The Great War in 1905 Volume 4

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The Great War in 1905

by D Fowler

Volume IV

WWI in 1905 - Part XV: America Enters the War

President Hoover had had a hard time convincing Congress that Germany was a worthy ally. If the Soviets really threatened Britain in more than their colonies, public opinion had said, then wage war. But not now. This was something which gnawed at Hoover, as he was opposed, as he put it, "to entering into every conflict as a sort of world policeman." However, as the Soviets and others marched onward, he found it necessary to commit US funds and to at least consider committing US soldiers.

Public opinion changed late in 1929, as word reached the US of the Kaiser’s willingness to sacrifice. People could at least tolerate the Kaiser, and at least he appeared to be a Godly man now, though skeptics pointed to his attack on France and stated "if he was Godly, he converted on his deathbed." The fact that a child was running the vast German Empire now, in early 1930, also drew people to support war; in an America which saw the need to protect innocents, young Kaiser Karl needed American help. Besides, as a youth, he could be influenced by American ways.

Republicans didn’t wish to lose Congress, but a bill to declare war still managed to be ushered through, with the provision that it would only be against the Soviets. Others...well, they could be dealt with later.

On May 19, 1930, the United States formally enters what is coming to be known as World War Two. Japan is close to taking all of the Dutch East Indies, and Caucasian ships patrol the Persian Gulf. The British Navy, thanks to German help, has been able to sink quite a few, and is keeping the Suez open. However, it does the Allies no good if they own the seas and the others own the entire land mass between the Vistula, the Danube, and the Pacific Ocean.

A massive US troop build up is soon joined by other Latin American nations. Japan, sensing problems, quickly moves to guarantee Philippine safety - for now, anyway. They also complete conquest of Hong Kong and attack into Burma, with a purpose of linking with Caucasus somewhere in India.

Stalin’s forces, meanwhile, have overwhelmed British forces in the Gulf region, leaving Saudi Arabia alone for now, and have stormed into Afghanistan and the western part of British India. The British are having a very hard time quelling disturbances in India, and now must fear losing India not just because it is their crown jewel, but because strategically, they will have no stopping point between Australia and Africa for their troops. Britain, then, puts intense effort into keeping India British, while German maintains the thrust of the battle with the Soviets, soon the be joined by the Americans.

Stalin also pushed westward into what was left of Turkey, but remained very careful not to attack Greece. He knows the key to winning this war for him was to be in a position to strike the Soviets with everything he has after having made a peace with Britain. The British, sensing this, simply need to hold on a while. They are desperate for someone to help them fight Caucasus, but nobody will. Unless the U.S. could be persuaded.

Britain sought American help versus the Caucasians in summer of 1930, with Karachi under siege by Stalin’s forces. They argued that Stalin considered himself just as much of a Communist as Trotsky, and that he, in fact, could be the more dangerous dictator. After all, Trotsky had some labor camps in Siberia, and Soviet POWs were on occasion signing up for missions to liberate their homeland. However, those in Caucasus told horror stories of forced labor in horrible conditions, and of people left to die of thirst in the massive deserts of the Middle East if they refused to adhere to his commands. Caucasian POWs quite often volunteered to fight for the Allies.

Hoover and most moderate Republicans see this as little more than a colony grab, and consider it "not a high priority" to fight Stalin. However, it doesn’t matter. Soon, Stalin will make one very, very big mistake as his military enters the Kashmir region of India.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine was remaining neutral, but very terrified. If it attacks Caucasus, the Soviets are likely to attack and create a two-front war, and vice versa. They are waiting until Germany gets close enough to assist.

Finally, in October of 1930, the Germans manage enough reserve troops that they can land a force in Ukraine. The Ukranians decide they can protect themselves against Caucasus enough that they join the Germans and other Allies in an attack on "the soft underbelly" of the Soviet Union. Stalin would love to have some of the Ukraine for himself, but doesn’t need it yet. It can attack the Soviet Union from several different places when they got done with Britain. And, it seemed, with the growing discontent with the British and support from the Soviets and Caucasus, thanks to his propaganda, that that might be by the end of next year.

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WWI in 1905, Part XVI: Moo-lag Archipalego

The year is 1931

Vaudeville and early radio performers just can’t get enough of the jokes. Even in wartime, all of America is refreshed by two things - Babe Ruth, too overweight to be drafted, is still hitting home runs, and cow puns are flooding the nation.

