Leonid Utyosov As Oleg Volkov (Soviet military commander)
Paul Robeson As Division Commander Hannibal Jameson (Black, Military Commander)
Alice Lightfoot* As Sinopa (Native American, Folklorist, Scientist, Female)
Mel Blanc As Henry Strauss (American Bourgeois exile working with Nazi Germany)
Peter Lorre As Werner von Koehlberg (Nazi Sorcerer)
Marlene Dietrich As Gesine Oswalt (Nazi Scientist, sole voice of reason)
Cary Grant As John Stewart (English business mogul)
Edward G Robinson As Mario Cesare, Italian Fascist Commander
Anton Walbrook As Lord White
Stan Laurel As Arnold Ford
Fritz Lang As Siegfried
Kurt Gerron As Fafnir


Real persons portrayed by Voice Actors:

Mel Blanc As Adolf Hitler
Mel Blanc As Heinrich Himmler
Mel Blanc As Iosif Stalin
Mel Blanc As William Z Foster

Commander Columbia

The Shorts​

To build excitement for the release of the first film, a trio of shorts was released to introduce people to the characters and the concepts of the setting as well as share the origin story of the protagonists with an eager public.

Commander Columbia: American Warrior​

The first shows Amanda's youth and her orphaning in the civil war as well as her first contact with the supernatural, the world that once was but has been restricted by the flow of divinity; but when; as a youngster she decides to poke around a site with some friends and is forced to duck aside from some Fascisti goons from Italy whose Zeppelin is used as a secretive headquarters flying high above where most can reach; trying to find Pandora's box for Il Duce before the Americans can get it. Fleeing from the Zeppelin and trying to get her fellow orphans to safety, she tumbles into a cave and finds Pandora's box with her friends and decides to open it. This turns her into Columbia, letting her trounce the fascist agents and even toss the tank they had snuck into America clean over the Horizon and then pull the Submarine they had used to escape out of the water and smashing it upon the ground; shrugging off the impacts from both the cannon and the sub's deck gun before downing the Zeppelin.

Her initial friends will come to find their own paths in life though, as she's called to go overseas for further adventures that will take her far beyond the shores of America.

Commander Columbia: The Four Companions​

The second covers her first meeting with her squad overseas; delving a bit into their own origins. Vladimir was a quiet and shy young pioneer who nevertheless rushed to save his comrades from a collapsing cliff face only to find himself able to stop the entire rockslide. Miguel rushed to save people from a burning building from an arson attack started by Synarchist terrorists. Yanyu dove into the water to rescue people from a ferry struck at a river by warlord bandits in China. This leads them to conclude they were chosen for some particular reason by Pandora's box because they were ordinary people who decided to put their lives in harm's way to save their fellow ordinary people in accordance to the principles of their nation. They were not born special, but were rewarded for the actions they took for their fellow people.

They are met with a British plot by the first British supervillain; Lord White and his assistants; the Blue Knight, the Scarlet Dragon, and the Golden Archer who seeks to make use of his newfound abilities to aid in an effort to advance the goals of the British state and bring about an uprising in America that he can use to pilfer artefacts from the UASR in the chaos. His plans are thwarted and the Baron of Steam's automatons are forced to retreat for the time being.

Commander Columbia: The Machinations of the Reich​

The third introduces us to some Nazi secret societies under the order of Adolf Hitler with the blessing of Heinrich Himmler undergo efforts to ensure that the Fatherland is not left behind in this era of gods; hoping to go beyond merely accumulating new gods but to revive those of old. While Nazi blood obsessed purists have already been kidnapping people they believe could have descent from Siegfried for years, Himmler informs his agent Arnold Ford that they require more. Arnold, wanting to elevate his position in the Nazi Hierarchy also wishes to spark a pogrom in America by using a drugged gas that will cause those who inhale it to go mad, turning the Jews of Brooklyn into the beasts that he believes them to be. Arnold has many assets, and has made himself into a vampiric supersoldier with the powers made available to him, but his plot is uncovered and is foiled as his submarine intended to deliver the gas is sunk and he himself is slain. Himmler's agents, however, manage to acquire some subjects with which to deliver to the Reichsfuhrer for his primary goal, and while Himmler is disappointed at Arnold's failure, believes the distraction he provided was worth it.

Commander Columbia: The Knight and the Ark​

The first true feature-length film after establishing the characters quickly for those not already in the know as they seek to penetrate into the Fatherland itself; starts with the resurrection of Siegfried already underway. Siegfried and his once nemesis Fafnir are reconstituted from the blood of those who; however very distantly and feebly; have some relation to him to rebuild him. It is not a perfect process and is indeed, intentionally flawed as the Germans seek to indoctrinate him into a pure agent of nazism, turning him into a Qliphoth, a husk of darkness to augment his already tremendous abilities.

The resurrection is interrupted, but Siegfried is already among the living once more and he and Fafnir hold off the quartet as the black knight proves to be virtually invulnerable. Though the castle that he is resurrected in is collapsed, they do catch wind of Siegfried's hastily formed follow up plan to locate the ark of the covenant to undo the Jewish people and thus, in Hitler's eyes, communism itself out of his belief that communism the ultimate expression of Jewishness. This takes them on an adventure to the sands of the near east where we are treated to how lackadaisical British authorities take the threat of the rising third Reich; greeting even the overtly intimidating Siegfried like an honoured guest while haranguing Amanda and even talking down to her for being a woman and a "damned red one at that".

