Scorpions in a Bottle: 'For Want of a Nail' Expanded

The Early Worden Governorship

Theodore Worden, as detailed previously, was an ardent CNA nationalist, had had quite inflammatory opinions against those he saw as detrimental to the betterment of the nation as a whole. Catapulted into the Governor-Generalship after the attacks of August 2nd, he would ensure that those who impeded upon the CNA would pay the full price for their actions.

The Indian Liberation Movement was determined quickly determined to be the sponsor of the attacks, as announced by Shamba Pandya in a radio broadcast:

"We are, and proudly are, the men who sponsored this assault on tyranny. The men in Burgoyne are just like the men in London and Taichung: sponsors of imperialism, and by extension of the forces that keep India, our homeland, in chains. Now, listen to their nation writher and scream; they are now paralyzed."

This rhetoric by the ILM sent the majority population in the CNA into a blinding rage directed against anything Indian. Indian immigrant-owned businesses were picketed (and in some cases violently attacked), and Indian immigrants were often attacked publicly in major cities such as Norfolk, Burgoyne, and New York. These attacks were, to the chagrin of people inclined towards the Peace and Justice Party, often encouraged by the crowds of angry North Americans seeking vengeance. Notably, Worden and the remnants of the Grand Council said nothing on the matter.

To begin intensifying security in the country, Worden announced on August 18th that the CNA would be undergoing the first draft of all able-bodied males into the military to "restore peace, order, and a sense of normalcy in the Confederation and goodwill to all peoples." Immediately, the Peace and Justice Party began massive protests on university campuses (the Party's strongholds), but other than them, very few objected. The nation was in turmoil, most agreed, and drastic measures would have to be implemented to counter the threat of another attack of this nature.

The most shocking event of this persuasion was a massive student protest at the University of Indiana in Michigan City on August 21st, in which several thousand students and likeminded individuals who had refused to register for the draft demonstrated for an end to the increasing militarization of CNA society (Worden had called several units into active alert, and the occasional military patrol was not uncommon). Here, the head of the Peace and Justice Party James Volk was speaking to denounce the Worden Governorship's "Cronyism, enabling of oligarchy, and militarization."

However, at this protest, the general in charge of the CNA military base in Michigan City by the name of Ernest O'Donnell, a devout Imperativist, felt it necessary to station troops by the site of the protest "in the name of protecting them from those who may commit violence against them." This was not without a grounding in reality; the PJP had been subject to violence as well as Indian immigrants. As such, several warmobiles and infantry squads were positioned in key areas. They were under strict orders to not fire first at any threat.

Tragedy struck when a particularly incensed group of students, about ten in number, attacked an infantry unit stationed in the area of the protests using privately owned firearms. The infantry, seeing as they had been attacked first, fired back, killing all the students in that group. As word spread, more overzealous students began attacking military forces, and eventually an entire riot had broken out among a portion of the protestors. This was not backed by the PJP leadership, however. Volk is on the record as calling to those committing violence to stop, saying "There is a reason why we are called the Peace and Justice Party! Stop this violence at once!"

Even so, Volk was arrested by local police forces for inciting violence amongst the students, something he fervently denied. The "Bloody 21st," as it became called, resulted in 224 student deaths (not all of them attackers) and 21 deaths of active duty soldiers. O'Donnell was unrepentant:

"I refuse to apologize for the actions taken in self-defense by my soldiers. I am certain any other commander in the area would have authorized it."

Worden, in an announcement in newspapers and on official vitavision channels, applauded O'Donnell and the arrest of Volk. To counter this, he would be appointing O'Donnell as the new head of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, replacing Orton MacPherson, who had tendencies towards the Liberal Party. As the new head of the CBI, O'Donnell would be in charge of investigating subversive elements and other potential terrorists.

On September 4th, Worden addressed a meeting of the members of the United British Empire in London regarding the Indian Liberation Movement, giving the now-infamous "vengeance speech," a speech which would define CNA foreign policy for the next several years:

"Fellow members of the British Empire, I know of your deliberations regarding requesting military aid from the Confederation of North America to combat the threat of the Indian Liberation Movement and its madman of a leader, Shamba Pandya, who has menaced your nations before and has menaced our nation last month. To this request, we accept. We will aid you. It is in the best interests of all. The CNA armed forces will be at your disposal."

On September 8th, the first CNA forces, under command of Jared Ethan, landed in Pondicherry, beginning the Occupation of India.



The Beginnings of the Invasion of India

On September 8th, 1973, the first divisions of the CNA military arrived in Pondicherry to, in the words of Governor-General Theodore Worden, "restore peace to a blighted land and bring to justice a butcher who has slaughtered thousands if not millions." Pondicherry, an area with little action taken by the Indian Liberation Movement, was chosen for that very reason to be the location of the United Empire Task Force Headquarters (UETFH), the base of operations for United Empire forces in India.

Soon after the arrival of CNA forces, several divisions from the UK, Victoria, Australia, and New Zealand arrived in Pondicherry as part of the Empire-wide alliance to find and put Shamba Pandya on trial for crimes against the Dominion of India and the United Empire as a whole. Even though Britain was the head of the Empire at least nominally, the entire operation was under the command of the CNA military, assisted by the Confederation Bureau of Investigation.

The commander of this offensive was General Jared Ethan, a CNA military man from Scottsdale, Indiana, and a devout Imperativist. In the wake of the August 2nd bombing, Governor-General Worden made Ethan the head of the Army Task Force for National Security, tasked with overseeing the military operations with keeping the peace in the CNA post-bombing. Now, due as much to his loyalty to the Imperativist cause as to his skill, he was in command of a multinational coalition designed to take revenge on those who attacked his home country.

The arrival of the Empire force in India was met with mixed reactions among the population of India. The Empire Party rejoiced, encouraging young Indians to join the Indian Army to aid the coalition in putting an end to the violence that had plagued the country. The Liberal Unionist Party issued statements of support for the coalition, but made no urges to join the Indian military. The Indian Congress for Independence was officially neutral, but many high-ranking members made statements supporting their mission if not their overall purpose of keeping the empire together.

Upon the arrival of the coalition force, Shamba Pandya released a radio broadcast calling for a new insurgency against the Empire and the Indian government in Delhi. In this broadcast, he said:

"Indians, the imperialists now have no qualms about destroying our way of life, our traditions, our people, and our nation. It is now time to make fertile India's land with the blood of the conquerors. Kill all imperialists you can; men, women, children, soldiers, workers, White or Indian or Negro; it is irrelevant. Make them suffer for coming here."

To inaugurate this threat, locomobiles rigged with explosives, dubbed 'locobombs' by English-speaking observers, detonated in several Indian cities in crowds of people, killing 1,500 on that date alone. Shootings, bombings, and other acts of terrorism were commonplace in the following weeks, not least in areas with Coalition presence.

From Pondicherry, CNA forces moved north to reinforce Delhi, Karachi, Bombay, and Calcutta. The first engagement between CNA forces and the ILM ensued on the outskirts of Pondicherry when a convoy freightmobile, ostensibly belonging to the Indian government, was actually filled with ILM resistance fighters who burst out of the freightmobile and slaughtered several civilian workers before CNA troops engaged them. Eventually, some were captured and brought to a compound in Pondicherry for interrogation, but the vast majority were killed. Ten CNA soldiers and twenty-five ILM fighters were killed.



The Foundation of the Global Association for Peace

In the wake of the August 2nd attacks on Burgoyne, John Paul Lassiter, his staff, and his cabinet, as well as the entire Mexican government looked upon the situation with unease. Lassiter had previously made several direct overtures towards the Indian Liberation Movement, but the murder of the majority of the CNA Grand Council during the August 2nd attacks seriously gave his administration pause.

On August 4th, the Mexican Congress voted to issue no statement regarding the attacks, and offer no humanitarian aid, unlike several other nations of the world which did. Through various diplomatic channels, he ensured the other nations of the Greater American Free Trade Agreement did not do so either. This position was urged on by Secretary of War Ernesto Salmeron and Secretary of State Raymond Portillo, both stern Mercatorists that opposed the CNA and what it stood for, much like Lassiter. Opposed to this policy of neutrality was General Julio Recinos, the commander of the Jefferson military district and the main overseer of border troops between the USM and the CNA. Backing him was General Malcolm Norris, commander of the border troops in Alaska and the northern parts of Arizona and Mexico del Norte. Generals Recinos and Norris opposed the lack of compassion of the regime on the basis that it may make the CNA more likely to strike the USM first.

When the CNA and the United British Empire jointly invaded India, Lassiter made a firm denunciation of the invasion, calling it "an imperialist action designed to keep yet another people in the hands of the British." Similar statements were made by Rigoberto Rodriguez of the Argentine, Enrique Hermion of New Granada, and other nations of GAFTA, as well as various African and Asian nations that opposed the intervention.

Lassiter realized that the United British Empire provided a framework for powers hostile to the United States of Mexico to coordinate their efforts to attain strategic policy objectives, most of which Lassiter took as hostile, the invasion of India highest among them. To counter this, Lassiter called for an assembly of delegates to form a new organization to provide a framework for the coordination of the activities of poorer nations of the world.

In a speech in Mexico City's Jackson Square:

"The oppressed peoples of the world need a safeguard for their independence, such that their enemies in Burgoyne and London may not encroach upon them. So now, I call for a conference of peoples in a neutral area to hammer out a new organization, the Global Association for Peace, to act as such."

Almost immediately, the poorer nations of the world sent ambassadors to Mexico City to voice approval of this plan. A brief meeting in Mexico City led to the agreement that it should be held in a neutral area, not in Mexico. Eventually the decision was reached that the Association's Charter Conference would be held in Port Babineaux, United Townships of Ghana. President of the United Townships Jacques Desrochers was ecstatic, hoping for an increased amount of trade in his poor, impoverished nation.

On September 20th, 1973, the Port Babineaux Conference was completed, with 95 nations, the United States of Mexico among them, being signatories to the Global Association for Peace Charter. Under the Charter, there would be a Director-General serving as the chief executive of the organization, tasked with various administrative functions. The first Director-General was Kulap Sunan Metharom, a delegate from the Kingdom of Siam. In his inaugural speech, Metharom denounced the "imperialists in Taichung that oppress my homeland and the lands of East and Southeast Asia."

In addition to the executive Director-General, there would be a World Assembly composed of two delegates per nation, tasked with passing resolutions regarding the world situation, hoping that the nations of the Association would agree with its assessment. Shortly after the passing of the charter, the first meeting of the World Assembly took place in the National Legislature building in Port Babineaux, with a GAP building scheduled to be completed by the end of 1973. Additional buildings would be constructed in other parts of Port Babineaux, as well as auxiliary offices in Mexico City.



Kramer Associates in the 1970s

After the launch of the Bernard Kramer from Honshu, Japan, Kramer Associates established itself as the leading power in space exploration, and its actions in other parts of the world solidified itself as a major power on the level of the United British Empire, Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico, or any other power so endowed. As benefitting a power of said stature, company President Carl Salazar authorized a series of exploits worldwide for the creation of profit and goodwill.

Salazar, a personal friend of Japanese Prime Minister Shotaro Ogino, put relations with that country among the highest priorities among KA objectives. It was KA that helped Japan modernize during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there was a feeling of a great debt owed to KA by many in Japan. In the words of the Emperor himself in 1962:

"Kramer Associates is a blessing from the Queen Goddess Amaterasu herself. They have helped us reach a pinnacle of development, and we owe them a great debt."

Under Salazar, the relationship with the United British Empire grew and grew, and Salazar himself met with politicians from Britain, India, Australia, and Victoria to mend their relationship, even though Salazar was the one who authorized the Taichung project which spurred development of nuclear weapons in the UBE. Said alliance was mostly an alliance of convenience; it was their mutual distrust of the United States of Mexico that brought them together. It was known during the Global War that Mexico was capable of harming British holdings in the Pacific, and the UBE was not interested in having that occur a second time.

Salazar remained hostile towards the United States of Mexico, and the acquisition of that nation of atomic bombs under the direction of Thomas McCarthy worried him greatly. He ordered KA naval bases on Luzon and Mindanao to mobilize in case of a Mexican strike, and primed all nuclear launch sites in case of Mexican hostility. However, beyond rhetoric, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter displayed no interest in actively antagonizing the corporation; rather, his main enemy was the CNA. Salazar was satisfied with this arrangement.

Salazar was ambivalent towards the CNA, and mostly did not concern himself with the country's politics. He took an interest in the Imperativist movement, however, and covertly funded some of their candidates; he figured that so long as the CNA was openly hostile to the USM, KA could be left to its own devices. After the August 2nd bombings and the deaths of most of the CNA Grand Council, Salazar authorized a massive aid package to be sent to Burgoyne to be used in reconstruction.

Kramer Associates owned several manufacturing plants in India which were responsible for the production of weapons and foodstuffs to be sold worldwide. The Indian Liberation Movement found KA's involvement in the country deeply disturbing, and several of these manufacturing plants were damaged or destroyed in bombings. After the joint CNA-UBE invasion force landed in Pondicherry, KA threw his support behind the Coalition. KA diplomatic channels in Burgoyne, London, Rutledge, Canberra, and Delhi all offered financial and supply aid in the occupation, which was accepted by all. CNA Governor-General Theodore Worden had the following to say on the matter:

"Mr. Salazar has yet again shown his dedication to keeping world peace. We graciously accept any aid he has to offer us, and wish him the best in his endeavors."

To international observers, the most morally dubious actions committed by Salazar during the 1970s were a continuation of his policies started in the wake of the Global War: policy in China and Southeast Asia. These areas had fractured into warlords' provinces, and KA was eager to remain with an economic foothold in these regions. By 1971, there were fewer of these states, some backed by and friendly towards KA and others hostile to them.

In China, the Republic of Jiangsu, in control of a majority of Southeastern China with its capital at Nanjing, was the major KA-backed state, run by President Wen Pan. Wen was a Chinese commander during the Global War who fought against the Mexicans and Siberians that had invaded. After the fragmentation of the Chinese government, Wen returned to his native Jiangsu and carved out a fiefdom for himself. Wen was, unlike most warlords, eager to have KA investment in Jiangsu and its territories, and established an embassy in Taipei in 1967. From there, he cooperated with Salazar and his agents.

Other KA affiliates in China were the Republic of Greater Mongolia and the Sovereign State of Manchuria, both of which had leaders sympathetic towards KA and followed Jiangsu's lead. Both of these states, like Jiangsu, were given significant amounts of military aid, which was used to increase their holdings at the expense of hostile warlords among the remnants of China.

In opposition to Kramer Associates were the Protectorate of Hunan, constantly at war with Jiangsu, the State of Turkestan (which stretched into central Asia as well), the Republic of Tibet, and the State of Sichuan, all of which were in sympathy to the United States of Mexico, and all signed the Charter of the Global Association for Peace at Port Babineaux. KA forcefully blockaded these nations and backed insurgency groups in them, hoping to convert them to KA suzerainty.

In Southeast Asia, the situation was similar. The Kingdom of Siam and the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea were hostile to KA, while the Union of Malaya and the Confederation of Vietnam were sympathetic to Salazar and followed the Jiangsu model of cooperation. Much like China, the former two were signatories to the GAP charter while the latter two remained in the influence of KA.

The Development of the Calculator - From 1948 to 1974

During the fire of the Global War, KA scientists were hard at work at the construction of a new device, mainly for the purpose of calculating revenues and expenses for the war effort. Based on the designs of the occasional inventor, these scientists, led by Samuel Herring, worked on what would be known as the electronic calculator.

Previous calculators, operated by a series of punch cards, had been in use as early as the 1880s, where in the CNA, Britain, and USM had been used for censuses and other accounting tasks. The Global War had spurred the necessity for a more efficient calculator, as the debts incurred by KA had become large enough that the human labor necessary for solving them effectively had become too costly. The electronic calculator would be their replacement.

Through the 1950s, Herring and his team worked at Taichung to ensure that their machines would work effectively at calculating basic equations. In 1955, the first electronic calculator, the EME (Electronic Mathematical Engine) was debuted to Carl Salazar, who enthusiastically approved of the device. After a demonstration of the device's power and capabilities, Salazar ordered that clones of the EME, the size of a large room, be installed in major KA facilities across Taiwan and the Philippines.

In 1955, Herring was contacted by Salazar to begin the preparation of the EME for military purposes, and disclosed the nature of the Taichung Project, the project which would result in the nuclear bomb. Herring was tasked with the creation of calculators that would assist in weapons development and testing, something which Salazar was of the utmost importance. In a speech to the KA Board of Directors in January of 1956:

"If we can have superior calculating power, we can have superior military power by the virtue of increased precision and accuracy. While the CNA and the USM may be guessing at their target, we will be calculating its exact location in seconds."

By the detonation of the first nuclear weapon as a result of the Taichung Project, Herring had proven his worth as an adept imparter (a term used for those who imparted data from the real world to the calculator), perhaps the most competent of imparters in the world. From here, Herring refocused his efforts to creating calculators that would be able to crack codes used to convey information among the intelligence agencies of the world.

In 1964, one of Herring's coworkers, Chester Findlay, had the idea of attaching a cathode ray tube, as used in vitavisions, to a calculator, enabling the graphical representation of data imparted into said calculator. This breakthrough in calculator science was embraced by KA and made standard throughout the firm. Cathode ray calculators (or CRCs) were used in KA weapons tests, and eventually cropped up in the agencies of other nations, but KA still held the lead.

In 1971, the launch of the Bernard Kramer satellite into extraterrestrial airspace was facilitated by CRCs, and Herring was congratulated, along with ballistics scientist Marcus Lustig, with its completion. Within the satellite were several calculators based on Herring's designs, which facilitated the transmission of vitavision signals to KA-backed broadcasting stations.

Before the launch of the Bernard Kramer, Lustig and Herring had collaborated on the development of the Intraplanetary Atmospheric Missile (IPAM), a form of missile designed to transport warheads of various sizes to points across the globe. The IPAM, the brainchild of KA ballistics scientist Charles Hodder, was designed to complement the Taichung Project's destructive power with a range that was in every sense capable serving as an "angel of death," in Hodder's words, to any nation that threatened the order of the War without War. Lustig aided him with the actual ballistics; Herring provided calculators for both mathematical calculations and tests. By 1971, IPAMs had the capability of being armed with nuclear warheads, and several with said warheads were aimed at Burgoyne, Mexico City, London, and Berlin.



The Worden-Sykes Propaganda Machine

Upon Theodore Worden's haphazard ascension to the office of Governor-General of the Confederation North America, one of his initial actions was to create a new government agency to disseminate information regarding the unfolding crisis and then war in India. The official newspaper, the Confederation Herald and the official vitavision channel GCVT (for Grand Council Vitavision) were previously the only two state-owned apparatuses for the dissemination of information, but the early 1970s necessitated a change in government techniques. The CNA could not rely on the whims of the newspaper business, run by such moguls as Leslie Grisham of the Burgoyne Times or Garrett Leahy of the New York Post, Worden contended, and that a state-run enterprise was necessary to convey the "truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth," in the words of Worden in a speech to major Vitavision networks.

To head this new agency, the Confederation Bureau of Information Dissemination (CBID) was established, its headquarters being in the Pittsville neighborhood of Burgoyne, an affluent part of the city with major government buildings and many rich occupants. The head of the CBID would be a party boss from Michigan City, Indiana, by the name of Peter Sykes.

Peter Sykes was of English ancestry who immigrated from England during the 19th century, and settled in Michigan City to work in the factories (an occupation that would pay comparatively handsomely to someone of the poor stature of the Sykes family). Eventually, one of Peter's ancestors, Christian Sykes, would rise the ranks of Indiana Utilities (a major producer of ovens and other home supplies nationwide), a position which brought his family great wealth. Christian's son Bartholomew would take the position of head of the company in 1905 after the death of the company founder Harris Hickey. It was from this standpoint of business wealth that Peter was brought in.

Peter graduated from the University of Indiana in 1949 with a major in communications. He worked jobs with advertising agencies until 1954, where he got a job with the Michigan City People's Coalition. From there, he was found to be a master propagandist, leading for several Coalition councilmen elected from Michigan city during multiple election cycles. Thomas Chapman, a councilman who owed his election in no small amount to Sykes' advertising, had the following to say after his retirement in 1968:

"Peter Sykes is the communications wizard of Michigan City, nay, of Indiana. His films, his radio broadcasts, his print advertisements, his rallies all resulted in Coalition victory. If it weren't for him, I would have lost to Matthew Lewin, Robert Hiskey, or Fulton Macalister [Liberal opponents of Chapman]. The party owes him a great debt."

After the rise of the Imperativist movement in 1968, Sykes threw himself behind the Imperativist cause and began promoting it in newspapers, using his family wealth to fund this great endeavor. Theodore Worden took notice of this, and met with Sykes in 1970 in Philadelphia. The two turned out to quite like each other, and Sykes began designing advertisements and promoting for Imperativist fundraisers nationwide.

After the August 2nd attacks in Burgoyne, the ascension of Theodore Worden to the Governor-Generalship, the Invasion of India, and the foundation of the CBID, Sykes was Worden's first choice for the position. Sykes was a choice based not merely in qualifications, but also in politics (a connection many made). Not only did Sykes faithfully serve the Imperativist movement, he was also a masterful showman, of the likes of Richard Mason. His rallies were notable for attracting thousands to the Imperativist cause and drumming up support for the general draft for the Invasion of India. Indeed, after going to a rally where Sykes spoke, several young men Confederationwide volunteered before the draft went into effect.

A Sykes rally had the trappings of the 19th century political rally adopted to the contemporary political climate. The flag of the CNA would fly from every flagpole possible, as well as draped from buildings in the vicinity and on lampposts, accompanied by the flag of whatever confederation the rally was held in, along with any local or municipal flag that was applicable. To begin the rally, a large brass band, accompanied by a very large chorus, would perform The Call of Saratoga, the CNA national anthem, followed by a common Imperativist anthem Our Mandate Divine. This would be followed by a local party or government official, on the pleasantries one would expect. After this, Sykes would give a rousing, thunderously loud speech (powered by only his naturally loud voice) about the direness of the time. It was a frighteningly useful tactic.

From one of these rallies directly after the August 2nd attacks came two hallmarks of Sykes' characterization of Worden. At this speech, in Williamsville, Pennsylvania, Sykes declared:

"It is our requirement, now, to follow our new Governor-General into the future. He is a sage of our time, whose wisdom and genius we must heed if we are to leave this crisis with our institutions and traditions intact and our heads held high. Worden is the Leader. The Leader will save the nation."

After such a triumphant finish, Sykes raised his right hand to the sky, his elbow bent at a slight angle, and his pointer finger pointing towards the sky. This, he explained, was a salute in the style of the Romans (those more educated in the classics would indicate it was that of the Augustus of Prima Porta more than anything else). After this, his speech was interrupted by a chant of "The Leader will save the nation" with that salute. It would be copied the whole nation over.



Indian Domestic Response after the Invasion

The government of India was lukewarm about the prospect of the joint CNA-UBE force landing in Pondicherry at best. Only about half of the Indian delegates to the UBE were in favor of the military action, while the other half was decidedly against it. However, due to the majority of the UBE delegates from Britain proper, Victoria, and Australia were in favor of the invasion, said invasion was allowed to commence.

After the initial landings in Pondicherry CNA General Jared Ethan, the supreme commander of the invasion forces, addressed the Indian parliament in New Delhi. with Prime Minister Devan Mahajan and Governor Cyrus Greenfield in attendance. This speech, concerning the role of the occupation force and promises to the Indian government regarding said invasion forces, promised respect to Indian sovereignty and government institutions. In particular, Ethan made the promise that "no civilian will be harmed by our invasion force unless they explicitly take up arms against us or otherwise aid the butchers in the Indian Liberation Movement. All humanity is equal, and we, the civilized people of the United British Empire, respect that fundamental equality that permeates all men and women."

The three parties in the Indian parliament (Empire, Liberal Unionist, and Indian Congress for Independence (ICI)) each responded in different but predictable (to one acquainted with 1960s and early 1970s Indian politics) manners consistent with their established ideological viewpoints. The Empire Party, led by Latif Prabhu, a merchant representing Karachi in parliament, responded quite favorably to the arrival of the CNA and UBE troops, and prepared various supply collections throughout India to be given to homesick and confused soldiers from foreign lands. The Empire Party also sponsored rallies throughout India to promote enlistment in the Indian Army, and had moderate success in such efforts.

The Liberal Unionist Party still for the most part supported the arrival of the Imperial troops, but far more reservedly than the Empire Party. The Liberal Unionists, under party chairman Mitra Chadha, mainly promoted anti-ILM movements in the various cities of India, and built up support for their party simultaneously. Certain Liberal Unionist leaders opposed the landings in Pondicherry and the subsequent dispersal of CNA and UBE troops elsewhere in the country, and spoke at rallies and on vitavision to spread such sentiments. However, these Liberal Unionists made it very clear that violence against the Imperial troops would not be tolerated.

The Indian Congress for Independence (ICI) took a position much the same as the more isolationist Liberal Unionists; one opposed to the occupation but equally opposed to the extremist ILM and their philosophy of violence. ICI leader Shalya Grewal openly denounced Shamba Pandya in a vitavised speech in Hyderabad:

"This man 'knows' what is best for India only because his goals broadly align with our own. However, we are not the ones who have called for the butchering of Anglo-Indians. We are not the ones who have called for attacks on innocent civilians. We are not the ones who destroyed the legislature of an innocent nation, driving them into a fury that has caused them to invade our country. You have made quite a bargain, Pandya, and now all of our homeland will have to pay the price for this horrendous act."

In recognition of the current political climate, Grewal promised to hold no mass protests or rallies so long as the invasion force was occupying India, his reasoning being that the ICI could become the target of both the ILM and the imperial coalition forces, especially those who disobeyed orders and committed crimes against civilian populations. Rather, the ICI continued to lobby and encouraged ICI supporters to arm in case of an attack by either side. In this act, Grewal was ready to turn the ICI into his own army should India's eventual independence be threatened.



Mexican Foreign Policy after the Invasion of India

The United States of Mexico was firm in its denunciation of the United British Empire and the Confederation of North America as the Invasion of India commenced. Mexico was considered the great power most in tune with the developing world, and the majority of Latin American and African states were in concord with the government in Mexico City rather than Burgoyne or London. President John Paul Lassiter, after the Invasion of India, announced "full support for nonviolent efforts to remove the imperialists from India."

In what was and still is seen as a Mexican counterpoint to the invasion, Mexican Secretary of State Raymond Portillo toured several countries in East and Southeast Asia that were commonly deemed hostile to Kramer Associates, whose president, Carl Salazar, was outspokenly in favor of the intervention in India. The countries visited were the Protectorate of Hunan, State of Turkestan, Republic of Tibet, State of Sichuan, Kingdom of Siam, and Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, all of which were locked in conflict, often violent, with KA-backed states.

Raymond Portillo was a former Congressman from Durango, with ancestry from all three major Mexican ethnic groups. After the election of John Paul Lassiter in 1971, Portillo, an ally of Lassiter's in Congress who collaborated with him on several initiatives, was noted for his excellency in terms of foreign policy, and it was this trait that made Lassiter appoint Portillo as his secretary of state, replacing the outgoing Diego Quiroga, a longtime assistant of Raphael Dominguez.

On these visits, Portillo recognized these states' accession to the Global Association for Peace, and signed trade deals with them to replace the goods prohibited from flowing into them by KA blockades. Lassiter knew Salazar would not dare trifle with the power of the United States of Mexico now that it had the atomic bomb, and that a Second Global War would be detrimental to humanity at large. This implicit understanding between Taichung and Mexico City would continue for several years and prevent, at least initially, the Invasion of India blossoming into a new war between the world's major powers.

Portillo, under Lassiter's orders, arranged the signing of a treaty that expanded the Greater American Free Trade Agreement (GAFTA) to these East Asian and South Asian nations in a diplomatic meeting in Chengdu, Sichuan. With the attendance of both Asian and Latin American delegates, GAFTA was dissolved and replaced with the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement (GTLA), overseen by representatives from the Global Association for Peace. It was agreed that the GTLA would be sponsored by the GAP, and that GAP members would be welcome to join.

Many nations in Africa, such as the United Townships of Ghana, the Empire of Ethiopia, Sultanate of Morocco, and other countries on the continent. However, more isolationist nations, such as New Granada in South America, refused to join, citing a need to remain economically independent of other nations. Enrique Hermion, President of New Granada, said in a press conference in Caracas:

"The Greater American Free Trade Agreement was already forced upon us by Mexico City. I do not want any more Mexican megacorporations taking New Granada's resources for their own profit. We will remain in the Global Association for Peace, but we will withdraw from this 'free trade.'"



1973 in the Haste to Space

The year 1971 was an important year for space exploration, due to the launch of the Bernard Kramer from the Kramer Associates- Japanese launch base in Kyushu. Leaders around the world flocked to ensure that their nation would have the opportunity to go to the final frontier with dignity and honor intact. This would be a daunting task for all nations involved.

The United British Empire was the first nation to begin its work on satellites, with Prime Minister Gordon Perrow authorizing the creation of a program days after the Kramer launch. Due to agreeable latitude, a launch base was established in the northern parts of Victoria (Victoria was chosen over India due to the latter's political instability despite the closer latitude to the Kramer base). British ballistics scientist Mortimer Spaulding, a noted weapons scientist who made great strides in British defense technology during the 1960s and 1970s, was placed in command of the new Royal Extraterrestrial Ministry.

The Confederation of North America authorized a small expenditure to form a rocket base in Cape of Currents, Georgia, an area touted by the Georgian government as an ideal place for a satellite launch area, in 1971, approved by Carter Monaghan. After Monaghan's incapacitation, Maynard Thacker promised that he would increase expenditure towards the base with the goal of having a satellite launched by 1974, but no formal act was passed by the Grand Council due to said body's destruction in the Council Hill bombings.

After assumption of the role of Governor-General, Theodore Worden immediately promised a tenfold increase in spending not only on the military, but on space exploration. In a press conference in Philadelphia, Worden is on the record as saying:

"Space is the final great expanse; we have no grand western land, no hostile Mexican wilderness, no frigid Manitoban waste to explore, for we know them. Rather, space beckons to us, the Confederation of North America, to be welcomed to her arms, a sign to the world that we are indeed blessed by providence, and that we must go forth into the blackness and bring the progress of the British spirit to her."

Shortly after this speech, Worden sacked the former director of the Confederation Space Administration (CSA), Marshall Douglas, for reasons given as "lack of cooperation with Burgoyne." Political observers, however, saw otherwise: Douglas was a fierce backer of the Monaghan and Thacker governments and had repeatedly denounced the Imperativists as "radicals who want regression to the days before racial equality, before women's suffrage, before independence, even!" Worden replaced Douglas with another shining example of Confederation ballistics: Edmund Sotheby, an imperativist and weapons developer. Sotheby had endorsed Worden during his run for the Grand Council, and appeared with him and other Imperativists members of the Grand Council during a rally.

To the west, the United States of Mexico's Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, run by the physicist Martino Ramirez, an appointee of President John Paul Lassiter, led the Mexican effort to launch a rocket into space. The first Mexican launch base, known as the Vining Launch Area, was established at New Donetsk, Alaska, under Ramirez' instruction and Lassiter's endorsement. The previous Secretary of War, Vincent Mercator, had supported this measure, one of the few areas where Lassiter and Mercator agreed on anything other than basic Progressive doctrine.



Japan in the 1970s

After the end of the Global War, Japan lapsed into a state of less power than it had previously, as the position of supreme power in the Pacific fell to that of Kramer Associates, the company that came to dominate the Japanese defense industry and supply most of the Japanese Army. Japan, however, did have the Republic of Siberia at its disposal as its major trading partner, and also had the economic incentive of supplying aid to the countries of East and Southeast Asia in cooperation with Kramer Associates. Countries in these regions that were friendly to Kramer interests were guaranteed to be acceptable to Japanese firms, and also sources of migrant labor and natural resources.

In 1968, elections for Prime Minister were held in which the incumbent, Saburo Fujimori, a member of the Japanese Imperial Party (JIP), was challenged by Shotaro Ogino, an MP from Hiroshima and head of the newly founded Japanese Party for Cooperation and Growth (JPCG). The 1968 elections were framed in the context of the economic recession caused by the isolationist policies of the Fujimori government, which had withdrawn from the country's traditional alliance with the United British Empire, having fought alongside them in the Global War against the United States of Mexico and German Empire. The Fujimori government's policies had led to a mass decrease in international trade and attempted to boost Japanese agriculture to its reasonable maximum; in reality, Japanese farmland became overused and depleted of nutrients, and calls for an opening of trade became more prevalent.

Such was the incentive for the election of the JPCG, a party founded by Ogino in Hiroshima, backed by merchants, large corporations, and the military, while opposed by the JIP strongholds of small-scale farmers, nationalists, and the Japanese aristocracy. However, the Japanese middle class, cognizant of the recession caused by JIP isolationist policies, voted in favor of the JPCG in hopes of economic gain. In addition, Fujimori was widely considered to be a hypocritical ruler who had touted Japanese isolationism and nationalism while gladly taking as much Mason Doctrine aid the CNA would give them. He was also harshly criticized for cutting most ties with Kramer Associates, a company seen quite positively among most sections of the Japanese public.

As expected, Ogino won the election with a majority of seats going to the JPCG. On his inauguration day, Ogino promised renewal of the Japanese agreements with Kramer Associates and closer relationships with the countries of China that were friendly to Japanese influence, as well as those in southeast Asia. Ogino also announced his intention to reestablish diplomatic relations with Korea, who had lapsed into a similar isolation after the Global War. Korea before the Global War had been one of Japan's best trading partners, and Ogino promised a return.

In 1969, Ogino and the Japanese Parliament approved a proposal by KA scientist Marcus Lustig to build the world's first satellite base in Kyushu for the launch of the first artificial satellite, the Bernard Kramer. Lustig, a ballistics scientist who had worked with the Japanese army before the isolation of the Fujimori government, was well-liked in pro-KA circles in Japan. Ogino, a disciple of such schools of thought, eagerly accepted the offer to build the base there, but made sure Lustig and KA promise to use Japanese labor and supplies to the greatest extent possible. Carl Salazar, eager to reopen relations with an old ally, agreed.

Japan turned out to be the perfect site for such a base, being of appropriate latitude and longitude for such a base, and a labor force that was all too eager to sign up to work. Under Lustig's direction and Ogino's support, the base was completed in 1970 and the first artificial satellite, the Bernard Kramer, launched in October of 1871. Ogino, Lustig, and Salazar were all in attendance, and a crowd of Japanese workers cheered as the rocket carrying the satellite blasted into the air, proving humanity had entered space.

Ogino was especially lucky to have the launch occur at that time: 1972 was an election year. The launch, combined with the general Japanese economic recovery under the government of the JPCG, boosted the JPCG's fortunes in the election significantly. The JIP candidate, Takehide Okamoto, attempted to cast Ogino in the light of a traitor to the nation willing to sell Japan to Kramer Associates, but the sheer amount of jobs and high Compiled Revenue Figure (CRF, a measurement of the strength of an entire economy) made that argument seemed like the caviling of an old man. The JPCG was elected with a supermajority in parliament, and Ogino began his second term.

The first major foreign policy challenge Ogino, a mostly domestic-focused official, had to face was the joint CNA-UBE invasion of India. The Ogino government had issued messages of condolences to the victims of the Indian Liberation Movement's attacks in Victoria, India, and Australia, and had cooperated in UBE undercover operations in Japanese territory to find ILM agents operating out of the country. However, the Japanese public was, in accordance with a long-held belief, opposed to British rule in India in general, but was willing to ignore it so long as the United British Empire remained open to Japanese trade.