It all stems from Stalin’s utterly (sorry) fantastic faux pas in the early fall of 1930. He begins to take all the cows away from Indian villages once his troops move in. Villagers note at first that the cows didn’t mind too much - they were used to humans, after all - but that the treatment of the herds was rather rough.

Caucasus continued on a stampede, fighting near Delhi as all of India seemed in a state of revolt, until January of 1931.

That’s when someone noticed the beef.

Stalin soon herd that word of his cattle rustling was spreading like gangbusters - that many Indians knew that cows were being killed for food. The un-thinking Stalin didn’t mind at all. Probably happy that I’ve found a new source of food, he reasoned. He considered himself a true liberator. So did the Indian people until they found that the animal seen by hundreds of millions as hosting something next to a god - and probably a close relative - was being slaughtered by the millions, and that they themselves were being fed beef.

After that, Stalin was in a pile of...a pile of...he was in deep.

Those in India began a massive recruiting campaign to get Indians to join the effort against the Caucasians. Suddenly, pro-Caucasus sentiment was wiped out at Indians bemoaned the taking of all of their cattle "for the common good." Stalin found himself waging a massive campaign against an army of millions. While the Indian soldiers were poorly trained and, in many cases, poorly fed, they readily fought to ensure the safe return of all of their cows. Stalin had managed to incite a holy war over cows.

Now, Stalin is reeling, and his constant harangue against Indian customs - and slaughter of Indians, as well - only serves to aggravate an already bad situation. He tries to enlist some Muslims - this works in some minor ways, but the problem is Stalin has been quite harsh on Muslims in his nation, too. He considers promising Muslims their own state, then backs off; recognizing that all the other ethnic groups he’s corralled will also demand independence.

Stalin’s army faces an immense battle for control of India, but even with Arabs filling his ranks, it is a losing one, as he gets pushed back to the border with Iran by the end of summer. Meanwhile, he has lost most of the chance he had to take parts of Ukraine. He pleads with the British for peace, but Britain will take nothing less than the entire Middle East, leaving only Stalin’s original Caucasus region.

Stalin chooses to keep fighting, deciding he now has enough cattle he doesn’t need Ukranian grain as much, plus he can join in against Trotsky at the end. Besides, he knows he is wearing down the British.

He is accurate in a way, but the British, Greek, and numerous smaller European nations mount an assault from the sea in April, 1932, and take Beirut and Tel-Aviv, with Jerusalem falling soon afterward. While these are areas with little oil, Britain is managing, finally, to retake some of the oil-bearing land.

In July of 1932, the British offer their own truce. Stalin may keep Kurdistan, but must surrender everything else in the Middle East. The British see the Soviet theater becoming much more treacherous, and they wish to let Stalin attack there. However, they also insist he may not attack the Ukraine at all, and must demilitarize after the war against the Soviets.

Stalin ponders this choice, then accepts. He badly wants to defeat Trotsky, and the British are allowing him that opportunity. Yes, he has shown a large number of Communist parties in Third World Countries that he is clearly not their friend, but he feels he can regain the stature he once held with them. On August 11, 1932, Stalin and an exhausted Britain sign the peace accord. Stalin’s troops will, after a few weeks, march north and take as much territory as they can.

The move seems odd, considering that Britain was just as concerned about Stalin, but they know he can’t conquer all of the Soviet Union. And, Germany has agreed that if the government of the Ukraine - including the figurehead Czar - are not backed by Stalin, they, the Germans, will join a renewed war against the Caucasian dictator.

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WWI in 1905, Part XVII - The Fall of Trotsky

Soviet forces had been ground down, but they were fighting a defensive war. Even when those in the nation of Ukraine were convinced to join by the Germans, the battle was not an easy one. Ukraine pushed out to its normal borders [of OTL’s 1998 Ukraine] by the end of 1931, as the other Allies concentrated their energies northward. However, Trotsky had not been as ruthless as Stalin, and therefore Soviet citizens weren’t rushing to join as quickly as they had before.

However, with the Allies hundreds of miles from Moscow in mid-1931, America’s full war machinery began to kick in. They landed at Vladivostok, and managed to take the Yamchatka Peninsula. The road was treacherous, but the USSR fought a two-front war now. American forces were glad to have been hardened in Siberia when the brutal toll of the battle of Trotskygrad [OTL’s Leningrad], fought over several months until October, 1931, resulted in an Allied victory but millions dead in house to house fighting.

