Flash fiction thread

The rise and fall of the American People’s Republic

The Second American Revolution erupted in Detroit on May 1st 1932. Violence spiralled out of control in that industrial city in the heart of the Mid-West and the fall-out would bring down the government of the United States of America before the year was out. Communist victory would be the outcome as revolution won the battle for control of the country. President Herbert Hoover fled the nation before he could be voted out of office while his sure-fire challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt lost his life when New York City fell to the Red Militia that October. Washington was completely burnt to the ground in the fighting where civil war raged during the revolutionary period though the planned scouring of the nation’s capital was only one of many scenes of fantastical destruction which occurred during that year. Close to half a million lives were lost during the replacement of the capitalist United States of America with the communist American People’s Republic. The country was transformed with haste in the aftermath of the fighting’s conclusion just before that Christmas. There were changes everywhere including the dissolution of state governments & national institutions as well as the renouncement of territorial possessions outside of North America. Those in charge in New York – where the new republic made their capital – built something new from the ashes of the old. They set about transforming the American way of life and creating the utopia which they had promised the people. Those who didn’t want to live in such a society faced revolutionary justice in the form of the Red Terror. The American People’s Republic began its tenure as it would go on: drenched in the blood of enemies.

Such events shook the world, more so than the Russian Revolution fifteen years earlier. The effects were felt across the globe. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression hadn’t only affected America leading to such a situation where the government could be overthrown as fast as it was by the masses of the desperate duped into believing that those with guns and revolutionary zeal could deliver upon all of their promises. This blow from America to the economies of others was near fatal in many places. International trade with the former United States ceased leading to financial disaster elsewhere. Hoover had escaped to Canada and there were other Americans who left their new country too. A government-in-exile was formed first in Ottawa before eventually moving to Hawaii. That Pacific island chain was officially disowned by Chairman Edward Sommers (America’s dictator in all but name) in New York but wasn’t gobbled up like other territories by the Japanese – such as the Philippines – or the British & Canadians – who placed the Panama Canal and Alaska respectively under their protection – were. From Honolulu, there was an assertion that the United States of America still existed and the government there was under Hoover’s Vice President Charles Curtis who claimed to be the legitimate president. The facts on the ground though were that Sommers and the American Communist Party had all of the power and their regime extended from coast-to-coast across North America. Foreign governments tried to have relations with them despite the manner in which they had seized power and Sommers’ actions since then with his Red Terror against all opposition, real and imagined. America turned inwards though as rebellions flared up and the latest initiative to build the promised utopia took the attention of those in New York: the rest of the world was ignored. Even the Soviet Union was shunned by isolationist Sommers.

Through 1933 and into the next year too, there continued to be rebellious flare-ups nationwide. The communists had won country far too rapidly – it had never been a true civil war – and much of the Red Militia had been demobilised once victory had come leaving large numbers of civilians armed despite post-revolution laws to the contrary. The writ of government from New York didn’t have the desired effect across parts of the South and the West. People’s Commissioners were murdered by rebels. Crops were set alight and factories blown up. Strikes took place and successionists declared themselves dictators themselves. Each and every time, Sommers’ forces would eventually take control but it was never an easy process. In areas cleared of rebellion, the Red Terror would subsequently take place to try and pacify the people but that only inflamed tensions even more. The security forces would move on elsewhere and the trouble would start again. It would be late in 1934 when Sommers finally had enough. His government would no longer accept this situation where all that they’d built was threatened. The Red Militia was increased in size through forced conscription (when the call for volunteers was poorly answered) and the following January saw the country swept of the last vestiges of resistance to the regime in New York. Observers had thought that the Red Terror was outrageous in 1932 but they hadn’t imagined it could be as bad as it was come 1935. Rampaging armies ravaged large areas of the rural parts of the country. They slaughtered entire towns and went through the mountains, the plains and the swamps killing all in sight. Massive population transfers occurred in the aftermath among those people who were left. Unwittingly, yet in something that only a fool couldn’t foresee, Sommers set the country up for a famine. Workers in urban areas who filled their quotas in factories couldn’t manufacture in them wheat & corn which needed growing in the abandoned fields nor tend to the mass of livestock which was no longer being bred & prepared for slaughter. Farming families were some of the worst hit by the Red Terror and those who weren’t killed fled either to the cities of tried to make their way out of the American People’s Republic to either Canada or Mexico: Hawaii wasn’t an option and Curtis’ government there had decreasing influence.