Ogino's Minister of Defense, Tokimasa Yamaoka, noted for his support of cooperation with Western powers, called for a Japanese detachment to aid the CNA and UBE in India, calling the ILM "butchers who kill the innocent. Can we, the good people of Japan, stand by these atrocities?" However, the rest of the JPCG was less committed to another armed conflict, and in October of 1972 voted against a detachment to India, which would have been placed under the command of CNA general Jared Ethan, the commander of the operation.

Despite the refusal to deploy the Japanese Army in India, the nation was still on the whole opposed to the United States of Mexico's attempts to gain favor. The wounds of the Global War still ran deep in the Japanese national consciousness, and Mexican nationals in Japan at the time recounted, in the words of Mexican journalist William Iverson, "a cold feeling towards Mexicans, who had disrupted Japan's rightful place in the Pacific. We Mexicans are not welcome here. Vendors try to scam us, police are more likely to turn us in, government officials usually just snub us. For the Jeffersonians or other Anglos reading this, do your best to approximate a CNA or British accent. If they can hear our Spanish-flavored mother accent, they will see us for who we are. Hispanos and Mexicanos, don't bother."

Iverson's words do summarize succinctly the Japanese few towards Mexico in general: one of deeply-rooted distaste. This distaste came to a boiling point in early 1974, when Mexican Secretary of State Raymond Portillo visited the countries in East and Southeast Asia hostile to Kramer Associates (and by extension Japan) and founded the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement, bringing these countries into the Mexican sphere of influence by way of the Global Association for Peace (an organization Ogino had refused to join). In a fit of rage, Ogino ordered the Japanese ambassador in Mexico City, Kazushige Yoshikawa, recalled, and expelled the Mexican ambassador in Kyoto, Peter Salguero.

To respond to what Ogino dubbed "a blatant hostility to our nation," Japanese Foreign Minister Shigeaki Seki called a meeting of diplomats from Jiangsu, Greater Mongolia, Manchuria, Siam, Kampuchea, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines (all essentially puppets of Kramer Associates), Siberia (a puppet of Kyoto), and Australia (a member of the UBE, friendly to Japan) to a summit in Osaka to draft a joint agreement to oppose Mexican interventionism in Asia. Here, the Osaka Agreement between these countries was signed. The countries of the Osaka Agreement agreed to not establish diplomatic relations with Mexico City, to defend each other in case of attack, and to not actively oppose the occupation of India.



The Union of Australia in the 1970s

After the Global War, the Union of Australia suffered an intense disillusionment with the policies of the United British Empire, leading to what is now considered the 'national renewal phase' by historians. These policies were enacted by the Australian Sovereignty Party (ASP) Prime Minister Nathaniel Chambers, an MP from the city of Oxley on the southeastern coast of the continent, and a supporter of severing a good deal of ties with the mother country. Elected in 1948, Chambers' successors would continue his policies into the 1950s until a major change in policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Australian Sovereignty Party was founded in Port Philip, on the south coast of the continent, in 1899, the year of the signing of the Australian Unification Acts and the creation of the Union of Australia, uniting the colonies of New South Wales, Vandemonia, Flindersland, Swan River, Hicksland, and Herveysland. The ASP strongly encouraged policies that displayed Australian independence from Britain, as stated in a party manifesto from 1926, written by the first party head Malcolm Clegg:

"Mother Britain has entrusted her children in North America to govern themselves; I do not see why Australia should be any different. The policies of Salutary Neglect employed by London have benefitted us greatly, and it is only natural that we pursue independence within the Empire."

It was this spirit that became immensely popular during the days after the Global War, in which Australia feared attack by the forces of the United States of Mexico as well as the allied but threatening Empire of Japan, and the similarly threatening but friendly Kramer Associates, which were enough to put the wartime government, led by the Australian Shining Sun Party (SSP, a party which backed increased ties with Britain, named for the saying that the 'sun never set on the British Empire') and its Prime Minister Edmund Sheldon, on a weary edge. Under Sheldon, the Australian Parliament in Canberra authorized the deployment of Australian troops to India to fight the German invasion force - an unpopular measure, since the SSP and ASP were in coalition, against several regional parties with no common interest. This mandated the appointment of Courtney Judd, an ASP member, to the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Australian forces were later withdrawn from India to fight the Mexicans in the Pacific. The continent had to endure the prospects of two Mexican invasions as well as one from German New Guinea. However, Britain throughout the war constantly demanded Australia provide troops to fight in Europe.

This pestering by London left a bad taste in the mouths of Australians, calling for a withdrawal from the United Empire and the assumption of a similar status to the CNA in regards to Empire membership. The Sheldon government was challenged in 1948 when the ASP withdrew from the coalition and forced a vote of no confidence. The 1948 elections, held when the war was winding down and the Mexicans too busy in China to bother with Australia, were focused around the question of how many ties with Britain would be maintained. The ASP, led by Nathaniel Chambers, won the election in a wide margin, and was subsequently elected Prime Minister, with a large parliamentary majority as well.

The Chambers government announced in 1950, after two years of sponsoring reclamation programs in Herveysland and the northern parts of Flindersland, that the Union of Australia would

"No longer be Britain's little boy, no matter how much London may wish it to be otherwise. We will remain with our brothers in the Empire, but they will just be that: brothers, not commanders. We refuse to send our men to fight in foreign trenches without any direct threat to Australia, and we will pursue a foreign policy independent of the Empire and more beneficial to Australian interests."

This foreign policy was one of less obedience to London in exchange to de facto loyalty to a power much closer to home: Taichung, home of Kramer Associates. The company had been a major arms supplier to Australia during the Global War, and company President Carl Salazar was eager to keep Australia in the Kramer Associates sphere of influence. Salazar, in a meeting with Chambers, ensured that shipments of goods through the Indian Ocean through Kramer-dependent states in Africa would continue unimpeded in return for similar promises regarding the Kramer usage of Australian resources and labor in their own projects. Chambers agreed with this policy, and the Port Philip Accords were signed in in the eponymous city to officiate the agreement.

The early 1950s are considered an experimental period in Australian political history, initiating a time of foreign policy unimpeded by London bureaucrats. With the aid of Kramer Associates, Australia increased its diplomatic and economic popularity in Africa and East Asia, negotiating trade deals with several countries and giving Australia a near-monopoly on important natural resource markets, enriching the country in newfound capital never before seen to Canberra and the people at large. However, there was a hesitance of crossing the paths of Britain or Mexico. A Member of Parliament from Hobart, Julius Grossman, an SSP member, encapsulated the general feeling in a speech to Parliament in 1952:

"Australia right now is like the sheltered youth now off to university in another city, prone to the discovery of vices such as sex and alcohol. This experimentation is tempting, but it can lead to the sins of sodomy and addiction, both of which lead to eternal damnation in the eyes of the Lord. Let not our nation succumb to such things in its experimentation."

This cautiousness in regards to foreign policy was found ultimately justified in the Republic of Mutapa, a country rich in minerals in southeastern Africa which had recently gained independence from France. In the absence of French authority, foreign investors came rushing into the country to negotiate settlements for the exploitation of natural resources, efforts laid dormant after the French withdrawal. By early 1952, the two major countries were the Canberra Mineral Company (CMC), based in Canberra and with significant backing from Kramer Associates, and the Pinckney Extraction Corporation (PEC), a British company based in Bristol, England. By that year, each corporation had the backing of a significant party in Mutapan politics. Mutapan President Faraji Semprebon was backed by the CMC while the opposition leader Tendaji Bordelon was backed by the PEC.

Mutapan politics at the time were already tense due to questions of foreign policy and racial harmony, and the backing of rival parties by the two corporations only served to make matters worse. In April of 1952, during the nation's second election cycle, fighting broke out between supporters of Semprebon and Bordelon in several towns, fighting which would spread to the cities. Since it was public knowledge of both parties' corporate backings, the international community was immediately aware of such things, spurring denunciations of both Britain and Australia by world leaders, including by CNA Governor-General James Billington, who remarked that "such bloodshed is antithetical to the British spirit that governs both nations," and Mexican president Felix Garcia, who proclaimed that the war was a sign of the "butchery and bloodlust that is the very foundation of the British Empire."

Both Britain and Australia scrambled to find a solution, which resulted in the Rutledge Conference in August of that year, after approximately seven thousand deaths in the country, in the capital of Victoria. British, Australian, and Mutapan delegates from both sides met to discuss an end to the war. The eventual agreement, the Rutledge Accords, reformed the Mutapan government into something more resembling the CNA with a federalized system for each major ethnic group. Both nations promised to reign in their respective corporations and direct relationships in terms of money were to be banned between businesses and Mutapan political parties. Both Britain and Australia were shamed by this effort, and resulted in a curtailing of Mason Doctrine Aid in 1953 after Richard Mason's election to the governorship of the CNA.

The fallout in Australia was massive, with public scrutiny so deep that there were open calls for Chambers' resignation even within the ASP. Bowing down to public opinion, Chambers resigned in early 1953 and replaced by the more moderate ASP member Daniel Duncan, who barely survived a vote of no-confidence election in 1954 and continued policies of Australian assertiveness in foreign policy, but made sure to never get involved in a conflict of the magnitude of the Mutapan Civil War.

However, another vote of no-confidence was called in 1955 after the botching of a trade agreement with the State of the Benadir, another country in East Asia, which resulted in the expulsion of the Australian ambassador in the capital of Hamar and the imposition of 400% tariffs imposed on all Australian-manufactured goods. The election was fought over perceived ASP incompetence in foreign policy on one hand, and another pressing issue on the other hand: the rise of Mercator in Mexico.

The rise of Vincent Mercator, first Secretary of War, then President of the United States of Mexico, deeply troubled the Australian population, who feared a restarting of the Global War due to the Progressive Party's aggressive rhetoric and heightened militarization. Of special concern was the reopening of Niles Naval Base in Hawaii, which had been decommissioned during the final years of the Silva regime. Niles Naval Base was the main departure point for the Mexican ships that had tried to invade Australia multiple times during the Global War, and Australian war veterans were among the most vocal groups.

This rise in discontentment with the ASP on election day gave the SSP its first win in more than a decade, giving the SSP a majority in parliament under the new Prime Minister Bernard Wesley, an MP from Sydney. On his inauguration day, Wesley proclaimed "a new birth of cooperation between Britain and Australia, a grand rapprochement from the follies that were the Mutapan Civil War and the Benadir Incident, a defense against Mexico, and continued economic prosperity." Wesley's first act in office was to call the British ambassador to the Prime Minister's mansion in Canberra for an official dinner, in which new positive relations would be maintained. In 1954, Wesley visited London and met with British Prime Minister Edward Tattersall for similar reasons.

However, Wesley knew not to interfere with the ASP policies that were popular, the cooperation with Kramer Associates high among them. In October of 1954, Wesley travelled to Taichung to meet with Carl Salazar, and the two reaffirmed the agreements made with the Port Phillip Accords, guaranteeing Kramer access to Australian natural resources and labor. Wesley also urged Salazar to extend the same to the rest of the United British Empire. Salazar was not enthusiastic, but said he would consider the offer.

Under Wesley, the defense relationship between Britain and Australia was tightened significantly, and Australia formally rejoined the United British Empire with all that entailed. This relationship led to British forces being stationed in parts of Australia, joint military exercises, and in 1965 allowed the British to test their first nuclear bomb in the Outback. This was after two elections in which Wesley's popularity allowed him to retain control over the government, defeating a substantially weakened ASP both times.

In 1967, an aged Wesley, 72 years old by then, died of a stroke in his office in Canberra. The nation mourned, Britain, the CNA, and other countries along with Kramer Associates sent their condolences, and the question of who the next Prime Minister would be was of critical importance. New elections were held in 1967, in which Wesley's popularity was demonstrated in that the SSP was elected yet again, and its candidate, the MP from New Inverness, Flindersland, Elmore Lewin, rose to the office of Prime Minister.

For the next five years, Lewin ran the country much as Wesley did, cooperating with Britain militarily and economically, while still placing emphasis on the relationship with Kramer Associates and opposition to the United States of Mexico, surviving yet another election. Lewin also endured the bombings of late 1973 in Canberra, in which he sternly denounced the ILM. In 1973, however, with the Council Hill Bombing and the deaths of most of the CNA Grand Council, Lewin immediately promised aid to the CNA and immediately committed troops to the Occupation of India.

Lewin also caused a small controversy when he signed on to the Osaka Agreement with the Empire of Japan, formally aligning Australia with Japan and its allies, most of which were Kramer puppets, in March of 1974. In response to this, Lewin replied that:

"Japan is an ally of Kramer Associates and hence an ally of us. Let us defend our homeland and quell the terrorists in India and in China. Our homeland must come first, and they are a grave, grave threat. You are either with civilization or with the terrorists."



Europe in the 1970s

After Chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier's unification of the realms of the German Empire in 1971, the balance of power in Europe, formerly a relic of what remained after the Global War, shifted significantly. The inauguration of the first Diet of the new German Empire, consisting of Germany proper, France, the Associated Russian Republics, the Ukraine, Poland, and the Sultanate of Arabia, now would dominate continental politics, to the chagrin of the various powers of Europe that had once known glory but now saw a world with said glories fading, seeing the rise of the Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico, and Kramer Associates.

The multilingual German Empire's formation was a source of great worry from other national capitals on the continent, including London, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Copenhagen, and others. These nations shut down their embassies in the capitals of the conquered nations and increased significantly their presence in Berlin. This new continental power would be indeed be the decider of peace or war on the already war-weary continent. Chancellor Kiermaier, to absolve their worries, had a conference in Paris to assuage their worries. Among these assembled heads of government were British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Serafini, Spanish Prime Minister Maria Calderon, Portuguese Prime Minister Joao Araujo, Swiss President Gunter Weierbach, and Scandinavian Prime Minister Oskar Eilert, all noted statesmen with their own interests regarding the continent's future.

Gordon Perrow, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, represented a constituency in Yorkshire when nominated by the Whig party against both the Conservatives and Liberals (the Whigs were a centrist party neither Conservative nor wholly Liberal) in 1968 in a coalition with the Liberals against the Conservatives. Perrow's immediate interests at the time of the Paris conference in mid-1973 were in India, due to the ongoing invasion and threats of the Indian Liberation Movement. However, the people of the United Kingdom did indeed fear the rise of a new nation that had access to the vast resources of Germany, France, and Russia, which seemed at best ambivalent towards Britain. Perrow, following the zeitgeist that flowed throughout London and the rest of the nation, denounced Germany's "enslaving of other nations to do tis bidding." Notably, this made no mention of the British Empire, nor the Mutapan Civil War of the 1950s.

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Serafini was a member of the Italian Parliament from Florence, who had been elected on the platform of continuing popular post-Global War platforms of the peacetime leadership led by fellow conservative Marcelo DeLazzari, who favored direct investment in the areas of Italy that had fought France alongside Germany. Serafini's presence was not much else than a reaffirmation of the good relations held between Germany and Italy; the two countries had been friendly to one another since the 19th century. The Italian public, however, was skeptical of Germany; this was shown in a 1971 plebiscite in which Germany offered Italy to join the new union under the German crown. The Italians liked their monarchy under Giovanni III and an independent foreign policy which brought money to Italian coffers due to investment in the states of the former Ottoman Empire.

Maria Calderon was possibly the most peculiar of the leaders at the Paris Conference. Calderon was the first female member of parliament elected to office in Spain, representing a town on the outskirts of Madrid. Calderon became Prime Minister, the first woman to hold such a position in all of Europe, in 1966 after her party's Prime Minister Enrique Santamaria resigned due to accusations of money laundering during his election campaign. Calderon, his deputy prime minister, hence ascended to the office of Prime Minister and appointed Mariano Saenz, from Barcelona, to take her place. Under Calderon, Spain continued its path of neutrality, isolating itself from too much intervention by either Britain or Germany, rather turning its attention towards the Western Hemisphere. It was Calderon that led Spain to become one of the members of the Global Association for Peace upon said organization's foundation by Mexican President John Paul Lassiter.

Portuguese Prime Minister Joao Araujo was from the city of Coimbra, and like Spain was a committed devotee of Portuguese neutrality, which had held firm during the Global War. Araujo also had friendly relations with the Mexicans, and joined the GAP and sent representatives to the Port Babineaux conference in 1973. Araujo was an admirer of Vincent Mercator, and modeled his policies in Portugal after Mercator's reconstruction of Mexican society. Araujo even met with Lassiter in late 1972, in which both praised their nations' commitments to equality.

The Swiss and the Scandinavians were much like the Portuguese and Spaniards in that they were both committedly neutral nations determined to be independent of any other nation. However, unlike Calderon and Araujo, their leaders saw an implicit danger in trusting the Global Association for Peace, which was rapidly deemed as an instrument of Mexican imperialism. At the Paris Conference, their leaders did little more than marvel at the sites of the city, and were quiet during actual meetings.



The Lassiter-Roderickson Scandal of 1974

In his youth, as stated before, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter was known in his hometown of Puerto Hancock to be something of a womanizer; there are fragmented accounts from his teenage and young adult years of several flings with young women, both in his youth in secondary school and later during his Global War service in China. Those who knew him repeatedly expressed surprise that he had married after graduating secondary school, to Carmela Barrera (the daughter of Lassiter's father's coworker), and the chismeadores (the Mexican term for gossip columnist, as described in English) attempted to interview his former classmates and comrades in arms during the 1971 elections, but those that attempted to have particularly inflammatory material published often found themselves visited by Progressive Party stalwarts that had defected to Lassiter's campaign.

What was known of the Mexican first family's relationship appeared rocky to the public; many inferred that their marriage was encouraged by the Lassiter and Barrera families as an economic insurance policy - neither family wanted their fortunes, meager as they may be, from falling into the hands of either a convenience store chain mogul or other competitor (this proved to be for naught; Carmela's older brother, Luis, sold the store in 1952). As such, their relationship was rocky, with no children being produced, and one Chismeador, Adalberto Costilla y Harris, speculated in the National Investigator that their marriage had never been consummated. It is interesting to note that Costilla y Harris ceased writing shortly after the publication of said rumors, and the National Investigator's offices burned down within a week after his departure.

It was known to the public, however, the two happened to argue quite frequently. When the first couple of the nation sat for an interview with the Palenque Nightly News (the official vitavision channel of the state of Chiapas) and the subject of their personal life came up, the two entered a fierce argument about the subject of potential past children, and led to both storming out of the studio early, leaving in different directions. Rumors swirled of a divorce; however, the two were seen together the next day in a press conference in Veracruz, their quarrel apparently resolved.

In January 1974, the Lassiters paid a visit to Jefferson City to meet the Governor of Jefferson, James Anthony Roderickson, and the general in charge of the military forces guarding the Jeffersonian border with the CNA, Julio Recinos, to discuss the possibility of hostilities between the two countries. The day was uneventful during the summit, and Carmela spent the day shopping in the nationally renowned commercial districts of Jefferson City. However, when Carmela returned to Madison House (the Mexican President's official residence on official business to Jefferson City and the former home of James Madison), the President was nowhere to be found.

Carmela, in a panic, ordered the Presidential guard to find him, and they scrambled to find him, and so they scrambled their locomobiles and those of the Jefferson City Police, with even a few terramobiles from Fort Jackson (the main military base of the area) being scrambled; indeed the entire city was placed on high alert. Eventually, the President was found in a prominent café in the city with Governor Roderickson's daughter, Julia Roderickson. The implications of this were obvious.

The chismeadores, and the Mexican press in general, were in an uproar. Their suspicions were confirmed; Lassiter was a womanizer and there was no doubt about it. Carmela was enraged, and publicly assaulted John Paul in the streets. The police broke them up, and the President apologized on national vitavision the afternoon of the next day. Some of the devout Catholics in Congress called for his removal from office, but Mexican Supreme Justice Miguel Oleastro (another Progressive Party plant) said there was no legal ground for his removal. He issued a statement thusly:

"President Lassiter's behavior is hardly honorable, but there is no constitutional requirement for any degree of chivalry in the performance of the President's duties, only professionalism and competence. To Canon Law or Moral Law, he may have committed a great crime, but to Mexican law he has committed no infraction."



A short biography of Julio Recinos

Julio Recinos was born in San Miguel de Cozumel, Chiapas, on March 4th, 1920, to Marco and Angela Recinos, Mexicano peasants who worked for Mexican Fisheries as fishmongers. Mexican Fisheries, headquartered in Victorville, Jefferson, was the main employer among the poor of San Miguel de Cozumel, and in his childhood Julio learned how to fish much like his parents, and expected to grow up to be like them.

However, with the outbreak of the Global War in 1939, Recinos, nineteen years old, joined the Mexican military in a show of patriotism, as did many in San Miguel de Cozumel. Recinos was deployed initially in Siberia and later took part in the invasion of Manchuria. Recinos was known for being a very lawful, very obedient soldier, and did not go to the brothels and bars that his fellow soldiers frequented. Indeed, like many on the island of Cozumel, he was quite religious, and in addition to being a soldier he was a religious councilor who aided the Mexican chaplainry in giving spiritual comfort to the soldiers in China. Here, Recinos rose to the rank of Captain in the army due to various acts of valor, but he did not receive the same accolades that were won by John Paul Lassiter.

After the withdrawal from China, Recinos was sympathetic to the cause of the Mercatorists, seeing Mercator's plan for redistribution of wealth to be a cornerstone of the Catholic faith, and called upon his fellow Catholics to join in the overthrowing of the Silva regime. After winning a battle against the Causa de Justicia in Durango in 1951, he received for his loyalty and assistance in supporting national unity under the new government, Recinos was given a Generalship. Recinos deserved this appointment; he was a strategic mastermind.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Recinos saw the internal occurrences of the Confederation of North America, and deemed the nation a selfish one, hardly caring for the truly poor peoples of the world. His Catholic faith was the main justifier behind this, and it was by his urgings that Guillermo Buenaventura, the Bishop of the diocese of Mexico City (the main diocese in central Mexico) to formally denounce the CNA and follow Mercatorist party line. In a speech in Tampico, Recinos decried Mexico's northern neighbor as a nation ruled by the devil himself, a signifier of his distaste.

In 1965, shortly before the national elections, Vincent Mercator redrew the military districts of the nation to better reflect the current geopolitical situation. Recinos was assigned to the Jefferson Border District, comprising the state of Jefferson and parts of Mexico del Norte and ordered to modernize the defenses and their deployments. In cooperation with General Matthew Norris, a Nortean himself and commander of the Northern Border region, Recinos made what Raphael Dominguez dubbed the "Great Wall of Mexico," a series of bases designed to throw off any invasion from the CNA.

Recinos held this position well into the 1970s, and was praised by President John Paul Lassiter, who he met with in 1974 in the meetings that would have the Lassiter-Roderickson scandal as the highlight. Recinos thought little of Lassiter's morality, but understood that he, as the President, had ultimate sway over the Mexican military.



Worden's Grand Council and Domestic Reception

In the August 2nd attacks, the Confederation of North America's legislature, the Grand Council, was reduced to the thirty imperativists that proclaimed loyalty to the ideology of Theodore Worden. In Worden's house in Burgoyne after the attack, Worden and the remnants of the Grand Council proclaimed an emergency government of the variety enacted during the Global War, a move seen by many as dictatorial. However, in a speech to the press shortly after the bombing, Worden guaranteed the current state of emergency would only be temporary.

Of the thirty, there arose the need for new officers to continue the actions of the Confederation government, not least a need for a successor in case another attack of that variety were to occur. The Council President, of which Maynard Thacker was before Carter Monaghan's resignation and his subsequent death in the August 2nd bombings, was the designated successor of the Governor-General in case of the former's death. The new Council President was a Councilman by the name of Isaac Whitley, of Trenton, New Jersey, Northern Confederation. Whitley, before the bombings, was known in the Confederation news media as Worden's right-hand man, and his appointment to the second highest office in the nation was surprising to little.

Worden knew he had to at least maintain the façade of a parliamentary democracy in his accession to power, and allowed the remnants of the government to vote on a council party leadership which would have little practical power but gave the impression that CNA democracy was still functioning. The new majority leader was James Hatton of New York City and the new majority whip was Anthony Cawley of Coningsby, Manitoba. When Worden was busy, Hatton and Cawley took the initiative in appearing in rallies and talking to the press (Whitley did the same on occasion).

It was this rump Grand Council that replaced most of the Monaghan-era Confederation officials with Imperativist loyalists. Ernest O'Donnell, the infamous suppressor of the Michigan City riots, was appointed the head of the Confederation Bureau of Intelligence and replaced the previous Orton MacPherson, who had resigned in disgust. Likewise, the newly created government agency, the Confederation Bureau of Information Dissemination, was put under the command of Peter Sykes, a People's Coalition speaker and media mogul who had helped Worden gain election to the Grand Council. Such acts of cronyism and patronage were often common in the CNA but not to this extent or obviousness, but the nation did not care - it was mourning, and such sadness was blown into anger during the invasion of India.

The same could be said for the entire popular perception of the CNA government after August 2nd. Most agreed the draft imposed to raise troops for the invasion was necessary. The apparent loss of representation for wide swaths of the country was lamented but was generally understood as a temporary setback in the fight against Shamba Pandya and the Indian Liberation Movement. The flag-waving and anthem-singing was demonstration of that. A quote from an interview between a reporter from the Burgoyne Herald and a passerby in Burgoyne is a good summary of the general feeling:

"It's a tragedy that CNA democracy has been destroyed in such a way, but that is only a testament to how terrible the ILM is. This is why I'm registering with the draft; I want to fight them. They're enemies of our nation and enemies of the republic that we serve. If it requires a smoother decision making process, so be it."



Deployment of the Mexican Armed Forces as of January 1974

In the 1970s, the Mexican Armed Forces were deployed to prevent any antagonistic element, foreign or domestic, from being capable of harming the United States in any way, shape, or form. This paranoia was fostered during the Fuentes and Silva administrations, and brought to the forefront of the Mexican people during the Mercator and Dominguez administrations. The Lassiter administration continued this track of cautiousness by refusing to reorganize the military districts that had the entire country under the lock of the military, which reported directly to the President.

The country was divided into several military districts, and the coasts under their own authorities in case of any threat. In the north was Julio Recinos' Jefferson Border District, headquartered in Blainesburg, Jefferson, a town close to the border with the Southern Confederation of the CNA. In Mexican military strategy, it would be Blainesburg that would be the forefront of any assault into Jefferson by the Confederation of North America. In addition to Blainesburg, additional fortifications were in Hamilton (a town on the Mississippi River) and Batesville, a town in the northern parts of Jefferson.

To the north was the Alaskan-Old North Border District, overseen by general Matthew Norris. Headquartered in Alkaevgrad, Alaska, and with jurisdiction extending into northern parts of Mexico del Norte and Arizona, this district's intention was to defend against a CNA incursion into Alaska, and above all the defense of San Francisco and Puerto Hancock, the two major Mexican cities anywhere near this district (the Alaskan capital of Nikolaevsk was also a minor city deemed worth of defending).

Domestically, each state had its own military districts, each headquartered in a major city. In California, there were four districts: San Fernando, Puerto Hancock, Loreto (comprising the Baja California peninsula), and Levittsburg (the far northern part of the state). These were intended to simultaneously defend the state from a CNA incursion through the Rocky Mountains, specifically the cities of San Francisco, Puerto Hancock, Sacramento, San Fernando, and Santo Tomas, and to fight against rebellions, something which Mercator so desperately feared.

Arizona and Mexico del Norte each had two military districts, centered around their capitals, Sangre Roja and Conyers respectively, and one each around two northern cities, in Arizona's case Mendoza and Mexico del Norte's case Morales. In both cases, these were intended to defend the state capitals against a CNA force which was successfully able to defeat the forces of the Alaskan-Old North Border District.

Jefferson was a special case, divided into five districts in addition to the Jefferson Border District. These districts were seated in, respectively, Moreton (a city in the northwestern part of the state), San Antonio, Nacogdoches, Arnold, and Jefferson City respectively. Due to the violence that enraptured the state in the 1950s and 1960s, Mercator had deemed the additional security necessary, and the possibility of an invasion from the CNA was simply too great in his eyes.

Durango, while not having any borders with the CNA or other hostile, was divided into a mind-boggling ten districts, with the most heavily armed headquartered in Torreon, the state capital. These districts were the descendants of the encampments instituted to fight the Black Justice Party and the Causa de Justicia during Mercator's early administration. With this origin of violence, it is no wonder that Durango was the most heavily garrisoned state in the USM.

Chiapas was in a similar state to Durango, with five districts each centered around different cities. There was also the Chiapas Border district under the command of General Ambrosio Gomez, tasked with the responsibility of defending the country against a perceived potential threat from Guatemala, which, for whatever reason, was heavily suspected by Mercator to be harboring those hostile to the new Progressive regime in Mexico. However, news from Guatemala City pointed to only good relations with the USM, as they had joined the Global Association for Peace.

On the Mexican coasts, there were four districts: one defending the gulf coast, one defending the southern Pacific coast of Durango and Chiapas, one defending the Californian coast, and one defending the Alaskan coast. In addition to these, the only defenses for the states of Hawaii and the Mexican Antilles were naval; these were headquartered in the state capitals and reported to the nearest mainland naval district.


Siberia in the mid-twentieth century

The Republic of Siberia in the middle of the twentieth century (here used to describe the end of the Global War to the beginning of the era begun by the Invasion of India by the Confederation of North America and the United British Empire) was a nation with an identity crisis. Founded by a Mexican imperialist war to take control of Alaska and used as a puppet state by them, Siberian Premier Mikhail Kuznetsov agreed to let the Mexican military use Siberian bases to attack Japan. However, with the end of the Global War and the Japanese invasion and occupation of the country, it had been under the beck and call of Kyoto. The contemporary Siberian government had to strike a fine line between maintaining the heritage of the first leaders of the nation such as George Tsukansky and the will of its Japanese ally.

Premier Kuznetsov was in every respect pro-Mexican, as well as anti-Russian imperialist in nature (he appeared to turn a blind eye to Mexican imperialism, however). His signing of pro-Mexican trade agreements to benefit the country's relatively new northwestern state of Alaska only solidified him as a puppet of Mexico City to his opponents, chief among them a lawyer from Yakutsk by the name of Feodor Somsikov.

Somsikov was the leader of the Siberian Party of Self-Determination which actively opposed intervention by Mexico City in Siberian affairs. When Mexican President Silva proposed to Premier Kuznetsov the joint attack on Japan, in Congressional deliberations on the subject Somsikov repeatedly voiced his displeasure with the measure, going on to state that "Kuznetzov is nothing more than a marionette played by the bureaucrats in Mexico City, much like the colonies of the great nations of Europe are puppets of London, Paris, or Berlin."

With the outbreak of the Pacific front of the Global War, Somsikov lead a cadre of likeminded congressmen to protest the outbreak of war. Withdrawing to the Laptev Sea port of Tiksi, they refused to promote the cause of war espoused by Silva and Kuznetsov, holing up in a small house for the duration of the war. Here, they published dissenting literature that encouraged soldiers to leave the Siberian army, charging that Kuznetsov was involving them in a foreign war at the behest of the United States, and did the same to young men who were to register to the draft to refuse to do so and indeed flee into isolation for the remainder of the war.

With the fall of Udsk in 1948, Somsikov was contacted by the commanding general of the Japanese invasion force Hotaka Fujioka to be the new premier of the country, as the previous government they had deemed to be illegitimate. After long deliberation Somsikov agreed and was installed as the new premier of the Republic of Siberia, an occasion marked by a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister Kichiro Kagome who spoke at said inauguration. He appeared to begin to lead Siberia into a new age of democracy and personal liberty, causes for which good remarks came from London, Burgoyne, and Canberra.

However, Somsikov now had power, and appeared by all accounts to be intoxicated by the position of ruling his own nation. His first decree in 1950 was to have the Siberian congress approve a resolution making him president-for-life, a move criticized by both internal and external observers. This was a dictatorial move in the manners of Kuznetsov, and to his critics he was forever branded a hypocrite. He maintained his integrity in a speech to the Siberian press:

"If I am around to secure the personal liberty of all for the longest time, so much the better. I know how to run this country and so therefore its liberties will be forever defended."

In March of 1950, riots broke out in Yakutsk by those who had formerly supported Somsikov and were disenchanted by his power grabs in Udsk. Initially peaceful, local police had opened fire on the crowd, and subsequently turned violent, causing a good portion of the city's population to go violent, destroying a good fifth of the city proper and several hundred deaths. The Great Fire of Yakutsk, dubbed so after the similar great fire in London centuries ago, was known internationally for the terror it inspired in international observers.

Somsikov's first and only reaction was to send in the Siberian military to quell the riots. Within days, troops had been flowing in from bases in Magadan and Vladivostok, armed with old Global War era military materiel. Several hundred more deaths ensued, and Somsikov was branded a traitor to his original ideals of personal liberty.

Nevertheless, with the aid of the Siberian Military, Somsikov maintained power through the 1950s and 1960s into the 1970s, still as an ally of the Japanese Empire. In 1973, with the CNA-UBE invasion of India, Somsikov consulted the Japanese Prime Minister Shotaro Ogino about possibly joining the invasion coalition, but Ogino advised against it. With Ogino's blessing and support, Siberia signed the Osaka Accords in 1974, confirming the long held view that Siberia was a military disciple of Japan.



New Granada in the 1970s

Under the dominion of the Hermion political dynasty since the beginning of the twentieth century, New Granada found itself more or less at the beck and call of Mexico City, something the elites in Bogota found most unpleasant. However, the Hermion dynasty as the decades past found itself looking more towards their own interests than those of their ancestral homeland.

During the Global War, New Granada had declared war on Japan, Great Britain, and France just as the United States of Mexico had, and sent forces to Siberia as part of the Bolivar Brigade (named after Simon Bolivar, the national hero of New Granada who had secured the country's independence during the Trans-Oceanic War). The Bolivar Brigade had fought in China alongside the Mexicans and Siberians, and withdrew when president Silva gave the orders to do so. New Granadan President Carl Hermion saw this retreat as a "surrender, a forfeiture of the worst kind."

With the debut of the Mercatorists in Mexico and the overthrow of Alvin Silva, Carl Hermion found them to be much more agreeable than the Silva government. Hermion happily had his ambassador to Mexico City, Edgardo Arocha, present his credentials to the new government. Throughout the twentieth century Hermion continued to support the Mercatorist regime until his death in 1965, at the age of 89.

Carl's successor, Enrique Hermion, was not nearly as endeared to the Mexicans as his father was. He viewed them as meddling too much in the affairs of New Granada, and repeatedly expressed shame that his family had come to power as per Mexican intervention. "My great-grandfather Victoriano was only put in power in this country because of his brother Benito's warmongering. It is my penance that I support more independence for the people of New Granada in the name of Bolivar and the other founders of this nation."

To Mercator, Dominguez, and later Lassiter, Hermion's policies regarding relations with Mexico were troubling. In 1967 he approved a piece of legislature passed by the New Granadan parliament removing various benefits to Mexican businesses investing in New Granada, most importantly their oil in the Caribbean sea. However, Mexican ambassador Carlos Wilson, a longtime diplomat from Chiapas, was able to successfully reinstate most of these benefits via the mass buyoffs of New Granadan MPs using money specifically set aside for that purpose by President Lassiter.