The war is delayed during the winter months, as each side begins minor offensives. In the summer of 1932, however, the Kaiser’s forces, led by an excellent young general named Rommel who has risen through the ranks, roll to less then 200 miles of Moscow, aided in part by Stalin’s march north. When the Autumn of 1932 hits, Trotsky is starting to get hemmed in. He orders the government moved to Yekaterinburg. He even considers allowing the Czarist government to retain everything west of the Urals if he gets to keep everything east - which is quite a bit of terrain.

However, lack of fear of Trotsky also causes revolts to break out within his own party. He hasn’t run the Communists with the same iron hand that Stalin has in Caucasus, and soon, hard-line Communists vote him out of power, insisting on choosing a leader who will "fight to the finish, through the thousands of miles yet to go."

Trotsky refuses to heed the calls to step down; he insists on a "long march" much as the Communists had done recently in China. However, he is captured and shot by forces loyal to the hardliners.

Stalin’s forces are close to the northwestern most part of the Caspian Sea when they learn of this in the Fall of 1932. Stalin is elated. It is then that the Allies try to pull yet another rabbit out of their hats.

Stalin is a Russian, first and foremost. Yes, he formed his own nation of Caucasus, but carved it out of Russian territory, and has longed to rule all of now-Soviet Russia. What if they were to convince Stalin that the Communists wished to welcome him back? The egotistic Stalin is probably expecting just that, they reason.

It was worth the gamble, with the Allies stalled after having won the major battles of Smolensk and Archangel in September, 1932. The U.S. held a little more of Siberia, but not much, compared with how much would be needed. Allied intelligence, which has planted several spies among Stalin’s operatives, plants information that the anti-Trotskyites are really friendly to Stalin, and would welcome him back. Stalin lusts for the chance to take power there, and unite the Soviet Union and Caucasus. Yes, he prefers taking power by playing one side off against another, but if it could be gained another way, he would do it. And, he truly does have a few friend in Soviet Russia who would welcome him, though not many.

This amounted to a gamble for the Allies, for they didn’t want to let the Soviets get Caucasian oil. Yes, Japanese oil from the East Indies was getting to them, but in smaller quantities than before because of effective British fighting and the American blockade around several ports, including control of Vladivostok. The Soviet war machine was being ground down, and if the Allies were successful in their offensives next year, they could capture all or most of the Soviet war production, which was more and more centered around the capital of Moscow.

Stalin and dozens of top Caucasus Party leaders, together with thousands of militia, were transported into the Soviet Union, where they attempted, in November, 1932, to stage their own coup. As expected by the Allies, some Soviet bosses fought back, and another minor civil war erupted.

Because of the mass confusion, the Allies were able to stab Stalin in the back. British forces, most of them recruits from India, marched into Caucasus, just as they’d been planning on doing. Even if Stalin survived, he might still only be in control of the non-Caucasus part of the Communist empire. Another offensive was begun by Rommel’s forces despite the cold, his cunning victories earning him the nickname "General Polar Bear." Kaiser Karl took much of the credit for the idea; after all, his grandfather had been the one who came close to winning the First World War by starting the Turkish Civil War.

The winter offensive in Caucasus proved quite effective. Thousands joined together to cheer their "liberators," and Stalin’s generals were afraid to fight without direct orders from him. For all they knew, these were soldiers coming to help them.

By March, 1933, a new government had been installed in Kurdistan, and one appeared in Caucasus a week later. Stalin had been killed in a bloody coup attempt, after he had gained power of parts of the Soviet Union. Most of his supporters had also been killed.

It was a moot point, however, General Rommel’s offensive, together with the bombing efficiency of American air ace Charles Lindbergh and his crews, marched into Moscow in May, 1933, where house to house fighting practically destroyed the city. The Soviet Union lingered for a while, but by September, 1933, the leaders realized all hope was lost. They surrendered to the Allied governments, and were escorted by forces loyal to the Czar and the democratic Duma to prisons.

Mindful that Trotsky and others had committed treason by overthrowing the government, every one of the Communist leaders was killed. Russia, however, was in a shambles. It would take years for them to recover.

The young Kaiser Karl smiled gleefully as the peace proclamation was read. He hardly considered himself the victor, however.

Richard Strauss, who several years earlier had, upon request, begun an opera based on the Kaiser’s grandfather, Wilhelm II, conducted the first ever performance of his masterful work. The performance came the night the peace was signed, September 25, 1933.

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WWI in 1905, Part XVIII - Peace Breaks Out

British forces had placed little emphasis on beating Japan. The Japanese army got bogged down in Burma, but still held much of Southeast Asis as Hoover won re-election in 1932. They also held much of the East Indies.