One is also shown how the Germans treat with the British authorities almost amicably while sharing some manner of disdain for the Arabs there while Amanda is further pained by the sight of how the Jews are being used as cats paws in a game of empire and how thin the British philosemitism goes as they see the corpse of a Jewish historian who had knowledge Siegfried wanted. Leaving behind only a horrible drained husk that creakily reanimates before a spooked Volkov destroys the husk.

A cut to the antagonists also sees Siegfried making nice with Lord White while clearly thinking White is at best, a useful idiot; culminating in a fight with him and the gang when Siegfried wants to get a move on; being informed by an SS agent that they have found a site that they can begin digging at and deciding that the unpowered members of the third reich would take much too long without his assistance. White offers a distraction before he is forced to flee again; with Yanyu cautioning Miguel and Amanda to not give chase and focus on more important matters, telling them that White's egotism will surely lead him to show up again.

Siegfried and Fafnir casually smash their way through the guardians of the Ark of the covenant whom even the most stalwart of British and German superagents dare not approach, the Dark Knight casually beheading a Seraph who reduces many who approach to pillars of salt to get access to the Ark before he's interrupted by Amanda striking him in the back and then smashing him straight through the cave and into the Otherworld. Siegfried is calm and patient and Lord White does indeed, make his return to add to the confusion that allows Fafnir to take the ark in its claws and fly it to a place where it can be put away for safe containment to be brought to the Reich.

Volkov has a frank discussion with Amanda about her impatience and how he's concerned for her, a conversation where the two's growing bond is increasingly cemented while Yanyu gives Miguel concerned admonishment for not only his recklessness but encouraging of Amanda to indulge in her own. A moment is shared, but they have to get going.

A Palestinian they helped earlier tells them that she's seen where the Germans are taking the ark and that Lord White has seemed to have some sort of disagreement with the servants of the Reich which has delayed their transport. Something over the Germans wanting to do blood sacrifice to ensure its safe opening that the British in their genteel sophistry find a bit too beyond the pale to accept.

Amanda asks if the ritual has started and prepares to head out headfirst once more before she's stopped by Volkov who tells her that they need to work on this together; all of them. And thus the four decide to make use of help from anti-British resistance fighters who provide a distraction and a crucial splitting of attention. The British, fearful of looking too bad; break away from the engagement and thus leave the Germans to themselves. Amanda and Siegfried fight, but instead of trying to take him on all by herself, she pushes him towards the others to let them mob up on him, Amanda and Vladimir bouncing him between them to prevent him from covering his weak point which lets them incapacitate him and then focus on the Dragon Fafnir who is made to recoil when Miguel scorches him with his own flames and Yanyu figures out a way to use her mystic waters to snuff out his all burning fire. With the ark secured, it's soon brought to the Caucasus where it will be kept by the Soviet Union safe from prying hands.

The Nazi duo are forced to withdraw with only secondary relics in their hands as a furious Hitler chews them out and remarks his disappointment to Himmler who assuages his master's fury that there are yet other plans for them to try while we later cut to the four at a beachside in the Crimea where they've gone to cool down.

Amanda, who has clearly been into and flirting with Vladimir throughout the film, pulls him over for a kiss at the party while Miguel shows Yanyu some Mexican partner dances with clear sexual energy behind them and the four are congratulated for their work, ending on a high note as the four cement their fire-forged friendship.

Reception ​

Commander Columbia: The Knight and the Ark was a cultural phenomenon but not a smash hit. Audiences who watched it generally reported interest in it as well as an appreciation for taking animation in more serious directions, but the film would only scrape past its break-even point due to its large budget and the propaganda department's large number of free showings. However, making money was never the point. The new America needed new national symbols and a cultural tour de force to show the world that the might of America's cultural industries had returned stronger than ever. The propaganda department felt in particular, that it would take some time for their new icon to fully take root in any case, and hardly minded the audience needing some more time to get used to the concepts.

Critically; while it can be hard to remember in the present day after more than seventy years of seeing Amanda Aaron; the film was divisive along more than just political lines. Many thought that the film was overly heavy with characters and ideas and relied substantially on people having already consumed prior media rather than standing entirely on its own. Others believed that the film, in essence, was a pagan glorification of the all-powerful individual or national personificationism as well as an escapist fantasy rather than a proper work of socialist realism. And like most works of its time, it was about as subtle with its politics as a battleship bombardment to paraphrase the words of Samantha's sister Edsel.

Many also criticised its sexually charged tone and frequent violence as well as espousing a particularly belligerent worldview of uncompromising revolutionary aggression. Amanda was an easily angered, fight-happy and argumentative protagonist who made little effort to spare many of her opponents and tended to fight in a rather savage, kinetic fashion meant to break her opponents as quickly as possible. This did not endear her to quite a few people who felt that she was a poor role model for the new Socialist woman. She got dirty, she fought dirty, she was frequently rude and flippant and less than lady-like. Such was felt, to be an overly rough and tumble attitude towards what should be the shining ideal of the revolution even to many socialists.

However, it resonated strongly in more than enough people it sought to reach to start to dig its roots. In an America that felt increasingly threatened by the ever-growing menace of the Third Reich, a hero who could take on the full menace of Hitler's Germany and triumph was what many were looking for. Especially in the Jewish Community which had played a strong part in the popularisation of supernaturally powerful protagonists born of its long history of fist-fighting with anti-semites, Amanda's cultural impact would be quite profound. In China and Mexico, where they were used to being largely ignored by American culture, the positive representation proved particularly appealing as well.