The Greater American Free Trade Agreement was virulently opposed by Hermion, calling it a grand 'sellout' to the business interests in Mexico City. However, Wilson, the 'snake of the north,' was able to buy out more New Granadan MPs to pass the measure. However, Hermion did approve of joining the Global Association for Peace (GAP) and personally attended the Port Babineaux conference in the United Townships of Ghana, signing the GAP Charter on the behalf of New Granada.

However, with the extension of GAFTA into the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement (GTLA), Hermion announced New Granada would withdraw from the trade agreements that came with the GAP while remaining within the organization itself. This elicited reactions of bewilderment in Mexico City, Guatemala City, Rio de Janeiro, and Port Babineaux, but was accepted elsewhere. European countries which had joined the GAP, such as Spain and Portugal, did not sign the agreements either, and understood the New Granadan question.

In 1974, with the Invasion of India well underway, Hermion shocked the world by meeting with Jonathan Winnicott, Chief Executive of Imperial Vulcazine, a major vulcazine distributor in the United British Empire, affiliated with various North American companies. At this meeting in La Guairá, Hermion and Winnicott discussed the possibilities of Imperial Vulcazine establishing rigs in the Caribbean sea. To the shock of the international community, the ultimate agreement was that, by 1976, Imperial Vulcazine would be able to start construction of oil rigs.



The Greater German Empire in the 1970s

After the consolidation of France, the Netherlands, the Associated Russian Republics, and Arabia into a grand confederation with Germany, the Greater German Empire, Germany under her chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier was forced to choose between the two growing blocs in the world stage: the Global Association for Peace, ruled from Mexico City, and the greater British Empire and its allies, ruled jointly from London and Burgoyne. Kiermaier's domestic and foreign policy was focused on asserting a 'third bloc' independent of either of the former two. In a speech in Hamburg, Kiermaier stressed the necessity of "making sure we are beholden to no other nation or collection of nations."

In 1972, Kiermaier secured the admission of Poland into the Greater German Empire, and Polish delegates were sent to the Diet in Berlin late in that year. Despite the occasional disapproving proclamation from minor nations on the world stage, Polish accession was achieved with not much violence (one brief outburst of violence in Warsaw being one of the few exceptions). It is mainly due to the admission of Russia as a member of the GGE that Poland joined without much commotion; being beset on both sides by a superstate was considered unsafe to an independent Polish nation.

Germany's allies at the time were mainly focused in two areas: Italy and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was divided into three parts: Arabia, Persia, and Anatolia. Germans should they be directly incorporated into the GGE and as such were not invited (Arabia, which was on the other hand much more pro-German, was invited and assumed seats in the Diet). The current Shah of Persia Dalir II was reluctantly supportive of the Germans and their place in the world, as it was under his rule the Global War was ended (his father, Dalir I, had died during the war). He was forced to cede Arabia as well as the Ottoman territories in North Africa and grant independence to Anatolia, but Chancellors Markstein and Kiermaier (among others) saw the creation of Persianalliance as beneficial. Dalir II saw the Germans as a necessary evil, giving them access to Persian oil in exchange for defense against those who would exploit the nation even further, such as Britain had, and in aid for quelling rebellions much like the Arab Revolts in the early twentieth century (those that had caused the Global War).

Anatolia, likewise, was a German ally only reluctantly. President Enver Bardakci was in no way endeared to the Germans but understood the necessity of continuing the alliance should Britain or some other power try to take control of the country. After the Global War, the German government was able to negotiate preferential treatment to the Bosporus Straits into the Black Sea, something deemed of the utmost strategic importance for Germany should there be another Global War.

Italy was the other key German ally, with a string of pro-German leaders, said leader being Francesco Serafini in the 1970s. Despite rejecting membership in the Greater German Empire, Serafini was still unabashedly a friend of Kiermaier, saying that "he [Kiermaier] is always welcome in the land of Rome's children." One of Kiermaier's greatest successes in the year of 1973 was the signing of the agreement that gave Germany access to the Italian naval base at Palermo, ensuring Germany and Italy jointly would be the chief naval powers of the Mediterranean.

Kiermaier also opened beneficial relationships with the countries of North Africa, from west to east: the Sultanate of Morocco, the Republic of Al-Jazair, the Republic of Tripolitania, the Republic of Cyrenaica, and the Republic of Egypt. Founded in the wake of the Global War and unsure of their international allegiances, Germany took a keen interest in them in the 1970s, securing trade and military deals with all of them.

On March 6th, 1974, with the Invasion of India in full swing, the GAP in existence, the Osaka Accords signed, the Greater German Empire hosted delegates from the Ottoman Empire, Italy, the aforementioned North African states, and some other African nations in Berlin to sign a mutual defense pact, named the Berlin Pact. The Berlin Pact would allow for defense against any opposition from either other power bloc. Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Hungary were observers who would consider the offer to join. Nevertheless, the Berlin Pact was set to fundamentally realign international politics.



The Occupation of India as of early 1974

By the dawn of the year 1974, the joint CNA-UBE occupation of India was lost in a morass of public opinion and international denouncement. The Indian Liberation Movement's attacks were far from consistent; indeed, they were designed to be chaotic and therefore confound the tradition-minded commanders of the operation, supreme commander Jared Ethan among them.

The occupation's main goal was the location of Shamba Pandya, the man who ran the ILM from a base in an unknown area of the country. A massive "hearts and minds" campaign was conducted with the aid of the Indian government, supporting an end to the ILM's 'unbridled treachery.' These programs were moderately successful; it drove many away from sympathizing with groups that supported withdrawal from the United British Empire (to the chagrin to the Indian Congress for Independence), but had the unintended effect of radicalizing many others. It was one of these events in Jaipur, a city in the middle-west part of the country, that would spark the mass escalation of violence that would mark the coming years.

In Jaipur, a mass public event sponsored by the Indian government marketed towards young adults in particular, cautioning them of a 'country with no employment, no safe place to raise your future children, due to the stinging disease of radicalism and terrorism.' This campaign, devised by the CNA social theorist Miriam Carney, normally working with the University of Burgoyne, treated radicalism similarly to alcohol: something somebody would fall to when times were rough, and would eventually cause a spiral into depravity, violence, and ruining of one's reputation.

Naturally, radical members of the Indian population objected to this. One of these people, Ram Parikh, manifested his objections via ramming his explosives-filled freightmobile into such an event in Jaipur on February 10th, 1974 and detonated the cargo, killing approximately seven hundred. Jaipur, a hotbed of loyalist activity, was not prepared for such radicalism, and the emergency response was lacking. It is estimated up to three hundred more people lost their lives in the injuries sustained due to the bombing.

The bombing in Jaipur led to a mass panic among the CNA and UBE military officials in Pondicherry. General Ethan ordered a massive incursion of military forces into Jaipur to maintain order, as it was feared an ILM action would begin shortly. Ethan was not in any way wrong; indeed, the following actions in the Jaipur area would serve in many ways the death knell of the preconceptions that the CNA and UBE generals had thought about India.

A CNA convoy under Lieutenant Gregory Chapman, a noted tactician in CNA military circles, was dispatched to Jaipur from Karachi with the intent of aiding the local forces. This convoy consisted of several detachments of warmobiles and terramobiles guarding freightmobiles carrying food and supplies to relieve the city of the supply and medical problems associated with such a massive attack. Chapman believed the route he was taking (an Indian-government constructed highway) would be completely safe. He was dead wrong.

Firstly, one of the terramobiles in the front of the convoy spontaneously exploded, causing Chapman to order the convoy to halt. Explosives technicians concluded that there had been an improvised bomb on the side of the road waiting for whatever poor soul that would be unfortunate to cross it. Chapman ordered an immediate search of the upcoming road; Jaipur was within twenty miles of their current location.

Then came the ILM force waiting to ambush them. Out of seemingly nowhere, ILM forces bearing rocket launchers fired near-simultaneously at the terramobiles, destroying several. In a panic, Chapman ordered the convoy to rush towards Jaipur. This sudden movement prevented the explosives technicians from doing their duty: what the ILM did not destroy, more roadside explosives did. To further cause detriment to the situation, several locobombs rammed into terramobiles or convoy freightmobiles, destroying them and killing all those aboard (not to mention destroying the supplies destined for Jaipur). The entirety of Chapman's forces were destroyed. All soldiers and drivers died, Chapman among them.



The Jaipur Campaign and the Reevaluation of Indian Strategy

After the death of Lieutenant Gregory Chapman and the destruction of his convoy after the Jaipur bombing on February 10th, 1974, the CNA and UBE generalship in Pondicherry met in an emergency meeting in the morning of February 11th. General Ethan ordered the dispatching of a heavily armored force from Delhi, the national capital, to reinforce Jaipur before the ILM could take the city and relieve the fleeting local defense force from attack.

In the middle of the meeting, a page had informed the general staff that the situation in Jaipur was getting worse by the minute. At six in the morning of February 11th, the ILM had detonated several locobombs in the local military base, destroying it and most of the terramobiles and other vehicles of the Indian military in the region, as well as killing most of the soldiers and destroying their weapons, including the local commander, Tarun Handhe. With the destruction of most of the military base, the mayor of Jaipur, Barid Modi, ordered the Jaipur police to take emergency precautions in case of mass ILM action in Jaipur.

Modi's fears were well founded, as demonstrated when Modi's home and office buildings were destroyed by ILM bombs. Several more bombs went off in other parts of Jaipur, mostly in crowded places such as marketplaces, schools (including the University of Jaipur), and various monuments (excluding those made before India was put under British rule; the ILM was quite conscious of defending India's heritage). Shortly thereafter, locomobiles and freightmobiles carrying ILM militants came streaming into the city from hidden bases set up in the hills around the area, all armed.

It was this new state of chaos in Jaipur that General Ethan ordered the force from Delhi to be dispatched to the city under siege by the ILM. Ethan ordered one of his highest-ranked subordinates, the CNA's General Sullivan Wyndham, to take command of the operation, dubbed "Operation Amber," named for the city of Amber that had gradually grown to become a part of Jaipur. In the afternoon of February 11th, General Wyndham's force departed from Delhi. Several terramobile battalions had been deployed beforehand to engage any ILM forces and clear the way for the main force.

It was this deployment of assets that betrayed Wyndham's background: that of a Global War era-student of military strategy. Although the CNA was not involved in the Global War, North American military academies had studied the strategy and tactics of the Global War, especially those espoused by the British military. The CNA and UBE had entered India, fallaciously, expecting something similar to the war with Germany: a war of large, pitched battles in the countryside and large-scale sieges of cities. Thusly, the forces deployed by Wyndham were equipped to fight infantry of the manner of the German army in the Ottoman Empire, and not the asymmetric ILM militants.

Such misconceptions would be the undoing of the initial phases of Operation Amber. A combination of remote detonations, missile launches, and militia action via ambush destroyed most of the CNA terramobiles. Notably, this included the use of false truce flags, something that was generally seen as uncivilized among the powers of the Global War. ILM militias were able to use the hilly terrain around Jaipur to their advantage, and many rocket brigades were stationed atop hills to take down terramobiles from above, and the depressions in between hills were mined, as were key areas on the highways.

Such losses prompted General Wyndham to set up a camp outside of Jaipur and regroup his forces in a small town outside of the city. Twenty-three terramobiles and fifty-four CNA, UBE, and loyalist Indian troops were dead in the initial operations. However, said town had a cell of ILM militants inside, something else Wyndham was unprepared for. Such an assault was easily fended off, but some escaped in the general area of the city. After this, Wyndham attempted to contact any loyalists in Jaipur telling them that the ILM was coming towards them; he received no response. Discussion with the high command in Pondicherry revealed something similar to Wyndham's conclusions: Jaipur had fallen to the ILM.

As a commander in the Global War might have done, Wyndham deployed the artillery in his force to move up and fire on Jaipur, only a few miles away by this point. Upon entering sufficient range, the artillery fired indiscriminately into Jaipur with the intention of weakening the ILM hold on the city. For several hours, such shelling continued, with no regards whether it fell on the ILM or civilians, something that would prove to be a critical mistake.

After the shelling, the CNA terramobiles and warmobiles carrying large amounts of infantry began to enter the city, expecting to be met with ILM resistance. However, the resistance was far greater than anticipated: the indiscriminate shelling of the city had radicalized a good portion of the population in favor of the ILM and against the CNA forces. The CNA force therefore found itself being pelted with rocks and whatever small object that could be perceived as capable of damaging an armored vehicle by civilian fighters as they entered the city. When such forces, using arms most likely provided by the ILM, destroyed or took hostage the initial force of twelve vehicles, the remainder of the force entered Jaipur.

The rest of the CNA forces found themselves in pitched urban warfare, with mined streets and militant brigades, often with rockets, hiding in alleyways. The bulky, inflexible vehicles often found themselves disabled by ILM trickery, and infantry were killed in ambushes, by garrisoned buildings, or by simply being overwhelmed. By 1:42 A.M., General Wyndham ordered a retreat. The Jaipur campaign had failed, and with it, the hopes of a yearlong occupation at best were shattered.



The Jaipur Campaign, Continued

With the destruction of the bulk of General Wyndham's forces, the military leaders in Pondicherry realized the foolish method in which they had been approaching the occupation of Jaipur. General Ethan called for a 'reevaluation of the current situation in Jaipur and the occupation force's doctrine in combatting the Indian Liberation Movement." When called to discuss his errors, General Wyndham admitted that he had thought too conventionally, using strategy and tactics taken from old Global War-era manuals read during his education in affairs of the military.

During the nearly violent debate (one British general had threatened to break a wine bottle over the head of an Australian general who opposed him), British general Eustace Levitt brought up the thoughts of Colonel Beauregard Stanton, a noted agitator within the ranks of the Coalition forces regarding their modus operandi in entering India in the first place. Stanton called for a "weeding out of the sickness that is Global War-era doctrine" from the ranks of the CNA armed forces upon learning that India would be invaded. Before the war, Stanton, a noted military thinker who had written a book on modern military strategy and tactics, had cautioned that a conflict between a conventional force and the 'local resistance movements sweeping the former colonies in Africa' would end in disaster if the conventional force did not adapt to local conditions and motivations.

Although nowhere near the age of the leading generals, most of them veterans of the Global War, Stanton had his supporters among the generalship, including among them Michael Meacham of Australia, George Godfrey and Geoffrey Chandler of the CNA, and Charles Keating of the United Kingdom, in addition to Levitt. General Ethan was opposed to such measures, saying it was "dishonorable to conform to an agenda set by terrorists and madmen." However, such an attitude was held as cocky, arrogant, and overly nationalistic, and General Godfrey, a lifelong CNA military man who had disputes with the Imperativist government in Burgoyne, accused Ethan of being a 'partisan fool appointed by Worden to better his fortunes back home."

Stanton was called from his station in Delhi to Pondicherry to discuss the reevaluation of doctrine with the Generalship, sponsored by General Levitt. At the meeting, Stanton called for cessation of indiscriminate shelling of cities as devastating to civilian morale and hence likelihood to cooperate, the cessation of sending of terramobiles as scout parties without sufficient armament against militias, more effective use of airborne scouting, and the adoption of a more pragmatic usage of civilian structures in urban warfare and combat.

Stanton's arguments persuaded the generalship to reevaluate their strategy for the suppression of the ILM while reaffirming their ultimate objective to bring Shamba Pandya, the leader of the terrorist organization, to justice. Furthermore, and more importantly, he secured permission from the generalship to lead a force into Jaipur demonstrating what he viewed as a correct manner to take the city, and his force departed on February 15th of that year.

Stanton commanded a smaller force with only ten terramobiles and twenty warmobiles, each carrying ten soldiers. These soldiers were chosen by the commanding officers in Delhi as they were known to have expertise in hand-to-hand combat, something Stanton emphasized in urban combat. Upon entering the city, the soldiers in the warmobiles exited them and positioned themselves sitting atop the terramobile turrets, enabling the viewing of alleyways as well as making terramobiles more efficient in terms of antipersonnel combat, something quite necessary in this environment.

Stanton's methods were amazingly effective, with minimal civilian casualties (discerning who was a combatant and who was a civilian was of high importance in Stanton's view of military strategy). Indeed, several Indian civilians who had previously attacked General Wyndham's forces refused to fight Stanton, with one civilian dubbing him a "more generous, more understanding man who understands the value of our homes." Within the day, the majority of the ILM was expelled from Jaipur and their main base of operations in the city destroyed. Most of the ILM was held captive, or at least those who had not died in combat. The few that escaped took a good deal of the ILM military supplies, allowing it to be used in other campaigns. However, Stanton was vindicated. The CNA and UBE had their new strategy.



The Battle of Pondicherry

After the taking of Jaipur by the CNA's Colonel Beauregard Stanton in February, the entire Coalition force celebrated in a quasi-nationalistic fervor. Celebrations were held in Delhi, and King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and by extension Australia, Victoria, India, and the Confederation of North America, gave a speech thanking the Coalition for 'restoring peace to a city of innocents, so that a just Indian government may return to control the entire country." General Ethan and General Levitt personally thanked Stanton in a ceremony and promoted him to Brigadier General with permission from Governor-General Worden himself. Worden proclaimed in a press conference in Burgoyne that Stanton "was now a national hero on the level of Scott, McDowell, Galloway, and Gallivan." A statue of Stanton was commissioned on Statuary Row in his hometown of Norfolk, Virginia, showing the gratitude that the nations of the Coalition nations held for the man.

However, the Indian Liberation Movement vowed revenge for the loss of Jaipur. Shamba Pandya said in a statement over the ILM-controlled radio broadcast, subsequently reported in Indian and later CNA and UBE newspapers, that Stanton "will be the first of the generalship that has enslaved India to die. We have put a bounty on his head, and will richly reward anyone who kills him before we do." Stanton was assigned a large bodyguard comparable to those assigned to the leading generals of the operation, second only to that of General Ethan himself.

On March 3, 1974, a massive bomb blast engulfed the main military base in Pondicherry, Fort Donovan (named for the first Governor of India, James Donovan), specifically the headquarters building where the generalship normally met. Indeed the generalship was scheduled to meet there within the hour; apparently, the ILM had gained schedules from the Coalition forces and had tried to kill the generalship. However, the bomb went off an hour before the meeting was scheduled, and only killed ten Coalition soldiers.

Shortly after the initial panic, locobombs descended upon the city and detonated themselves at major Coalition checkpoints guarding the entrances, killing thirty. Subsequently, a large force of ILM militia, coming in lococarriages (locomobiles designed for mass transit, as used in public transportation in major cities) and smaller locomobiles, each armed with explosives and captured or contraband weapons. These forces began attacks on civilians and on local Indian and Coalition forces, which began to be deployed from Fort Donovan and from other bases in Pondicherry.

Here, Brigadier General Stanton commanded a terramobile and warmobile battalion against the militants, killing several in front of the local courthouse. His knowledge of urban warfare enabled the Coalition force to destroy the invading ILM militants while suffering minimal casualties. Like in Jaipur, Stanton put emphasis on avoiding fire on civilians, and specifically ordered his soldiers to only fire when certain that the target was indeed a militant.

Eventually, the invading force was sent scattering into the Indian countryside by Stanton and the other generals. General Ethan is on the record as feeling humiliated that his force suffered twice the casualties that General Levitt's did and four times the number that Brigadier General Stanton's did. Stanton would now be known as a hero for ages to come. Ethan was worried for his reputation.



New Granada and Mexico in 1974

1974 was an election year for the Parliament of New Granada, and, like never before, there was a tide of nationalism throughout the country. Enrique Hermion, the current President for Life, had shown a grand display of defiance to the business and government interests in Mexico City by allowing the British, for a change, to begin extracting oil on the coast of the country, thereby abolishing the Mexican monopoly on the region's resources. In March, Hermion restarted diplomatic negotiations with the members of the United British Empire and the Confederation of North America, flatly contradicting Mexican President John Paul Lassiter's orders to have no such relations with them.

The April elections resulted in a mass sweep of Parliament by the Bolivarian Party, a staunchly nationalist party claiming ideological descent from Simon Bolivar, the nation's first president. Party leader and now Parliamentary Speaker Rosendo Olmos declared that it was 'high time for this nation to declare independence from Mexico much as we did Spain.' It was believed by many that acting with Britain and the CNA would be necessary for independence; indeed, Olmos said in a speech to party faithful that 'there is no shame in consorting with foreign powers; there is only shame in lying prostrate to one. Lassiter had us under his boot heel. Now, we are truly independent and may associate with whoever we wish.'

Despite his nationalism, Olmos saw no reason not to remain within the GAP. "The GAP should eventually be host to every nation in the world in Port Babineaux," he remarked, and understood that relations with Mexico would have to continue. However, he defended the New Granadan withdrawal from the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement, deeming it a threat to New Granadan business interests at the expense of Mexican or other interests.

The results of the election were met with hostility in Mexico City. Mexican Secretary of State Raymond Portillo denounced the Bolivarian party as "extremist and a puppet of London and Burgoyne, threatening to unravel the longstanding relationship between Mexico and New Granada." Mexican ambassador in Bogota Carlos Wilson felt much the same; to him, the Bolivarian party was a threat to his job and to Mexican interests. Under Wilson's orders, money from the Mexican State Department sent millions of Mexican dollars to New Granada to fund opposition movements and buy out opposition members of the New Granadan Parliament.

In May, Enrique Hermion, an ardent supporter of the Bolivarian Party, and Olmos met in La Guairá with the British and CNA ambassadors James Fitzwilliam and Donald Webster, respectively, along with Jonathan Winnicott, head of Imperial Vulcazine. With them, Hermion and Olmos announced that they would now no longer be markedly hostile towards interests from the CNA or UBE; they would be seen as equally valid partners for trade and development that the other nations of South America, as well as Mexico, were seen as. However, Herion and Olmos insisted that they were still members of the GAP and would not aid in the invasion of India, as proposed by Webster (a noted Imperativist given the job mainly as reward for his support of Governor-General Worden's Grand Council run).



Britain as of 1974

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, under the monarch George VI, was a nation widely considered among the most powerful nations of the world in 1974, rivaled only by the CNA, the USM, and Germany. Its rule in India was the only major challenge within its vast dominion, even reduced after the mass decolonization movements after the Global War. In Europe, it was safe, but alone.

On the European continent, the German absorption of much of its puppet states gained after the Global War under its chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier, Britain had no major allies. Even Portugal, traditionally an ally of Britain, had joined the Global Association for Peace in 1973 along with Spain. Scandinavia and the Helvetic Confederation were steadfastly neutral, Italy was allied with Germany, France and the Netherlands absorbed into Germany along with Russia, Poland, and Arabia. Southeastern European countries, such as Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, or Serbia, were in the German sphere of influence as well.

Such an arrangement left the British people fearful, and it was with this fear that Prime Minister Gordon Perrow attained power in 1970. A major Whig party leader from a riding in North Yorkshire, the Whig Party had in many regards become the premier 'lionish' party in the country. The adjective 'lionish' meant 'likely to fight,' and was often applied with intent to call the subject of such a word a warmonger, something the Whigs were often accused of being. Opposed to monarchical or indeed central government power in excess, this applied not only to Britain but to elsewhere. The great Whig thinker Jeremy Rutherford, an MP during the time of the Global War from Suffolk, said on the war's beginning,

"It is our empire's responsibility to ensure good government for the entire world. Germany is an autocratic state left in centuries past. It is high time Britain discipline these warmongers, both in Berlin and in Tehran."

In India, the United Kingdom was in many regards the tactical and strategic superior member of the invading coalition, despite the operation's overall command by CNA general Jared Ethan, a Imperativist appointee from Burgoyne by Governor-General Worden. However, unlike the nigh-untested CNA armed forces, accustomed only to the occasional training mission in one of the Vandalias or the wastes of Manitoba, the British army was well-equipped to deal with Indian terrain, if not the tactics of the ILM. The Global War actions in India served as ample training for the current British military leadership.

Domestically, there were three main parties in Parliament: the Whigs, the Liberals, and the Conservatives. The Conservatives were generally a dovish party, having supported the Mercatorist offensive of the Dove and harkened back to old pre-empire factions that opposed mass territorial expansion while maintaining control of key areas such as the CNA, India, and Australia. Conservatives were generally in favor of Mercantilist economics. The Liberals arose as a rabidly pro-empire party that supported expansion but also isolation, in opposition to the Whigs' lionishness that arose in the twentieth century with antecedents in the nineteenth.

In addition, there were major nationalist movements within Britain such as the Scottish National Front, the Welsh Independence Party, and the Irish League for Liberation, all of which called for the dissolution of the United Kingdom (and incidentally had connections with the United States of Mexico and Global Association for Peace) and fragmentation into its predecessor states. All three parties opposed dissolution; indeed, it is said that only the threat of Germany kept the nation together. However, union was popular; Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen all had members in parliament and every party had MPs from each constituent country.



Italy as of 1974

The Kingdom of Italy was dubbed 'the great conduit of the Mediterranean' by Mexican journalist William Iverson in 1973 on a investigative trip in which he reported back to several Mexican newspapers. Iverson's assertion held true; Italy's place in European geopolitics was as a linkage point between points eastward and westward, but above all northward. In 1973, on a state visit to Berlin, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Serafini proclaimed that Germany was "Italy's greatest friend in this world."

Germany, upon incorporating several of its puppet states into the Greater German Empire, extended a hand to Italy to join the new union. Prime Minister Serafini, elected in 1970, declined and said he would never forfeit Italy's sovereignty, but maintained that Germany would still be welcome in Italy. Indeed, the union of France, Russia, the Netherlands, Arabia, and Poland under the German monarchy was met with some relief in Rome, for France under direct German government would be less likely to begin a general European war, and Russia the same.

Serafini did not lie when he said that Germany would be welcome in Rome; indeed, he did what he could to strengthen the relationship. In 1973, Serafini shocked the world when he allowed the German navy to use a naval base at Palermo to host their Mediterranean fleet. Previously, the German Mediterranean fleet had been based at Beirut; however, Chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier wanted to relocated the fleet to Italy for a more centralized location in the Mediterranean, backed by influential members of the admiralty.

Admiral Diethelm Loris of the German Mediterranean Fleet brought the fleet into Palermo in November 1973. This centralized location was considered optimal in case of a massive French revolt against German rule, something considered distinctly possible in the 1970s. The German Navy had decided not to base their fleet in France for fears of incurring any more violence than had already occurred. A base in Italy, therefore, was considered optimal as it was in unabashedly friendly territory and yet close enough to mainland France.

Prime Minister Serafini was often considered an appeaser or a puppet of Kiermaier, but in reality he was a shrewd politician working for what he saw was the best for Italy. Serafini, in exchange for allowing the German naval base in Palermo, gave a boon to Italian business by having the German Ministry of the Economy give Italy preferential treatment in terms of imports. Additionally, Serafini was of a very cautious school of Italian thought that believed that Germany was still the best way to go into the future. Britain, the continent's only other significant power, was simply too far away to be of any major aid to Italy in case of a major European war. Germany, a country Italy now had long borders with, seemed the most optimal ally.



A short biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, part I

Reinhold Kiermaier was born in Munich in 1921, to Felix and Olga Kiermaier, the former a career military man whose father had fought in the German interventions in the Argentine during the 1890s, the latter from a family of merchants who had made their name in the Munich commercial scene.

Kiermaier was eighteen years old when he joined the German military to fight in the Ottoman Empire, and was present at the Battle of Damascus. Later, his division was redeployed to France to invade, and remained there for the duration of the war. After the 1942 German victory at the Battle of Strasbourg, German Chancellor Karl Bruning visited the local garrison of which Kiermaier was a part. Kiermaier found the very idealistic, nationalistic Bruning a very interesting character, but also thought that his method of governing occupied territories as military districts was unsound.

With the end of the Global War in 1948, Kiermaier became convinced of German superiority on the European continent, but felt such superiority was in jeopardy of being destroyed due to an overextension of German military forces. The German defeat in India and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire only confirmed such things to him. Germans were human, thought Kiermaier, and they were prone to the foolishness that humans often are. However, he felt divine providence had given Germany a great potential, potential that ought not to be squandered.

By the end of the war, Kiermaier was a well-known thinker and military strategist who had been promoted to General by war's end (some have questioned the wisdom of this of the German general staff; to the contrary, about ten years of war give ample time for promotion). The new Chancellor, Heinrich von Richter, was favorable to Kiermaier and had him placed as the commander of forces stationed in the northeastern parts of France.

However, France would not be Kiermaier's home for long, as Germany's ally, the Austrian Empire, was on the verge of collapse. During the Global War, Austria was subject to a series of violent revolutions reminiscent of the chaos that had ensued during the Bloody Eighties, the context of the Italian-Austrian war that gained Venice for the new Kingdom of Italy. Bohemians, Slovakians, Hungarians, Serbians, and a variety of other groups demanded independence, inspired by the actions of Abdul el Sallah in the Ottoman Empire. The Austrian Civil War, therefore, was a major concern of von Richter's Chancellorship. He dispatched Kiermaier to Vienna as the official German representative with a detachment of a hundred thousand troops.

In Vienna, Austrian Chancellor Adelbert Dresdner, the leader of Austria since the 1920s, pleaded that the German Empire support it against the rebellions occurring throughout the country. However, another large faction within the Austrian government, led by the Foreign Minister Dierk Gehard, wanted a pan-Germanic union under the German Imperial monarchy in Berlin, to include the ethnically non-German parts of the Austrian Empire.

To the surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to the international community, Kiermaier refused to use the military forces of the German Empire to broker a solution. To the contrary, he called a peace settlement in Vienna of the various rebel groups and the Austrian and German governments, with neutral observers from Britain and the CNA. The Austrian Empire would be broken up as per the Treaty of Vienna. The following points were included:

A short biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, part I

Reinhold Kiermaier was born in Munich in 1921, to Felix and Olga Kiermaier, the former a career military man whose father had fought in the German interventions in the Argentine during the 1890s, the latter from a family of merchants who had made their name in the Munich commercial scene.

Kiermaier was eighteen years old when he joined the German military to fight in the Ottoman Empire, and was present at the Battle of Damascus. Later, his division was redeployed to France to invade, and remained there for the duration of the war. After the 1942 German victory at the Battle of Strasbourg, German Chancellor Karl Bruning visited the local garrison of which Kiermaier was a part. Kiermaier found the very idealistic, nationalistic Bruning a very interesting character, but also thought that his method of governing occupied territories as military districts was unsound.

With the end of the Global War in 1948, Kiermaier became convinced of German superiority on the European continent, but felt such superiority was in jeopardy of being destroyed due to an overextension of German military forces. The German defeat in India and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire only confirmed such things to him. Germans were human, thought Kiermaier, and they were prone to the foolishness that humans often are. However, he felt divine providence had given Germany a great potential, potential that ought not to be squandered.

By the end of the war, Kiermaier was a well-known thinker and military strategist who had been promoted to General by war's end (some have questioned the wisdom of this of the German general staff; to the contrary, about ten years of war give ample time for promotion). The new Chancellor, Heinrich von Richter, was favorable to Kiermaier and had him placed as the commander of forces stationed in the northeastern parts of France.

However, France would not be Kiermaier's home for long, as Germany's ally, the Austrian Empire, was on the verge of collapse. During the Global War, Austria was subject to a series of violent revolutions reminiscent of the chaos that had ensued during the Bloody Eighties, the context of the Italian-Austrian war that gained Venice for the new Kingdom of Italy. Bohemians, Slovakians, Hungarians, Serbians, and a variety of other groups demanded independence, inspired by the actions of Abdul el Sallah in the Ottoman Empire. The Austrian Civil War, therefore, was a major concern of von Richter's Chancellorship. He dispatched Kiermaier to Vienna as the official German representative with a detachment of a hundred thousand troops.

In Vienna, Austrian Chancellor Adelbert Dresdner, the leader of Austria since the 1920s, pleaded that the German Empire support it against the rebellions occurring throughout the country. However, another large faction within the Austrian government, led by the Foreign Minister Dierk Gehard, wanted a pan-Germanic union under the German Imperial monarchy in Berlin, to include the ethnically non-German parts of the Austrian Empire.

To the surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to the international community, Kiermaier refused to use the military forces of the German Empire to broker a solution. To the contrary, he called a peace settlement in Vienna of the various rebel groups and the Austrian and German governments, with neutral observers from Britain and the CNA. The Austrian Empire would be broken up as per the Treaty of Vienna. The following points were included:


The incorporation of Austria and the other German-speaking portions of the Empire, including the Sudetenland, into the German Empire.
The creation of an independent Hungary.
The creation of the Federation of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, designed for the 'northern Slavs' of the empire.
The creation of an independent Union of Croatia and Bosnia for the purpose of 'a homeland for the southern Slavs of the empire.'



A short biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, Part II

After the Congress of Vienna, as it was called, General Reinhold Kiermaier of the German Empire was considered by many to be a master of diplomacy, and one who had ended decades of internal conflict within that country. The year of 1950, the final year of the Austrian Empire, saw Kiermaier applauded by the leaders of the Confederation of North America, Great Britain, and even Mexican President Felix Garcia praised him as a champion of peace for all, an irony considering his status as a General in the German Army.

In Austria was planted the seeds of Kiermaier's ideas regarding the future of the German Empire, the ideas that would shape his chancellorship upon his ascension to the office in 1971. While at Vienna, he had come to the conclusion that a large, multiethnic empire of the size of the Austrian Empire simply could not survive if governed in the quagmire of bureaucracy and confusion that was Austrian government, including a dual monarchy and a variety of other positions that were held by Austrians, Hungarians, and other ethnicities.

However, Kiermaier did see the benefits of the separation of the crowns of Austria and Hungary, in that they each had their own ministries and parliaments but ultimately beholden to a centralized parliament in Vienna. The parallels with Germany, Kiermaier felt, were obvious. Austria had Hungary, Bohemia, and other nations, Germany had Poland, the Netherlands, the Associated Russian Republics, France, and Arabia. They were still under direct German rule, but were not formally united into a German state.

Kiermaier was afraid of an encroachment on these occupied territories by any of the powers of the day. Britain in particularly worried him, as it had been allies with both France and the Netherlands during the Global War, and was suspected by both Kiermaier and several other German military officials that they could be supporting the nascent rebellions in these countries. However, he saw them as not mere potential allies, but something with far more potential: partners in a confederation.

Germany itself was a confederation of the various German-speaking nations that had unified after the Trans-Oceanic War. These individual statelets sent delegates to the German capital of Berlin to discuss issues of a national importance; said delegates were appointed by the local legislatures. A confederation of an even larger sort between Germany and her dominions seemed not only possible but beneficial to Kiermaier.

Kiermaier saw such a union as beneficial for several reasons, but the military reason stood out. In 1950, the strongest military powers in the world were the United States of Mexico, the Confederation of North America, the Empire of Japan, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Germany was behind all of those due to its war-weariness, and France and Russia were rendered defeated, and the Ottoman Empire was rent into three parts. Of the countries under German dominion, France had plenty of manpower, as did Russia and Arabia, with the Netherlands and Poland supplementing them. Arabia had plenty of natural resources as did Russia. Hence, union between them would create easily the most powerful military in the world.



A Short Biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, Part III

In 1955, Kiermaier resigned his post in the German military to run for a seat in the Bavarian Diet, with its capital in Kiermaier's hometown of Munich. Formerly not of any specific political party, Kiermaier chose to run under the Deutschland Party banner, a party Kiermaier found the most likely to support his desires to confederate the various German dominions into one superstate. He opposed the contemporary Democratic Party, whose leader in the national Diet, Huppert Grosser of Hamburg, supported the complete but gradual withdrawal of German forces from the various occupied territories.