Confident in victory over the Soviets, the British launched full force into a war against Japan. Hoover, who hadn’t wanted to get overly involved in any other aspects of the war, declined to do so here, except for lending the British use of harbors and ships.

In February, 1933, the Allies managed to land on the largest island in the East Indies. The Japanese were pushed further back in Burma. At this point, the Japanese military leadership, sensing that their archrival, China, if the nation they should be fighting, offers an armistice to Britain. They will give up most of the East Indies and Burma, and promise not to expand any more, in exchange for free reign in China.

Britain is tempted to comply, but they would like more assurances that Japan will not rise again to challenge them in the Pacific. America, however, pushes the British to accept it. They argue that the Japanese, if their attitude holds from previous battles with the British, will not stop until they have been invaded themselves, and that this would be very harsh on both sides, with millions more loves lost. Britain is in very hard financial straits right now, and public opinion was growing more in favor of settlement every day. With the Japanese not causing any damage to the mainland, and with the Soviets being vanquished after causing very little, it was important to stop now, while the public still supported the government to some extent.

The British finally relented after several more months of fighting. On October 19, 1933, World War Two came to a close.

The peace with Japan, given increased gains by the Allies, caused Japan to be left with the following: Home islands, Sahkalin, Taiwan, Korea, the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, and Indochina. In return for a promise, brokered by the U.S. not to invade the Philippines when the achieved independence in 1938, the U.S. promised not to complain should the Japanese invade China. Given the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese could wind up fighting the Communists, anyway, they reasoned.

Russia is back under the Duma and the Czar, with the Communists being outlawed. Caucasus is granted independence, though reluctantly, and it splits into several different nations, on ethnic lines. Kurdistan also receives independence.

Hungary, Poland, and Romania are granted their pre-1928 borders, and Ukraine - which hosted the "true" government of the Russians, is incorporated once more into the Russian Empire. Though the nation had been independent for a while, the Czar provides a great sell for Ukranians who still wished independence by constantly arguing "in a sense, Ukraine conquered Russia, and now they are in control of it."

Russia and Eastern European nations are give immense amounts of humanitarian - mostly food and medicine - aid by Western nations as they rebuild. The U.S. handles the brunt of this, as the British have been completely worn down physically, though they didn’t suffer an immense amount of damage from bombings.

World Communist parties, having suffered a double loss, are unsure who to their spiritual leader now. There is once more no Communist nation on the Earth, and only China’s Communists appear to have even a slim hope of gaining power via revolt.

One thing has been shown to them, however. Revolution is not a viable solution, not unless everyone rebels at once. And, Stalin’s - and, to a lesser extent, Trotsky’s - examples have been so utterly bad that fewer people are turning to them. Indeed, Stalin slaughtered millions of people, and Trotsky was responsible for hundreds of thousands of death of political opponents, not to mention a rebellion which led to the worst civil war in Russia’s history, one which seemed to involve the whole world at the end.

World Communists were back to where they had been in 1900. If anyone supported anything left-wing, it was Socialist parties, and even those received little support.

In actuality, the German empire has come out, as of 1935, shining like a beacon. Kaiser Karl, with French and Italian assistants as regents for several years, had absolute authority; it is the last vestige of "divine right." To his credit, he is remembering the instructions from his dying grandfather, to surrender selfish desires. In that vein, he has spoken to the French and Italians about gradual freedom for their nations, something which pleases all concerned. However, he also desires that these new nations be "God-fearing, Christian nations," and tries to convince the people to take on absolute monarchs themselves. In fact, he pondered aloud to an audience of members of the League of Nations, why not let them remain in the German Confederation, and let them each take turns being leader of the Confederation. The idea brought snickers, but as it would turn out, it would be quite well received - provided the French were able to take immediate control. The Kaiser was not quite that unselfish, however.

"This," remarks Britain’s Prime Minister to the French leader-in-exile, still in Algeria, "is what one of my predecessors had in mind when we hoped we could just wait until Wilhelm II passed away. Sadly, we were not able to get it until after your nation was overtaken."

France and Italy, meanwhile, have much to be proud of. These two nations - especially France - provided the industrial capacity needed while German cities were being bombed quite often in the darkest days of World War Two. Theirs would be major nations in their own right. And, Britain dearly wished that these nations would receive independence very soon. Otherwise, it was as if a giant behemoth were standing in the middle of Europe, overshadowing everyone.