Americans started to starve. Sommers’ regime tried to rectify this later in the year but it was a situation beyond repair. Too much damage was done to rural areas and the people who had fed the nation. Importing food was impossible due to the isolationism employed through the years and the hostility from abroad. A solution was eventually presented to him from one of his many lackeys: this time it wasn’t something ripped from the pages of works by Marx as was usually the case. The immediate neighbours of the American People’s Republic, Canada and Mexico, would be forced to give aid. The huge Red Militia would make sure that neither refused… or had the chance to either. Even if this hadn’t caused the war which it did, it was doomed effort. Such a rescue scheme was never going to work. American people couldn’t be fed by the armed theft of food from neighbouring countries! Sommers attempted it though and thus brought his regime up against force of arms from abroad.


It would later be called the Seven Nation Army. Soldiers from several countries (the United States of America from its Hawaiian base included) defended Canada and Mexico in a two year conflict which eventually saw them move to invade and liberate America. Britain and France – each concerned by German actions in Europe at the same time – fought alongside those two invaded nations with their coalition joined by Australia and New Zealand too.

In 1936, the main task was to push the Americans back over their own borders. Complete dominance of the seas, and increasingly the skies, helped the Seven Nation Army but when it came to men on the ground, the Red Militia had the numbers. Sommers was able to throw huge numbers of conscripted soldiers into the fighting to try and take over his neighbours. It was munities among them that eventually saw the collapse of the Canadian Front that summer – Mexico was a different matter – allowing for a counteroffensive to push the Red Militia out of Canada. British and French forces secured Florida later in the year and their naval strength helped ease the pressure of their allies fighting on the Mexico Front. Sommers would pull out the majority of his men from Mexico at the beginning of 1937 to stem the tide of the coming offensive down from Ontario into the Mid-West. The Royal Navy steamed into New York Bay in February to shell New York and there was also an amphibious assault made in the Seattle area too. When that city in the Pacific North-West was captured, Curtis’ forces also arrived ‘back home’. It was a token force but an important piece of propaganda. The United States of America was trying to reclaim its territory, assisted by allies who had committed themselves to no territorial concessions from their participation in this conflict… well, only in North America though, not elsewhere in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

When the main offensive on the Canadian Front started in the Spring, that quickly became the American Front. The border was crossed in many places and crushing defeats were incurred among the Red Militia. Further munities broke out and then there was the defection of a large number from the control of Sommers too. That broke open the battlefield in Minnesota leading to British Army tanks going south towards Chicago from the rear while ‘new divisions’ of the United States Army followed them. Detroit fell to the Canadians while the French secured Maine and pushed deeper into New England. Victories won by the Red Militia in Montana and also what was once Upstate New York couldn’t offset the tide of general defeat. There was an expansion of the invader’s control on the flanks in the Pacific North-West and New England, but the main drive into the Mid-West saw Chicago reached just ahead of May Day. The revolution had been five years beforehand but now the American People’s Republic was falling apart. In the Appalachians and Texas, the rebels came out again. There weren’t many people left who were willing to rise up but they bravely did. The flag of the United States, the old Stars & Stripes, was used as a banner by large armed groups who sought to liberate themselves with one last effort against the hated regime in New York who had drenched the country in blood throughout the last half decade.