When Kiermaier left for Munich, an Austrian delegation led by the Vienna Deutschland Party's local branch offered a position in the new Austrian Diet to Kiermaier as a reward for his services to keeping peace in the remnants of the Austrian Empire. Kiermaier had briefly considered doing so, meeting with the local party leader Burkhart Leitner before declining the nomination. When Leitner began to plead to Kiermaier to accept, Kiermaier replied in a famous quote:

"We may both be Germans, but we both know that Germany is a famously fragmented nation, composed of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire that came out of the Trans-Oceanic War over a century ago. As such, I feel nigh-treasonous running for office in a territory that is not my own. I will thusly return to Bavaria and run there."

Kiermaier was welcomed as a hero in Munich, where he ran for a Diet seat for an electoral district that he had lived in all his life before joining the German military in the Global War. Upon his return, mayor of Munich Ortwin Havener held a parade in his honor, with a military band and actual forces from the Global War on parade through the major streets of the city. Havener congratulated one of Munich's "greatest sons" back to the city and gave him a medal in honor of his service (one of many that he had earned over his illustrious career).

Kiermaier won the elections for the Diet in 1955 in a landslide majority, and his return led to the Deutschland Party, until then unpopular in the public opinion due to its actions during the Global War, to a respectable majority in the Bavarian Diet. Kiermaier, as a member of the Bavarian Diet, sponsored many bills supporting reconstruction of various parts of the province damaged in air raids by the British or French air forces, bills which made him immensely popular, and many other members of the Deutschland Party were keen to emulate his way of speaking and thought.

In 1960, after five years of faithful service, Bavarian Diet Majority Leader Sieghard Hass nominated Kiermaier to be one of Bavaria's nominees for a seat in the National Diet in Berlin. Kiermaier accepted the nomination, saying that "I am always willing to serve my home country. If it deems me best able to serve in Berlin and not in Munich, I will gladly accept the responsibility." A majority vote in the Bavarian Diet confirmed his place in the national Diet. Kiermaier went to Berlin in September of that year.



A Short Biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, Part IV

Reinhold Kiermaier, the great peacemaker of Vienna and the loyal servant of his home state of Bavaria, arrived to take his place in the great National Diet of the German Empire in the year of 1960. Upon his arrival, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Adolph Markstein, of Hesse, greeted him with celebration much like that he had received on his return to Munich after his negotiations in Vienna. Markstein lauded the former general as a "hero of the Global War for the German motherland," in front of the entire Diet. This was met with a standing ovation.

During his first two years in office, Kiermaier spoke favorably of Markstein, a fellow member of the Deutschland Party. However, Kiermaier was known for not following the Deutschland Party line on all occasions, voting for a bill that that restored some local autonomy to the government occupied territories, and also against the bill that dissolved the state of Belgium and gave its constituent French and Flemish speaking parts to France and the Netherlands, respectively. Kiermaier believed that Belgium should have been an ally to Germany and ultimately confederate; the reasoning of Markstein and his allies was that the recent ethnic tension between the two groups proved they simply could not live together, something which flew in the face of Kiermaier's philosophy of a military alliance between the several nations conquered by Germany during the Global War.

Another break between Kiermaier's allies and the mainstream Deutschland Party was the issue of the Offensive of the Dove, proposed by Mexican President Vincent Mercator. The mainstream Deutschland Party members of the Diet opposed the very possibility of accepting the peace treaty, and its lack of agenda made it only more odious. Kiermaier, on the other hand, saw the proposed treaty as a way to increase peace worldwide and make relations with Britain, which were cold since the cessation of the Global War, warmer. He explained his opinions thusly:

"Britain is as of now the major enemy our nation faces in the world. Should we make peace with them, we can concentrate on internal improvements and the betterment of the peoples living under our rule."

Most interpreted Kiermaier's remarks as supporting the dictatorship of Vincent Mercator in Mexico, a regime deeply unpopular in Germany. Thorsten Aeschelman, a Deutschland member of the Diet from the Berlin region, contended that "Kiermaier has no reason to be a member of this party. If Kiermaier had any shred of integrity left, he would join the Democratic Party."

Kiermaier's voting record proves otherwise. While in the Diet, he voted against several Democratic sponsored bills cutting military spending or the size of the armed forces, consistent with the Deutschland Party's positions. He was in many ways a conservative, voting in favor of the increased spending on welfare programs that Deutschland favored and the Democrats opposed.




A short Biography of Reinhold Kiermaier, Part V

Through the 1960s, Reinhold Kiermaier, in his capacity as a member of the German Imperial Diet for Bavaria, served as a moderate conservative voice in the governing body, not going to the extreme nationalism that the Deutschland Party was prone to but remaining firmly nationalistic and a lover of the German fatherland, something the opposing Democratic Party shied away from. Nationalism was still, in a sense, tainted with the memory of Chancellor Karl Bruning, the Chancellor who had fought the Global War until being replaced by Heinrich von Richter. Kiermaier was seen as being of a similar political persuasion of the members of the Deutschland Party that voted to end the war against France, Britain, and Russia.

In 1964, the possibility of expanding the German healthcare and pension system, the Imperial Health Service (IHS), was at the forefront of German politics, something that the Diet was utterly deadlocked at finding a solution. One of the major objections to even the existence of the IHS was the perceived federalism that the German Empire was based on, and that the various German states that made up the Empire should be tasked with the problem themselves.

Kiermaier drafted a bill that created an intricate system of checks and balances between the provincial and Imperial governments, one that had little tolerance for people who accepted money from the Imperial Pension and Welfare Service (IPWS) while making no attempt to find work, a key objection that the Democratic Party had to previous Deutschland Party plans. The bill passed with a majority of both parties voting in favor of it, breaking decades of progress on the issue.

In 1965, due to his expertise on the region, Kiermaier was selected as the leader of a Diet-authorized trade delegation to a conference of the former Austrian nations, plus Serbia, in Budapest, Hungary (the current Chancellor, August Muhlfeld, had a distinct dislike of foreign travel, and felt that Kiermaier was more apt at such things anyway). In Budapest, he met with Hungarian President Rikcard Herczeg, Bohemian president Tomas Jezek, Croatian president Teodor Matic, and Serbian Prime Minister Joakim Zivkovic with the possibility of liberalizing trade. His reputation as the Hero of Vienna was not lost on these leaders, and it was indeed a significant boost to the German delegation. German Foreign Minister Anselm Geiszler said the following on the matter:

"The Hungarians, the Bohemians, and the Croatians all could tell that the man that stood before them [Kiermaier] was the man who could very well have prevented them from dying at the hands of the Austrian military. They spoke with him a deference that seemed almost as if he were a king or an emperor, something strange indeed when countries with republican governments such as these. Thus is the essence of human desire to worship at the altar of a deity; they will break whatever secular custom they have to offer tribute to a god that they deem worthy of reverence. Kiermaier was to them at that time that god."

Kiermaier returned to Berlin with great success, and his agreements with their governments were applauded. The Hero of Vienna and the Hero of Munich was becoming the Hero of Berlin. His reputation led to an upswing of Deutschland voting, at a time when Chancellor Adolph Markstein's removal for corruption and the inauguration of the Democratic Chancellor Muhlfeld had taken his place.

In 1971, Muhlfeld resigned the office of Chancellorship, saying he had grown too old for politics - he had been born at the turn of the century. Kiermiaer was immediately nominated as the Deutschland Party's candidate for the Chancellorship, opposing the variety of Democratic candidates, out of which eventually was chosen Ekkehart Schuttmann. The Diet's vote, majority Deutschland in composition after a variety of elections in the latter half of the 1960s, was clearly in Kiermaier's favor. He was the next Chancellor.



A Short Biography of Reinhold Kiermiaer, Part VI

Reinhold Kiermaier, the hero of Vienna, rose to the office of Governor-General in widespread celebration in all parts of the Empire in 1971. Celebrations were especially vibrant in Vienna and Munich, the former the part of Germany that he had brought in, the latter the city of his birth and subsequent rise. Political commentators widely favored the Diet's choice of his accession. In the words of Aloysius Steen, a renowned vitavision political commentator and host of the program The Imperial Eagle (the Reichsadler in German), "Kiermaier shows that Germans can have faith in their government. We do not need to be disillusioned when men of such stature are chosen."

Kiermaier's inauguration, attended by diplomats from Britain, the CNA, and Mexico, was marked by his speech concerning the Imperial Health Service reforms, the role of the military, the incorporation of Austria into the German Empire, and other topics of that nature. However, the most internationally shocking of the announcements was the plan to begin a confederation between the various occupied countries of the German Empire and Germany proper. Kiermaier promised "a birth of brotherhood between peoples that would hopefully defuse the nationalistic tension between the various peoples of Europe and the world."

Kiermaier, partially out of his popularity and partly out of his own personal charisma, was able to succeed in passing the beginnings of the new government, dubbed the Greater German Empire, in a vote that blurred party lines to a degree. The majority of Deutschland supported it, as did many Democrats. However, the very warlike members of Deutschland opposed it (they were known for demanding the usage of the military on protestors in Russia and France, something that the international community would have abhorred; Kiermaier and the rest of Deutschland knew this very well). Likewise, the dovish Democrats opposed it on the grounds that Germany should leave these peoples to their own devices.

Nevertheless, negotiations continued, and France, the Netherlands, the Associated Russian Republics, and the Sultanate of Arabia (a puppet state of Germany carved out of the former Ottoman Empire) were persuaded to join the new Empire with the promise that their internal affairs would remain theirs and that they would have representatives in the new government on an equal footing to the representatives from the current parts of the German Empire. Shortly thereafter, Poland was persuaded to join facing pressure from German in the west and the Associated Russian Republics in the east.

Kiermaier extended his offer to the Kingdom of Italy, which refused, and to the former parts of the Austrian Empire, including Croatia, the Federation of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, and Hungary, as well as Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, all of which declined due to the strong national identities in these countries coupled with a lack of major German involvement in their national governments. Anatolia and Persia were both considered to have invitations extended to them, but it was ruled they were too volatile to be considered stable parts of the Empire (Arabia, on the other hand, had a strong national identity and was favorable to German interests).

The first Union Diet met in Berlin in late 1971, where several statesmen of the non-German countries of the union were appointed as members of Kiermaier's government. The Greater German Empire would become a new significant power on the world stage, now easily rivaling that of Britain, the CNA, or the USM.

Norris versus Wyndham in the Rockies

In the early days of September the CNA's General Sullivan Wyndham was moving his forces into the Rocky Mountains with San Francisco in his sights. However, the Rocky Mountains were a significant change in pace than the fighting in India, and yet were eerily similar in that they involved on the side of the CNA's enemies a form of unconventional warfare that was different than what was taught in the various British-written texts that the CNA had studied in great detail since the 1840s. This was not open battle on the Great Plains; this was a war that would be like that in the Alps or the other mountain ranges of Europe that Britain only had a slight interest and experience in.

The winding roads of the region on the way to the Mexican northwest were wrapped around mountains and were dotted with small towns in the various flatter areas. It was in these areas that the CNA military excelled, and was exceptional in defeating the armored forces of the United States at towns such as Norcomville and Robinsonburg and various others. CNA terramobiles outclassed Mexican terramobiles in many ways due to the large amount of help that British engineers gave North American engineers during the design process in the days leading up to the invasion of India. The same could be said for airmobiles and gyromobiles; however, the CNA could not be said to have had complete control of the skies; it was the usage of the Mexican Air Force that would even the odds between the two sides in that front of the war.

On September 14th, a CNA convoy of terramobiles and warmobiles was making its way through a mountainous road when a Mexican fighter squadron was preparing to fire on the North Americans. These vehicles were heavily defended by anti-air weaponry on freightmobiles escorting these vehicles. The squad leader, Garret Harrelson, ordered the fighters to continue moving in the general direction of the convoy but not get too close. Then, Harrelson ordered a strike on a rocky peak of a mountain that they would be crossing shortly at just the right moment, causing a rockslide that sent the CNA convoy plummeting down into a valley. This tactic led to Harrelson being promoted and becoming the basic guideline that the Mexican Air Force would operate under in the Rockies.

Partisans were also instrumental in breaking what had previously been an inexorable advance by the North Americans and turning it into yet another quagmire that India had been for the longest time. Working with the Mexican military, the Sons of the Old North led CNA forces into ambushes and set booby traps, such as supplies rigged with explosives, to keep the North Americans on their toes. They also destroyed bridges, like they had done at Slocum Pass, and used some decidedly less than completely humane forms of resistance (or less so than the average level of humaneness inherent in war).

The large amounts of vehicles required by the CNA necessitated large amounts of vulcazine to be transported to the front. Partisan commanders noticed this and captured sources of vulcazine to make makeshift weapons, such as handheld explosives in bottles which were capable of destroying terramobiles. These were hardly the only weapon they used, and far from original; the concept had been pioneered during the First Global War. This was not the only flame-based tactic they used: on several occasions, at temporary CNA encampments they would set up leaking containers of vulcazine and use various methods of lighting them, such as leaving a trail of vulcazine that would ignite in its entirety if it were lit, and put these in the ashtrays of officers for the purpose of a surprising explosion that would inevitably kill several if positioned rightly.



Mexico's South and Central American Allies, and La Guerra Granadina

The invasion of the United States of Mexico by the Confederation of North America sent worry into the various states of South America, most staunch and committed allies to Mexico for several years. Already having recalled their ambassadors to Burgoyne in 1971 and 1972, they were willing to stand with their erstwhile ally through the uncertainty of the Invasion of India. John Paul Lassiter, President of Mexico, had declared that "My brothers and sisters throughout your continents, I give you my nation's highest thanks for joining with us in this great crusade for international liberty" when he met with various leaders from those countries in 1972. The invasion proved that this relationship was not weakened by the adversity of the CNA, but rather strengthened by it.

With the notable exception of New Granada, when the klaxons of war were sounded and its dogs let slip, young men throughout the continent enlisted in droves to help their economic and social benefactors and friends in that country, expecting the leaders of South America to declare war jointly. They did so, and armies were raised in Rio de Janeiro and Lima, Quito and Buenos Aires. The sinking of the Brazilian cruise liner, the Curral do Rei, named for the city in that country, only galvanized opinions to fight the North Americans even more.

And yet New Granada was obstinately opposed to going to war, as its leader, President Enrique Hermion, was far less pro-Mexican than the rest of the continent, having negotiated with the British company Imperial Vulcazine to have petroleum drilling rights in the country's Caribbean coast. Thusly, the nation had some good relations with the Imperial bloc, having restored its ambassadors to Burgoyne, London, and the other members of the UBE in 1974, and expelling Carlos Wilson, the Mexican ambassador in the New Granadan capital of Bogota. The beginning of the war had Lassiter denouncing Hermion as the "lecherous whore of a continent of otherwise noble leaders of great nations, willing to do whatever a North American or a Briton does for the right price."

Backing up his rhetoric with action, Lassiter instructed his Latin American allies to not send their forces to Chiapas, but to instead invade New Granada, something they did with an understanding of the responsibility but with obvious disappointment that they would not be able to fight on Mexican, or even North American, soil. Lassiter promised that they would one day, but that the treachery of New Granada was of more immediate importance on that continent and must be dealt with swiftly, something that they obliged. The Guatemalans assembled their forces in the southern part of their country and invaded the Panama region of New Granada on August 30th. The day after, the armies of the rest of the continent began their invasions through Rio Negro and Quito.

There were three generals on the Allied side of this war: Javier Mendoza of Guatemala, Cristian de la Pava of Peru, and Cesar Gouveia of Brazil. On the New Granadan side of the conflict were generals Tomas Gutierrez, Alvaro Santos, Julio Moreno, and Andres Gomez. Each of them were all of the highest ranks of their respective militaries, but were still less powerful, well-equipped, or trained than the armies of Britain, Germany, Mexico, or North America. A Mexican observer in the Peruvian army, Allan Borromeo, contemptuously described the fighting of the GAP forces in New Granada as "two armed mobs chasing each other around the jungles and the plains" and not professionally armed forces doing 'civilized' battle, to whatever extent that phrase can be applied to what boils down to murder on a mass scale.

However, this characterization of the militaries of Latin America as being simply armed mobs is a gross simplification of the actual combat occurring, and the horrors of the war in that country. Both New Granada and the invading armies all had armies equipped with Mexican arms, vehicles, and aircraft, which were quite formidable when used correctly; fear of a possible North American incursion in South America during the Mercator administration had led to a surge in military sales to Latin American countries. Even if they were from the 1950s and the 1960s, this weaponry could dish out significant amounts of harm to its opponents.

Such was the face of the war in New Granada. Confusion often occurred due to almost identically equipped and designed terramobiles, and friendly fire was common. However, the most expensive fruit of the Mercatorist weapon sales was only unleashed on September 19th: that of flamethrowers. Flamethrowers, initially used during the first Global War in China, were effective if often costly weapons in that front, and their brutality lead to a popular outcry in Mexico to press Alvin Silva, the president at the time, to ban their usage. With Silva's overthrow by Mercator and his allies, flamethrowers were used against various rebel factions in Durango, where the popular consensus against the weapon became even more virulent. Understanding the need for public support, Mercator banned the usage of the weapons once he was in power by the Mexican armed forces, and left them sitting in warehouses until selling them off for large sums of cash to his Latin American allies.

Flamethrowers were used in horrifyingly great effect when Peruvian forces burned the New Granadan town of Bosque de Bolivar with flamethrowers in an attempt to route a New Granadan force hiding in that village. The New Granadans retaliated when they mounted flamethrowers on warmobiles and charged into Peruvian infantry lines, creating a new, distinctly New Granadan weapon, dubbed the Mapana, named after a venomous snake of that country. Public reaction was mixed; one commentator in Bogota said that "apparently we will burn our own forests to save them."

Mexico, despite her preoccupation with the North Americans in Jefferson and in the Rockies, was able to aid the coalition invading New Granada from the naval and air bases in the Mexican Antilles, the smallest state in the Mexican union in both population and in area, including the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, Saint John, and Martinique. Most notable of this aid was the bombardment of La Guairá, a major port on the Caribbean Sea. A Mexican squadron under the command of Admiral Maximilian Arenas moved towards La Guairá, where the formidable Mexican Navy was able to take down the paltry New Granadan navy and begin shelling the city, the site of the largest naval base of that country. What horrified the world, however, was the usage of air-deployed stickzine bombs on the city, causing the various buildings of the city to be set ablaze, an action that appalled the world, even some of the minor members of the GAP such as Spain and Portugal (certainly, those in Berlin and Rome objected, but not publicly).

In the Caribbean, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo, three Spanish-speaking nations of little military might but of great spirit, pledged to aid the Mexicans by having their navies harass North American shipping and naval forces moving from Georgia to Veracruz and Jefferson. These forces often did very little but harassment, but were able to sink some cargo ships as well as the H.M.N.A.S. Michigan City as it was moving towards Veracruz. Despite the fact that there were several other fronts needing attention, Governor-General Worden authorized the bombing of Habana via bases in the Florida peninsula of Georgia, and the landing of North American Marines in Cuba.



The Veracruz Landings

On October 10th, with the North American armies under General Jared Ethan continued their advances in Jefferson towards the capital of that state, a fleet under admiral Stephen Dalton descended upon Veracruz. Long range bombing campaigns using Marquis-class bombers were used to destroy critical ships of the Mexican Navy docked in the port of Veracruz, and more bombers dropped stickzine onto the city, causing large swaths of it, mostly the poorer parts, to be lit aflame.

The invasion of Veracruz set a record for the largest amphibious landing in the history of human warfare, with over a thousand vessels carrying troops descended upon the beaches of the areas adjacent to the city, supported by air and naval bombardment upon the city proper. General Eduardo Bermudez, the commander of the Veracruz garrison and a former Mercatorist coup leader in Chiapas, had made sure to deploy his troops in such a manner that would hopefully deflect the invasion. The Mexican Air Force, under its commanding general Rutherford Ballinger, was sent to intercept bombers from the North Americans, with a reasonable success rate. At Veracruz, unlike Jefferson, Mexico was actually having a meager amount of success.

The reason for this initial success was due to the anticipation of a landing of North American forces somewhere on Mexico's Gulf Coast. However, the full amount of forces defending the Gulf were not at Veracruz; Mexican strategists had predicted that a landing would be either at Veracruz or at the Yucatan. However, they had not predicted the sheer monumental scope of the invasion, which stunned the world in its size. Machine gun nests and rocket pads on the beach were able to stop the advance for some time, but General Charles Congable's North American marines and infantry were able to move forward with the help of armor and artillery from various brigades.

This whole strategy by Admiral Dalton and General Congable was part of what Worden deemed "the second Conquest of the Aztecs," hence the names "Operation Cortes" for the entire operation. The route that they would take was similar to that of Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of the Aztecs, who moved from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, which the North Americans would emulate, to symbolize "the culling of this rabid beast, just as the Aztecs sacrificed thousands to their own depraved false deities." Dalton, in particular, felt quite strongly about this plan; his father was a correspondent for the Burgoyne Herald during the Mercatorist revolution in Mexico, and was killed by the Mexican military in Chapultepec during a counterinsurgency sweep of the area. Dalton, therefore, ensured that the Navy would "pound all Veracruz into submission" and ordered Congable "to give them hell." Congable, a loyal Imperativist, obliged and carried on the mission.

As General Bermudez ordered his troops to fall back from the beachheads, he gave a desperate call to Palenque, the capital of the state of Chiapas and, more importantly, the headquarters of the Mexican forces in that state. Under General Miguel Cardenas, most of the forces under his command were in the Yucatan waiting for an invasion that was not going to come. Upon getting Bermudez's call, the Chiapan forces began their march northward. Their arrival would be the decider in the Veracruz front.



The French Insurgency

With the German army, navy, and air force pounding the southern coast of England, the French Republic, a constituent part of the Greater German Empire, was at best lukewarm towards the war. Jean-Baptiste Tremblay, the French President, was a supporter of the war, but not without the occasional prodding from the German general in Paris, Vester Kreuse. Nevertheless, he was a proponent of the peace and was elected as such in 1969 and again in 1973. Under his administration, the armies of France were given under command of the German general staff and thusly would be used against the British. As part of the Empire, France was obligated to send its forces to the war effort, and thusly planes of the French Air Guard were sent to bombard Southampton and Portsmouth on the English coast, and some additional raids on Christchurch, Plymouth, and Exeter.

Despite the war being mostly of Kiermaier's manufacture, rather than Tremblay's, the French people who were against the war blamed their president as it was under his administration did their homeland join with the Germans in their Empire and their war. Thusly, it proved ample recruiting fodder for the Sons of Fanchon, the rebel group that had caused violence in Paris in the days after the union with Germany, which gained large amounts of young men and women who, disenchanted with the state of their country, were willing to take up arms to defend it. The new leader of the Sons of Fanchon, Leopold Herriot, was a veteran of the attack on Paris and had only narrowly escaped with his life; he had seen Stephane Pascal, the organization's former leader, die at the hands of the Germans.

The Sons of Fanchon were in many ways inspired by the Indian Liberation Movement and its leader Shamba Pandya. While the occupation of that country was underway, Herriot had made radio declarations of sympathy with the ILM, and admired the terrorist organization's "willingness to show no mercy." When it was decided that the time to strike at the occupiers of the Patrie, similar brutality would be used. "They are inhuman, they are animals, they are barbarians!" called out Herriot to a meeting of his followers. "Kill them like the swine that they are!" And so the Germans would feel the wrath that North America had suffered.

The first of such attacks was a minor but symbolic one, at a restaurant in Paris on the Seine which was a popular site for German soldiers to take their French lady friends for dinner. In what Herriot dubbed a "reclamation of French women for Frenchmen, and Frenchmen alone," gunmen loyal to the Sons of Fanchon burst into a popular dining room, killed all the German soldiers and anyone else who resisted, and ripped off the hair and tore the clothes off of the women who had been consorting with them. Their lips were sealed shut with a gag, on which read the word "putain," meaning "whore" in English, and left to serve as an example for those who followed Tremblay.

This initial act of brutality was followed by another even more unsettling one, where the Sons of Fanchon copied the ILM's locobomb tactics and drove a locomobile rigged with explosives to detonate inside a crowded shopping mall in Paris, and specially rigged to cause an explosion more fiery than usual. This succeeded masterfully; 482 innocent civilians were dead in the blast, and the mall utterly devastated by the blast. Firefighters were dispatched immediately, but the damage could simply not be undone.

Convoys throughout the country were raided, as were passenger autobuses. Of all the raids on transportation, though, the most dramatically diabolical was the capture of an anti-air gun in the general area of Toulouse. From there, the militants were able to fire upon civilian and military aircraft leaving the city and moving towards Germany. After downing three successive flights, forces of the French army were deployed to take them down. By November of 1974, France was a war zone.



The Alaskan Front

With the invasion of the United States of Mexico by the Confederation of North America, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter ordered the commander of all forces in the state of Alaska to head southward to participate in the defense of the Mexican Old North. General Charles Medwin, a native of the state, supervised the transference of all forces southward to prevent the North Americans from invading through the Rockies, and hopefully stopping an invasion of San Francisco and Puerto Hancock.

However, such a move was anticipated by the North Americans, and thusly they dispatched, from Belton, Manitoba, an assault force under the command of General Justin Harrison was dispatched to invade the southern portions of the state and prevent the forces there from linking up with the forces in the Rockies. Firstly, an aerial assault was launched from an airbase outside of Dickenson, Manitoba, and bombarded several towns in the area including Borisovgrad, Alaska, which was a staging ground for the Mexicans to move southward, as well as supply convoys. The continuous bombing was enough to demolish the small village of Salamanca, Alaska, which was outside Borisovgrad.

Concurrent with the ground invasion spearheaded by Harrison, a naval force was launched from the Arctic location of New Carlisle, Manitoba, under the command of Admiral Scott Strickland, and moved to bombard Point Harrington, the northernmost settlement in both the state of Alaska and the United States of Mexico. This naval force bombarded the town and then landed North American Marines, who were able to defeat the remnants of the force that had not been relocated to points southward from the town. From there, the North American Marines were able to execute whatever military or civilian figures that they could find, and forced the rest of the civilian population to provide them with supplies, which were either used there or ferried back to Manitoba.

General Harrison's army was moving westward into Alaska, engaged in the similar Locust Warfare that the entire North American Armed Forces were using from the Rockies to Jefferson, causing a massive amount of damage to the civilian population. As they moved towards Nikolaevsk, General Medwin's forces met Harrison's forces in battle in the town of Merioneth, which was a stalemate between the two forces; both retreated after losing several terramobiles in the wreckage. Again they fought at the town of Carlson Point, where the North Americans won a slight victory but was ultimately inconclusive.

Conclusiveness was reached on October 12th, when the Mexicans and the North Americans did battle at the town of Barracksville, where, using the terrain to their advantage, the Mexicans were able to route the North Americans. This small but significant victory was proclaimed far and wide among the Mexican news media as a sign that the Mexicans were successfully repelling the North American invader; however, the war in Jefferson and Durango was appearing to show otherwise.



The Battle of Lafayette

The North American capture of Henrytown was only the beginning of what Theodore Worden saw as a burgeoning offensive towards Mexico City, where he fully intended to, in his own words in a speech in Burgoyne, "Personally shoot that damn fool Lassiter." The next target after Henrytown was the city of Lafayette, halfway between the former city and the state capital of Jefferson City, a city that North America would need to control to have any hope of taking Mexico City. General Jared Ethan vowed that he would take Lafayette and prevent the Mexicans from obstructing the way to the south.

However, what most historians and aficionados of war technology was the unique weapons deployed by the North American army in the beginning stages to confuse the Mexican army, during the battle to take down artillery emplacements and delay reinforcements, and after the battle to cause as many casualties during the retreat. This weapon was designed by a team employed by Kramer Associates, dubbed the Ladybird, in Taiwan. The chief engineer of the project, Michael Desmond, was a North American scientist that had worked with Kramer Associated since the 1950s, helping with calculator design and applications, working with figures such as Samuel Herring.

The Ladybird was a small tracked vehicle, about the size of a small wagon, and special in that it was controlled via radio signal in consoles by human operators, who mounted a small camera atop of it for ease of navigation. This vehicle was equipped with a reasonably large explosive, essentially making it a remote-controlled bomb. The ladybird was based off of French designs from the First Global War, which were used in the ultimately futile defense of the country during the German invasion. Desmond's design was substantially more practical than the French designs, which required a wire and view of the battlefield by the operators.

The battle of Lafayette opened with the usage of ladybirds to destroy Mexican terramobile patrols, and then against infantry deployments; one particularly well placed ladybird was able to kill about two hundred troops in its single detonation. As the Mexican forces came closer and closer to the city limits, the usage of ladybirds was halted temporarily, and Ethan called in the Marquess bombers to drop more stickzine on the city, causing massive fires that forced the Mexicans to either move outward towards the North American forces or to burn in the city. To support the Marquesses was a steady stream of smaller bombers, mainly of the Baron class, attacked more precise targets; Ethan ordered them to attack petrol stations in particular, making evacuation significantly harder in addition to causing collateral damage. Fighter airmobiles took down whatever Mexican airmobiles that were deployed.

Then moved in the North American armor, which engaged Mexican armor in the suburbs of Lafayette (which itself could be argued to be a suburb of Jefferson City). Houses were regularly used as garrisons by the North Americans, civilians be damned, and looting was especially common. North American armor, generally superior to Mexican armor, was making mincemeat out of their opponents. Usage of ladybirds to take down terramobiles was employed to great effect, and the bombing campaign did not relent. Eventually, General Recinos called a retreat.

During the Mexican retreat, bombers and ladybirds destroyed as much Mexican materiel as they could, lest it could be used elsewhere. However, the point was made clear. On October 20th, 1974, the North Americans took Lafayette, and their next target would be Jefferson City.


The Media in the North American Front

As the North Americans pushed further and further into Mexico, President John Paul Lassiter of the United States of Mexico needed a way to drum up morale. He therefore looked to the media, loyal to him as a matter of a good deal of it being controlled by the Progressive Party's political 'consultants' installed when Mercator took power. In a twisted, sadistic sense, Lassiter could say that he was lucky that the North American assault was so brutal; it was ample fodder for the newspapers and vitavision programs.

The initial invasion of Jefferson and subsequent bombardment of Henrytown became a key point in the early stages of Mexican media in the war; the newspapers would run pages extolling the heroes of Henrytown. In particular, a young man from that city by the name of Michael Burwell, who had enlisted in the Mexican military to fight against the invaders and had died sacrificing himself by throwing a grenade into a North American terramobile as his comrades escaped the city, was used as the ideal Mexican soldier that young men across the country should emulate as their role model; a "noble servant of the Mexican nation," said Lassiter in a speech in Ciudad Victoria, Durango.

The tactics of Locust Warfare in Jeffersonian towns by the North Americans led to a constant stream of demonization campaigns by the Mexican newspapers. Stefan Garrido, a writer from the Puerto Hancock Enquirer, came up with his famous description of the carnage of the battles in Jefferson:

"It is like seeing hell open up on Jeffersonian soil, as if Satan himself decided to rend the Earth and unleash his demons to destroy us. And yet they were not portals to the domain of the Devil; they were the burning husks of villages left by the North Americans as they went on their rampage across our lands. They were not demons; they were the invaders."

Shortly thereafter, large public posters were displayed in even the smallest of towns portraying the North Americans as literal creatures from hell. Caricatures of North American political and military leaders, such as Theodore Worden, Isaac Whitley, Ernest O'Donnell, Jared Ethan, Sullivan Wyndham, and Stephen Dalton, with horns, pointed tails, and pitchforks were common, and the North American flag was displayed on posters within a fiery plume, showing that, as far as Mexico was concerned, Satan's nation was North America.

The Rocky Mountain front also provided the Mexican media with ample fodder, as the militant resistance organizations, such as the Sons of the Old North, were natural heroes to be used by the wartime partisan press. The partisan victory at Slocum Pass made the ideal victory to be trumpeted, but all in all there was very little that was ultimately made as propaganda during the early stages of the war coming from that front other than the Sons and the skill of the Mexican Air Force; the North Americans had ransacked the areas heading into the Rocky Mountains, and a Mexican victory on that front was far from assured.

The most impassioned usage of the media, however, was in the Durango front that had been opened with the landings at Veracruz. Most Mexicans from the states of Durango and Chiapas did not have the fullest zeal for the war that those from the northern part of the country did; some iconoclasts had expressed joy at the invasion due to the fact that the Anglos, the historical oppressors were bearing the brunt of the invasion until Veracruz. At that front, President Lassiter made a point to speak to the defenders personally, calling upon them to "take not one step back in the defense of the Mexican motherland."


The Battle of Tlanapana

After the landings at Veracruz on October 10th, the North American advance towards Mexico City continued its inexorable movement, defeating the Mexican forces at a variety of small towns west of the city of Veracruz. The Mexican general in charge of the defense of the capital, Eduardo Bermudez, was desperately attempting to hold out for the forces of Miguel Cardenas, the commander of forces in Chiapas, which were hurrying to the city of Tlanapana, where Bermudez had established his regional headquarters. Forces under Edmundo Lopez, one of Bermudez' subordinate officers, were making their stand against the North Americans at the city of Santa Margarita on October 16th.

Radio communications between Bermudez and Cardenas were continuously clear, but transportation between the two states had been impeded significantly by North American bombers being launched from carriers in the Gulf of Mexico, destroying both parts of the Chiapan force and, more importantly, large swaths of the highway system that had been established during the Mercator administration. In the morning of October 16th, as Lopez was moving towards the North Americans at Santa Margarita, Cardenas informed Bermudez that, God willing, they should be able to make it to Tlanapana to assist in the attack on the North Americans, and that Lopez should not move until reinforcements arrived.

However, Lopez was a stubborn, obstinate commander who disliked Bermudez and, more importantly, thought that the North Americans could be beaten then and there, and that if he waited, that advantage would cease to exist; hence, he felt that there was no time for waiting and ordered his forces to strike from Santa Margarita. However, the North American forces, under the command of Bertrand Carlson, were about one and a half the size of the Mexican force and were better equipped, with armor leading the charge. However, faulty intelligence had persuaded Lopez that the force was significantly smaller (a postwar investigation revealed this was the work of spies under the employment of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation), and thusly he moved forward.

This proved to be a terrible mistake. As at the battle of Lafayette, the battle of Santa Margarita was spearheaded by the usage of ladybirds that decimated advancing Mexican infantry and armor, and then a strategic bombing campaign, supported by missiles in part guided by calculators. As the infantry continued to roll in, Lopez realized that the situation was untenable for the Mexicans and called a retreat towards Tlanapana, where Bermudez was waiting for him and Cardenas' forces were en route to reinforce him, having to face the specter of being remembers as the perpetrator of one of the most egregious tactical blunders of the Mexican Army during this war. By October 18th, two days after the travesty of Santa Margarita, the North Americans were sighted not far from Tlanapana.

The forces from Chiapas had arrived in Tlanapana and were able to bolster Bermudez's forces, but it seemed that within hours, the North Americans would be arriving with a vengeance. Hastily, defenses were constructed and the Mexican Air Force scattered, with its commanding general, Rutherford Ballinger, ordering the interception of as many bombers as possible before the armor came. It seemed like a desperate gambit, and indeed, morale was plummeting. But then, what seemed to be divine intervention occurred.

