Piłsudski, Charles I of federated Danubia, and Trotsky's USSR.

von Lettow-Vorbeck and Lawrence, Allenby and von Sanders, Bose and Carleton Coon all proved that you could understand and even win over the natives!

Luxemburgists, Gramscians, Lukácsians, Picasso artists, left-anarchists, etc. The soviet-republic system not only strengthens Soviet rule but provides a mechanism for incorporating territories--coming in quite handy for Mongolia, Turkestan ... Poland ... Manchuria ... Germany ... The antireligious campaign in fact bogged down in Central Asia even in the 10s, with all the Red lamas and imams backing the Revolution.



Danubia brags how tolerant and cosmopolitan it is, and prevents its Balkan puppets from starving themselves to stay on the gold standard as OTL. Constantinople's busy using oil and conscription to shut up all the minorities, Greeks and Alevis and Kurds and Armenians and Jews loyal to the Sultan-Caliph first. Without Kemalism radical modernizers drift more for Communism, while the Porte calls the secularists bourgeois Francophiles and enacts a very Muslim land reform.



Berlin has a free hand in the Americas, backing

Peru's Óscar Benavides

Leguía (

Argentina's Yrigoyen a

Ramón Castillo

Marmaduke Grove

Ibáñez, and

Alessandri in Chile (though Santiago's pro-Britain)--reformists and reactionaries alike. Even "Red"

Cárdenas and Red Prestes warm up to Berlin and especially the Vatican, but OTOH a Red

pro-German Elías Calles agitates against Cárdenas, increasing Mexico’s Catholiciziation a little

Negrín kiboshes

Azaña starts courting London and the far right)

Urban IX and Pius XI

real Pétainist)



TTL's WWII starts because Ukraine's long been squarely in Moscow's sights: after Petlyura's weakness and Bandera's brief rule-by-killing-off-everybody (from Reds to priests), it's overripe for a big shift.

Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Constantinople, Moscow, Tokyo, and Nanjing all badly mistrusted one another regardless of supposed alliance or shared language or ideology: a massive war of some sort was inevitable. After some local incidents 1937-39, Britain and the USSR each attack Germany in 1940 in the name of liberating Eastern Europe. Under Royal Navy blockade Berlin turns east for resources, but two decades of racism and exploitation have left it very Soviet-friendly. The fighting bogs into brutal mechanized warfare on the Don and around Petrograd, and saturation bombing of China and Europe. Soon Berlin's wanting peace at any cost, with Moscow, Paris, and Madrid acting as its go-betweens in negotiation; Kosygin sends Trotsky to a dacha 1943. Zhukov's sweeping Central Asia--not just to divert London but to start winning the Great Game at long last. The Ottomans' Grand Army of Islam is bridging the Indus already.







Fighting alongside the IJA everything , casually brutal, bloodlessly violent, jealous, and brings out repressed , casually brutal, bloodlessly violent, jealous, and

in the English psyche. jingoistic in the English psyche. far closer to Washington's liberal democracy than the paranoid, hungry, strategic-bombed police state "back home." The Afrikaners are fully pro-German, adding Cape Town to the Commonwealth's reluctance to follow Britain, while Curtin's panicked by the alliance with Tokyo--the IJA's hordes of cannibal rapists are sweeping straight for Australia!

Even the wildly-militaristic and -Francophobic Churchill's embarrassed by London's rabid aggressiveness, bipartisan anticommunism shading into Blackshirt antisemitism, running street battles against the TUC, vicious MoI propaganda, and the Army removing Duplessis's dictatorship 1940. Rommel's too good in Morocco, Spain's a quagmire, and Crete's too fortified for the Commonwealth to make the now-fabled "breakthrough." Canberra and Ottawa arecloser to Washington's liberal democracy than the paranoid, hungry, strategic-bombed police state "back home." The Afrikaners are fully pro-German, adding Cape Town to the Commonwealth's reluctance to follow Britain, while Curtin's panicked by the alliance with Tokyo--the IJA's hordes of cannibal rapists are sweeping straight for Australia!

Paris is busy fighting off the RAF, trying to crack the Continental blockade, and to overthrow Salazar and then liberate Dublin like it's the 1790s again. In the Caribbean the French and Royal Navies have a "gentlemen's agreement" not to duke it out in America's "backyard pond," a hypocritical neutrality by all in the name of "freedom of the seas." The Americans are occupying Dutch and French Guiana at the requests of Paris and the Hague--giving London what it said it wanted, a neutralized and Anglo Caribbean. The most rabid British admirals are around Spain and shelling Algiers and Berber horsemen: the plan is to stay out of Europe, secure the Channel against Operation Otarie, and use African stalemates and RAF bombing to make Paris sue for a separate peace. Meanwhile, the Heer's busy with the Red Army but Berlin can ignore Britain with the Luftwaffe still flying. London gets only a smattering of rockets.