Many who felt that the threat of Fascism in Europe, South America, and Asia or western European Imperialism in Africa and Asia was going unnoticed emphasised with Amanda's aggressive, take the fight straight-on attitude towards Fascism and Imperialism. Among female movie-goers in particular, many latched onto her as an icon of feminist strength and power while still retaining a great deal of kindness and empathy towards her friends even through her character flaws. A whole generation of young women would hold her up as an image of female empowerment, and a number of fighting women in the second world war would make use of her iconography or symbology.

A Symphonic History of the Ruby Orchestra​

Julius Monroe was a man whose passion for music began at an early age when his mother brought home a phonograph in 1911 when he was just four years old and his family had recently moved to Harlem to look for work. He tried his best to learn music by himself and would pester other musicians he could access in Harlem for advice and tips for where to go as he spent much of his free time on his hobby. With the war came rationing and a steep decline in the availability of many of the materials used in musical instruments, but it also prompted his father, who enrolled in West Point to be later shipped out against Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary in the Macedonian campaigns.

The letters from home he received oft spoke of things he did not fully understand, but he got the impression of a terrible, ugly war that made very little sense to Marius Monroe. "I cannot for the life of me, understand why I, an American Negro am fighting the Bulgarians in Epirus next to a Maori man from New Zealand because a Serbian shot an Austrian in Bosnia" to quote Marius' own feelings on the subject. Ever curious, Julius at least once got into trouble with his teacher for questioning the purpose of the war. The Bienno Rosso of course rocked through Harlem as many demanded an end to the senseless war and an end to brutal rationing and the visible injustices of society, and Julius wrote a few basic compositions to try and capture his feelings about the event.

Eventually, his father would return home in early 1919 a changed man, having already had doubts about the justness of the American cause and returned absolutely convinced the whole thing was rotten to the core. Marius felt as though he had thrown his life away for no purpose or cause and struggled with the feelings of having accomplished nothing of value. He spoke fondly of his perceptions of the Soviet Revolution, believing that "that was a cause worth fighting for, not dying so that Tanzania, Cameroon and Namibia can trade hands to the next set of colonial masters".

…..

Perhaps the most important event for Julius' later career was the performance of Gustav Hoist's "The Planets" in America as well as his exposure to Prokofiev's music for some of his ballets. Impressed by the usage of music alone to tell a story without relying on lyrics as well as the usage of music to strengthen the visuals on display, Julius was determined to become a composer and devoured the works of his idols. He eventually got a job as a composer for a stage company while still studying in music school and managed to ride out the great depression by branching out into film; whose popularity was barely diminished by the depression.

By the time he finished his musical education in 1932 with an impressive degree from his six years of studying, he was also a committed socialist who was passionate about the liberation of the disempowered and a card-carrying member of the American ANC. He had written a few campaign songs for Norman Thomas' electoral trailer and the WCPA's wider electoral struggle in the leadup to the elections and cast his vote with a sense of optimism. He had his doubts that the system would just fall away peacefully on its own, but he was highly confident in electoral triumph.

…

During the revolutionary war he participated in some small scale fighting in the New York Metropolitan area before returning to his work as a composer, writing a number of songs of some note that would find use in the Revolutionary army, attempting to meld the influences of Russian revolutionary music with American traditions. With the brevity of the war, the number of compositions that he made were similarly limited, but retain a place of importance in the musical tradition that would lead to his work with Columbia. Though one particular task that always vexed him was "adapting the international to English with lyrics that sounded good to my ears."

It would be his work at a concert that would draw Samawal Hamidi's attention to him while he was talent scouting in the AFNCSR. Catching his attention after the show, Samawal invited Julius over to a cafe and having a productive discussion, Samawal offered Julius the position of the lead composer for the animated films he was making with Spartak and Samantha. Upon being made aware of the scale of the projects, Julius agreed almost immediately, eager to make his place in history.

He asked to see all the work the trio and their team had made so far and studied the notes on all the characters created and all the concepts drawn up.

For Columbia, he created a leitmotif clearly derived from the upbeat traditions of American wartime songs such as "Yankee Doodle" and "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and blended them with his own revolutionary army compositions. The intent was to create something martial sounding and strong, but upbeat, cheerful, triumphant, and distinctly American, fitting in with Amanda Aaron's boisterous and fighty happy personality interwoven with her genuine kindness and sweetness when not roused for a fight. She was, however, strong and full to the brim of power and potential, and as such needed music to capture the immense energies she contained within as well as her fighting spirit.

Vladimir's own theme was based upon elements of Russian folk songs such as Kalinka, Korobeiniki and the Cossack song mixed in with Soviet-era music about the life of the common people to create a distinctly more rustic than Columbia's theme. His leitmotif was crafted to sound more gentle, intellectual, and contemplative, and some would compare its feeling to the Red Army song Katyusha in structure and feel, though Julius claims to have not yet heard the song when he was working on Volkov's theme. Vladimir Volkov was a somewhat shy and more passive character than Amanda and inverted the traditional gender roles of a male and female lead (as well as expectations of a Soviet-American duo) by taking on a number of more feminine qualities. Rather than power or triumph, it was meant to invoke gentleness and innocence.