John Paul Lassiter, President of the United States of Mexico, had chosen to visit in person the defenses at Tlanapana mere hours before the North American advance, and had asked to give a speech to the soldiers who were preparing their defense. Something morale-inducing, encouraging was expected; it was not what they received. In this speech, Lassiter excoriated the "cowardice displayed at Santa Margarita," and publicly shamed Lopez for his retreat. Then, he ordered Lopez to stand in front of the gathered soldiers and apologize, and the commander did so profusely.

To set an example, Lassiter brandished his pistol and shot Lopez dead in front of all of them. After this, he said the following words:

"If you dare retreat, like this insolent swine, you proclaim yourself to be a loving follower of the monster Worden in Burgoyne. This is why I issue the order: not a single step back against the invading North Americans! All those who flee the battlefield like children are to be shot on sight. Those that somehow survive are to be executed publicly."

It was in this climate of fear the Mexicans met the North Americans in battle. North American armor met with Mexican anti-armor weapons, including rocket launchers and mortars within entrenched fortifications. After Ballinger's air forces were able to route a North American air assault (despite the destruction of large amounts of eastern Tlanapana), to the shock of the North Americans and General Carlson in particular, Mexican bombers, mainly of the Tzotzil class, were able to significantly hamper the North American assault. With the aid of the first combat deployment of the Xipe Totec-class Gyrogunships (gyromobiles outfitted in a manner similar to naval gunships), the Mexicans were able to successfully route the North Americans.

During the battle, an estimated four hundred Mexican soldiers had been shot dead as they retreated or fled the battlefield, on one occasion falling to Mexican machine guns. Lassiter felt them to be of no consequence; indeed, he issued an order saying that no retreating man would have any place in a war memorial, and their families would cease to receive pensions and be sent to containment camps in the deserts of Mexico del Norte and Arizona. However, it cannot be denied that the order worked; recollections from that battle say that it was the most energetic that the Mexicans had fought.

The war, at least in Durango, seemed to have been drastically changed in the favor of the Mexicans. Lassiter demanded that his men "continue their valiant efforts to expel the North Americans from our lands." Chillingly, he also announced that the Cowardice Order, as it had been branded, would apply to all fronts, including the coming Battle of Jefferson City.



Prelude to Butchery: Commencement of the Battle of Jefferson City

On November 2nd, after weeks of massing forces in the husk of the city of Lafayette, the North American forces under Jared Ethan numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with state-of-the-art terramobiles, warmobiles, gyromobiles, aeromobiles, and calculator-guided missiles, in addition to large amounts of ladybirds. That day, Ethan reported to Governor-General Worden and told him that the force was ready to "take down the city second only to the Mexican capital." As Worden assented, the force moved on. Jefferson City was on the highway route to Mexico City, and if captured, it would be able to provide a direct route to the latter and allow General Ethan's forces to meet up with Bertrand Carlson's forces that were in Durango. In a speech to his soldiers, Ethan said:

"The fate of North America and her dignity depends on our success in this battle. If we fail to take this city of treason, our nation will fall to the dust heap of history."

First came the ladybirds, which were able to take down several anti-air emplacements around the city. General Julio Recinos, the Mexican commander in charge of the Jefferson front, had anticipated that ladybirds would be used as the initial attack, and specially trained soldiers were sent to guard the emplacements. They did so, and about half of the original number survived. Then came the missiles, which took out about a half of the remainder, leaving about a quarter of the original defenses intact. Then came the bombers, which were armed with the most powerful explosives that the North American pound could buy and thusly laid devastation throughout the city, destroying many historical buildings including the Jefferson State House, formerly the site of the Jeffersonian Congress before its incorporation into the United States of Mexico.

As the armor and infantry came rolling in, the Mexicans revealed themselves by "coming out of the woodwork of the city," in an ambush that used evacuated civilian buildings as garrisons. However, North American artillery and gyrogunships were able to clear several, and a massive duel between North American and Mexican armor in the northeastern neighborhood of Hamilton resulted in a North American victory. However, Jefferson City was a large city and thusly was far from captured. It would be a long fight for both sides.

As the artillery emplacements came in (mostly howitzers), the North American forces found themselves bogged down in the city. Jefferson City, despite being founded by those who had escaped the CNA, was completely foreign to the invaders. As the Mexicans were pushed back to the city center, reinforcements arrived from the northern parts of Durango as well as the southern parts of the Old North, which were instructed to, rather than move northward to the Rockies (most soldiers from California were being sent there), to defend Jefferson City to the last man. Mexican convoys were destroyed via ladybird, and Mexican fighters sparred with North American fighters over the city, and bombing raids were felt by both sides. This created a situation that would only deteriorate as time went on, and would last for a grueling slog that would last for six months.

Stories from Jefferson City, when viewed from a vantage point from after the war, seem like that of a horror writer desperately trying to make a story set during a battle and succeeding in a terrifying manner. The battle was so thick and the troops from either side so close that on occasion Mexicans would hold one floor of a building and the North Americans another. Improvised explosives were widely used by the Mexicans in particular. A particularly popular explosive was what was deemed "Pulque para el puto" in Spanish or "Worden's Wine" in English, made by pouring vulcazine into a bottle, putting a rag hanging out of it, and lighting the rag, resulting in a grenade-like explosive that caused large amounts of fire. Then came the bombers that dropped stickzine by both sides of the battle, burning three quarters of the city by December. Then came the horrendous hand-to-hand combat between them. In the words of Victor Walmsley, a North American infantryman:

"I had never known hell until I went to Jefferson City. Worden and Lassiter both knew what they were creating, and they both deserve to hang for this."


The Light of Man-Made Suns: The First Usage of Atomic Weapons in War

As Jefferson City dragged on and on, the need for additional troops in the Durango front became ever more necessary for the Mexicans. Raymond Portillo, Lassiter's secretary of state, was frantically urging the various South American countries to end the Guerra Granadina and take down New Granada, thereby freeing up their forces to be sent to fight the North Americans. Despite this, Enrique Hermion's generals were holding off the flamethrower-armed forces of South America. Even with aerial bombardment from the Mexican Antilles, Hermion would not surrender. He would continue to fight, and told the Mexicans that he would "only give up when Mexican troops marched into Bogota and kill me personally." Obviously, due to the Mexican preoccupation with the war with the CNA, this was an untenable proposition.

Lassiter met with his remaining general staff in Mexico City to discuss the possibilities of ending the Guerra Granadina by December on November 12th. Some generals, such as Andrew Palmer, supported the deploying of troops in Chiapas to New Granada to reinforce the Guatemalans. Others supported no intervention and to let the South Americans deal with their own war. However, Lassiter was not satisfied. He wanted the war over soon, and the reinforcements that the Mexicans so urgently needed. General Ermenegildo Ziesler, however, proposed something that initially horrified all except Lassiter: the usage of an atomic bomb.

The generalship was fervently against such a proposal. Raymond Portillo, speaking via telephone, said that the United States being the first to use its nuclear weapons would set a dangerous precedent and risk the usage of North American atomic bombs on Mexican cities. Julio Recinos objected on the grounds that it would make the Mexicans seem like butchers. However, Lassiter was open to the possibility, and after some consideration, authorized the usage of an atomic bomb on Bogota.

The bomb was shipped from the port of Chetumal in Chiapas to St Croix, where it was boarded onto a Chantico-class heavy bomber and sent towards Bogota. As the bomb dropped, the crew onboard took pictures of the resulting explosion, a sight of horror that is even now iconic. Those in the New Granadan countryside say that the explosion made the sky look like sunrise and was visible for kilometers around.

International reaction was that of horror, with even Kramer Associates president denouncing Lassiter as a modern butcher. Worden called him a "merchant of death," while British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow said that Lassiter was "the harbinger of the Devil." More muted criticism came from Mexico's German and Italian allies, and South Americans said practically nothing.

The New Granadan provisional president Guillermo Hermion (Enrique had died in the blast) announced a formal surrender to the invaders and the Mexicans, and held the Treaty of Caracas, which ended the Guerra Granadina and ordered New Granadan forces to fight the North Americans, and expelled Imperial Vulcazine from its territory. Soon, troops from all across South America would be arriving in Chiapas to fight the North American scourge.

Worden, however, knew that he had a superior nuclear arsenal at his disposal, and seriously considered using it on Mexico. However, his generals warned him of the Common Risk of Annihilation, which could spell doom for both countries. However, Worden hated the prospect of appearing weak to the world, and looked for a target that would not draw too much Mexican ire while simultaneously proving North American strength. Ernest O'Donnell, head of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, proposed the capital of some Mexican-aligned Caribbean nation, which Worden supported heartily.

North American marines were busy rampaging around the Cuban countryside but were unable to enter the city of La Habana without significant difficulty. General Christopher Tatum, the commander of operations on Cuba, was open to the usage of the atomic bomb on La Habana to prove a point. With little dispute, the action was approved.

Habana, like Bogota, went up in flames.



Insurgencies within the United Kingdom

As Britain underwent its second terrifying bombardment in the 20th century, there was still cause for some radicals in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to have a disconnect with the government in London. Nationalists in these constituent countries of the Union were looking for methods to break free from what they saw as Westminster's oppression of their home nations and thusly saw Germany as a potential ally. Inspired in part by the Indian Liberation Movement's war against the British and CNA, radicals in each of these nations were eager to gain German help in their wars of liberation.

Germany, naturally, had spies all throughout the United Kingdom, and thusly these nationalist movements fell under intense interest by the German Ministry of Defense. The Minister of Defense, Guntram Falk, personally ordered the assistance of "Welsh, Scottish, and Irish nationalist rebels in the United Kingdom itself." To do this, he secured a large amount of German thalers for the purpose of funding rebels from the German Exchequer, despite the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Engelbert Stosser, protesting what he thought was another "frivolous waste of thalers." Even so, such funding was put into weapons and other supplies.

Oliver McNamara, the leader of the Irish nationalist party Erin go Bragh, had declared at the beginning of the war that "violence was now permissible for the defense of the Irish homeland." Minor attacks had been perpetrated throughout the island but were not able to cause any major damage to the British war effort; local defense forces were able to quell riots in Kilkenny, Belfast, and Tipperary, among other smaller towns. However, a German submarine was able to establish contact with Irish rebels on the coast of County Waterford, and gave them explosives and guns, which were used in a damaging raid on a British training encampment nearby, where approximately three hundred servicemen in the British Army were killed (it is to be noted that most of these were Irish men who fought with Britain; separatist feelings were in a prominent minority - reforms throughout the 20th century enabled fair representation in Westminster for Irish constituencies). Forces from the army moved from their nearest base in County Wexford to suppress the rebellion. Similar insurrections happened in Counties Sligo, Cork, and Armagh in the last months of 1974.

In Scotland, however, a far more devious plan was being hatched by the Germans. In conjunction with the Scottish National Front, which had made a similar permission of violence to that of Erin go Bragh, General Manuel Brahms of the Imperial Air Force and Admiral Ferdinand Halle of the Imperial Navy were preparing an attack on a British airbase in Lamberton, Berwickshire, which was providing a significant amount of air support for the Royal Air Service over the English Channel. Submarines were dispatched to supply weapons to Scottish rebels, and a German squadron of battleships came moving towards the town, as well as a single aeromobile carrier.

Starting as a diversion, German bombers began dropping their payloads over the town of Lamberton, forcing the British airmobiles to intercept them, as well as diverting many ground forces into the town from the airbase. Shelling of the town provoked British bombers to scramble, where they were fired back at by German guns. As this occurred, the SNF insurgents drove captured freightmobiles and busmobiles into the base and destroyed several hangars and administrative buildings before being forced out by security guards. This marked the first and most successfully raid on the island of Great Britain proper during the war, and struck fear into the British public.



The War in Baluchistan

Through the months of August and September, the remnants of the forces that invaded India under the pretenses of destroying the Indian Liberation Movement were busy clearing out the vestiges of that organization; Governor-General Theodore Worden of the Confederation of North America had insisted that the Indian task be completed to "rid the world of the radicalism that caused the deaths of thousands." Indeed, the war on Mexico and the war against the Indian extremists were seen in the same light: the crusade for worldwide liberty against those who advocated the destruction of the stable world order (one could rightly call him a hypocrite for starting both wars in the first place, especially after the atrocities in the Mexican Old North and the atomic bombing of Habana). Worden refused to withdraw the forces from India; indeed, only a fraction of the North American Armed Forces were there.

However, as the system of alliances caused the war to go global, in addition to the ongoing war between Germany and Britain in Europe, war would logically come to India. This necessitated the division of the forces in India in two: one to invade Tibet and another to defend the Province of Baluchistan, in western India. The former will be the subject of another entry; the latter is the focus of the one currently being read. The commanding general in charge of coalition forces in the country, Eustace Levitt of the United Kingdom, was forced to make such a division; he had orders from Prime Minister Gordon Perrow to both "defend the Raj and to support Jiangsu in China." Thusly, he himself moved immediately to Quetta, where he set up the Baluchi Front's main base of command operations.

On September 30th, through a combination of diplomatic agreement and German heavy-handedness, the forces of Anatolia and Persia launched their invasion of Baluchistan with the intention of capturing Quetta as a preliminary objective, but the main target was, ambitiously, the city of Bombay, which lay in in the province of Gujarat on the coast of the Arabian sea. The joint Anatolian-Persian force was led by General Esin Tufeksi, a veteran of the Global War who fought in the Invasion of western India at that time, and supported by his second-in-command Houshan Khanbata, a Persian veteran of that war. The two of them had known each other to a degree during the last years of the war as they were in the joint service of the Ottoman Imperial Army, and joined the armies of their respective states upon its dissolution. They were both German allies and, despite the longstanding agreements between them, yet could not gain the support of the German armies in Arabia for the invasion.

Reinhold Kiermaier, Chancellor of the Greater German Empire, which included Arabia as a part of its dominions, was afraid of the possibility of an Arabian revolt on the scale of the Indian rebellions; to do so, he had instituted Empire-wide conscription with the intention of fighting in Europe; this served to take the population of young Arabian men that could form the core of an insurgency and have them disciplined into the life of an Imperial soldier; it was under this pretense that he refused to support the invasion. However, the fact of the matter was that the Baluchi front was solely a diversion for the forces in India; he wanted them away from Europe so he could focus on the pounding of Britain via air and sea, and the pacification of France as a hotbed of rebel activity. He frankly did not care if they reached Bombay or not.

But the German contribution to the Baluchi front was not zero; forces of the German navy, based in Muscat, were provided to assist in the bombardment of British naval bases on the southern coast of the province, and air strikes from Dughmur Air Base outside the city of Sur supported the invasion in the early days of August. During this time, the joint Anatolian-Persian force was able to seize control of several villages and establish a forward supply base in the city of Dalbandin, with the intention of soon taking Quetta. However, it was immediately apparent that the weapons of the invaders were at best old 1950s-era German materiel that had been sold to them by the governments of the time, and at worst First Global War-era hand-me-downs. By October, it became clear that the Baluchi front was going nowhere.



The Invasions of Tibet and Siam

As the Pacific Joint Defense Pact and the Osaka Agreement threw themselves into effect, the entire area of East Asia was thrown into havoc and war. The various states in China that had formed out of the collapse of the Chinese Empire in the wake of the First Global War were happy to go to war once more, if such wars were already not in effect. Now, full mobilization was completely permissible in the international community; they were not likely to care due to the wars raging in North America and in Europe. However, there were two fronts where the great powers intervened in Asia: in Tibet and in Siam. When British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow, on the advice of his general staff, gave the order for the commander of the forces in India, Eustace Levitt, to invade Tibet, the latter also chose to dispatch part of the force to invade Siam.

Levitt, through several political favors within the North American military, had Beauregard Stanton, previously a Brigadier General, promoted to a full-fledged General, placing him in command over various generals such as Charles Keating and George Godfrey. To further solidify Levitt's trust in Stanton, the latter was put in charge of the entire East Asian theater of the Indian front. Doing so diligently, Stanton relocated his command to Gangtok and prepared his forces for an invasion of Tibet. From there, he sent George Godfrey as the commander of the invasion of Siam to his own command in Rangoon.

To prepare for the mountain warfare that he would be facing in Tibet, he looked to the Rocky Mountain front of the war in North America, and Sullivan Wyndham's command there. Stanton, known to not be fond of Wyndham, made a commitment to be nowhere as brutal as the generalship in North America was being, and to not fall for the partisan traps that Stanton was falling for. However, the odds in Tibet would be significantly in favor of the Imperial forces in this front, rather than the rapidly fading advantage in the North American favor in the Rocky Mountains. The Tibetans had none of the large, advanced military that the United States did; Lassiter had sold them very little weapons as he did not think that the North Americans would risk invading such territory. However, Stanton believed that he was fighting for the right cause and thusly saw the need to pacify Tibet. He is on record saying the following:

"I believe that the situation in China was caused by the poor autocratic government that was in place beforehand. Many arch-conservatives, like Wyndham or Ethan, think I am not sufficiently faithful in Imperativism and in North America and in democracy. Rather, I am none of these things. I believe in Worden's message and I believe that it needs to be spread."

Every offensive into Tibet would be supported by a very detailed air sweep, something that Wyndham had a tendency to forget, followed by scout teams to seek out insurgents or military emplacements. Then, the doctrine of Locust Warfare, employed first in India and then in Jefferson, Durango, and the Mexican Old North, would be eschewed, with the emphasis on a "winning the sympathies of the oppressed Tibetans." Civilians were not attacked, and air strikes were ordered to be as precise as possible to minimize civilian casualties. However, in actual combat with Tibetan forces, his strikes were brutal and decisive, and he lost not a single battle in the initial invasion. By the end of November, he had taken Yadong, and was well on his way to taking control of Lhasa.

Similarly, General Godfrey invaded Siam with similar principles. However, it was expected that the Siamese people would form a significant amount more insurgents than in Tibet. The ruling government in Siam was popular with the people, with its king having ruled since the First Global War, where he was a nationally renowned war hero. Likewise, the status of a former prime minister of the country, Kulap Sunan Metharom, the Secretary-General of the Global Association for Peace. Thusly, the partisans that he encountered were ruthlessly exterminated, but innocent civilians were spared. Due to Stanton's philosophy, the Tibetan and Siamese fronts are known to be significantly less brutal than the North American front's crimes against humanity.



The Russian-Siberian Brushfire Wars

With the commencement of the war between the Germans and the British, the north of Asia, divided by the Associated Russian Republics, a member of the Greater German Empire, and Siberia, aligned with Japan and Australia and a signatory of the Osaka Agreement. When war was declared between the two sides, it was seen as necessary by both to enter at least some sort of belligerency.

As a member of the Greater German Empire, the ARR was decidedly uneasy about the entire affair; massive riots had erupted with the formation of the union in 1971, and had to be quelled by the German Army. Iosif Matveev, the President of the ARR, was a pro-German politician and the leader of the United Europe Party, one that advocated cooperation with the rest of the Empire and Russia's continued existence within it. Despite his support of union with Germany, Matveev was a nationalist that wanted the "incorporation of the robbed eastern portion of the Russian nation that is under the possession of Japan," and, with Chancellor Kiermaier's permission, began mustering an army to take control of Irkutsk, the largest city in the southwestern portion of the country, and then Udsk, the capital. "Once this is done," promised Matveev, "we will incorporate Siberia as another republic of our Association."

Russian forces under the command of General Yuri Mihaylov moved from a fort in the eastern reaches of the city of Krasnoyarsk in the Republic of the same name, and began an advance on Irkutsk, the major Siberian city in the region. Mihaylov's army was strong but not at its optimal capacity; Russian troops were being moved westwards into France to help with pacification of the country against nationalist terrorists. Nevertheless, the Siberian military, under the command of General Radoslav Olenev, was able to route the Russians at several small towns leading to Irkutsk, but were forced back into the city by December of 1974 by the deployment of state-of-the-art German weaponry by the Russians (Kiermaier had approved the usage of such weapons by the Russians, who wanted such permission to be seen as an integration of the German and Russian nations under the common Empire).

The first usage of stickzine on the Eurasian landmass occurred when the Russian Air Service equipped their bombers with the substance and dropped it over Irkutsk, burning a large swath of the city to the ground and forcing a Siberian retreat into the center of the city, on which the Russians advanced. The Russians, having experience in urban warfare from the First Global War, were able to exploit the damaged buildings as cover as they moved forward, and their bombers were able to ruin the roads that would have permitted a Siberian retreat. Understanding he was now between hostile Russians who would be happy to kill his forces and himself and the brutal Siberian winter, Olenev surrendered to Mihaylov. The city of Irkutsk was in Russian hands.



The Rocky Mountains Front in early 1975

The relentless North American advance through the Mexican Old North, led by General Sullivan Wyndham, had ended by slowly creeping to a halt by the Mexican General Malcolm Norris. Wyndham was attempting with all his might to reach the city of San Francisco and thereby prevent the movement of forces from California to Jefferson. However, this goal was becoming to seem awfully unreachable given the circumstances by New Year's Day in 1975.

Partisan warfare was taking its toll on the North Americans; Wyndham was ineffective against the ILM in India and he was equally ineffective here. It is perhaps poetic justice that the tactics used by the ILM were being used by the Mexicans during his invasion of the latter; roadside bombs, ambushes, and other covert methods of warfare were being used against his forces to increasingly great effect. The mountainous terrain of the country was only supporting the efforts of partisans and the Mexican army against the North Americans. One of the most common techniques of resistance against the invaders was the destruction of bridges across canyons and crevasses, which took the lives of three thousand North Americans in a span from November to February.

Of significance is the usage of Mexican air power in the invasion. Due to having a large mountain range across a populated frontier, the Mexicans had introduced more innovations in flying in high-altitude areas than the North Americans, which had comparatively fewer reasons to research them. Thusly, Wyndham's invasion was focused mainly on ground forces, which were more than capable at engaging their Mexican opposite numbers but were often sitting ducks in terms of their operations against the Mexican Air Force, which was far better equipped and supplied than the air forces that had been hastily brought in after the battle of Slocum Pass. Mexican gyromobiles lurking in canyons and behind peaks were also able to cause significant harm to the North Americans, as they were equipped with deadly rockets that could destroy terramobiles.

In April 1975, the North Americans met the Mexicans at the small town of Ranierville, whose population had been evacuated by the Mexican army under Norris's personal supervision. As Wyndham's forces advanced, partisans undertook the largest coordinated strike on the North Americans yet, destroying fifty-four terramobiles, sixty-five warmobiles, killed two hundred and sixteen soldiers, and destroyed fifteen supply freightmobiles. After the damage was done, the Mexican Army's best terramobiles were deployed to route the North Americans. After three hours of harsh fighting, Wyndham was forced to call a retreat.



The Establishment of the Confederation of Kronmiller

Ever since the birth of the Imperativist movement, Theodore Worden had his sights set on the Mexican state of Jefferson with the intention of adding it to the Confederation of North America with the purpose of "letting the Hispanos and Mexicanos of that country be free of the stifling influence of the Anglos in that country, allowing them to develop socially and culturally independently. The would not need to be corrupted by the anti-British mentalities of the Jeffersonians, and would be able to see what Britain has too offer them." Likewise, he supported the "re-education" of the Jeffersonians and their annexation into the CNA, where they would be schooled in the "benefits of Empire and not perverting the Mexicans that should rightfully have their own country."

This was, however, not made a significant campaign point in his election to the Grand Council; he had mainly campaigned on removing the reckless spending of the Mason Doctrine and a vigorous North American nationalism that counteracted the feelings of national guilt debatably supported by the Liberal Party, and in Worden's arguments the mainstream People's Coalition. But when war came around and General Ethan's forces were embroiled in the Battle of Jefferson City, Worden saw it necessary to incorporate Jefferson into the Confederation before the conquest of the state was complete for the purpose of "accustoming the people to the benevolent rule of Burgoyne."

Starting this process was the creation of a provisional state government from collaborationist Jeffersonians. These citizens were often horribly racist against the "colored" peoples of Mexico and despised what Andrew Jackson had "consigned" Jefferson to in his unification of that republic with Mexico. The collaborationist leader, Michael Kendrick, was a vocal Jeffersonian nationalist who saw unification of the "white peoples of North America" as something completely desirable (Worden forced Kendrick to tone down the racial rhetoric to appeal to the large negro population of the Confederation). This new government of the Confederation of Kronmiller (named after the intellectual forefather of the Imperativists Thomas Kronmiller - given this name to "expunge all trace of rebellion from the names of our lands") met in the city of Nacogdoches, which was renamed Gallivania, after Ezra Gallivan.

Shortly thereafter, Kendrick was elected (from a voting public composed of only collaborationists, for a given value of collaboration) as the Governor of the Confederation of Kronmiller. After the war, Worden promised, Kronmiller would be allowed to elect members of the Grand Council from its territory to be sent to Burgoyne to legislate on issues. However, the state of emergency that the country was currently in (compounded by their troops being inside the territory of Mexico) was going to have to put that idea aside for the time being.

However, the Kronmiller government was eager to provide a militia of Jeffersonians who collaborated with the North Americans to serve in the battle of Jefferson City. In February of 1975, the first brigade of Kronmillerite troops had arrived to support the current meat grinder of a battle that was ensuing. They would die like the rest of the men there, North American or Mexican.



The Durango Front in early 1975

The Mexican victory at the Battle of Tlanapana in the middle of October of 1974 had turned the tide of the front decisively in the favor of the Mexicans. In December, Mexican forces under the command of Edgardo Bermudez were able to repel the North Americans under the command of Bertrand Carlson from the city of Santa Margarita, forcing them out of their local command which was being used for the planning of the attack on Mexico City, an attack which Santa Margarita decided was not going to happen as planned. Operation Cortes would be a failure.

The main reason for this operational failure, as concluded by historians of the Second Global War, was Theodore Worden's decision to split his forces into four invasion routes rather than focus on either the Durango front or the Jefferson front. There were simply not enough troops set aside to take Durango; there was a large concentration of soldiers stationed inside of Veracruz with the intention of pacifying it, but partisan activity by Mexican insurgent groups were intent on making life difficult for them, thereby drastically decreasing the amount of troops allotted to Operation Cortes.

Hence was the weakness in General Carlson's forces, which were beaten by a larger Mexican force at Santa Margarita, and were then sent retreating eastwards towards Veracruz, winning a decisive siege of North American fortifications of the town of Pachuqilla in the middle of January, then winning a decisive battle at Granja de Douglas in February. The slow pace of the Bermudez's advance was due to the North American air superiority on the front, which was unable to stop the large Mexican force under Bermudez's command but was still able to cause large amounts of damage using gyromobiles and bombers. Mexican anti-air guns were carried with every major advance in response, but many were destroyed by either North American infantry or armor. Carlson employed various flanking attacks on the advancing Mexicans and thusly was able to slow them further, but Mexican formations had their armor defending their flanks, breaking, to a degree, the attempts to delay them.

And yet it still took months to march across that country, for North American forces were slowly diverting forces from Veracruz and the Caribbean to fight against the Mexicans. It took them until April to reach the outskirts of Veracruz. By that time, however, the "Durango Meat Grinder" as it was dubbed by the Mexican press, had killed at least sixty percent (by estimates made in the 1990s) of the North American forces, and the insurgency within the city of Veracruz itself was making more and more rapid gains against the occupiers.

On April 4th, 1975, General Bertrand Carlson was killed by a Mexican sniper reviewing newly landed troops from Hillsborough Naval Base in Hillsborough, Georgia on the North American Gulf Coast. Carlson's assassination led to his second in command, General James Knott, a figure generally held by most military historians of the conflict as being completely incompetent. Knott was a longstanding military man in the CNA military and simultaneously was on the board of directors of North American Firearms, the largest firearms company in the CNA, and used that position to donate heavily to Worden's cause. Hence, he was appointed under Carlson by Worden as a political award.

It would be under Knott's leadership that Veracruz would fall to the Mexicans in April of 1975. Mexican bombers, newly brought to the front from factories in Chiapas, were used to bombard the city with precision strikes (President Lassiter had made clear his desire to avoid as much civilian casualties as possible in the largest port on the Mexican East Coast). By April 20th, the North Americans retreated. Veracruz was in Mexican hands once again.



The war in China

With the activation of the mutual self-defense clauses of the Osaka Agreement and the Pacific Joint Defense Pact, the nations that arose out of the warlordism following the collapse of the Chinese Empire after the First Global War began acting on old grievances as they rallied their armies to ostensibly fight for their allies. During this, the regional hegemon of Kramer Associates, sitting comfortably in its headquarters in Taichung, Taiwan, supplied its allies with the best weaponry money could buy, something that was a boon to those nations that were lucky enough to be on Carl Salazar's good side. These nations were only given more of an advantage with the benefit of the regional economic power, Japan, fighting alongside them; they also had the possibility of Indian and Australian economic and military aid, and from there, aid from the nations of the United British Empire.

The State of Sichuan and the Protectorate of Hunan were two of the largest states affiliated with the GAP and therefore Mexico, but Mexico, embroiled in its own war, was in no position to aid its Asian allies. Hunan in particular needed aid, as a long brushfire war with Jiangsu, one of the largest pro-KA states, since the end of the First Global War. Thusly, the leaderships of the KA-affiliated states saw these two, along with the State of Turkestan and the Republic of Tibet (this one was being invaded by the North Americans and United British Empire and thusly was not the highest concern) as the biggest threats in China.

Hence, in a meeting in the Jiangsu capital of Nanjing, the Republic of Greater Mongolia, the Republic of Jiangsu, the Sovereign State of Manchuria, the Republic of Korea, the Empire of Japan, the Republic of Taiwan, and the Republic of the Philippines signed an agreement where they would, in the words of Jiangsu president Wen Pan, "fight jointly against Sichuan and Hunan and bring the specter of Mexican involvement in China down forever." Japanese and Kramer Associates (who fully supported the agreement) funds and weapons were being shipped to Nanjing, Ulan Bator, Changchun, and Seoul as fast as they could be, and divisions from Japan were being massed, with the rest of the forces, at the border between Jiangsu and Hunan. On October 8th, 1974, the invasion began.

Fighting in Hunan and Sichuan was brutal beyond comparison, dwarfing even the North American front, minus the atomic bombings of Bogota and Havana. Large swaths of China, once industrialized, were now utterly devastated by bombing raids over cities. Villages were burned using tactics observed in the war in New Granada. It was very clear that the side supported by Kramer Associates was in the lead, but the soldiers of Sichuan and Hunan were more than willing to sacrifice themselves to cause more damage to the KA-sponsored troops.



The Council of Bordeaux

In February of 1975, the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France was a large port run mainly by German and German-sympathizing industrialists who used the city's placement on the Garonne River to the Bay of Biscay as a place for ships to be stocked before heading to the CNA, Mexico, or South America. The German dominance of the various corporations stood in stark contrast to the dockworkers and proletarians that toiled in the factories of the city. Additionally, the famous French wine industry was dominated by German financiers who mainly bought wineries for status and not for business, with some exceptions. Hence, in the region of Bordeaux, the population was of a decidedly anti-German bent.

The rebellion of the Sons of Fanchon, generally held to be a conservative nationalist organization opposed to the German dominance of the country, was confined to mainly the Paris area, as well as some actions in the southeastern parts of the country and one incident in Toulouse. They had never, however, been able to make any foray into the region of Bordeaux, a region which was ripe for rebellion. Therefore rebellion would have to come to the region by other methods.

The large amounts of manual workers in the region made ideal conditions for a revolution as predicted by certain 19th century figures against the elite in a class-based conflict. And so such a conflict happened, and was the brainchild of a dockworker by the name of Ruben Allard. Allard had discovered the works of Erich Neiderhoffer in his youth in a bookstore in Bordeaux, something that was found very interesting in his working-class family. The oppression of France by the Germans in many regards a class-based one, thought Allard, and Neiderhofferism could very well be adapted to such situations. Like Neiderhoffer, Allard did not think that the capitalist order could be changed, but egalitarianism in the market was a distinct possibility.

On February 13th, 1975, Allard led a revolt of Bordeaux dockworkers against the German ownership and the local government, which was dominated by supporters of President Jean-Baptiste Tremblay's faction in Parliament. Seizing armories and police arsenals, the revolt grew so massive that the city was seized by February 24th. German forces were diverted from their main base in Calais, where they were being used to hold the north of the country in addition to keep the pressure on the United Kingdom, to Bordeaux. As the city was under revolutionary control, the orchard workers revolted as well, burning the homes and offices of their corporate overseers.

Allard's variant of Neiderhofferism was imbued with a strong French nationalism and populism, one that he maintained was compatible with the tenets of the German thinker. "Egalitarianism in economics is an expression of the liberty that Frenchmen hold dear," said Allard to his supporters. After the region was suitably in the control of the revolutionaries, the leaders throughout the held territories converged in Bordeaux for what Allard deemed a Council. There, they proclaimed the Egalitarian Republic of Guyenne, for the region that it was in. This republic would be "free and independent of the German empire and Kiermaier's attempts at domination" and would "fight for a free France."


The End of the Battle of Jefferson City

The end of the Durango front and the expulsion of the North Americans from the southern portion of Mexico marked a decisive shift in the war's momentum. Simultaneously, forces from Mexico's South American allies were flowing into Chiapas from ports in New Granada. Most importantly, however, was the relieving of the threat in Durango from the forces defending Mexico City, which absolutely crushed Operation Cortez. All of these forces were being sent northward to end the slaughter at the battle of Jefferson City.

Since November of the previous year, Mexican and North American armies had been vying for control of that crucial city. Jefferson City was on the highway to Mexico City, and thusly was the only major way to take the Mexican capital after the conclusion of the Durango Front. On May 2nd, 1975, the Mexican armies under Edgardo Bermudez arrived to reinforce Julio Recinos. His experienced men, armor, artillery, and aircraft were soon able to put the numerical advantage into the Mexicans. However, these soldiers were often former peasants and slum-dwellers, now not seen useless by their governments as they were not machine gun fodder if nothing else. Nevertheless, they had weaponry and were willing to fight for their side.

The obscene violence continued in the city, where street-to-street and even building-to-building (and occasionally room-to-room) combat was widely seen as the norm. The Mexicans and North Americans were at a standstill in the center of the city, where the once elegant Jefferson City Capitol Building was lying in smoldering ruin. The entire city block was reduced to rubble, with artillery emplacements in the basements of what used to be buildings.

Slowly but surely the Mexicans made their way forward, expelling the North Americans from their entrenchments and forcing them into the northeastern portions of the city. Bombing runs from the Mexican Air Force were pounding strategic positions; even if they were shot down, they would convert their planes into flying bombs and sacrifice themselves for the Mexican cause. Enough bombs made it through to necessitate a retreat.

In their retreat, General Jared Ethan ordered the burning of the parts of the city that they still held in a denial of resources to the Mexicans. As they left, the Mexicans found what used to be a city, strewn with destroyed vehicles and the corpses of civilians and Mexican soldiers. Additionally, Ethan ordered the execution of all Mexican POWs in North American custody and left them dead among the streets, as a reminder that the war was still going on.

After a week of fighting through the ruined city, Ethan finally gave the order to withdraw to Lafayette. The battle of Jefferson City was won on May 11th. The nation celebrated.

But the war was far from over.



The North American Retreat from Jefferson

After decisive North American defeat at the Battle of Jefferson City, General Jared Ethan had no choice but to retreat from the city to the city of Lafayette on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the protestations of Governor-General Theodore Worden, Ethan still deemed it necessary to leave the city after the forces from the south of Mexico and the various reinforcements from Latin America had outnumbered the North Americans. Now the North Americans were having the problem that the Mexicans were having in the beginning of the war: their forces were stretched too thin.