Those rebellions were important factors in the success of the last offensive made by the Seven Nation Army. They distracted Sommers and his cohorts from where all attention should have been: in Upstate New York and across Indiana. ANZAC troops helped break open the way through Albany and there was the presence of those defectors from the Red Militia who fought for the United States at Indianapolis. However, it was British, French & Canadian troops who did the bulk of the fighting in ripping open the enemy lines. They were joined by tanks and aircraft in opening gaps for the offensive to go ahead. The Americans collapsed nearly everywhere in a crescendo. The Red Militia was beaten. Hungry bellies and, at that stage ammunition shortages, were just as responsible for their defeat as the invader’s strength. The Ohio River was crossed in August and the Hudson Valley was entered too. Back to New York Bay the Royal Navy came while French warships supported the landing in the ruins of the abandoned Washington by a party of soldiers under their Stars & Stripes banner. The American People’s Republic was now coming apart. Most of the country still was in Sommers’ hands in theory but the war was lost by where invading armies were and rebellion seemingly everywhere else. Soldiers started laying down their arms and a tide of successionists sprung up. Many of the latter were opposed to the old order of the United States just as they were the communists, but for the time being they fought against Sommers forces. It was September 2nd when New York was reached by British and Canadian troops as they came down from the north. Sommers was still in the city and he intended to fight to the end. Others in his regime had fled but he stayed in his capital intending to man the ramparts. Someone shot him in the back of the head the next morning with the identity of his killer unknown to history. Despite that assassination, there was still a fight for the city which lasted several weeks: men of Sommers’ regime fought on there long after his death. Elsewhere though, there was an absence of real resistance to the liberation of America apart from south of the Ohio. Those invading made sure that they continued the message of ‘liberation’ wherever they went. Military rule had to be enforced though and there were few ‘friendly locals’ to appoint to positions of power to legitimise it in the eyes of the public. In Hawaii through the years, Curtis’ regime had bled supporters and so there weren’t many people they could bring with them when they returned home. Soldiers with the Seven Nation Army had many engagements with armed locals who fought not for the dead Sommers but against foreign occupation.

The American People’s Republic lasted until November. Boston and Philadelphia fell without a shot but there were Red Militia forces who established themselves along the Mississippi and down into Dixie. They retreated from the Appalachians and were surrounded on all sides as well as facing a French attack coming up from Florida to hit them in the rear. Only until defeat was inflicted upon them did the last communist forces fight. It was all over following the Battle of Montgomery on November 20th. The last organised resistance was finished off there in Dixie, some time after almost the whole of the West ended up under United States control following defections and desertions too. President Curtis was in Washington despite there being nothing there to resemble the capital it once was. With the war over, and foreign armies soon to be departing (the British and French would join with the United States in making veiled threats to force the vengeful Mexicans out of Arizona and New Mexico), now the re-established United States of America had to set about the long and painful process of putting itself back together again. Anyone who thought that was easy was stupider than Chairman Sommers had been two years beforehand.

Good work here. I really like this format. There was a TL about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan on the other forum that mixed this format in with others. I'll look for the link.

Sneaky buggers


The Soviet invasion of Iran begun on July 1st, 1984. The outrageous actions undertaken by the leadership of the Islamic Republic had gone on for too long. No longer could those in Moscow allow them to continue. Iran had refused to heed to threats nor even back down during the Soviet-instigated recent border clashes. It had been decided by those in the Kremlin that the situation would only get worse. Iranian activities on Soviet soil – denied by Tehran – threatened the whole house of cards which was the Soviet empire. Enough was enough. The Soviet Army would march on Tehran to install a responsible government there. Long-standing plans for a hypothetical conflict, ones recently dusted off, were modified and orders sent to participating combat & non-combat forces. A hasty, partial mobilisation in the southern military districts of the Soviet Union had seen the capability to launch the invasion reached in nine days from decision to going over the border.