Perhaps more surprising are the choices to bring on the usage of Latin American folk instruments such as guitars for Valiente's theme, an unusual addition to the classical orchestra's repertoire. Heavy usage of percussion, flamenco-inspired instrumentation selection and arrangements, furious clapping, and a breakneck tempo were used to represent Miguel's fiery powers, his daredevil attitude, red hot temper and ability to strike suddenly. "The intent was to give the feeling that a volcano was erupting and had a personal vendetta against you in particular" in Julius' words. Miguel was a passionate and combative lad who doubled over laughing when amused, cheered out loud when happy, screamed in fiery rage when angry and sobbed when sad; and as such Julius was determined to give him something suitably intense.

For Yang Yan Yu; also known as Koshih, his composition sought to mix together modern instruments with traditional Chinese musical devices and the songs commemorating the Chinese revolution and its ongoing struggle to unify a shattered nation. Meant to provide a sense of hope and perseverance in the face of adversity, the assistance of a number of Chinese Americans working in music was used to provide a reference and a grounding for Julius in Chinese music to base his composition. The theme was perhaps slower than her companions' as Yanyu was often the person who asked the team to slow down and think things through, but would stir into something that was an "anthem to hope itself" as she also often provided the courage to press on even in the worst of times.

 

[Miss Teri]

Excerpt from Diary of a Reactionary: My Life in the Sons of Liberty by Paul Matthews (UASR: University of Colorado Press, 1983)

I had been stationed at Fort Collins since the judge sentenced me to basic training. For the first few months, it was rough, especially in comparison to the light tasks we had to do in the Sons. I was in a squadron with fellow "delinquents", who also took a deal for basic training over prison. Some were simply criminals, but some were also political partisans like me, like a young Indian [Native American] from the fascist aligned "American Indian Federation", or a German from the German American Bund. Their goal was to make good comrades out of us. I never saw my old squad of fellow SOL teens who were captured with me for several years, probably so that we couldn't coordinate an escape.

The daily routines were brutal, especially since they also served the purpose of punishment. I struggled at first to get a handle on them, and I sustained some small injuries as I tried to climb walls or run with my fake rifle. I held out hope in the beginning, however, that I could use this harsh training for the great final war to restore the Republic. I zoned out a while during my political education classes, because I felt that I would have no need for it. I was also sure that my father would arrange for communiques indicating missions to accomplish with my new training.

That never came, and gradually, my devotion to the cause of capitalism crumbled, as my worldview was expanded. The commanders, devoted as they were to building new soldiers, showed compassion and kindness, and never pushed us beyond our own capabilities. My commissar proved patient, and eventually, I got into his lessons. I was also allowed to explore, something I rarely did under the Sons. My father feared I would be indoctrinated into Judeo-Bolshevism.

He wasn't wrong. I still remembered the hardships we went through during the Depression, and how everyone around us had it just as rough. I think the only thing keeping my dirt-poor father from joining the Communists was his staunch Baptism and patriotism. What I saw now were people who had jobs, who were living well, who weren't hungry, who all had homes to go to in the winter. It seemed Communism really did improve the lives of people.

My stance against communism softened, but I was still convinced I was a Sons member.

About a year and a half into my sentence, I received a surprise visitor: my older brother Daniel. The last time I had seen him was right before my fateful journey. He was wearing a simple shirt and pants, and looked much happier than when I left him.

We embraced and talked in the visitor's lounge.

"How are things, Danny?"

"It's been fine. Mostly fine."

"How's father?" Maybe he'd finally give me a secret communique.

"Wouldn't know. Haven't spoken to him for over a year."

I was shocked. Danny was very loyal to my father, parroted all his beliefs, never questioned him.

"What happened?"

"After your capture, I tried to mount a rescue with some of the older guys. Father immediately told us not to. That you were already lost to the Bolshevik machine, and the Jews and Papists had likely already brainwashed you into becoming a soldier of Satan."

"What, I…"

"He told me that they couldn't trust you. That you might be inclined to turn them in from your brainwashing. So, we had to abandon you and if absolutely necessary, kill you, if the time comes."

I couldn't believe it. My own father abandoned me, and was willing to kill me, over some imaginary idea that I could ever turn him in.

"I argued against it for months, and he gave the same answer. Finally…. I was forced out of the Sons."

"Over me?"

"No, I had been seeing someone."

"Outside the camp?" There were generally no women in our camp. The Sons used entirely male partisans. Women were trained as auxiliary or spies separately. I think it was some very Protestant thing about sexes mixing.

"No… inside. With another one of the boys."

"Oh." Keep in mind, had I heard this when I first entered, I would've disowned him then and there. Homosexuality was a sin, and only communists did it. Since then, however, I had seen some of my very own commanders and commissar have wonderful relationships with their same-sex partners, just as loving as those between my very own parents.

Still, I knew that having a Uranian relationship was punishable by death for violating the Sons of Liberty oath ("You must live a decent, Christian lifestyle, and abstain from sin").

"They caught us, and we had to both flee the camp to avoid getting killed. I went to the Public Safety Office the next day to become an informant. They raided the camp, but Dad wasn't there. Apparently, Dad and some of the other members were transferred just before the raid. I think they're in Colorado Springs now."

So, Father had the opportunity to contact me, but didn't. There was no mission.

"I've been living in New York for the past year. Found someone that I love very dearly."

"That's good to hear."

"You ought to come by sometime."

"Still got six months left before I get released."

"Well", he took out a sheet of paper with a pen written address. "If you're ever in New York, I'm always available to talk."

I took the note, and mulled over what happens next. I didn't know where my father was, and he'd shoot me dead if he saw me. My mother died shortly after Charleston in an aborted bomb-making scheme. Even if I went with my brother, I didn't really have an idea for my own future, especially an ex-terrorist like me.