North American forces had been expelled from Durango and were having the same done in Jefferson, but were still on campaigns in the Mexican Old North and Alaska. These three fronts were not easily linked with one another, due to the sparse railway lines of Manitoba and the two Vandalias, and due to the claimed essentiality of all three to "break the Mexicans' collective backs" in the words of Worden. However, Ethan, who history has not judged as a strategic or tactical genius, was wise enough to understand the need for retreat. Nevertheless Worden called for "not a single inch forfeited" to the Mexicans, and forbade as much retreat as possible.

The North Americans made a stand at Lafayette in June 1975, and were driven out by the beginning of July. Later that month, they were expelled from Henrytown, and the port at that city was taken in a joint operation with the Mexican Navy under Admiral Luis Moreales. From there, they continued their advance to Nacogdoches. However, North American troops made a point of fortifying the towns between Henrytown and Nacogdoches, resulting in several months of fighting in small towns. North American troops were able to temporarily reverse the Mexican offensive at the Battle of Camden Bluff and again at Walton Creek, but the Mexicans counterattacked at Lexington and Fort Staunton. The latter was on the Mexican highway route to Nacogdoches.

The Siege of Nacogdoches has been called a microcosm of the Battle of Jefferson City, seemingly a quagmire where the front would not move. When they engaged each other on July 31st, the first anniversary of the war's beginning, it seemed like that the street fighting and heavy bombardment from the air would last until 1976. However, it only lasted to October. This victory was hailed by John Paul Lassiter as "a heroic victory of the brave Mexican people" as the North Americans retreated back over the border into Southern Vandalia, while being chased by the Mexicans. Jefferson had been freed.



The Retribution Question

At the time of the expulsion of the North Americans from Jefferson in October of 1975, the Mexican nation was cheering. It seemed as if the many soldiers of the United States and of the various other Latin American nations could rest easily. Forces from all over the Americas had helped in the expulsion of the North American forces from the easternmost state of the Mexican Old North, and the war in the Americas seemed to be tilted in the Mexican favor.

The war, however, was not over. The North Americans, despite being expelled from Jefferson and Chiapas, were still in the Rocky Mountains and in the southern parts of Alaska, where it seemed that the Mexican forces already there would be sufficient. General Wyndham's forces in the Rockies were suffering, and similarly in Alaska where General Harrison's forces were being countered, and a retreat seemed likely.

Nevertheless, the war was within the realm of being won, said Lassiter to his advisors. Despite this, there was a pressing question, which if one answer was chosen could prolong the war significantly, sending more Mexicans and other Latin Americans to the meat grinder.

This question was whether to launch a counter-invasion of the Confederation of North America, chasing them into their own country and waging what General Julio Recinos, the main supporter of the counter-invasion, as a "war of retribution" against what he viewed as "an incarnation of Satan among the nations." Recinos felt it absolutely to put an end to "any possibility of North American aggression towards the United States of Mexico." Many on the general staff supported this, with the end goal of making the Mexican nation the strongest in North America. To achieve this, the North American military would have to be sufficiently damaged to prevent a war of aggression, as well as the destruction of large swathes of their industrial base.

Opposing the plans for counterinvasion was Secretary of State Raymond Portillo. Portillo, with the backing of General Edgardo Bermudez. Bermudez made the case that the Mexican army, even with the backing of the other nations of the Western Hemisphere, simply could not take down the North Americans on their own territory. Portillo took a more politically-informed stance, saying that waging such a war of aggression would make Mexico "no better than the North Americans who had just invaded us." Very impassioned debates on this topic were held in Mexico City among the general staff and Lassiter's cabinet, pestering him to make a decision one way or another.

Lassiter listened to both sides and tabulated the advantages and disadvantages of each. After considering each for a month, on November 8th, 1975, he said the following:

"A North America that is strong enough to invade us cannot be permitted to exist any longer. A treaty now would do little good, as it could be ignored, and Mexico would be powerless to stop its dismemberment. This is why we must go into North America and destroy them from the inside."

On November 10th, 1975, the Mexicans moved over the Jeffersonian border to Southern Vandalia.


The Invasion of Southern Vandalia

On November 15th, 1975, the first Mexican armored divisions, under the command of General Julio Recinos, began moving into the North American confederation of Southern Vandalia. Aerial squadrons began pounding the towns on the border, and military bases were taken out by artillery backed with air strikes.

The first town taken by the Mexicans in Southern Vandalia was the town of Warwickville in that confederation. Recinos' soldiers looted the town after most of the civilians fled via locomobile to the towns to the north. General Recinos ordered the town burned as revenge for the damage inflicted on Jefferson and on the Mexican Old North.

The invasion sent the government of the Confederation of North America into a panic; they were the ones that were supposed to be invading the Mexicans, not the other way around. Governor-General Worden gave a frantic speech to the remaining press outside of his personal residence in Burgoyne, in which he said the following:

"The traitors that allowed this massive military failure will know justice for their betrayal. We will put new leadership into the command of our militaries, and we will march to Mexico City!"

Soon after the burning of Warwickville, an order came out from Burgoyne to withdraw the remaining forces from the Mexican Old North and from Alaska. These forces returned via the extensive North American highway system and were brought to bases in Northern Vandalia to support the forces defending against the Mexicans.

Perhaps taking a cue from Lassiter, Worden ordered that the former commanders of the invasion of Mexico, Jared Ethan, Sullivan Wyndham, Justin Harrison, and Stephen Dalton to be tried for treason. Within a week, they were all found guilty, and executed. Dubbed "the most right of justice" by Worden, international observers were appalled. Worden ignored their criticism and appointed General Bradley Watford to command the entirety of the Jeffersonian front.

Bradley Watford was an Imperativist lackey appointed to his command due to partisan bickering after the August 2nd attacks, where he replaced General Leslie Wheeling on the North American General Staff. Wheeling opposed the usurpation of power by Worden and refused to obey orders from someone he dubbed as undemocratic, but he was removed and replaced by Watford. When the latter was appointed to the command of the Southern Vandalia front, he was scared, to say the least. Nevertheless, he swore to do his duty as a North American patriot and a general.

General Recinos saw the necessity of controlling two cities in Southern Vandalia for the invasion to continue: Fort Lodge, on the Missouri River, and St. Louis, on the Mississippi River. If the Mexicans were capable of controlling those two cities, the two major rivers of the western CNA would be under effective Mexican control. Hence, the Mexican strategy would consist of attempting to gain control of these cities.



The Battle of Pocklington

General Bradley Watford of the CNA Army had seen it necessary to procure additional terramobiles for the defense of Southern Vandalia from Peterborough Ironworks, a pro-Imperativist company that had served the CNA military since the 1880s. It had been brought into the Imperativist fold when its CEO, Ormond Tomkins, signed an agreement with Worden's Minister of Defense Lewis Derby, to produce new armaments for the invasion of India and later the invasion of Mexico. Tomkins saw the defeat in Mexico as one directly hostile to the continued existence of his firm and thusly obliged to Watford's request.

As Watford's subordinate commanders delayed the Mexican advance into Southern Vandalia at battles such as Morpeth, Magrudersville, Wheatfield, and Jerome Hill, Tomkins ensured that the new terramobiles, named the Winfield Scott Terramobile, were rolled out into the confederation to fight Recinos' forces. Recinos himself had expected armor to be used by the North Americans and had, along with General Edgardo Bermudez, ordered more terramobiles from Mexican arms manufacturers. Naturally, such armor would have to meet at some time .

A large armor depot for the North Americans was located south of Fort Lodge at the small town of Dumfries, and was the site of the hastily established Fort Kronmiller, where Watford kept his command. The North American high command was deathly afraid of the Mexicans taking Fort Lodge or St. Louis, and both cities would have to be defended if they were to prevent a Mexican advance into Indiana, which would put Burgoyne at risk. "I am not convinced that Lassiter will not try to get so far as our capital," said Worden in a speech in Burgoyne, continuing by saying "that is why the Mexicans must be sent back home to their own lounging in their siestas!"

A large Mexican armored division under the command of Pedro Shea, a famous terramobile commander that had spearheaded Mexican doctrine regarding that vehicle, was advancing on the town of Pocklington, about fifty miles south of Fort Lodge, in January 1976. As Mexican air forces bombarded the town's small fortification, most of the North American civilians had been evacuated to Dumfries or to Fort Lodge itself. The Mexicans under Shea had began to breach the city itself when General Watford ordered the forces at Dumfries to advance.

And so began what would become the largest armored engagement in human history, dwarfing the next largest, the battle of Zamcuzny in the First Global War. The two thousand terramobiles on the North American side assisted by what would become twenty-five hundred on the Mexican side (procured through various Mexican factories as well as from their allied states throughout South and Central America) would bring death to seven hundred thousand men on both sides. North American forces were eager to use ladybirds and Mexican warmobiles were equipped with Mapanas (appropriated from the New Granadans), and gyrogunships were used by both sides.

By February 2nd, the North Americans called a retreat. Shea ordered a brief stay at Pocklington. By then, a large portion of the force that attacked that town was destroyed. However, more from Chiapas and Durango were on their way. Fort Lodge would be their next target.



The Neiderhofferist Rebellion in the South of France

The establishment of the Egalitarian Republic of Guyenne, with Bordeaux as its capital, brought a new level of organization to the French resistance against the occupying Germans. With the fall of Bordeaux to the followers of Ruben Allard, the leader of the revolt in Bordeaux and the new President of the Republic, the Germans sent General Bruno Biermann with a large force to occupy the southern part of the country in early March of 1975.

Biermann's forces took the city of Montauban, east of Bordeaux, as his command center with the goal of forcing the Republic of Guyenne into surrender. Guyennese forces under the command of Irenee Parris, recruited from those in the countryside outside of Bordeaux under the control of the Republic, began moving eastward, recruiting more rebellious groups under their banner. Another revolt in the city of Langon was supported by Parris' forces, and the rebels joined with his army.

Republican scouts reported back to Parris while resting in Langon, telling him that the Germans were moving along the highway from Montauban to Langon to hopefully expel them from the city and then drive to Bordeaux. Parris could not allow this to happen; he subsequently moved along that highway eastward, supporting rebels in the city of Marmande and in smaller towns along that route. As the Germans moved towards Marmande, they were hassled by raiding parties from the Republic and therefore delayed.

The two forces came together at the city of Agen. Biermann's forces had access to the best terramobiles and warmobiles the Thaler could buy. However, the Republican forces under Parris were masters of urban warfare, as their victories at Bordeaux, Langon, and Marmande indicated. Using the strategies proven effective by the ILM in India, the Republic mined the roads leading into Agen, destroying large portions of the German force. When the Germans entered the city, they were met with an onslaught of French paramilitaries armed with captured German weaponry, as well as a few captured terramobiles. Bombing campaigns from an airfield in Lalbenque, to the east, destroyed portions of the city, but galvanized support from the populace of Agen and the surrounding towns to join the Republican forces.

The battle concluded in the end of June after a slog of a month. Biermann himself was killed by a Republic sniper while overseeing forces in Agen. With this victory, the decapitated German force began retreating towards Toulouse. The Republic briefly celebrated, and then turned its attention to the rest of southwestern France. By August, Bayonne had fallen to the rebels, and then Pau and Tarbes by the end of October.

By the beginning of 1976, the Republic, having rechristened itself the Egalitarian Republic of France, had occupied all of the southern part of the country with the exception of the city of Toulouse and a small corridor northward of that city reinforced by the Germans, from that city to Montauban to Brive-la-Gaillarde, which connected with other areas under German control.



The German Strategy as of 1976.

Reinhold Kiermaier, Chancellor of the Greater German Empire, was looking for a way to defeat Britain. The Minister of Defense of the Empire, Guntram Falk, advocated a strategy in which "Britain must be starved and its people forced to rise up against Westminster."

The beginning of the war in 1974 was put under such a strategy, coordinated by Admiral Arthur Tifft. By 1976, however, the war had changed due to France, the location where most of the German forces were stationed, was half-controlled by a Neiderhofferist rebel movement. Bruno Biermann, the commander of German forces in the southern part of the country, was desperately trying to stop the growing discontent with the German-backed government of Jean-Baptiste Tremblay, who had brought France into the Empire.

The commander of German forces in the North of France, Theofil Waldfogel, a General who had served in the First Global War as a terramobile commander, was in command of a more peaceful area of the country. There had been nationalist attacks from the Sons of Fanchon, but little else. The north of France was heavily defended from British naval and air strikes; the Royal Air Service was relegated to a defensive role.

The German public, however, was rapidly beginning tired of the stagnation and called for a "decisive end to the war," in the words of Johannes Rothbauer, a member of a military garrison near Berlin who had become a noted nationalist speaker. "Germany can and must grow stronger. Britain can and must fall from its place as hegemon! We can win this if we strike now! Kiermaier and Falk are by this point just being frivolous fools who cannot make a decision!"

Growing public support tended towards an option that the German general staff had been quite hesitant to support: a full-blown invasion of the British Isles. Supporters, such as General Tiedemann Kempf, maintained that there existed enough native support to allow at least the taking of London, forcing an abdication of the King, the dissolution of Parliament, and the capitulation of the British general staff. Opponents, such as Admirals Arthur Tifft and Julian Bernat were starkly opposed to it, saying that the Royal Navy was too strong for the German Navy at that point to handle it.



Operation William, Part I

Operation William, named after William the Conqueror, the only man who was ever able to successfully launch an invasion of England, was the codename for the German plan to launch an invasion of the British mainland from the north of France. Admiral Arthur Tifft, commander of all German naval forces at the port of Calais, was understood to be against such an invasion. However, despite protestation from the admiralty and parts of the general staff, Chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier was convinced that an invasion would be necessary to put an end to the war in Europe.

In an address to the Diet, Kiermaier stressed the "need for an end to British hegemony in Europe, in Asia, and in North America," and included favorable references to the United States of Mexico in their struggle against the Confederation of North America. In this speech, televised to the world, Kiermaier made an ultimatum to Prime Minister Gordon Perrow of the United Kingdom:

"Surrender now, Perrow, and Germany will be merciful. We will treat your civilians kindly and you will be integrated into a new world order under the watchful hand of the Greater German Empire. If you do not surrender, there will be death beyond measure, beyond the scope of any war that has occurred previously in human history. Perrow, peace or slaughter are your options. Perrow, it is your choice alone."

Two days later on June 17th, Perrow gave a speech in the House of Commons in London, already battered by German bombers, refusing to surrender. His words were as follows:

"Your options that you have so given me, Kiermaier, are either peace or slaughter. I will tell you right now I will be damned if it will be a peace under the Kaiser's reign. If it requires the valiant sacrifice of British men and British lives, it will be blood on your hands. We will fight to defend every inch of sand in Sussex and in Hampshire and in Dorset to make sure that you will never, ever gain a foothold on our country."

The results of the ultimatum being clear, on July 20th Kiermaier ordered a large quantity of nuclear weapons to be moved from a German storage facility in the area of Rostock to a base not far from Strasburg. Shortly thereafter, the invasion craft, designed during the early phases of the war, were brought to the base at Calais, backed by anti-air weaponry to stop any British bombers from being able to sink them.

"And so the British will pay for their crimes against the world," said Kiermaier to the German press at the announcement of the beginning of Operation William. Within minutes of this declaration, IPAMs began flying out of the base at Strasburg to Britain, tipped with the strongest nuclear weapons that Germany had at its disposal. The cities of Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton, Hastings, Bournemouth, Poole, and Exeter were all obliterated, as were several Royal Navy bases among the coast and Royal Air Service bases in the towns.



Operation William, Part II

After the appalling destruction of many cities on the southern coast of England, the Germans began the second phase of Operation William, their plan to take down the United Kingdom once and for all. For over nine hundred years no force had ever been able to do so; the German military leadership believed that they could indeed be the first to do so in that amount of time.

The destruction of the Royal Navy's and the Royal Air Service's bases throughout the coast of southern England was very intentional, as coordinated by the general staff to prevent the destruction of key airmobiles or ships to the invasion. Both were held to have a strategic, if not a material, advantage over the Germans; the destruction of so much of their infrastructure was crippling. The invasion was therefore reckoned by the Germans to be possible in succeeding.

To do so, however, they would have to prevent the British cities of Folkestone and Dover, two cities on the coast of Kent close to Calais; they were thusly the ideal landing locations. The General of the Imperial Air Service, Traugott Voights, ordered his bomber squadrons (with heavy fighter support) to bombard these cities and destroy any military or civilian infrastructure that could be used to stop a German landing. Due to the disorganized, chaotic state of the Royal Air Service, the bombings were judged to be successful. Civilian casualties were considered appalling, but so are so many other engagements of the Second Global War.

With the bombings of Dover and Folkestone completed, infantry and light armored formations were parachuted from France into the cities, where they rooted out any last resistance. Landing craft from the port of Calais and the nearby cities of Wissant and Sangatte landed in the area between Folkestone and Dover, securing important small urban areas and the highway that connected the two. Partially to support the invasion and partially to provide a stark example to the British, German bombers used stickzine-filled canisters, based on a recipe found in bases captured by the Anatolians and Persians in western India, on the town of Capel le Ferne in between the two English cities of importance.

The destruction of Capel le Ferne, which killed approximately eighty percent of the town's small population of approximately 2,500, was the first real sign (apart from the usage of nuclear weapons) that the German general staff had been studying the North American invasion of Mexico intently. The Locust Warfare practiced in Jefferson and the Rocky Mountains was something that was noted to be incredibly effective, and so the German general staff studied it intently and attempted to rectify the mistakes made by the North Americans that resulted in their retreat back across the Jeffersonian-Southern Vandalian border. The result, as one can see, was one of utter butchery. The war in Britain would be just as terrible as the war in Mexico.

The Dutch Insurgency

The Treaty of Eindhoven, which had ended the war in Europe, had promised a "free and independent Netherlands." The Dutch people had expected this to apply to France as well as Germany; they did not want to be part of the Empire that Germany had forged, but they did not want to be dictated to by the Egalitarian Republic. Prime Minister of the newly independent Netherlands, Mathijs Rozendaal, declared in a speech in Amersfoort that his country "would bow not to the French, and not to the Germans, and not to any slave-driver who would dictate our affairs."

However, it was duly noted by the Neiderhofferians in the French government (suffice to say, all of the French government) that Rozendaal was backed by corporate interests in the Netherlands whose businesses were stifled during the Imperial years. Berlin had forced upon the Netherlands trade conditions that allowed German corporations to enter the country unimpeded, buying out large swathes of the Dutch economy. Individual nations of the Empire were unable to place protective tariffs on any entity; such was banned in the Imperial constitution, where the Imperial Diet was the only body capable to make such laws.

As such, Rozendaal and his party, the Dutch People's Alliance (DPA), was seen by the French as a corporate oppressor state; it did not help that the businesses backing Rozendaal had Kramer Associates among their ranks.

In March 1978 the Dutch Parliament voted unanimously to place an ultimatum on French soldiers to leave by April of that year. "We do not need a foreign army to defend us," said General Louwrens van Pijkeren, the highest commander of all Dutch forces; it is to be noted that the Dutch military was mostly using French weaponry. Dutch forces began moving towards the border between France and the Netherlands, fortifying the city of Brussels with the expectation of some kind of military action.

Such an action was received in Paris poorly, as one may have predicted. President Allard was incensed that the people who had been liberated, or so he maintained, by the armies of the French were now trying to insult them in that manner. A competent military commander from the days of the war, Allard took a detachment of the Egalitarian Republic's finest men and marched into the Netherlands.

Aircraft, originally belonging to the French government as backed by the Germans and presided over by Jean-Baptiste Tremblay, were sent over Brussels and carpet bombed the city, destroying key infrastructure and severely damaging the forces there. As they scrambled to defend themselves, the various French garrisons throughout the Netherlands began moving on Amsterdam.

Street fighting, of a brutality that wracked Jefferson City, occurred in Amsterdam. Entire portions of the city were burned as the Republican Army marched towards the Dutch parliament building. By the end of March 7th the entirety of parliament was arrested, Rozendaal included, as well as many corporate executives.

On May 9th Allard, after conducting the Battle of Maastricht in a Republican victory, came victorious into Amsterdam. He intended to address the occupational forces and the provisional government of the Egalitarian Republic of the Netherlands, established by collaborationists backed by the Republican Army.

As he approached the now-reappropriated parliament building, Allard was shot by an anti-French radical, Vincent Mars, who was subsequently killed by security forces.



Cordonnier takes Command of France

The assassination of the beloved Ruben Allard in Amsterdam was a national tragedy in France; however, certain members of the People's Assembly, led by Director of Military Logistics Mathieu Cordonnier, were secretly glad. What they had wanted was an invasion of Germany after the fall of the Netherlands; however, Allard and his majority in the People's Assembly forced such a plan to be defeated on practical grounds; indeed the Treaty of Eindhoven was signed by the French delegation with the distinct opposition of Cordonnier. With Allard, the man who Cordonnier regarded as a "useful fool," now dead, Cordonnier could take his chances.

Even with the brutality of the Battle of Amsterdam, Cordonnier insisted that an even harsher treatment of the Netherlands was necessary. In a speech to the People's Assembly Cordonnier insisted that

"The enemies of the Revolution in the Netherlands must be dealt with in the most stringent terms. Revolutions are bloody things, and blood has been shed, and will continue to be shed, until the last manifestations of counterrevolution have been expunged from that country. Their Egalitarian Republic, much like ours, is committed to the self-rule of the people. The oppressors that have held them down so long will be dealt with via the bullet. There is no other option with them."

Nevertheless Allardists controlled sixty percent of the People's Assembly. Among their number was the Speaker of the House, Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, who urged "peace and rationality" in the newly conquered Netherlands. "They have suffered enough," said Vaillancourt, in response to Cordonnier. Several other members of the Assembly were in favor of this.

To encourage their position, Vaillancourt had planned to have national elections in France in 1979 to have himself elected President of the Republic, and to deny Cordonnier the position. To encourage this, he and twenty members of the People's Assembly, all Allardists, travelled throughout the Netherlands on an "Offensive of the Dove," deliberately calling to mind the previous initiative of the same by Mexican President Vincent Mercator in 1962.

However, under suspicious circumstances in the Dutch coastal city of Ostend, an explosive device detonated under a bridge carrying a warmobile containing the Allardist delegation, killing them all, including Vaillancourt. After a brief period of mourning Cordonnier declared that the People's Assembly ought to "vote on a President to lead the country in this time of crisis, with both our President and a large portion of our Assembly dead."

As might be expected, the Cordonnierists had the majority in the Assembly with the Allardist delegation dead. They voted for their leader for the presidency, and he won. Mathieu Cordonnier was now the leader of the French nation.

After his inauguration in Paris, Cordonnier ordered more forces into the Netherlands with the intention of "once and for all bringing down the forces of capitalist oppression in our northern neighbor."

In Amsterdam, he declared the creation of a "Dutch People's Court," a mockery of justice that claimed to weed out the capitalists and their lackeys throughout the country. What really happened was a long month of bloodshed.

Throughout the country, Dutch veterans of the German Imperial armed forces, priests, landowners, business leaders, and outspoken opponents of Neiderhofferism were found and executed in their towns' squares. In Amsterdam, the entire government of the German and Independent periods were executed, policy makers and civil servants, the monarchy and Prime Minister Rozendaal, were executed. Egbert Mollemans, the leader of the Neiderhofferist Party of the Netherlands, was installed as Cordonnier's puppet in the country, ensuring that it would obey Paris' beck and call.



Cordonnier's Purges

On April 1st, Cordonnier, now the supreme ruler of France and by proxy the Netherlands, announced that the deaths of Jean-Pierre Valliancourt and his entourage was the work of "counterrevolutionary traitors that seek to destroy our progress." Therefore, he contended in a vitavised speech to the French nation, there had to be a "great purge of the nation of its clandestine enemies." To do so, Cordonnier authorized the creation of the Republican Directorate of Revolutionary Security (RDRS), the internal security apparatus of the Egalitarian Republic, led by Cordonnierist stalwart Guillaume Rousselot.

Rousselot immediately proceeded to scour the Republican government for anyone deemed an enemy of the Revolution, seen by cynics as a method for Cordonnier to gain control of the country by force of arms. This was not entirely inaccurate; the first to be executed, publicly at that, were the Allardist members of the People's Assembly, shot so that their bodies would fall into the Seine. Those who protested were met with the revolutionary justice of marauding military men marching through Paris, looking for anyone suspicious enough.

Soon, the entire country was awash in the thralls of the purges. In Bordeaux, insufficiently loyal police constabularies and businessmen were sent off on a flaming barge into the Atlantic Ocean; nothing has been recovered of them since. In Marseilles the mansion of a businessman who had not paid sufficient taxes in Rousselot's view had his house boarded up and set aflame with him inside it. In Toulon, machine guns fired into crowds of protestors and criminals alike.

International reaction was of disgust; Gordon Perrow rejected the methods of punishment as "completely out of hand." Carl Salazar, Chief Executive Officer of Kramer Associates, spoke of "Revolutionary Madness," and ordered the Federation of China to boycott all French and Dutch goods, which Wen Pan obliged. France was therefore becoming a pariah state, but the purges continued.

In what history has damned Rousselot and Cordonnier for was the targeting of General Irenee Parris. Parris had objected to the Barge of Bordeaux, as it had been dubbed by the international media; the Revolutionary Sentinel, the national newspaper, quoted Parris in an interview in Clermont Ferrand:

"This is not Revolution, this is overeager killing by an angry victim of the oppression of the German-backed regime. I refuse to support this."

Shortly thereafter, an armored deployment marched into Clermont Ferrand and took Parris hostage. Deemed a "traitor of the highest sort" by Cordonnier himself, he was taken to Paris and shot personally by the new dictator on April 21st.



The Catalonian and Basque Uprisings

With the apparent success of the creation of the Egalitarian Republic of France, with its ally in the Netherlands, Neiderhofferism began to rise among the separatist groups in Catalonia and the Basque Country, both longtime parts of the Kingdom of Spain.

Spain had been a longtime neutral state in European affairs, standing firm with Scandinavia and the Helvetic Confederation in not involving itself in the wars of the continent; both Global Wars had seen no Spanish involvement. However, in its multiethnic character both the Basque Country and Catalonia were uppity; neither region was treated particularly well by the government in Madrid.

Inspired by Ruben Allard, the famously nationalistic and Neiderhofferist rebel leader in France, the dominant rebel groups, insurgent for decades, in those two regions, were increasingly adopting collectivist anti-capitalist ideologies. By 1979 with the triumph of France in the Netherlands the Catalonians and the Basques were emboldened enough to begin full fledged attacks on Spanish forces deployed in their regional capitals, Barcelona and Bilbao, in the forms of locobombs and militia; in Catalonia the militia established control over L'Hospitalet, an outskirt of Barcelona.

As the months dragged on and the insurgencies in the two regions intensified, Allard was assassinated and Cordonnier came to power. after his bloody purges, he turned his attention to his southern neighbor. He viewed that the struggle of the Basques and the Catalonians were in full concurrence with Neiderhofferist ideology; after all they openly professed it.

In a speech to the People's Assembly, Cordonnier called for the "liberation of these two peoples' from Madrid's imperialist grasp." Furthermore, he described the nation of Spain itself as a "cobbled together abomination designed for the oppression of minorities and the enrichment of feudal lords;" it was a country ripe for revolution, he maintained. However, pragmatically he did not advocate for the wholesale invasion of Spain; France was war-weary and did not want to be bogged down against another power. However, there was enough demand, he felt, for an intervention in those two breakaway regions.

On April 20th, warmobiles of the Egalitarian Republic of France rolled across the Pyrenees to assist their Basque and Catalonian brethren. At Bilbao and L'Hospitalet and in many other cities the French were welcomed as liberators.

Spain had not been at war for a long while; their military force consisted mostly of excess war materiel sold to them by the North Americans in the period after the First Global War. Having more modern equipment, the French were able to seize both regions by the end of the next month, in an example of Locust Warfare being utilized outside of North America.

On May 3rd, 1979 the Basque Egalitarian Republic and the Egalitarian Republic of Catalonia were declared in their respective capitals after the Treaty of Nijmegen, which ended the war.



The British General Election of 1979, Part I

After the end of the Second Global War Gordon Perrow had lost the confidence of Parliament; a good portion of his country, and the homes of many influential aristocrats for good measure, were destroyed in nuclear fire and in the battles of Operation William. The war had been utterly inconclusive, and the Luitpold Muller affair had not been sufficiently avenged in their eyes. For allowing such devastation to happen, leader of the opposition Gerald Twickenham called for the dissolution of Parliament; a majority voted in favor of doing so.

Twickenham, a Tory, was a longtime dovish member of Parliament; he had been against the declaration of war on Germany and against the invasion of India. Now, he saw the devastation that war had caused and wanted a long period of rebuilding for the country, and "extend a laurel wreath to the other nations of the world." Twickenham campaigned for a rapprochement with Germany and the creation of an international organization that would put an end to war; the Global Association for Peace was too "influenced from Mexico City" to be of real neutrality.

However, Twickenham and Perrow had another challenger, the Liberal Joseph Priestland, from Shoreham-by-sea, Sussex. Preistland was among those who had lost assets and family in the rebellions of the various Workers' Armies during the war; to him it was deeply disturbing that there were still armed bands active in the south of England, and some were organizing in the North and in Scotland. Demanding an isolationist and traditionalist policy Priestland opposed what he considered a "warmongering" Perrow and a "spineless" Twickenham, he led the Liberals and secured the Party nomination of prospective Prime Minister in a conference in Preston, Lancashire.

Debates between Perrow, Twickenham, and Priestland took place throughout the country. In the industrial north Twickenham and Priestland sparred between the rights of workers; both were willing to support labor unions in exchange for increased action against militants; Perrow, deeply unpopular with the working classes, did not bother in the North; this would hurt him.

Veterans were quick to blame Perrow for the folly that was the war; it was the epitome of a rich man's sparring match, but with the deadliest of weapons available. However, many soldiers were far from fond of the Germans either; hence they began to move towards Priestland. To them, Twickenham was a weakling and an appeaser.



The British General Election of 1979, Part II

The election came when the French were victorious in Catalonia and the Basque Country; this was exploited to great effect by all parties; however Priestland had capitalized on it most effectively. Perrow was cast as somebody who was not willing to destroy radical Neiderhofferism in its infancy, and was the man who lost the south of England to their troubles. Twickenham was an outright supporter of the Neiderhofferist worker's armies and the butchering of the Cordonnier government in France. Political commentators duly noted that all three parties had absorbed Neiderhofferist thought in the nineteenth century; it would be hypocritical, academics maintained, to criticize Neiderhofferism in and of itself. However, politics are not the rational activities associated with the cool demeanor of political science, and thusly the allegations were flung from all to all.

The election itself came on a rainy day; famed political reporter Smedley Morton said that "it was only apropos for divine providence to furnish the weather in such a manner; such an election could only be sober and dreary" (not that alcoholism during and after the election subsided). Throughout the country the mood was one of apprehension; there were three distinct positions being argued and it was inconclusive which.

It turned out that Priestland had seized a total majority for the Liberals, to the chagrin of both Perrow and Twickenham. Shortly thereafter Perrow resigned his leadership of the party; he felt that he was "no longer fit to govern such a great assemblage of people;" however he kept his seat in Parliament. Twickenham, rather than take the indignity of serving in a parliament, resigned from his seat rather than enter Westminster once more; there was a by-election, replacing him with the Tories' Edward Ettrick.

With his victory, Priestland promised a harder stance against the Workers' Armies still active in the South of England; shortly after his inaugural speech in the House of Commons militants seized a factory in Bolton, Lancashire. In this early challenge to his government, he authorized General McIntyre, the hero of Kent as he was dubbed, to escort troops stationed in the Black Country to take down the Bolton Workers' Army, as they called themselves.

The result was a massacre; the Second Bolton Massacre (following the First during the English Civil Wars) was internationally seen as disgustingly inhumane; domestically, however, he was lauded for putting down something that could have led to the chaos seen in the South of England.



The Ouster of Kiermaier and the reorientation eastward

The Treaty of Eindhoven was absolutely humiliating to Chancellor Kiermaier; after returning from the Netherlands he was immediately summoned to the Diet, where leader of the opposition Klemens Schottenstein called for the ouster of the Chancellor for "hopeless incompetence in maintaining the empire." Now officially a pariah, Kiermaier made one final appeal to the governing body that he had brought to war:

"The loss of France was a failure of our generalship, nothing more. There is, however, a war to be waged in the East, in Russia. Their association of Republics is linked inextricably with Germany."

The fact that there were no more French members of the Imperial Diet by most accounts ought to have helped Kiermaier, but the Russian and Polish members, both from loyalist governments in Warsaw and St. Petersburg, were disenchanted. "If this man cannot keep France in check, how can he keep our countries in this benevolent voluntary association?" asked Bratislav Terebov, a leading member of the Russian diet members. In the decisive vote the Diet lost confidence in Kiermaier. Hence, he was forced to resign; he returned home in disgrace.

The various members of the Imperial Diet elected Schottenstein as their Chancellor, who promised an "imperial renaissance" and the securing of Russia in the name of the Empire. In Russia, there were two enemies, the Russian Patriotic Front, led by Varnava Petrov, and the Republic of Siberia, which was still backed by Kramer Associates; the multinational corporation detested the Greater German Empire's intentions to create a common market, as well as making it significantly harder to acquire Arabian and Russian oil stocks. Siberia was therefore being provided with the best weaponry that came out of Chinese factories.

After the Battle of Eindhoven the German forces were withdrawn to the valley of the Ruhr. With Schottenstein's election, he ordered the new Minister of Defense Leon Landsteiner to inform all the generals to begin marching eastward into Russia; the city of Irkutsk, held by the Russians for multiple years as the brushfire wars continued, had fallen to Siberia after a shipment of new warmobiles, designed by Kramer Associates, were deployed. These warmobiles were better than anything the Russians, and possibly the Germans, had to offer.

Protests in major German cities were endemic; the people were tired of war. This was a natural consequence of the undemocratic structure of the Empire; only on a local scale did the people have any real say, and these bodies would elect members of the national diet, bodies which would elect members to the Imperial diet. Riots in Kiel, Hamburg, and Nuremberg were all crushed by the military, leading to a death toll of over a thousand when all were combined. However, Schottenstein was as apathetic as Kiermaier, if not more; the men continued moving eastward.


The Purgation of Russia

Upon his ascension to the Chancellorship, Schottenstein fired all of the generals that had survived the disastrous war in France as well as those botching the war in Russia. In their place Schottenstein appointed Hildebrant Boeckmann, a general from Breslau, to lead the advance into Russia. Boeckman, the victor of a few battles in France such as the siege of Grenoble, was widely seen by the aristocracy as the most competent commander in the Empire; only due to the privileged upbringing of many of the generalship he was snubbed.

Poland was cleansed within a month; once the full brunt of the German military was deployed the resistance withered and died and its leaders executed publicly in Bromberg. "Mercy is something that I am not willing to display," said Boeckman to a reporter from a Frankfurt newspaper. "The French give none and we must give none if the legitimacy of the Empire is to be maintained." With Poland firmly under the command of Berlin the march carried onto the east.

The ultimate goal was Irkutsk; the Siberian city captured by the Russian government but recaptured by the Siberians, having been supplied by Kramer Associates. However, there was a large detachment of Russian rebels in the western parts of the country. This was no matter to the German advance; once faced with a far more advanced army, the Russian Patriotic Front lost its holdings in Pskov and Kostroma, the latter the main holding of the Front; Petrov, its leader, was too executed. "It is almost as if Boeckman is trying to outmatch Cordonnier in bloodshed," said the loyalist Mexican president Raymond Portillo. "I cannot sympathize with our former comrades in Berlin anymore."