The war whimpers to an end 1944 on the Eastern Front, and Britain's tangled web of various executive committees and royal commissions and War Cabinets and Blackshirt block wardens agree to a cease-fire early 1946. (Dublin and Manchester have seen heavy rioting since 1945). The new United Nations brings together an isolationist US, an un-Stalinist USSR, a feebly socialistic EC, a tolerant, federal Danubia, and even creepy "military socialist" China and Japan moving toward corporatism. London's the isolated, rabid anti-socialist--the Britain of

British Israelism, the Boer camps, the Zinoviev Letter, Reginald Dyer, Orde Wingate, the Bengali Famine, the Very British Coup, Venona, and Mitrokhin forgeries OTL. They run a Gladio-like network, even bombing the EC headquarters in Geneva (annoying the real Templar wannabes in France). Even if Attlee wins his reforms would be limited by the new Blackshirty framework. Living off boiled-boot soup and propaganda posters in London's empty shell, Britain has only Japan now.





Here's my WWII given a Central victory (as opposed to a WWI stalemate ). But even a shorter WWI and a "lighter and fluffier" interbellum, without Stalin and Hitler and everyone taking the smartest option, is gonna be sinister: left/right accommodationism is as creepy as polarization. Everyone's M.O. is hypocrisy rather than slobbering militarism.: another Prussian defeat means a very Presidential and militarized Fourth Republic 1920. But after French and even German troops are used to crush councils of workers andand 1922-24 sees franc hyperinflation, Berlin can't pump its defeated foe for indemnities and financial leverage and theis re-militarized. Paris consequently knows Berlin can be squeezed, ironically mending relations. A rainbow of militarist socialisms and nationalist mysticisms quickly distract the French far right, while French merchants factor for the German market and the banks offer secret numbered accounts forgenerals and managers of Germany's cartelized industry. To stop Paris and Rome from squawking, Berlin concocts the European Community, ministerial meetings evolving into an elected Congress in 1924, paralleling the League of Nations and its mandate to make sure such a catastrophe never happens again. The EC pleases Washington, Briand (assassinated 1930), Keynes, the young Ameriphile Churchill,Mussolini's revanchism is a threat to the entire new balance of power and"votes" to cut itself up 1923: Paris would rather gain Aosta and control the new states than keep Italy's load around--and the defeated Italian Army would rather swear loyalty to Milan, Rome, Naples, or Vienna than face the combined workers' councils, Central Powers, USSR, and France. Moscow and Vienna make sure Gramsci doesn't mind the change (with money). Paris, Vienna, and Berlin also work to agitate the Catalans and even the Carlists and Asturians, trying to replicate their success in turning one peninsula into their playground lready.'s Continental empire didn't last long, but with Germany choking on everything it ever asked for the far right can hardly say that all reformists are traitors to the men in the trenches: they get more upset about Berlin not backing the Russian Whites. Luxemburg runs around pulling the Reichstag left: without bitter defeat and continued blockade-hunger there’s no real. The most reactionary junior officers are kept happy colonizing Eastern Europe or training French soldiers--encouraging the Gallic far right, while Berlin ironically prefers SFIO policies to keep the masses from revolting. Rural Poles and Latvians have to jump off the sidewalk if a German comes by or they get beaten. Without Wilson's talk of liberal democracy and self-determination (, ethno-nationalist mooing) and with unabashed pith-hatted Great Powers still around, anticolonialism is quite weaker: Crimean Tartars and Tanganyikans are just trying to survive (for now ...) With imperialism not half-discredited by WWI's inshape: the 30s is when exploitation got bad OTL, and it's worse here--it's safer to squeeze than Poland or India. To the Powers, the examples of's where it gets dangerous: the US either didn't enter WWI or didn't win, so London switches to "seething hatred" mode against Washington and Paris--but what it really wants is any war, any time against Germany. It stayed longest in Russia even as the Central "peacekeepers" pulled out; it's been robbed of the Holy Land and the Cape to Cairo railway, and as Basra and al-Hasastrike it rich London starts getting. Defeat means Edward VIII's marriage is forgivable, and His Fecklessness is very friendly to the far right; Labour putzes around and keeps the "pro-WWI aristo charity gala" mentality, leaving behind even the Fabians. The Empire's united by the Imperial Conference of PMs, then the (rather powerless) Great Chamber of the Commonwealth, first elected 1921 byBritish, Southern Irish and Zimbabwean, Canadian, Newfoundlander, South African, Indian, Ceylonese, Australian, and