Finally, I asked my commander if I could stay in the Army after my term was up. He got the paperwork done. At the end of my term, I also requested a transfer to Winchester, to be closer to my brother.

[....]

Along with my weekend excursions with Danny and his partner Hershel, I also befriended several other soldiers. I was exposed to many different people from many different parts of the country for the very first time. Blacks, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexicans. I had never seen such diversity in my life!

My bunkmate was an Italian fella from Stubbenville, Ohio, Dino Crocetti. He had a similar story to me, though was never a political partisan. He had been making side money off a job guarding an illegal casino in Ohio. Because of his age during the arrest, he was allowed to join the militia. We became close friends. I hear him sing along with Frank Sinatra or Harry Crosby on the records. He would also box as "The Crochett", though that caused problems with the local commanders.

[....]

Dino and I got off the subway near the fairgrounds, amid a crowd of people. I looked around the horizon, before finally seeing the pointed statue known as the Trylon and the large dome known as the Perisphere rising over them, comparing them to our tickets

"Looks a bit like some private parts," Dino chuckled as he looked at the structure.

In hindsight, it did, but I was still squeamish about such things from my Baptist upbringing. I stayed silent. Together we moved towards the entrance with the large crowd of people. I read years later that there were ten entrances to the fairgrounds, each marked with a statue or mural marking some sort of socialist value or important event. In my case, I saw a large mural on the ground dedicated to the Haymarket Affair of 1886. One side dedicated to the event itself, one to the trial.

We had gotten the tickets from our commanding officer in Winchester. He had said that he visited the fair himself with his wife and children, and said it would be a nice spot for a weekend leave if we so desired.

We got the tickets punched by an automated system (checked by an attendant) after a long wait, and formally entered the fairgrounds.

It was a truly amazing experience. Like nothing I had ever seen before. Everything was so colorful, and all the buildings were like nothing I had ever seen before. All experimental designs, all magnificent. A lot of experimental art pieces, which I later learned were commissioned by the Secretariat of Culture to try to dispel the notion that the American government was only interested in "social realism."

"Hey, Paul," Dino cried out. "Let's take a look at that time capsule the commander told us about."

It was more impressive in concept than in design. It was a simple tube filled with various artifacts from this very time period, including the writings of people like Karl Marx, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and Albert Einstein; copies of The Daily Worker and Libertine Magazine; a microfilm full of informational text; a Mortimer Mouse watch; farming and industrial tools; and seeds from agricultural products provided by the AgSec. This at least according to the plaque that was nearby. It was lowered into the ground last year, and was not to be opened for over 5000 years.

"So… about 6939, if the plaque's correct. Imagine them digging this up in Buck Rogers time, and finding a watch or some seeds. Would they even know what this is?"

"Maybe" I was just awestruck by the possibility of them digging up this in a new millennium.

[...]

Dino and I agreed to split up and explore the fair by ourselves. (I think he was trying to be alone to flirt with women.)

The Fair was separated into several exhibitions that corresponded to several government secretariats. Said Secretariats either had their own pavilion display on the fairgrounds or there were more than a few cooperatives that were featured. All were geared towards emphasizing the accomplishments of socialism and the potential for future developments.

The sections were:

• The International Zone (representing the Union government in general, Foreign Affairs, and several nations)
• The Hall of Republics (representing Comintern and individual Republics)
• The Communication and Research Zone (Representing Communications and Education)
• The Defense Zone (Representing Defense, Justice, and Public Safety)
• Industry and Agriculture Zone (Representing Agriculture, Energy, Manufacturing, Light Industry, and Construction)
• Art, Culture, and Amusement Zone (Representing the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Secretariat of Culture)
• Transportation Zone (Representing Transportation, Railways, and Maritime Transport)

I put off visiting the Hall of Republics and the International Zone until the end, and went through the zones. I'll attempt to describe all these journeys in full, but my memory is a bit flawed from 50 years ago, so bear that in mind.

In Communications and Research, I found myself at the Bell Labs Pavillion, where I discovered weird new communications devices, like the "Voder" mechanized voice system, the man-like robot Elektro, and the "electric typewriter". At the University of Chicago Pavilion, there was research being done on biological processes that formed life on Earth, fossils discovered across the country, and strange things that could be achieved with radioactive material (apparently, according to one of the scientists in confidence, they had been importing a lot of uranium from the USSR and Belgian Congo recently.)

In Defense, there were multiple tanks, weapons, and aircraft on display, representing the cutting edge of WFRA technology. What really interested me, however, were the rockets, from the CalTech Pavillion. Majestic objects, most of them. The guest speaker for the day, a young Chinese engineer named Qián Xuésēn, stated that he and his team at the Rocket Propulsion Lab hoped to use these for a variety of different purposes, including space exploration.

Industry and Agriculture mostly focused on socialist accomplishments in those fields. We were shown the construction of a communal home and its various appliances, as well as the construction of the Manufacturing Pavillion we were standing in at this very moment. Agriculture was a large communal farm, and the various products that could be borne from them. Special emphasis on the larger yields these produce over their capitalist counterparts.

The most interesting experience came from the Culture Secretariat. A crowd of families gathered around a strange man in Black tights with a Red cape. A large "S" on his chest. I was baffled as he described his battle with a counterrevolutionary cell.

"That's Superman", a voice behind me commented.

I turned to see a group of four, younger than me. Three men, one woman. The closest one, a thin fellow with glasses, approached me.