As Petrov was killed, Matveev, the President of the Associated Russian Republics urged the Germans to go further to Krasnoyarsk, where the Siberians were likely to begin a siege within the week. As a member of the Empire the German army was obligated to defend them from foreign invaders; to support Boeckman throughout the ARR men were raised to join the new "Pan-Imperial Army" under his command, with Schottenstein's blessings.

In July, after supplying in Omsk and Krivoshchekovskaya, the battle for Irkutsk began. Siberia had already begun its siege of Krasnoyarsk, but strategic bombing from the Germans wiped out most of their communications. The Siberian general, Dominik Boltonogov, was forced to retreat; their forces retreated to defend Irkutsk once more.

The road to Siberia seemed to be open.


Kramer Associates and the beginning of the Sino-German War

President Carl Salazar of Kramer Associates had a long distaste for the Greater German Empire, for it was during the First Global War the Germans, in solidarity with their allies in Mexico, expelled all Kramer affiliates and seized all of their assets. Bruning, the wartime leader, had made an enemy for life in Salazar, and this enmity would continue after Bruning's death in 1951. Indeed Kiermaier and later Schottenstein would oppose the firm's operation in the member states of the Empire.

With the German capture of Irkutsk it seemed as if the Germans and their Russian lackeys would win the war against Siberia; indeed the Siberian military was simply not armed well enough. However Salazar had an army at his disposal: that of the Federation of China. Siberia and China, both being Kramer client states, had good relations, and Somsikov and Wen had visited each other's capitals.

After the fall of Irkutsk Salazar hurried to Nanjing, the capital of the Federation, and pleaded to Wen to intervene on behalf of the Siberians. Wen objected, saying that the Chinese army was too war weary and the economy too ravaged to prosecute another war only half a year after the end of the last. Furthermore he maintained that the Chinese army was not equipped to fight in the cold temperatures of Siberia.

Salazar countered by saying that a German-occupied Siberia would be against China's interests by pointing out how the Germans were a member of the now-defunct Global Association for Peace, all but dissolved in the Mexican Civil War. Additionally if Siberia was captured China would lose ports for its merchant shipping and markets for all of its businesses. Understanding this, Wen consulted the Chinese Congress and gained a declaration of war on Germany and its subordinate countries. In his speech, vitavized to the world, he said that

"There is no shame in fighting for an ally; indeed it is honorable to fight for someone who is threatened but still does not cause your own interests to be threatened. It is for humanitarian reasons that we intervene against Germany."

Chinese forces, having rebuilt after the end of the Chinese Civil War (a front of the Second Global War), were equipped with the best designs that Kramer Associates had to offer. Air strikes occurred over German camps to the east of Irkutsk, and land forces moved towards the city in July. Commanded by general Jia Chiaoxiang, these forces engaed Broeckman's forces in the small town of Putyatinsk outside of Irkutsk. The result was inconclusive but the war had undoubtedly begun.



The Firebombing of Philadelphia

Burgoyne was a city that was deeply divided between the Loyalist Mexicans and the Recinists; the city had erupted once more into violence with the assassination of President Lassiter. However, to the east there was a bastion of peace and North American government: the Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love.

Philadelphians had been very worried upon the outbreak of the Mexican Civil War that their city would be subjected to the horrors of the war, which had never really ended, in either Europe or North America, only assumed a new form. Their city had been at peace, but it had lost many sons in the invasion of Mexico and the later defensive war; the beginnings of riots similar to those in Norfolk were seen but they were quelled violently by the military that had been deployed there (President James Volk had ordered, reluctantly, martial law in major North American cities; this was encouraged heavily by Generals like Norris).

Philadelphia was one of the historic cities of North America, and also the closest truly major one to Burgoyne. Seeing this, it was a tempting target by General Recinos, who was holed up in Burgoyne and winning the city from loyalists. With this, Volk and the rest of his government were forced to flee to Philadelphia. An attempt to decapitate the North American government seemed assured.

Mexican Air Force General Geraldo Salome was based in Burgoyne and had sworn his loyalty to Recinos, and had large quantities of stickzine, the potent incendiary weapon, with him; large swathes of Burgoyne had been destroyed by the bombing campaign. Knowing that Philadelphia had not expected any part in the conflict, it had not constructed any major anti-air defenses. This, contended Recinos to Salome, was a prime target to win the war in North America once and for all.

On July 8th, 1978 the bombers began flying from the Guernsey Highlands Airbase in Burgoyne towards Philadelphia, carrying the largest quantity of Stickzine in military history over the city. One by one the airmobiles dropped their cargoes upon the unsuspecting city.

This was considered by many to be some sort of "crime against nature," but due to no truly influential treaties regarding the laws of war nothing could be done. So many historic artifacts were lost and hundreds of thousands were dead in the fire, mostly innocents. James Volk, the president of the new North American government, was now dead.

A successor would have to be found.



The Chiapan Neiderhofferists

Chiapas was by far the poorest state in the United States of Mexico; the admission of the Mexican Antilles earlier in the decade had not changed that fact. Mostly Mexicano in terms of ethnicity, it had been left in the dust by the rapid development of Jefferson and the Old North.

With the establishment of the Egalitarian Republic of France and its puppet states in the Netherlands, the Basque Country, and Catalonia, radicals in Chiapas, often impoverished factory workers, began to see a massive discontent with the Mexican government. Hipolito Narvaez, a factory worker in Ciudad de la Solidaridad, was a reader of Neiderhofferist works as well as the works of Ruben Allard and Matheiu Cordonnier in their Spanish translations, and quickly began to see the roots of a situation similar to those in Bordeaux, from which the French government had sprung.

The constant war, or so it seemed, to the citizens of Chiapas was taking its toll, despite its distance from the battlefield. Chiapan men were being sent to their graves in North America to "defend the Anglos," in the words of Narvaez, and the remaining population had been working nonstop in armaments factories since the invasion of Jefferson. The continuing hostilities in North America, combined with what had been deemed "unforgivable crimes" according to a small town Chiapan newspaper, such as the atomic bombing of Habana, were leaving a very sour tastes in the mouths of Chiapans.

Narvaez therefore, in a series of events that paralleled the rise of the shipyard workers in Bordeaux, led an uprising in his factory, destroying it in its entirety after looting all the weapons that could be salvaged. Subsequently moving to the surrounding towns, a small portion of the state was carved out by the end of July 1978. Drawing upon the longstanding quasi-nationalist narrative of the Chiapan secessionists (most of whom were not nearly as radical), they demanded an "independent and egalitarian Chiapas" which would be free from "plutocratic rule from Mexico City."

This development deeply scared the Mexican leadership, Portillo most of all. They could not support a prolonged war in their own country; even then there were occasional Recinist acts of violence throughout the country even when their proclaimed leader was a nation away. Hastily trying to find a new general, Portillo (still in charge after suspending elections, which would have been in 1977) ordered Brigadier General Hammond Maldonado, a rather inexperienced officer who had gained most of his promotions through noncombat means, to Chiapas to quell the uprising.


The New North American Government

With the death of James Volk, a noted pacifist, Generals Edgardo Bermudez and Malcolm Norris, the two highest ranking commanders of the Loyalist Mexicans in North America, saw the need to find a leader for the country that was more willing to cooperate and more willing, more importantly, to encourage the usage of military force against Recinos, whose firebombing of Philadelphia had killed thousands and whose occupation of Burgoyne was the key to his causes' military presence.

As soon as Volk died dozens of mid-ranking North American political and military personnel, most of them having served under Worden, clamored for the appointment of President of North America, a position chosen by the Mexican Loyalists. Most of them were hardly competent; however, one caught the eye of Bermudez. Rexford Peabody, a commander of a fairly large formation of troops during the First Battle of Burgoyne, had pledged his allegiance to the new government after it became clear that Worden had failed. Thereafter he met with Bermudez and Norris and persuaded them that he was loyal to "North America and not to any dictator."

Peabody, from a mining magnate's family, was able to wine and dine Bermudez and Norris (among other services) and as such was able to secure an appointment to the Presidency of North America. In a small inauguration in Michigan City, he called for a "unified, strong, and peaceful North America that will not wage war as it did in Mexico." In creating such a North America, however, there was a need to "remove the foreign warmonger" from that country, that foreign warmonger of course being Recinos. He also spoke out against the Neiderhofferists beginning to gain traction in the Southern Confederation, denouncing them as "charlatans and butchers" as they were in France.

To gain support, Peabody's first act was to contact the still rebellious general Justin Harrison in Manitoba and brought him down to discuss a ceasefire. In a peaceful North America, promised Peabody, Harrison would be given a high-ranking military post; such a move was met with hesitation by Bermudez and Norris but was eventually permitted; it would take the stress and pressure by Mexican forces in Manitoba and would allow Harrison to enter the war on the Loyalist side.

Talks between Peabody and Harrison continued for a week but resulted in the latter's agreement. In Manitoba, the last of Worden's loyalists was brought to Michigan City to begin marshalling troops to fight Recinos.


Peabody Marshalls his Country

Rexford Peabody, the newly inaugurated President of North America, acted in accordance with what was urged by Bermudez and Norris in the fight against the Recinists. Jefferson, now in rebellion, was actively engaging loyalist forces on the border between that state and Durango; as such, loyalist forces stationed in the Mexican heartland were forced to either go around Jefferson into Mexico del Norte or take a naval route from Veracruz to Hillsborough or Jenkinson (both on the Gulf of Mexico), leaving Recinos with the most optimal position in the area of the province of Pennsylvania.

Peabody was encouraged by Loyalist leadership to begin marshalling the people of North America for more troops to make an army several thousand strong to combat the Recinists. With the permission of the completely ineffective Congress of North America, Peabody instituted a draft in the Confederations least affected by the war in terms of infrastructure. North American veterans of the invasion of, and later defense against, Mexico who had sworn allegiance to the new regime were put in charge of groups of men to train them for the slaughter that would inevitably happen.

This was combined with the deployment of armed police in volatile urban areas such as Norfolk, Virginia, Southern Confederation, where a Neiderhofferist council had taken other a large portion of the city. Terramobiles were deployed to "force compliance" with the draft; many former militia members were impressed into government service. Nevertheless an armed deployment had to be maintained in Norfolk after several terrorist attacks on civilian populations in the area of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

In a moved that shocked even the Mexicans, Peabody made it such that more roles were opened for women to serve in the North American military; this was something previously enacted only in times of great crisis (women were nurses in the Global Wars but little else), and could now serve as regular infantry and armor personnel. "So many North Americans have died in the previous war," said Peabody in a speech in Hillsborough, "and we must take all we can. If women want to join, so be it."



The War in Jefferson opens

Thomas Gilmore, the Governor of Jefferson during the war, had refused to lead a "secessionist government" when the Declaration of Martial Fidelity was signed, and so resigned his post. To replace him, the Speaker of the Jeffersonian House of Representatives, Adrian Mercator, the son of the former Mexican President Vincent Mercator, was appointed president (it is interesting to note that the elder Mercator supported the succession, writing that Portillo "had surrendered all legitimacy" in not completely defeating the North Americans) of the Republic of Jefferson, which reinstated the Constitution of the days before the United States of Mexico minus some clauses about slavery (the institution was to be banned, partially to keep negro Jeffersonians on the side of the secessionists).

Loyalist forces were commanded by the upstart Fulgencio Villanueva, who had served in the defense of Durango; a native of Tlanaplanan, a town where a large battle had taken place, he was a fanatic defender of the country. "Jefferson is Mexican and will remain Mexican," he had said to a member of the press in an interview in Santisma Trinidad, Durango. Promoted to General upon the Jeffersonian succession, it was believed that he would be able to marshal the veterans of the Durango campaign to bring Jefferson back into the fold.

Villanueva's forces advanced over the Rio Grande, upon which the bridges which they were using to cross were destroyed by a Jeffersonian air strike. On the other side of the river were the forces of Stephen Cuthbert, a veteran of the Battle of Jefferson City and had actually fought alongside Villanueva in North America. He radioed Villanueva from his base in Guntherville, Jefferson, and made the following plea:

"Fulgencio, we are brothers. We fought together. Can you not see the division between us on state lines? It is completely unnecessary. What your government is doing is allowing a colossus the opportunity to rise again and to kill our countrymen. Why do you not see the folly of this? Why do you want more Jeffersonians to die? I urge you to lay down your arms and sit out this war. There is no reason for either of our corps to fall so pointlessly."

Villanueva sent the following response:

"I swore to protect the United States of Mexico from all enemies foreign and domestic. I intent to honor that oath, and you, my friend, are now a domestic enemy. You are rending the Union asunder and that I cannot allow."

To which Cuthbert replied:

"I'm sorry."

Shortly thereafter Jeffersonian artillery began pounding the Mexican positions, and bombing raids destroyed more of the corps. Soon, a ramshackle bridge was deployed over the river, and Villanueva advanced.


Recinos' Retreat from Burgoyne

Julio Recinos had holed up in the former North American capital (by now the de facto seat of government of the country, loyal to Mexico City, was at Michigan City) and had begun to fortify the city with the intention of making it an "impenetrable fortress" from which the loyalists would not be able to evict him. However, there was the significant problem of manpower. He had only his forces that he had brought with him from Mexico plus the stragglers of a few other commands, and his cause was not one to which many North Americans were endeared. As such his men and materiel were dwindling to a superior foe in the form of Bermudez and Norris, as well as the now-marshaled Harrison under Peabody's command.

By October 1978, the quiet firefights around Burgoyne had begun to morph into a real siege; bombers deployed from the Southern Confederation and Manitoba were beginning to pound the city with every increasing ferocity. Taking a page out of Recinos' own book, there begun a furious firebombing of the city much as had been done to Philadelphia. In the words of North American Air Force General Quentin Bickford, the supreme commander of the air forces loyal to Peabody, "he has made himself deserving of such brutality," conveniently ignoring how Bickford had ordered similar during the invasion of Mexico.

Soon artillery began firing from the outskirts; Bermudez, Norris, and Peabody, the latter personally commanding a sizable force due to his experience as a general, had all amassed outside the city of Burgoyne. The targets that were hit were mostly military, less out of charity and more out of the fact that during the previous siege of the city most civilians had been either killed or evacuated in the ensuing destruction. Enough of Recinos' air force had been destroyed in the chaos, with fighter aeromobiles of the Loyalist side had been very effective in taking down those of the Recinists, that bombers were taking a toll on rebellious troops.

Eventually, the hold seemed untenable for Recinos. There was only one other place loyal to his cause: the nuclear base in Wellston, Alaska, that had been placed under his command by President Lassiter. Forces there were loyal to him and had resisted attacks by loyalists. This would be his sanctuary, he felt; his forces subsequently undertook what they hoped would be a successful exodus.



The Third Battle of Irkutsk

Twice in the past five years had Irkutsk, that city on the Angara river in eastern Russia, had been the host of bloodshed, the first time between Siberia and the Associated Russian Republics and the second between Siberia and the armies of the Greater German Empire. The third time was to be between the Greater German Empire and the Federation of China.

General Jia Chiaoxiang was a veteran of the Second Global War in China and had helped conquer the region in the name of Jiangsu, Wen Pan, and Kramer Associates. A personal friend of Carl Salazar, Jia was one of the more competent generals in the Chinese theater and as such was put in charge of protecting Siberia from Germany. "In the name of free nations of the world," said Jia upon reaching Siberia in the small town of Sigachyovsk, "I will defend Siberian liberty from the menace that awaits it." President Wen had said similarly and provided financial aid to his northern neighbor.

After the battle of Putyatinsk the Chinese began their advance towards Irkutsk with a deployment of Locust Warfare that was no doubt inspired by the North Americans in Mexico. Irkutsk was an industrial town of key importance to the Germans and the Russians and as such was subject to an intense artillery bombardment that drew comparisons to Jefferson City and Burgoyne in its intensity. The Germans responded by withdrawing back to the western bank of the Angara; General Broeckman was preparing for what he called a "clash of civilizations."

Broeckman ordered large artillery guns, designated with the name Salamander, positioned on the western bank of the Angara to pound the Chinese forces. Air strikes by the Chinese were, however, able to take down the salamanders; with the backing of Kramer Associates the Chinese were able to acquire state of the art airmobiles and terramobiles; Chinese terramobiles were able to fight German terramobiles one on one with a reasonable rate of success; the same could not have been said for the British terramobiles that had fought to repel Operation William.

Superior Kramer-designed technology proved to be superior, with the heaviest of Chinese terramobiles taking down the lightest German terramobiles with a single volley; similar comparisons could be made to Chinese versus German airmobiles. General Broeckman, having sustained unacceptable losses, was forced to retreat westward. The Chinese had their first victory.


Recinos' March to Alaska

One may have expected, as did many military analysts at the time did, for the Recinists to be picked off easily by the loyalists in North America. This was not the case, for a slim majority of the forces that had been used to invade North America had defected; the secession of Jefferson proved to be a stumbling block for the forces based in Durango and Chiapas to aid the beleaguered loyalists. The Neiderhofferists in France were also funding the rebellions in Chiapas, and as such were proving to be yet another thorn in the side of Mexico City.

President Adrian Mercator of Jefferson had insisted that the Jeffersonian military, reorganized assets of the Mexican military that had been deployed in the state before secession, use a sizeable portion of its assets to defend Recinos' retreat to Alaska; General Colin Clifton, from Lafayette, was appointed to lead the operation. Clifton was also in charge of the airdrops of supplies that were to prove godsends for him; he would praise the Jeffersonians as "the finest allies he could ever have," an implicit swipe at Bermudez and Norris, both of whom were reorienting the offensive to take down a now-moving force.

As they moved through the old North the Recinists were sure to curry favor with the locals; it was through them they would gain more supplies. Those soldiers who were cruel to civilians were executed on the spot, their bodies cremated unceremoniously, and the ashes dumped in makeshift ditches. "We must endear ourselves with the residents here, who have been so betrayed by Mexico City." In these villages, there were many veterans of the fighting in the Rockies; these veterans would sometimes join up with the Recinists and thereby bolster his forces. Soon, event the Sons of the Old North were coming down in droves to support the march to Wellston. Prominent heroes of the war in the Rockies now pledged their wholehearted allegiance to the Recinist cause; Recinos himself would have several photographs taken of him with them.

Anti-air guns were looted from the burning husk of Burgoyne and spread fairly evenly throughout the militaristic caravan that composed the fleeing Recinists. Several locomobiles, the larger ones, were designated to carry airmobiles when not in usage, and had construction machinery to make ramshackle airstrips in the towns in which they settled. This soon proved to be untenable; the planes were often stuck in the mud on said landing strips, and fuel was hard to come by. By the coming of the new year all aerial tactics were abandoned entirely and they relied totally on the coverage of the Jeffersonian air force to ward off loyalist attackers.


Kramer Associates enters the North American theater

In fulfillment of the fears of the Loyalist Mexican government, Portillo in particular, General Recinos was able to reach his base in Wellston, Alaska, by early January of 1979. This was nothing less than a titanic migration, with supporters of Recinos praising him as the new "hero of Marathon" and Adrian Mercator dubbing him a "titan of our age, a survivalist who guarded his men with pride and with conviction against a horde of tyrants."

However, it was the nuclear missiles that were in Wellston that were the most worrisome to all involved except the Recinists, who saw them as their salvation. In a declaration sent to major news vitavision channels, Recinos said that

"I can destroy Mexico City, Guadalajara, Torreon, Puerto Hancock, whenever I deem it necessary. President Portillo, I highly advise that you give ample thought to the possibilities of what could happen very soon. Do not cause more wasteful deaths; you have done so amply. Could you give peace a chance, Portillo, and punish those that deserve it? Peabody is a scoundrel and a Wordenist. Do not trust him."

This declaration, as long and rambling as it was, did not send the Mexican government suing for peace as the rebellious General had intended. Indeed, the immediate issue was to order as many civilians as possible to prepare for a possible nuclear strike. Bunkers constructed in the last decade during the Mercator administration (who was very much afraid of a preemptive North American or British strike) were being refurbished for immediate usage.

As this frenzy enveloped the United States, Mexico City received a message from the Chinese ambassador in that city. The ambassador, Kao Zhiyuan, informed Portillo that Kramer Associates could no longer maintain neutrality in the North American conflict.

Salazar had been following the war with great interest, and saw Recinos as a threat to "human civilization at large." If he were to use nuclear weapons on Mexico City, for example, he thought that it could spiral into a "worldwide conflict" that would destroy any trace of life on Earth.

As Portillo had expected (and remarked that "Kramer Associates never fails to please"), Salazar had spies in the Wellston facility before its seizure by Recinos; after that the spy had been caught and executed. To counter what he deeply feared as an apocalyptic possibility, submarines armed with nuclear weapons loyal to Kramer Associates but nominally under the command of the Philippines and Taiwan were deployed throughout the Pacific Ocean with a particular confluence around the areas near Wellston to either destroy the facility or shoot down missiles launched from it.

Kao proposed a joint course of action, the exact details unspecified, between Mexico and the Kramer affiliated states to take down Recinos. Portillo famously said the following:

"Kramer Associates is my nation's longtime enemy but it does not want to destroy us. Recinos clearly does. If I must make a deal with the devil to save millions of lives, I most certainly will."



The Jervisport Landings and the North American Advance

Almost immediately, Wen Pan of the Federation of China called for an emergency meeting with President Portillo in Mexico City, to which the latter agreed. Wen, the closest ally of Carl Salazar, was now in complete crisis mode in regards to the situation regarding General Recinos. In an address to the Chinese Congress, he said that "we may not have been involved in the North American war, but we are now very much involved by necessity as per our existence as human beings. We can no longer allow such potential butchery to go on without action."

Cynics, however, disputed, and continue to dispute, the insinuation that the Kramer Associates and Chinese intervention into the war were solely due to humanitarian reasons. North America had been an ally of Kramer Associates and had, unlike Mexico, allowed the corporation to operate within its borders. Salazar seemed to be currying favor with Portillo, who would hopefully permit Congress to lift sanctions on the corporation. Additionally, both Kramer Associates and the integrity of the United States of Mexico were threatened by the wave of rising Neiderhofferists in Europe and in Chiapas, thereby forcing an alliance.

In Mexico City, Wen offered Portillo the usage of Chinese military forces to help wrest Alaska from the Recinists, who had divided once reaching Wellston and taken control of most of the northern reaches of the state. Once there, they fortified the southern part of the state to fight off the impending loyalist armies, under the command of Norris and Bermudez. Seeing that Alaska was becoming a fortress, he consented to it provided Congressional approval. After a night of angry, screaming debate, both houses of Congress approved the usage of Chinese forces on Mexican soil.

Despite the war with Germany in Russia, China still had a massive army left over from the War of Chinese Unification (itself a front for the Second Global War) and so it could afford to allow some forces to be deployed in Alaska. Under the command of the Chinese Marines, General Zhen Jianyu landed at the town of Jervisport, Alaska, on the highway route to Wellston, to the complete surprise of the Recinists. Air support was provided by the airmobile carrier Shangdi, a carrier made by Kramer Associates engineers made on contract for the Chinese government.

This had the advantage of complete surprise to the Recinists, who were in no way expecting Chinese intervention in the conflict. Forces were moved from the south to Jervisport to fight off the Chinese who were marching, intently, towards Wellston. Simultaneously, a large column of terramobiles under Norris' command were deployed in the area where the Recinists had withdrawn, pushing northward and triumphing at the battle of Kenilworth.



The Battle of Wellston

By March 1979 the Chinese and the Mexicans were coming dangerously close to Wellston, Alaska, far too close for the likings of General Recinos. His movement was all but destroyed except for that of Jefferson, which was causing its own problems for the Mexican war effort. However, President Portillo had authorized Norris and Bermudez to put subordinate commanders in charge of containing the Jeffersonians and instead concentrate on Recinos. "It is simple," said Portillo to skeptical members of the Mexican House of Representatives. "Recinos has nuclear weapons and the Jeffersonians and the Chiapan Niederhofferians do not. Our very survival rests on our triumph over Recinos."

Air strikes over Wellston were able to destroy armored columns guarding the town, but the actual base had been heavily fortified with anti-air weapons. Chinese Marines were busy destroying partisans outside the town, and the air strikes continued from the aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Alaska. Such air strikes had allowed the forces under Bermudez and Norris to advance to the point where they had almost completely surrounded Wellston, with a force twice the size of that of Recinos. The end seemed to be drawing near.

Recinos ordered his most experienced terramobile pilots to engage the loyalist forces outside of Wellston in a last ditch effort to destroy the enemy that was encircling him. These vehicles were able to do significant damage to loyalist terramobiles and artillery platforms before succumbing to the power of Chinese air strikes or Loyalist anti-armor guns.

In a streak of pure rage, Recinos ordered the launching of every single nuclear weapon that he had, confirming the fears of President Portillo. As per the Mexican nuclear program's results, he had ten bombs; three of them landed on Loyalist positions outside of Wellston, killing much of the force sent to destroy him. However, both Generals and significant portions of the force survived.

The other seven nuclear bombs were sent towards Mexican cities. Anti-missile airmobiles were scrambled from bases in California and the Old North to intercept them. Additionally, it was revealed that Kramer Associates had stationed antimissile submarines in the northern Pacific Ocean to act against this very possibility.

In the most harrowing few minutes that the world had ever known, the missiles were intercepted. Not a single one destroyed a single city.

With those gone, Portillo directly ordered Norris, Bermudez, and the Chinese Marines to advance on the base. The remnants of Recinos' forces either fought to their deaths or surrendered, with the former slightly more in number than the latter.

When they reached his compound, Recinos was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.



The Reorientation towards Jefferson

With the final destruction of the Recinists in Alaska, the Republic of Jefferson was the main opponent of the continued existence of the Mexican state and the current ideological makeup of the Federation of North America. The ruling triumvirate, in accordance with the 19th century structure of government, Adrian Mercator, Thomas Gilmore, and Frederick Hawkins, had fervently beaten back pro-Mexican opposition in the state, having them arrested and thrown into prisons in the middle of the Jeffersonian desert.

Jefferson had long been a source of eager recruits of the Mexican military, and the majority of the soldiers that had fought in Jefferson and in North America were simply unable to accept the remilitarization of their northern neighbor; as such, they were to go independent of Mexico, or so they had deemed. Mercator, the unquestioned leader of the three Governors, was willing to go to the world and demand respect for the Jeffersonian cause, accepting a French delegation to the ruins of Jefferson City to demonstrate his cause. Such a visit did not, as he had hoped, spurred on French recognition of the State of Jefferson, but nevertheless strengthened international support.

Mexican President Portillo, after the Battle of Wellston, had issued a draft order throughout the United States to call up thousands more men to fight against the Jeffersonians, hoping to "end this fratricidal war as soon as possible." The forces in Alaska, supplemented by loyalist Alaskan men, began moving southward to Jefferson. Rexford Peabody, both a President and a General, began moving large forces from North America to the border with Jefferson to continually provide pressure upon the rogue federal subunit.

However, the greatest boon to the Loyalist side was the various Central and South American nations that had fought alongside Mexico against North America. Seeing North America defeated did not deter them; indeed they continued to fight in Alaska and in Jefferson with pride and loyalty. President Ignacio Santiago of Guatemala said it best:

"Mexico is our staunchest ally, and in our greatest hour of need, we must be there for her as she has been on our side against the world for years."

There was also token Chinese support for the Mexicans, mainly in technology. Kramer Associates had, to the surprise of the world, reopened relations with the Mexican government. Portillo was not the firebrand anti-Kramerite that Mercator or Lassiter had been; indeed he was willing to propose bills that would decriminalize Kramer holdings in Mexico. However, the Chinese marines and airmobile carrier that had been deployed to Alaska were withdrawn and subsequently used to attack Siberian emplacements in Chukotka and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Still, supplies brought in from China, which were in vast quantities, were used to arm Mexican troops. It seemed as if Jeffersonian capitulation was inevitable.



The Splintering of the Mexican Progressives

As Presidents Portillo and Wen negotiated in Mexico City, later to be joined by Salazar, the various members of the Progressive Party, by this point the ruling party of a single party state all but in name, were becoming hesitant about their popular mandate. Many of these, led by Eduardo Gallegos, a member of the house of representatives from Durango, were disgusted with the suspension of the 1977 Presidential elections as well as the current policies towards the economy of Chiapas, the poorest state in the United States and the site of rebellions influenced by France.

Gallegos began decrying Portillo as a tyrant and a charlatan, due to the renewal of relations with Kramer Associates and its ilk, including China, Japan, and many other nations under its sphere of influence. Portillo had for the first time in decades allowed Kramer Associates to operate within the borders of the United States. Since it had been outlawed, Kramer Associates was the preferred enemy of Mexican Progressives, which were keen to oppose corporate control of the government which was seen in the United Kingdom and in the Confederation of North America, as well as in other nations of the United British Empire.

Gallegos began calling for a peace settlement with the rebels in Chiapas, as he felt that their plight was one made through neglect from the Mexican federal government. In reference to Hipolito Narvaez, the leader of the rebellion, Gallegos said that he was a "man who does what he does not out of bloodlust but out of desperation, desperation born out of our own cruelty towards his state." Soon, other radical progressives of Gallegos' nature began calling for land distribution to be undertaken by the Mexican government and the state government of Chiapas.

Seeing the toll of the war on Durango and on Jefferson, Gallegos insisted on opening negotiations with the State of Jefferson and its triumvirate of leaders Adrian Mercator, Thomas Gilmore, and Frederick Hawkins. The few remaining loyalist Jeffersonians in the Mexican Congress were sympathetic to this; they did not want to see Jefferson "subject to the ravages of war that France and Britain have seen recently," said Saul Caldwell, a representative of Jefferson.

In March 1980 these legislators formally renounced their membership in the Progressive Party and founded the Mexican Peace and Justice Party, deliberately taking ideas from the North American party of the same name. "James Volk and his comrades are good men," said Gallegos in the party's opening convention in Tampico, "and we are faced with a similar cause: warmongering and oligarchy." There, he refined the cause of peace and justice, and swore to negotiate with both the Jeffersonians and the Chiapans.



The Battle of Krasnoyarsk

After the victory at Irkutsk the Chinese began mounting their advance towards the next city westward, the city of Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei river. The German forces were now in retreat, and General Broeckman was deeply worried about the advancing invaders; he was afraid that he would be executed by Chancellor Schottenstein like the leaders of the German forces during the French uprising. He had called forth reinforcements from the remaining nations in the Greater German Empire, including substantial deployments from the Associated Russian Republics.

The last decision brought controversy; Broeckman and Schottenstein had at first decided not to used Russian troops due to their perceived incompetence. Initially, the fight against the Siberians, and now the Chinese was considered to be a German fight and a German fight alone. This reorientation was deeply troubling to many in the Diet in Berlin; it seemed as if it were an admission of their own incompetence. "We face the possibility of being the laughing stock of the world," said Ludwig Schumacher, a member of the Diet from Freiburg. "We had better win at Krasnoyarsk or all is lost."

The above remark, and the above concerns, were not made public until decades after the war. Broeckman, once he saw the Chinese approaching Krasnoyarsk, held most of the non-German troops a good few miles to the west of the city to trick the Chinese into advancing with a lesser force than they had expected.

General Jia Chaoxiang had anticipated a small fight; what he had gotten was something far more worrisome. The non-German troops under Broeckman's control had subsequently moved to flank the approaching Chinese forces, and had been successful in moving to their locations undetected. Broeckman send the German air service's fighters to scour the area to destroy any Chinese scout craft; only a few were downed, for there were few sent.

As the Chinese walked into the trap, German bombers were sent from Krasnoyarsk to drop conventional bombs as well as stickzine over the Chinese forces. Realizing that they did not have adequate countermeasures, Jia ordered a retreat eastwards to regroup. Then, the auxiliary forces attacked Jia and surrounded him. Jia and his staff were taken as prisoners, and the Chinese advance seemed to have ground to a halt.



Gallegos and Narvaez

In May 1980, the war-wracked United States of Mexico received yet another shock to the system when Eduardo Gallegos, the leader of the Mexican Peace and Justice Party, met with Hipolito Narvaez, the President of the Egalitarian Republic of Chiapas in the small city of Tapachula, in the southern part of the state on the Pacific Coast. This was a declaration of the shared commitment of "social justice" and the equitable redistribution of wealth and land that Neiderhofferism demanded.

Immediately, the international press jumped upon this meeting as not unlike Lassiter meeting with Shamba Pandya some years beforehand. Bernard Holton, a British columnist, denounced Gallegos as "a radical who willfully ignores the chaos in France that is so eagerly being exported to Chiapas." Indeed, that was the reaction in large portions of Europe; both Britain and Germany, enemies of the Egalitarian France, were horrified with the overtures to what they deemed as a grave threat. Ambassadors in Mexico City, having been reinstated after the war, were pleading to Portillo to clamp down on the Chiapan Niederhofferists, lest Chiapas lead revolutionaries in Latin America to rebel and chaos like what happened in France.

Portillo had at first been willing to accept the existence of the Mexican Peace and Justice Party, but now he had serious misgivings; he ordered the forces guarding Mexico City (stationed there since the failure of the North American landings at Veracruz) to arrest all members of the Mexican PJP for "treason" due to their association with the government of Egalitarian Chiapas. "This would only give them legitimacy," said Portillo in a speech to the Mexican House of Representatives. Indeed, the French, already deeply interested in the situation in Chiapas, were now beginning to funnel increasing amounts of aid to the fledgling revolutionary state.

During his stay in Tapachula, by that point the Egalitarian Chiapan capital city, Gallegos also met with Jerome Clermont, the French ambassador to Chiapas, and discussed the "shared bond of social justice" that the MPJP and the Egalitarian Republic of France shared. When asked about why he was so willing to consort with what the world held to be terrorists, he responded that there was "no reason not to open dialogue with those that could very well bring about peace."



The Battle of San Cristobal

San Cristobal, Jefferson, was among the larger ports of the state, on the Gulf of Mexico. Before the Second Global War San Cristobal had become even more economically dominant; it was among the country's largest ports, rivalling those of Chetumal, Veracruz, and Tampico. The city was bombed by the North Americans during the Second Global War with stickzine; by the time of the Mexican Civil War the city was a shadow of its former glorious self.

Now, it was within distance of the Mexican loyalist army. The Mexican forces under Fulgencio Villanueva were rapidly approaching the city and they were hell-bent on taking that port. Jefferson was receiving aid from European countries who did not particularly care who ran the state so long as its vulcazine resources could be tapped and used in European locomobiles. This trade was what was keeping the Jeffersonian war effort afloat; if that trade could be cut, they could be destroyed.

Stephen Cuthbert, the highest ranking Jeffersonian General and a personal friend of Villanueva's before the Civil War, was guarding the city. The Jeffersonians had a distinct advantage in their war materiel; many prominent Mexican arms manufacturing and design firms were based in the state and either defected or had their assets seized by the government in Jefferson City. At San Cristobal were deployed new artillery guns that were rolled out of factories in San Antonio, one of the greatest cities of the state and a powerhouse of the Mexican economy. Even more fearsome were recently debuted terramobiles designed for combat against the best that the North Americans had to offer.

Mexican terramobiles advanced upon San Cristobal as artillery and aircraft pounded the city, targeting in particular the port. Heavy terramobiles of the Jeffersonian defense exited the city to engage the Mexican terramobiles; in addition to air support, the heavy guns, something that no Mexican terramobile had at their disposal, made short work of the enemy.