New Zealander subjects. The rest of the colonies quickly join in the elections. North Ireland's Ascendancy still teaches ZA Apartheid, but Malan never comes to power.After some time out in the cold over Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky turns the's Presidium into a directorate (vs. Mikoyan and other "Caucasians" favoring the Central Committee). Religion's much more brutally crushed than OTL. Stalin and Zhdanov are shot to public jubilation after a 1935 show trial, after Budyonny's forced to kill himself by the imprisoned Stalin; Yagoda and Yezhov keep climbing until they're shot 1941 and '43. With all the Old Bolsheviks around Soviet culture and politics is extremely literary, to the point of eccentricity: it's brutal and even more military-oriented than Stalinism, but not used to doingat bayonet-point. They can keep dog's heads going for three days now, to C.S. Lewis's disgust. Moscow sees no boundary to The Revolution, but there's plenty of room for entryism in Europe, plus a friendly rainbow of non-Sovietandso Ecuador sides with Britain),nd(enraging hungry Britain), andBrazil on everyone's doorstop makes the armies constantly smash "anarchists," Berlin struggling to keep the Latins from sending the Jews to disappear in the pampas . The. With no Moroccan experience or toehold for the Nationalists, the's in much safer condition. The cannythe more brutal anticlericalism (whereas. Much of this religiosity is done to annoy the neo-Bismarckian Prussians (Europe's religious divides surprised me by turning out far stronger TTL).(and the Bavarians) turn to Paris and Vienna against Berlin, and Paris is more pro-Catholic than OTL's Third Republic (to the point of getting, to better annoy Berlin. Even Communism is more sophisticated and not so yoked to the vicious "Red bourgeoisie" in Spain and Russia.Tokyo and London, long friendly, quickly ally as the most similar regimes in geopolitics, in military training, and in ideology. Inthe CCP's betrayed and the PLA destroyed as a conventional army after Chiang's execution at Xi'an , followed by the deaths of Mao, Yan Xishan , and Zhang Xueliang Chiang Wei-kuo can't do anything against the enormous Anglo-Japanese invasion, running the NRA on Soviet advisors andequipment. Konoe wants a fellow anticommunist authoritarian regime rather than keep wasting Japanese and collaborationist blood, effort, and glory groping towards Chongqing. Meanwhile Chiang, Jr., wants to get back in Moscow's good graces and reconstitute Zhang Guotao Zhu De , and Peng Dehuai 's PLA rather than patch anything up with Tokyo or Britain's puppet state in Nanjing. FDR can't send much from Manila but can negotiate with even Tokyo, and is friendly with Long Yun and Li Zongren (who Chiang plans to replace with Bai Chongxi ). The Soongs work with all sides, as usual. Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo are worthlessrunning a slave empire and selling prisoners to the Kantogun for experiments--but somehow the demoralized, corrupt NRA, unable to build any legitimacy, offers a worse bargain. Wartime India is doingworse than OTL's (though not as bad as TTL's China, which is better-off than OTL's). Tokyo's careful in its talk of "Asian liberation," keeping France and Germany's ports open in China but being "granted" French India's harbors. It's even more reluctant to provoke Moscow, even without a Pacific War eating up Imperial Marines, since even the likes of Vasilevsky could roll Manchukuo in like 10 days. Even the most delirious militarist's annoyed that the IJA is both out of Tokyo's control. All the Powers are being very cautious--London has to be careful with Washington, and Washington careful with London, Paris, andTokyo, which sees America as a simmering cauldron of race-hate and is riling up the Black people there.With a negotiated peace Moscow, Berlin, and Washington pulled back on the Bomb, so Tokyo and then London get it, followed by everyone else (but it's not an arms race: Ottawa controls more nukes than London at one point). America's buildup (without deployment against fascism) is something of a threat to post-New Deal democracy. Without the Holocaust causal racism against's okay, and fact is only further cemented in the 50s by the post-New Deal: the 50s are pushily domestic but not terrorized and. Neutrality has kept Sen. Bilbo and the Citizens' Councils very bold, and this sharpens the Civil Rights Movement more than OTL's Cold-War competition. Without a Cold War Red-baiting's much weaker--and typically sublimated into anti-Semitism. As for Africa, Britain and Japan are used to brutalizing their empires, and Germany and France aren't ready to stop milking it. The 60s arefor Africa, contrasting with Latin America's land reform. The French Fifth Republic is a somewhat-occult and entirely-fascist armpit that defines itself by Algeria, and ends up less friendly to Berlin thanis. Overextended Constantinople quickly loses its ability to keep a lid on anything in the 50s.