"It's Superman Day. There's a Superman contest, there's Superman comics being given out. And that guy over there is playing Superman for all the kids."

I thought for a moment. Superman, Superman…. Oh, that black clad guy in the funny books. I see some soldiers reading him sometimes.

"There was another contest for Columbia a couple weeks back too," the woman shrugged.

I suppose it was meant to be Commander Columbia, from that picture I see posters of on occasion.

"Paul Matthews", I introduced myself.

"Fred Pohl," the guy replied. "This is Don Woldheim, Isaak Ozimov, and Judith Merrill."

I shook hands with all the participants.

"Say, are you here for the convention?" The one called Don asked.

"Convention?"

"There's a convention for fans of science fiction. It's being held in Caravan Hall" Judith stated.

"Ya oughta come." Isaak interjected.

I was not a science fiction fan, but I was intrigued. However, with the limited time I had, I decided not to for the time being. Fred gave me the number of the "Futarians Science Fiction/Fantastik" Club, in case I was interested.

[...]

I boarded the Perisphere's automated sidewalk from the elevators along with many others, and very slowly entered through the entryway. It was dark as we entered, before the sidewalk finally stopped, and we could see the city below illuminated.

"BEHOLD!" a voice boomed from the ceiling "FUTURAMA, A CITY OF MEN IN A WORLD OF TOMORROW!"

I could see the full display. White buildings covered one side, while fake greenery in the form of trees and grass were scattered on the other side. There appeared to be one large city, full of large communal buildings, with the occasional skyscraper, filled in with parks, trains, and massive public areas. Scattered on the outskirts were smaller towns, with large futuristic communal homes and large farms, which appeared to be automated.

" HERE ARE GRASS AND TREES AS WELL AS STONE AND STEEL. NOT A DREAM CITY, BUT A SYMBOL OF LIFE AS LIVED BY THE MAN OF TOMORROW. HERE LIES THE PINNACLE OF WORKER ACHIEVEMENT!"

The lights steadily grew, and I could see the buildings light up.

"TOWN AND COUNTRY JOINED FOR WORK AND PLAY AND SUNLIGHT!"

"THE DAY OF THE WORKER OF TOMORROW BEGINS WITH THEIR JOURNEY FROM THEIR COMMUNAL HOMES ON THE OUTSKIRTS TO THEIR WORKPLACES. THEY WILL HAVE THE FASTEST TRANSPORT TO THEIR VARIOUS WORK PLACES, THROUGH THE ADVANCED RAILWAY AND SUBWAY STATIONS."

The trains lights grew red, and started to flicker.

"THE WORKER OF TOMORROW WILL LIVE IN AN AUTOMATED SOCIETY. THEIR EVERY NEED SHALL BE MET, AND THEIR BUILDINGS ARE EQUIPPED WITH TECHNOLOGY THAT ALLOWS THEIR VOTE TO BE DEMOCRATICALLY HEARD AT ANY LOCATION!"

The building lights started coming on, as did those in the parks and public areas.

"THE WORKER OF TOMORROW WILL THUS HAVE ENOUGH LEISURE TIME TO EXPLORE THEIR OWN COMMUNITY, OR THEIR OWN CREATIVITY IN THE AVENUE OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES."

Similar displays went on for several minutes before the voice came in and the lights dimmed.

"AS DAY FADES INTO NIGHT, EACH WORKER SEEKS HOME. FOR HERE ARE CHILDREN, NEIGHBORS, COMFORTS, RECREATION, THE GOOD LIFE… OF THE WELL -PLANNED CITY!"

"AS MAN HELPS MAN, SO NATION LEANS ON NATION.UNITED BY A THOUSAND ROADS OF COMMERCE, ART, AND HUMAN ASPIRATION. A BRAVE NEW WORLD, BUILT BY UNITED HANDS AND HEARTS. HERE, BRAIN AND BRAWN AND COURAGE ARE LINKED IN HIGH ENDEAVOR AS THEY MARCH ON, TOWARD UNITY AND PEACE. LISTEN! AS THEY SING!"

The musical score (an eclectic mix of classical and jazz) suddenly included an operatic score, as the sidewalk started again, and the display was lit in resplendent color.

As I left, I wondered if the World of Tomorrow would really look like that.

[...]

Before I met with Dino again, I made one final stop in the International Zone.

Several countries had pavilions dedicated to several nations. I could see nations like China, Britain, Spain, France, Pan-America, the USSR, Poland, Japan, Palestine, the Netherlands, and Ethiopia. I visited the Soviet Pavilion first, marked with a tower featuring the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. It featured several Soviet machines, some bits of Russian art and artifacts from various museums, and most notably to me, a recreation of the Mayakovskaya station of the Moscow Metro. Large archways spanning down, large circles above with lamps surrounding it. Brown marble floors. It was unlike anything I had seen before.

I exited, and headed to the Polish pavilion. I approached the boxy, checkered building (which now had a large banner on it: "FREE POLAND FROM NAZI OPPRESSION"), when I spotted a figure near a statue of a king.

She was a medium height, black hair, wearing fatigues including the Polish Flag. She was smoking a cigarette and watching the patrons walk in. With her long hair and striking features, I was fascinated, and cautiously approached

"Do you have a light?"

She reached into her uniform and pulled one out, as I reached for a cigarette Dino gave me.

"Thanks."

"You on leave?" She asked, with a thick New York accent.

"Yeah, I guess the uniform gave it away."