Bombers left the air bases to the north of San Cristobal and began pounding the Mexican force. As the Mexicans retreated another Jeffersonian force, based in Petersburg, to the west of the port, made their advance on a retreating Villanueva. This move was directly informed by Broeckman's actions at the battle of Krasnoyarsk; the Jeffersonians had defended a major city from their former masters in Mexico City.


The Battle of Tapachula

Tapachula, a port city on the southern coast of the state of Chiapas, was one of the loyalist holdouts in the state; its garrison was commanded by Brigadier General Fernando Greiner, a Duranguense military man who had fought in the repulsion of the North American landings at Veracruz and the Battle of Tlanaplanan. Greiner had turned Tapachula into a fortress city; he was desperately afraid of the burgeoning army of Hipolito Narvaez, who had already taken large towns not far to the north of the city, as well as the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula.

Meanwhile, Jerome Clermont, the Ambassador of France to Chiapas, had only recently worked out a deal with Narvaez to provide French-made weapons to the Chiapan rebels. After Narvaez had met with Gallegos, Clermont had reached a deal where France would gain significant amounts of Chiapan natural resources in exchange for the Chiapans receiving high-quality French weaponry (itself based off of German designs used by the pre-Revolutionary government under Tremblay). This weaponry would have to be delivered by aquamobile (the presence of the Mexican Antilles prevented the usage of overwater shipping; subaquatic shipping would have to be used - these aquamobiles were formerly in the possession of the German navy at ports such as Bordeaux, Nantes, Montpellier, and Marseilles before the triumph of the Egalitarians); the first of these shipments was deposited at Chetumal in July 1980. Soon enough, the armies of Narvaez were ready to attack Tapachula.

Using captured Mexican artillery and aircraft, the Chiapan Neiderhofferists began attacking the city; however they were in such low quantity that Greiner was able to repel them. What Greiner did not have was manpower; even with reinforcements from the surrounding villages, the Neiderhofferists were too powerful. Many infantry detachments defected to the Neiderhofferists when they arrived; this gave them control of terramobiles and warmobiles that could go toe-to-toe with the Mexican forces there.

The city of Tapachula, however, was still heavily defended. To break these defenses, radical Neiderhofferists would, echoing the Indian Liberation Movement's attack on Burgoyne, load locomobiles with explosives and suicidaly ram their vehicles into the fortifications, destroying key defensive points and allowing the Neiderhofferist infantry to enter the city. Armed with weapons that rivalled those of the Mexicans, they were able to take the city center; Greiner was killed by a Chiapan sniper. Tapachula would be Chiapan.



The Neiderhofferist Tide in North America

Among the disaffected of North America, often those with little in the class-divided society of the nation who had lost a good deal with the war and occupation, the Neiderhofferist ideas sponsored by the Egalitarian Republic of France were very attractive; they had made this clear in the riots in Norfolk, Virginia, Gerald Tompkins had established his small republic in Norfolk, but that was crushed by Mexican troops sent from Burgoyne to help the local government.

This quelling led to a brief underground flight of Neiderhofferist groups, who subsequently began organizing a more general uprising throughout the Southern Confederation, with sister organizations in Indiana and the Northern Confederation. A covert resistance, dedicated to the hassling of the civil government and military, both North American and Mexican, was made to promote these goals; these included derailing of trains and the destruction and hijacking of the various convoys moving throughout the country.

With the success of the Chiapan Neiderhofferists at the battle of Tapachula, Tompkins, now the leader of the national organization, saw the time to strike against what they saw as oppressors, North American or Mexican. Returning to Norfolk, Tompkins launched the first of the second wave of Neiderhofferist rebellion, with a massive locobomb attack on multiple government and military locations throughout the city.

Similar attacks, often using locobombs, were used in terror attacks in cities such as Michigan City, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Hillsborough, Rockbridge, and many others throughout the country. Stolen stickzine containers from North American convoys were used to particular effect; a locobomb equipped with the substance destroyed the Northern Confederation capitol building, and another destroyed a Mexican military garrison in Burgoyne.

With North America in chaos, Rexford Peabody withdrew all forces in the Jeffersonian theater to the Southern Confederation to help the pacification of the region; the first major city to be cleansed was Dorchester, Southern Confederation, a city on the Gulf of Mexico.


The Peace of Henrytown

Henrytown by 1980 was a bombed out city, having suffered in the war against North America, and as it was being rebuilt, airmobiles commanded by Mexican Air Force General Reynaldo Benavides pummeled the city with conventional explosives, destroying even more of the settlement. Jacob Groton, a Jeffersonian soldier hailing from the city wrote his memoirs in 1992 and said the following on its destruction:

"My home was in ruins. My neighborhood was in ruins. My whole damn city was in ruins and it was horrifying. Now that not only the North Americans, but also the nation that I had pledged my service to, was purposefully razing it to the ground, was just utterly, utterly revolting."

However, Adrian Mercator was being forced to consider a new threat: Neiderhofferists in the northern part of the Republic. Mostly poor Anglos and equally poor Mexicanos in that region, they had become disenchanted with both Mexico and Jefferson due to their lack of punishment of North America to the point that they had preferred; they supported nothing less than the partition of the country and its reorganization to be more democratic according to their conceptions thereof.

There, Gerald Tompkins, the leader of the Neiderhofferist rebellion throughout the North American Republic, saw an opportunity to spread the revolution to Mexico and thereby eventually engulf the entire hemisphere, and then the world, in a wave of Neiderhofferism that would bring about a new world order of peace and equality. He began ordering the men and materiel that had organized themselves in the western parts of the country to begin siphoning off their own weapons and fighters and bring them to the organized Neiderhofferist groups in Jefferson.

The first uprising was at Albany, a small town in the northeastern part of the state, where disaffected Jeffersonian soldiers destroyed an army depot, hijacking what was needed and setting the rest aflame. Then, the women and youth of the town formed their own Jeffersonian Workers' Army, which had a kinship, but not a direct administrative link, with the North American Workers' Army. From there, the uprising spread to towns like Stamford, Ramsgate, Lifford, Nuneaton, and Harrelsonville, which all happily joined the army.

As this new threat grew and grew, the Jeffersonians, seeing the Neiderhofferists in Chiapas, were beginning to see the revolutionaries as the real threat; France was yet another boogeyman. Envoys from the Jeffersonian government to General Villanueva called for peace, and the "joint combatting of this anarchistic enemy."

Villanueva telephoned Mexico City, asking for someone to send a high-ranking diplomat to negotiate. President Portillo send the new Secretary of State Stetson Alvarez to do so; Mercator sent his Secretary of State Jeremy McNeil. Alvarez and McNeil would meet in Henrytown to discuss a cessation of the war.

The Treaty of Henrytown ended hostilities between Mexicans and Jeffersonians and allowed for the reincorporation of Jefferson into the United States of Mexico with the caveat that Jefferson could keep its old-style constitution and that more troops would be moved to North America to keep the new government there in line (it could not be abolished; it was understood that the Peabody government could serve as a valuable ally against the Neiderhofferists).

On July 8th, 1980, the Peace of Henrytown was signed. The Mexican Civil War had ended, and the American Wars of Revolution began.



Mercator and Portillo

Adrian Mercator had inherited his father's disdain for radical Neiderhofferism; during his rule as President of Mexico, small-time rebels had been put down violently to the condemnation of North America, Britain, France, and Germany. Adrian, however, saw that the current rebellions throughout the continent as something that international opinion could go to hell over, for all he cared; this was important enough to the stability of the Mexican state that they were not important. This was not even necessary; Germany and Britain both sent their agreement in fighting the rebels in Chiapas and in North America. North America, as one might expect, was either under the de facto control of the Mexicans or hotbeds of rebellion. France was the foremost leader of the Neiderhofferist powers, and therefore was by default an enemy.

Portillo had suspended the 1978 elections and therefore had given up any pretense to democracy in Mexico; national security, he insisted, was too important to allow for the "niceties of peacetime" to flourish in times so pressing. He was, however, at first hesitant to order the arrest of opposition members of the Mexican Congress; Eduardo Gallegos, the leader of the Mexican Peace and Justice Party, therefore walked free. Portillo tried to maintain that the country respected civil liberties, and allowed the occasional protest in Mexico City and in the state capitals of all states excepting Jefferson and Chiapas, two areas of great conflict.

Mercator changed this. Within the state of Jefferson, he ordered the former army of the independent state, now within the confines of the Mexican armed forces once more, to arrest all those who opposed the war effort, and then to completely obliterate the Jeffersonian Workers' Army, which had seized control of northeastern towns. "Give them no quarter," he insisted, and the Army did so; vitavision reporters showed the disturbing mass executions of Neiderhofferist fighters in that region of the state to the world.

Long conversations over telephone between Portillo and Mercator led to the former adopting the policies of the latter. After the Battle of Stamford, an important battle where the Jeffersonians slaughtered many Workers' Army soldiers and their families, Portillo ordered the arrest of Gallegos and other members of the MPJP. From there, he ordered the military to begin equipping bomber airmobiles to drop stickzine onto Tapachula, to begin the long and painful reclamation of Chiapas.



The New Granadan Revolution

General Quintero Orozco, a New Granadan military leader who had sided with the loyalists in the Mexican Civil War, had been installed as the leader of his home country after its end. There had been rumors of a Neiderhofferist revolution brewing in New Granada for some time; in his loyalty, he was dispatched to take care of whatever rebellion that was fomenting. With Chiapas and now parts of North America and Jefferson in the Neiderhofferist thrall, Mexico City simply could not afford more hostile states in the Western Hemisphere.

General Orozco therefore returned with all the New Granadan forces that had previously fought North America and later the Recinists; they were battle weary and resentful towards their leaders, who were held to have embroiled them in a pointless foreign war with no real relevance to their own lives. The men who had fought were therefore easily radicalized.

In New Granada, the leader of the revolutionaries was, uniquely, a woman by the name of Martina Morales, the wife of a soldier who had died fighting at the Battle of Fort Lodge. She and other locals of her town had begun sabotaging the war effort during the war, and afterwards found enough support to seek the violent overthrow of the Mexican-backed state. She therefore followed in the footsteps of those like Allard and Villanueva in their revolutionary fervor, urging on the people of New Granada to what she called a "new democratic state."

New Granada was a very much aristocratically dominant state, where the large landowning families had an overwhelming representation in the government at large. Land reform was a common populist rallying cry, but it had gone mostly unheeded. When Morales' voice was heard, the New Granadan peasantry rose up in revolution, smashing the mansions of the landowners and tax collectors. In the cities, the similarly poor rose up, as did the disaffected soldiers.

The majority of the army rose up against the old regime, and Orozco found himself severely outgunned. He called in reinforcements from the neighboring countries, but they too were embroiled in rebellions; Neiderhofferism was now a rising tide, not merely a vague threat an ocean away.

Orozco was assassinated in Cartagena by an angry soldier who had no desire at all let him continue living; he was drafted and was therefore most angry at having had to fight in a foreign land. With Orozco dead, the people rallied around Morales, who assumed the mantle of President of the Egalitarian Republic of New Granada.



Neiderhofferists in Latin America

New Granada was far from the only Latin American state to fall to Neiderhofferism. After the foundation of the Egalitarian Republic of New Granada, President Orozco immediately opened up relations with Cordonnier in France, who responded to her overtures with great warmth. "It is an honor to see more and more sons and daughters of Equality rise up and take their place as free peoples," said Cordonnier, as he dispatched a new ambassador, Jeremy Arceneaux, a former factory worker from Nantes, to New Granada.

The two Neiderhofferist governments were united in their commitment to spread the Revolution. Latin America seemed like the most accessible place to do so, besides Africa, for a key reason: the recent war. As the armed conflicts in North America and Mexico dragged onwards and onwards, Neiderhofferists in these countries began surging in popularity, not least in the neglected status of the former soldiers, some of which had come home to be swapped out for new recruits.

To maintain good relations with its Latin American puppets, Mexico City had allowed for the return of certain troop formations in North America and Mexico to their homelands in exchange for new troops; it was a placatory measure more than anything else. The general populations of these countries were getting tired of fighting wars for Mexico City and therefore revolution, in some, seemed imminent.

Rio Negro, a poor country dominated by rich landowners even more so than New Granada, was the first after New Granada to fall to Revolution; Jose Nocito, their leader, received significant amounts of aid from New Granada and France. Soon enough, the national capital of Manaus was captured by a Workers' Army and an Egalitarian Republic installed.

Next, Quito fell to the revolutionaries; the local elites were far more powerful in terms of relative strength compared to Rio Negro, but they were not to win; the Workers' Army of New Granada was to invade the country in early 1981 and establish control. Similarly, the New Granadan Army invaded northern Peru, but fought to a standstill in the coastal city of Chimbote.

Attempts to extend the revolution further to Guatemala were unsuccessful; Mexican forces provided air support to the well-equipped Guatemalan army, which beat the New Granadans back into their own country. Brazil, Santiago, and the Argentine were rich enough to allow some minor reforms to take place without threatening the power of the elite, and so the Revolution did not spread there.

However, in April 1981 the people of Cuba, a country attacked by the North Americans with nuclear weaponry and therefore hurting from the devastation of the Second Global War, rose up against their Mexican-backed government and seized control of Camaguey, the capital of the country after the destruction of large swathes of Havana during the war. Now, the neglect from Mexico City, now preoccupied in North America and Chiapas, came to a head.

New Granadan troops landed on the island after bypassing Jamaica, landing at Santiago de Cuba, relieving the Cuban Revolutionaries from having to defend the city against loyalists. The New Granadans were victorious, and by May 1981 the entire island was in the hands of revolutionaries.


The Treaty of Chimkent

The war in Russia between Germany and China had grown to be a clear stalemate after the battle of Krasnoyarsk; there had been many pointless advances and retreats between Jia and Broeckmann. By June 1981, both sides were weary of war. The Germans were the first to call for a peace; using diplomatic cables through the Republic of Turkestan, a formerly German-aligned state that had now gone neutral, they were able to contact the Chinese government in Nanjing. Seeing the toll of war on China and Siberia, President Wen agreed to a tentative summit.

Chimkent, the capital of Turkestan, was chosen mainly due to its neutral location, centrality in comparison to both Berlin and Nanjing, and the sufficient infrastructure for the necessary arrival of several hundred members of the diplomatic staff for both countries. The president of Turkestan, Adelzhan Bayzhanov, allowed for such an summit and promised "necessary accoutrements" for the meeting. Both the German and the Chinese delegations were met with fanfare by the Turkestani military; it was the most prominent on the world stage that the country had been in years.

German Foreign Minister Adalwin Schickendantz, the replacement for Thorben Denzel after the sacking of Kiermaier, arrived in the city on June 2nd; Chinese Secretary of State Chong Tengfei came to the city a day later. Both met in the Presidential Palace of Chimkent, where Bayzhanov served as a neutral mediator between both sides.

Schikendantz wanted the restoration of the pre-war border, while Chong was given the instruction to ask for as far west as Krasnoyarsk. Eventually, trade concessions in exchange for the Chinese territorial demand, the Treaty of Chimkent was signed with a covert understanding beneath it that would define Chinese-German relations.

Neiderhofferism was understandably a threat to the integrity of the German state; France was at its borders. Similarly, there were Niederhofferist rebellions in Southeast Asia that were deeply worrisome to Nanjing. With the revolts throughout the Americas, it was clear what the new global enemy would be. China and Germany would fight it together.



Stanton and Tibet

Beauregard Stanton, the former genius North American general, had set up shop as the dictator of Tibet. "North America is lost to the Mexican hordes," he said to a Chinese journalist, "and now we have to rebuild democracy and discipline in another part of the world. My comrades in India have now done the same."

The previous government of Tibet had been authoritarian as well, and Stanton's assumption of power was really not that different. The main difference in the eyes of the people was that Stanton was distinctly foreign; riots erupted when he came to power in 1977, which were suppressed immediately. However, he was more willing to engage in policies that were supportive of the lower classes; he set up the country's first healthcare system and instituted reforms that improved water and sanitation systems in both urban and rural areas.

The intervention in the Chinese Civil War on the side of Jiangsu brought back an army that had been battle-hardened; despite Wen Pan's overtures to the contrary he refused to join the new Chinese state; however, he saw the benefit in allying himself with the new government in Nanjing. At the inauguration of the Federation of China in that city, he was one of the guests of honor (the other being Carl Salazar of Kramer Associates) and spoke highly of the accomplishments. At home, he did his best to promote the new Tibetan army as the epitome of democracy and the people's will. There were many celebrations of the strength of the army and air force; they were elevated to almost-godlike stature.

During the war between China and Germany in Russia, Tibet had considered sending a token force to support the Chinese, but the nation's Grand Council (a deliberate homage to the government of North America before its dissolution) refused to do so. Nevertheless it supported an appropriations bill that would send Tibetan-manufactured arms and ammunition to the Chinese forces. Additionally, a volunteer battalion of soldiers who eagerly wanted to fight was sent off, led by Henry Edmondson.

Neiderhofferism had taken root among many lower-class populations in Southeast Asia and India, but Tibet was a bulwark against the rising tide. The social programs undertaken by the Stanton government had been received with great enthusiasm, and therefore support for the new regime ran high. Additionally, the military professionalism with which he ran his new state (which was undeniable autocratic) led to a powerful secret police, which destroyed any agitator cells.



Chinese Reconstruction

With the end of the war in Russia that had been seen in both Nanjing and Berlin as pointless and unnecessary, the Chinese government could focus on the long and expensive process of rebuilding (although this was coupled with the concern of Neiderhofferism rising in surrounding countries). President Wen, in a speech in the city of Dalian in Liaoning province, said that "we must become strong and industrious, lest we fall behind other powers, or fall to foreign radicalism."

To meet such a plan, Wen, in conjunction with economic planners such as Chi Yunxu, Lu Zhiqiang, Fu Shanyuan, and others, announced the new industrial and agricultural program known as the "National Acceleration," defining its success in terms of sheer output, and more importantly, number of people employed. The sheer destruction of the civil wars that had wracked the country since the end of the First Global War was still omnipresent in the country, and had reduced much-needed infrastructure to rubble. The country was in a depression; there had to be government intervention.

Public works programs began in earnest; on the provincial level, local governments were given large amounts of funds to build whatever they felt needed to be built, be it homes, commercial buildings, infrastructure projects (bridges, dams, etc.), or anything local councils deemed were of importance. This nationwide endeavor was quite possibly the largest single economic plan ever set into motion; with a nation so large as China, the scale and scope of such a project instilled awe in the foreign advisors.

And the foreign advisors certainly came. Kramer Associates was sending large amounts of funds to the Chinese government to build up a conservative state; Neiderhofferism was deeply threatening to Carl Salazar and the men who ran the company. "We must bolster China, and make it rival Mexico and Germany in sheer industrial strength; if not, we will decay into irrelevance."

It was not merely Kramer Associates that was putting in money; the Mexicans too had an interest. What money that was not being sent to the war effort was sent to China to rebuild, for much the same reasons as the money from Kramer Associates.

By the middle of 1982 the reconstruction had made China working on a level that had not occurred since the end of the last century. Unemployment plummeted; the middle class boomed. The central kingdom was rising; power plants were built along the Yellow and Yangtze, and massive farms were constructed that yielded twice the pre-unification rate, considering all of the previous states' yields.



India under Military Rule

The military government, descended from the force sent out by Governor-General Theodore Worden had decided to take control of the country by force with the beginning of the Second Global War. Commanding General Charles Keating, chosen by the other generals after Stanton took command of Tibet, announced that they would be "assuming direct political power" in India to "root out the filth that was the Indian Liberation Movement."

Unsurprisingly, during the latter half of the 1970s, conscription orders were sent out throughout the country and impressed into service with a new "Indian Imperial Military." This force would be sent around the country, going through every lead to find and kill anyone associated with Shamba Pandya's movement. Notably, tensions between Hindus and Muslims were made of lesser importance, for the ethnic-British dominated command staff needed a single, cohesive force.

The civilian government continued to exist in theory but was subordinated to the 'counsel' of the military government. Governor Cyrus Greenfield, representing the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was still the nominal head of state, and Devan Mahajan, the civilian Prime Minister, became a secondary head of government to General Keating. There were protests at the suspension of elections, but nevertheless the government was apathetic. There was no change, no heeding of the popular will, not even acknowledgement. The only exception was when the protests turned violent, during which the military government would imprison and kill as many as necessary to set an example.

Those suspected of terrorism were given poor treatment; massive camps were established in the deserts and the mountains of the country, where they were subject to Spanish Water Torture until they confessed to involvement with the rump ILM, now consigned to similar backwaters. There were quick allegations of misconduct; low-ranking military figures, all from the UBE or CNA, were found to be creating bizarre methods of torture that were more for their own deviant pleasure more than anything else. Inmates in these camps were found to be living in squalor, with food and water denied on a daily basis.



The Rhenish Wall

In the months and years after the war in Europe, many refugees in France and the Netherlands attempted to escape to the relatively free nation of Germany (despite its less than stellar record in eastern Europe). The border with Italy was already fortified; very few people could get across to Lombardy and Piedmont. President Cordonnier had every reason to therefore stop the tide of emigrants in France escaping his purges, or so he thought.

The decision was made by Minister of the Interior Isaac Desmarais to construct a wall along the Rhine, with artillery emplacements ready to strike cities such as Saarbrucken if the need arose. This wall would not follow the course of the Rhine exactly; as it went northwards, it would straddle the border between the Netherlands and Germany, with local headquarters at Liege and Assen. Military bases would be established in these areas with the goal of preventing as many French and Dutch citizens from entering Germany.

The Germans were acutely aware of this; Saarbrucken became a host of flurried military activity, as did Oldenburg and Aachen. Forces being brought back from the war in Russia would therefore be stationed in the western part of the country; compared to the misery of the Russian winter, this was seen as an absolute relief.

German domestic politics was found to be very distressed, with the constant accusations of Neiderhofferism of those at the target of whatever screed a politician needed to concoct. Hysteria pervaded society, with many in literature and the arts being arrested or blacklisted for being "Neiderhofferist sympathizers." Being pro-French was something that could ruin careers.

There had been the Treaty of Eindhoven, but there had been no exchange of ambassadors. Berlin and Paris had none of the other's diplomatic staff in their city limits, and so there was no formal communication. They were essentially blind, walking into a confrontation that could very well scar the continent once again.



British and German Cooperation

German Foreign Minister Adalwin Schickendanz was sent to London by Prime Minister Schottenstein to discuss the possibility of a joint military strategy to effectively prevent revolutionary France from spreading their ideology to either country. "Britain is a valuable potential ally," said Schottenstein, remarking on the new natural enemy. "They must be courted." British Prime Minister Joseph Priestland, representing a riding in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, was cautious about the proposal from his former wartime enemy, but was interested nonetheless.

The British foreign minister, Fulton Parchester, a Liberal from a riding in Gloucestershire, had no reservations about such a proposal. "What Mr. Schickendanz proposes is best for peace in Europe and for peace in the world. If France is counteracted, war is counteracted. Revolution is counteracted, and revolution is hardly good," said Parchester, speaking to Parliament in May 1982.

The debate about such an agreement was vitriolic in parliament, with conservatives opposing it. "Germany was the country that dropped horrifying bombs on our cities," said conservative Member of Parliament Joseph McKinney, of a district in Aberdeenshire. Mass veterans' protests broke out throughout the country, with several thousand coming from all across the island of Great Britain to personally protest the vote at the Palace of Westminster.

Despite the protests, Parliament agreed to the bill, which established a relationship between the German and British armed forces. Soon, German advisors and engineers came flooding into the south of England, the most devastated part of the war, and began to rebuild what their own country had destroyed. "It is like rebuilding your little sister's block tower after you knocked it down," said a German engineer. "You feel guilty, but you have to do it."



The German-British Defense Agreement

The agreement signed between McKinney and Schickendanz, authorized by both Priestland and Schottenstein, allocated several billion Thaler to the British government for the reconstruction of the southern counties of England, as well as less funds for the rest of the country. The public was deeply divided; some were virulently angry at what seemed like a betrayal of the war effort during the Second Global War. Nevertheless, Parliament saw need to rebuild the country.

Almost immediately, ships in the northern parts of Germany, mostly the ports of Oldenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck, Kiel, and others on the northern coast of the country. These docked at Dover, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton, and other southern ports. These ships came bearing material for new infrastructure and workmen to build them, with all the accompanying equipment to do so. Among these were hazardous materials workers with the necessary countermeasures to the fallout that the nuclear bombs had strewn across the landscape.

Over the next two years the Germans would use both German labor and British local workers to rebuild the ruined cities of southern England. In return, however, the Germans would have access to British nuclear weapons information and would be positioning nuclear missiles in Sussex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex. These missiles were to replace some of the lost locations in the ruins of Strasbourg, which had been destroyed by British weapons during the war.

The most viable form of resistance was the resurgence of Workers' Armies in Sussex and Kent, which terrorized the new workers. Both Berlin and London sent in military forces to quash them; from there the militaries of both countries, under a German general, would guard the projects.

The reasons for the agreement on both sides were the shrewd application of realpolitik on the European situation. The French were the main enemy, undoubtedly, and the Netherlands, Catalonia, and the Basque Country were its main lackeys. With a strong Britain, France would have to fight a two-front war if it attacked Germany. Likewise, allying with Germany would allow a cheaper reconstruction in Britain.



The Militarization of Piedmont, Sicily, and Sardinia

In 1982, the Prime Minister of Italy, Sigismondo Morasco felt deeply fearful of Neiderhofferist France. Elected after the fall of the Serafini government, Morasco was of a military background, and had fought against the French in Provence, participating in several small engagements, but nothing to the scope of the Germans.

Morasco had denounced Neiderhofferism as a "great and terrible evil" in the world, that the Italian government was obligated to help Germany destroy. The naval base at Palermo, which had been established eight years before, was used in coordination between Italian and German forces during the recent war, and now assumed a point of significant importance. It was the countermeasure against the potential threat of French naval power in the Mediterranean; the French Navy had already commandeered old German bases at Montpellier and Marseille, and was preparing for whatever war would come next.

As if this was not enough, the Italians asked the Germans for the construction of a new naval base, this one at Cagliari on Sardinia. From there, another base was constructed at Genoa. However, it was to be around Turin where the most militarization was to take place.

Morasco sent out conscription orders throughout Italy, taking up new young men that had come of age during and after the Second Global War. Terramobiles, infantry, and airmobiles were sent up to the area around Turin, where new military bases under the command of General Libero Briguglio were being established, with airstrips that could launch planes that could bomb as far as Bordeaux, the spiritual home of the Egalitarian Republic of France.

Perhaps most worrisome, but not to the knowledge of Cordonnier in France, was the establishment of German nuclear weapons in the Aosta Valley, in the far northwestern reaches of Italy. Much like the weapons in Britain, these weapons were intended to bring the balance of power further into the Germans' favor.



The Victorian Revolution

The Dominion of Victoria was a state that was characterized by a degree of segregation between the minority European population and the majority indigenous African population. It was not government imposed; indeed the Prime Minister of the country was African, and so had several of his predecessors. Rather, there was a wealth disparity, with Europeans, despite being less then ten percent of the country's population, holding around seventy percent of the wealth. Europeans dominated the military and the civil service.

Fighting against the Mexican-allied forces in the Second Global War, a conflict which did not bring the same level of devastation to Africa as it did to North America or Europe, but did bring widespread social discontent to the country. The people of Victoria were angry at having to fight people culturally similar to them at the behest of those who were essentially alien.

Neiderhofferist ideas saw a headway in Victoria, which was undergoing its social troubles but was not wrapped in war as of yet. With the Second French Revolution, President Cordonnier saw potential to extend his revolution to Africa. Neema Lowassa, a former soldier and later a labor union leader, grew to be the leader of the movement after being educated and trained by French covert operations.

The Revolution began in late 1982, some years after the war, when workers in cities like Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu, Rutledge, Mzizma, and Middlesbrough attacked military bases, government buildings, and the like. The capital was established at Mzizma after that city was seized by the rebels, who established, on the French model, the Egalitarian Republic of Maziwa Makuu, the name derived from the many lakes in the country.

By the beginning of 1983, the Egalitarian Republic had seized around half of the country, with large amounts of covert French aid. With this, the loyalist government, led by Governor-General Donovan McTavish, decided to petition the British and Germans for help.



The intervention in Victoria

The civil war in Victoria, backed by Neiderhofferists and by extension France, was deeply worrying to Berlin, to Mexico City, and to London. The possibility of a member of the United British Empire falling to the revolutionaries was simply terrifying, something almost too alien for them to comprehend. It was not merely evil, it was unfathomable.

Immediately, German, British, Italian, Mexican, North American, and Australian delegates met in Sondershausen, in Thuringia, to discuss what to do with Victoria. Neiderhofferist states were already rising up in Africa, and the Mexican allies on the continent, such as Katanga, were already preparing to intervene. On February 2nd, 1983, the Sondershausen agreement was signed, creating a multinational force to bring peace to the country. "Now," said Chancellor Schottenstein, "peace must be achieved, by arms if necessary."

The state that was chosen to be host to the Coalition forces (echoing the nomenclature of the intervention in India; Mexico opposed it but did little to stop such a name from becoming official) was the Republic of Angoche, a Mexican ally that bordered Victoria to the south. The government of Angoche had been at war with Victoria during the Second Global War, and had invaded the southern part of the country, attacking towns like Bradford and Suffolk. With the war's end, the two governments signed the Treaty of Mzizma, ending the war in that portion of Africa.

Coalition troops began landing in the port of the city of Angoche, the Kingdom's capital, and immediately began establishing airfields in the countryside that would be used to aid Victoria from the forces of Maziwa Makuu. Simultaneously, the motorways that were built for civilian usage were awash in terramobiles headed to support the loyalists.

The first battle of the intervention was between German and Neiderhofferist forces at the small town of Harlington, south of Rutledge, the national capital. The battle was one conducted with a no-nonsense approach by the staff in charge; stickzine, dropped from airmobiles, was deployed almost immediately. Harlington was reduced to ashes and dust; it was there decided that the campaign would be as brutal as the Indian intervention.


The Battle of Letterkenny

Letterkenny was a small town settled by Irish immigrants in the central portion of Victoria; it was a key intersection of multiple highways in the country, and such a natural target for the forces of Maziwa Makuu, whose forces began advancing on it as soon as possible.

The attack began with tactics inspired by the Indian Liberation Movement (ILM) in India in the previous decade; the first attackers on the fortified Loyalist base in the country were destroyed by locobombs ramming into the fortifications, levelling the walls and turrets that had been established. From there, the captured weapons from Victorian depots and army bases were moved into position, shelling the base and warmobiles engaging the those of the Loyalists.

With the Victorian Commander, Ernest Randall, in full retreat, the commander of the Coalition, German General Melchior Hanselmann, a veteran of the wars in Britain and Russia, led a combined force of German, British, and Mexican detachments to engage the insurgency. Their weapons were superior to those of the old Victorian hand-me-downs from Britain or North America, and as such they initially seemed the easy victors of Letterkenny.

However, the Coalition was shocked by the arrival of an air force loyal to Maziwa Makuu; they were rebellious pilots from the Victorian Air Arm that had defected. They swooped in with French-provided planes (this was not determined until after the war) and destroyed the advancing column of armor that was preparing to fortify Letterkenny. Coming as a complete shock, the Coalition forces scrambled their fighters to shut down any air base that would be serving as a base.

An airfield was destroyed; from there, however, Maziwa Maku forces came scrambling from the villages, seen by scout airmobiles sent to scan the area. Hanselmann ordered his bombers into action, equipped with stickzine. He wanted nothing less than the destruction of the villages.

The entire area was razed.



Chinese Intervention in Vietnam

China was the one major non-Neiderhofferist power intervening in the Victorian revolution; its leadership, Wen Pan and Carl Salazar included, were worried about the potential discrediting of the newfound Chinese power. To do so, attention had to be turned down to Southeast Asia, where Neiderhofferist revolts, inspired by the revolutions in France, in Victoria, and in Chiapas, were gaining in popularity.

This was a threat, pure and simple, to the government in Nanjing. Wen selected gifted veteran of the Second Global War, Zhuang Rong, to lead a Chinese force to quell the uprising that had already taken Saigon and threatened to take the capital city of Hanoi. Dinn Ngoc Lanh, the Commander in Chief of the Egalitarian Republic of Vietnam, was personally leading the charge towards Hanoi.

Neither side had particularly good weaponry; Kramer Associates had dropped some reasonably good quality terramobiles onto the beaches of northern Vietnam, but these were not enough to stop the surplus Mexican weapons given to the non-Neiderhofferist rebels supplied by the Global Association for Peace during the Second Global War.

The invasion began in June of 1983, with Chinese bomber aeromobiles destroying rebel positions to the south of Hanoi; long range bombers made runs over Saigon. Larger terramobiles, such as the newly designed Fucanglong Terramobile, and other vehicles, such as the Yinglong self-propelled artillery, outclassed the Mexican-designed terramobiles in every way (which were themselves in short supply).

Yi Pengfei, one of the highest ranking naval officers in China, was sent to bombard rebel positions on the Vietnamese coast. Not prepared for a naval war, the rebel positions fell quickly and easily to Chinese naval forces, including the marines. These forces were able to clear a way for the army led by Zhuang to advance down to Saigon, capturing it in October.

Dinn was captured and executed by the Chinese forces, and Vietnam was established as a pro-Chinese state, which was brought in the Global Association for Peace as a Republic of Vietnam, not unlike its pre-Revolution status.



The Commonwealth of Egalitarian Republics

With the uprising in Victoria and the ongoing wars in Chiapas, New Granada, and Vietnam, Mathieu Cordonnier considered it necessary to strengthen the international nature of Neiderhofferism. "We need to stand firm against the economic oppressors of the world," he said in a speech to the People's Assembly in Paris. From there, the Foreign Minister of France Georges Gaudreau was instructed to "bring together the various Egalitarian Republics as one cohesive bloc in the world."

Gaudreau sent out word to his ambassadors to propose such an idea to the various governments that were of a similar governmental persuasion; all consented on the basis that France was their main backer against the imperialism of whatever power happened to be hostile towards them. On July 9th, 1983, the various Neiderhofferists coalesced in Paris in the new government's capital building, Hotel de Gambetta, to sign the Hotel de Gambetta agreement that would establish the Commonwealth of Egalitarian Republics. In this document, it was written that "no monarchy or aristocracy" would be permitted among the nations of the Commonwealth, which would be dedicated to the economic and social equality of all human beings.

It was, however, noted that the French were very much insistent on a military alliance, which, in the case of "sufficient cause and aggression" from imperialist powers (implicitly Germany, Britain, North America, Mexico, and China), would call for a "general war" against the aggressors. The delegation from Maziwa Makuu held that the multinational intervention in their country against the Neiderhofferists was "sufficient cause and aggression;" however, France said that the success of the movement in Chiapas, which was coming close to independence, New Granada, and in the European states of Catalonia, Euskal Herria, and the Netherlands, and from there concluded that the state of the Neiderhofferist movement was in good condition.

Despite this, the Maziwa Makuu delegation ultimately agreed to sign on to be a part of the Commonwealth, which chose Paris as its meeting place; the city was among the largest in the Neiderhofferist bloc and was sufficiently safe from German and British attack. Satellite offices were to be established in Mombasa, in Tuxtla, and in Cartagena to supervise the spreading of the revolution.

The Commonwealth had high standards for admission, but was insistent on bringing poor nations that were oppressed by the imperialist powers to revolution and thusly meet those standards. There would also be military aid to those currently fighting them, including Maziwa Makuu and Chiapas.