Soviet special forces, aided by paratroopers for fire support, saw the airports around Tehran as well as an airhead at Tabriz seized without much resistance. An airlift begun once Soviet fighters had neutralised enough of Iran’s air defences and this allowed for attacking riflemen on the ground to be joined by light armour with haste. The Iranian capital was a battlefield in the first hours of the war. From out of the Caucasus, the Turkmen SSR and also Afghanistan, columns of Soviet armour rolled. They had extensive air cover and benefitted from electronic warfare support which the Iranians couldn’t hope to contend with. Short-range ballistic missiles – some laden with fast-acting nerve agents – supported the tanks and infantry carriers pushing deep into Iran. Airmobile troopers and parachutists were also present on the flanks and out ahead to give these attacks extra impetus. Iraqi forces struck all along the front of their ongoing war with Iran, supported by direct Soviet air intervention in places. Much hope was put in what the Iraqis would achieve… so much of that rather a forlorn hope. Regardless, the Iraqi attack did what it was supposed to do and kept Iranian forces where they were on this third front of the invasion.

In addition, Moscow opened up a fourth front simultaneously with those in the north, the east (Afghanistan) and the west (Iraq). Soviet Naval Infantry – their blue-bereted marines – joined with detachments of more of those paratroopers and Spetsnaz in attacking from the south. Iran’s long coastline along the Persian Gulf became a battlefield. The numbers of attackers here weren’t many and there was a great deal of danger of serious reverse for the mission goals. Still, the landings made in Bandar Abbas (and nearby islands) as well as at Bushehr and the new port at Chabahar were undertaken. It was important and the risks judged against the geopolitical rewards. Soviet forces grabbed southern access points along the Iranian coastline not just for their own use and so that they could attack Iran from all sides. This was additionally done to keep the Americans out.

Briefed on this element of the invasion later in the day, the American president uttered the phrase ‘sneaky buggers’ when shown the maps and with the implications pointed out. Moscow’s actions along the coast of Iran meant that they had their forces exactly at the same locations where US forces taking part in any hypothetical landings going into Iran would be using. The initial entry points were rapidly being expanded – Iraqis being shipped to into Bushehr and Soviet riflemen flying into Bandar Abbas – and there wasn’t much chance of the Iranians pushing them back into the sea. Like those in Moscow, military planners in Washington had previously war-gamed scenarios for American forces to go into Iran. One of those options concerned what the Pentagon called the ‘Zagros Doctrine’: US forces reaching those mountains in the south and stopping – with or without shots being exchanged – Soviet forces coming down from the north and east from reaching the Persian Gulf. That was now not an option which the American president had at his disposal should he wish to see his country intervene in Iran. Soviet forces would have to be engaged first, ahead of any landing. They weren’t stupid in Moscow, those sneaky buggers there.

No American intervention came. Even if the southern route into Iran had been open and there was the possibility of exploring the Zagros Doctrine to its logical end, the decision taken in Washington wasn’t the same as that reached in Moscow. The United States wasn’t about to go to war for the sake of the stupid actions of the rapidly collapsing regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yes, American geo-political interests were seriously threatened by what was happening but movements of defensive forces, new alliances and a series of secret diplomatic contacts between Moscow & Washington took place. Meanwhile, the Soviet invasion continued. Hiccups occurred, even serious reverses in places, but for all of the resistance that Iran could offer, one of the world’s superpowers brought them down. Seven weeks after the invasion began, the last organised Iranian resistance was obliterated in the Esfahan–Qom area deep inside the country. There was already a new government in Tehran and there were mass graves outside the city of those who refused to see sense when it came to the new order. Global war fears subsided and the strategic play carried out by Moscow in seizing the southern shore paid off big time.

The war was won and now begun the insurgency. It would be one to rival that in neighbouring Afghanistan in intensity and brutality. America had refused to commit their own troops to fight in Iran but it was sending guns to Iranians willing to fight for Iran before the end of the year. There would be no quiet end to this conflict either. Decades later, after the regimes in Moscow & Baghdad, plus that one established in Tehran in 1984, were long gone, the fighting would continue.

Iran would be Afghanistan X100.
It depends if the world can find out. Iran wouldn't be open to neutral, unmolested inspectors. Iraq used gas against Iran and the world turned a blind eye. the Soviets would be different, but proof, that everyone believes, would be hard to stick.