"Don't sweat it, kid. I see a bunch of GIs swarming around in my line of business."

"Are you on leave too?"
"No, this is, for now, my workplace."

"Really? Are you Polish?"

"My folks are. I speak it fluently, so I was useful for this assignment."

"Which assignment?"

"You don't know?" She pointed to the top of the building.

"The top few floors are the current headquarters of the Narodowowyzwoleńczy front. After the invasion, the government had it set aside for exiled leaders of the Polish left to operate, and now with the Nazis having taken over, they've decided to make the Polish Pavilion the headquarters for their left opposition. The invasion happened right when the Fair was starting, and they figured, 'we already have this building given by Polish government, why not just use it for Polish liberation'"

"And what do you do?"

"I'm a translator. Help ease the communications between them and the government. I've been with these leaders on behalf of Comintern for a while, and I've only come back home since the Nazis came back."

"That sounds amazing."

"It can be, but lately it's been tiring. And for the freedom fighters, it's real rough sometimes. They've lost everything to the Nazis, and they're stuck in a country they don't understand and have trouble in. I help as much as I can, but they really want to go home."

"I'll admit, that's how I feel sometimes."

"Oh?"

I discussed my past with her. My current estrangement. It felt like a while, but she patiently listened.

"Hm. You know, I think there's something for you." She reached for a pen and paper, and wrote down a phone number.

"Call this number when you get back to base. Ask for 'Commander Jay Resnick and Commissar Jeff Cooper'. They have something for reformed rightists like you."

"Uh, thanks."

"You want me to show you around?"

"Sure."

With that, we entered the complex. She showed me the various artifacts, and I even met some of the Polish partisans.

In retrospect, for me, the World Revolutionary War began for me at the foot of that statue.

-------

The Perispehre speech was taken verbatim from parts of this:

 

[Adonisus]

(Here it is, my first official addition to the project as a contributor.)


Interview given by H. G. Wells with Premier William Foster and (Ret.) General Secretary Upton Sinclair, 1938.

(In 1938, during the week-long festivities celebrating the fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Union of American Socialist Republics, noted British Man of Letters H. G. Wells was invited by the Presidium of the United Republics, and by members of the Workers' Communist Party, for an interview and a discussion on the subject of Socialism, and the political system of the United Republics itself, with then Premier William Z. Foster and the recently retired General Secretary Upton Sinclair. Given four years after Wells' historic interview with Soviet leader Iosif Stalin*, it helps to form a complete picture of both the unity of the young Communist world, as well as the differences of opinion that would arise between the two TCI superpowers).



Wells: To begin with, I wish to share my gratitude to both of you, Mr. Foster and Mr. Sinclair, and to our mutual friends who helped facilitate this meeting.


Foster: The pleasure is all ours, Mr. Wells, I assure you.


Sinclair: I do lament that we were not allowed to have this meeting before my retirement.


W: Yes, you retired recently from politics Mr. Sinclair. Any particular reason?


S: Nothing terribly significant. I've done what I could to secure the Revolution and further the cause of Socialism at home and abroad, so I thought it was time to return to my first occupation and leave politics to the young. The world is theirs, after all. The events of last year ultimately solidified my decision.


W: And you, Mr. Foster?


F: I figure I still have a few years left in me yet. But ultimately that's a question for the workers to decide.


W: Mr. Sinclair, you mentioned the events from the previous year. Are you referring to the events that were sparked in Michigan?


S: Yes, specifically those and the actions of solidarity that spread throughout the Union.


F: It was an ugly episode, of that there is no doubt. But it ultimately proved the durability of the Workers' Government. We had predicted that such problems could arise and had formulated measures in order to deal with them.


W: So the offenders have been sacked?

S: They were re-called, and new elections were held. It will be up to the courts to decide their fates.


F: The possibility of corruption is as much a risk in proletarian democracy as it is in bourgeois democracy. But the system that the workers have put in place has proven durable.


W: I actually wanted to briefly discuss that subject, specifically how the government of the United Republics works, especially when compared to that of the Soviet Union.


S: We would be happy to, within reason.


F: We do have to emphasize that the form of socialism that has risen in our Union was born from very different material conditions than the ones born in Russia. Their struggle was quite harsh and bloody compared to ours.


W: I was actually scheduled to speak with the President-Elect in 1933**. I did not take that trip, obviously.


S: That was a wise decision. No-one could have guaranteed your safety then.


F: We couldn't even guarantee our own safety!


S: You did get to speak with our comrades in Russia, yes?


W: Yes, I was able to interview General-Secretary Stalin the following year. We actually spoke of the events in America that were happening then. My editors had other ideas, however.


F: Comrade Stalin is rather disarming, isn't he?


W: Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised. But to get back to the subject at hand: The Soviet system appears to be much more rigid and centralized than what you have built here in the United Republics. Has that caused any conflict between your two?


S: We have certainly had our disagreements, if that is what you are asking. But that can be said of any government.


F: The Soviets were instrumental in our triumph in the Revolution. They provided us with arms and volunteers at a time when we desperately needed them, and Comrade Stalin was the one who facilitated it. Our friendship with the USSR remains ironclad. But even friends have their conflicts, and we make no secret of those we have with our Russian comrades.


S: But we have the proper channels to address those disagreements.

W: You are referring to the Comintern?


F: The International, yes.


S: It provides a forum for all of the Communist parties of the world, and we have made our grievances known there as well as in public.


W: Well then, to elucidate further on the subject of the United Republics' government: You are not in fact a One-Party State, as is the case in the USSR.


F: Liberty is a virtue that the workers of the Union cherish, and we believe that political liberty is part of that. Because of this, we have freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of religion for the private life of workers who are so inclined. And yes, we have multiple political parties active in the Congress of Soviets.


S: Our first Deputy Premier, Comrade La Follete, was not a member of the Workers' Party but a member of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. Other allies in the Revolution like Comrade Roosevelt are Democratic Republicans. All three of these parties are represented in the Congress.


W: So all of these parties espouse socialism?


F: In varying ways, yes.


W: What about non-socialists?


S: That would be the True Democrats. They, too, are allowed to run for elections if they have workers' support. They are not terribly popular, however.


F: Especially in the former South, where many members of that party were formerly involved in the oppression of Negroes. But again, we do believe in political liberty even for those we staunchly disagree with.


S: But to emphasize the point: Political liberty is something we cherish in our Union. No-one is punished for disagreeing or speaking out against the government, nor should they be.


W: Your friends in the Soviet Union might disagree.


S: Not as strongly as you seem to think.

F: Again, the conditions that the USSR was born from are very different and more harrowing than the ones we faced here. They still continue to face sabotage and counter-revolution from both interior and exterior malefactors.


S: We do not necessarily agree with all of their actions, but we do understand why said actions have been taken.



W: But you do still have issues with subversion.

F: On occasion, yes. We have largely dealt with most reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries that directly endanger our Revolution. But we've done it with Due Process and protecting the liberties of the workers and peoples of our Union.


S: The workers would not forgive us if we failed to subdue them. These are not simply dissidents, they are hardened bigots and racists who seek to terrorize our Negro, Jewish and Latin brethren. They work directly with large criminal syndicates in order to fund their operations, if not simply receive aid and comfort from Havana.


W: So there is still no love lost between you and MacArthur.


F: You can probably guess why.


W: Turning to politics: You have an election coming up, correct?


F: That we do! In a couple of weeks, I believe.


S: They were announced in January by my successor.


W: Would you mind giving some thoughts on your fellow candidates, Premier Foster?


F: I'd be happy to.


W: Wonderful. Let us start with Mr. Harry Truman from the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.


F: I obviously have quite a bit of admiration for Comrade Truman. His work with the Minutemen was exemplary during the Civil War. His record speaks for itself. My issue however is that he is supportive of a petit-bourgeois brand of pseudo-socialism that, if not outright reactionary, is vulgar in its social regression. Quite simply, he is far too attached to his idealized agrarianism rather than material reality.


W: I see. Well, what of Mr. Thomas Dewey of the Democratic Republicans?


F: Well, Comrade Dewey and his compatriots aided us during the Civil War, and helped to bring several sympathizers from the old Republic to our cause. For that, he and they have our gratitude. I also admire his zeal in fighting against the racketeers and counter-revolutionaries in Metropolis. But sadly, like many of the Democratic Republicans he has far too much of a romantic attachment to the old United States, and is unable to fully recognize the legacy of slavery, colonial brutality and oppression that it inflicted upon this continent. There is a reason that we in the Workers' Party made a clean break with the past.


W: And finally, what of Mr. John Garner and Mr. Francis Walter of the True Democrats and Provisional Democrats, respectively?


F: (laughs) No comment.


S: The workers have already shed blood for our Union. We are not going back, no matter how much those two men wish us to.


W: I see. Perhaps we should turn to some lighter topics. I'd like to turn to you, Mr. Sinclair. Being a fellow Man of Letters I'm particularly interested to hear of your current activities.


F: I had a feeling this would come up.


W: Well, Mr. Sinclair's books are read in my country as well as yours.


S: And you shall have a few more, because that is exactly what I am currently busy with. Now that I finally have the time to write to my heart's content, I've been able to write at the rate I used to before the Revolution. I have so many topics to plum through that sometimes it's difficult to marshall all of my ideas into a coherent narrative!


F: The fact that you now have that prototype electrical typewriter certainly doesn't help. (laughs)


S: Perhaps. But I digress. Among my current projects are a memoir of the Revolution, as well as a story for children***.


W: A children's story, you say? That would certainly be a new enterprise for you, I believe.


S: I'm up to trying a lot of new things, these days. For the first time in my life, the future seems bright and prosperous. I've only a limited time on this planet, and I still feel like I've got hundreds of stories to tell. The Memoir alone may run ten volumes!

W: And Mr. Foster, it seems likely the WCPA will win reelection. What is the agenda for the next term? Indeed, what is your vision of the future of the nation?


F: Simple, we continue our work over the past few years building the dictatorship of the proletariat and helping the workers of the world achieve freedom. We live in very troubling times. The armies of fascists and capitalists are wrecking havoc across the globe. They are trying to repress the free peoples of Spain, Libya, Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia as we speak. Hitler's measure against the Jewish people are truly monstrous. We strive to show that fascism and dictators are not the only way. That a society run by the workers that make it function is possible and can be free of hatred and oppression. WE hope to be a shining example and inspire the workers to wake up and make this a reality for themselves.


(Wells thanked the two gentlemen, who in turn offered their gratitude for the opportunity. Foster would win re-election to the Premiership, only to resign from his post two years later on the outset of the Great Revolutionary War.)


*Yes, this actually happened. You can read it here.
**This also happened, though in real life he spoke with FDR.
*** He's referring to 'The Gnomobile', which in real life was published in 1936. Obviously, he didn't have time to write it ITTL until now.