In June, 1935, Germany offers a compromise. They will release Sicily - far enough away that it’s hard to govern, anyway - to independence, and they will grant Italy south of the Amo River - where Florence is - independence, under an Italian monarch. To France, they are willing to grant everything west of a line along the Rhone River and extending north, keeping a strip which will run along the Belgian border and thus give them access tot he English Channel. The areas still maintained by the Germans will be split into small kingdoms, more efficient for inclusion into the German Confederation.

The King of Italy, after receiving guarantees that Germany will support him if Italians rise up to overthrow him once more, agrees. France at first waffles, but eventually accepts. They dislike seeing a monarch in place, but as long as the fellow is only a figurehead - though he does have more power than the British one - the French government-in-exile agrees. Britain is the lone holdout because they don’t want Germany to have access to the Channel, but they finally agree. After all, Germany has all of France now. The new, more condensed France and Italy are more compact, but they are also heavily industrialized, thanks to German efforts. They also are much more stable, as Germany took care of a lot of the Communists and Socialists in these lands.

On January 1, 1936, France and Italy once again join the family of nations. However, Germany had a subtle, yet more important, reason for doing this. Since they now held no colonies, their example would also cause the greatest empire of all, the British Empire, to be greatly diminished. If Britain refused to grant nations in Africa and India freedom, Germany would help the natives win freedom, and therefore gain some excellent allies in their sphere of influence. The new Kaiser was not warlike, but he was incredibly shrewd.

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WWI in 1905 - Part XIX - End of An Era

France, by comparison, had it easy. They only had Algeria after their independence had been secured. They clung more tightly to it, and possessed such industrial might that if Algeria did rebel, they were likely to win it.

America? They only had one colony which was unlikely to receive eventual statehood, the Philippines. They were already becoming independent in 1938. Similar, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal had such minor colonies that the German example of "giving everyone their freedom" and imploring everyone to do likewise had little effect on national morale. Giving them up could still mean placing them under your sphere of influence economically, and these nations setup plans to do so

Then, there is Britain. When France lost control of everything, a few small colonies went to other nations. Japan, of course, held Indochina, and the U.S. had taken over any French Pacific possessions. Holland had taken French Guiana and attached it to Surname. However, all of France’s African possessions had been willed, so to speak, to Great Britain for safekeeping. Except for a few areas, and those regions which were independent (Tripoli, Egypt, Tunisia, Abyssinia), all of Africa was British. Then, too, there was India and the Middle East.

Britain wondered why the Germans freed France and Italy with such "overbearing, bombastic pomp and ceremony," as one scribe put it. "It appeared as if they wished to announce it to the Universe as a whole."

Not the universe - just the Third World.

Japan, of course, refused to accept anyone’s desire for independence, and harshly savaged any areas seeking freedom from the Japanese yoke. At the same time, France incorporated Algeria to make it a part of France proper, and proclaimed itself "the first nation with contiguous holdings in Europe and Africa in centuries." Kaiser Karl didn’t mind such actions, as long as the British went down quite a few notches.

One elder statesman makes the following proposal. Create a Dominion of Africa much like Canada. The response is laughter in Parliament, considering that Africa is three times the size of Canada, with many times the population.

However, natives in Africa are beginning to get restless, just as in India again, where the British are trying to grant independence to a nation with almost as many languages as the whole of Africa, it seems. Gandhi’s work is likely to cause them to grant Indian independence within the next few years.

Several British authorities, however, point out that Africa would be no different than India, simply larger. Perhaps, they deduce, three separate dominions could be created. One would be for Muslim regions such as much of former French West Africa and some of Nigeria. One would be for Eastern and central Africa. One would be for Southern Africa, below Belgian Congo. The nations, then, would not be divided along random boundaries, but would be untied, just like India. That, these statesmen feel, would give them a feeling of unity.

After much debate, in the year 1940 Britain conferred independence on India and granted much of Africa Dominion status, so it - like Canada and Australia - would remain forever within the British Commonwealth.

As India broke into civil war, which would soon result in the separate nations of India and Pakistan, the British knew that Dominion status for the whole continent was probably a Very Bad Idea. Indeed, even for one part, it probably was. But, now they could only hope.

In late 1940, as the Japanese - having captured all of Manchuria - intervened in the Chinese Civil War, sending massive amounts of troops, Britain decided they would set 1950 as a target date for freedom, and try and sort out just how to divide up the provinces of the dominions. Having learned some lessons in India, they determined that they could deal, perhaps, with five or six different dominions, with a couple dozen provinces each, if they had to.

When the British Governor General for Africa, Montgomery, returned with his assessment, leaders were shocked. He counted over five hundred different tribes which would clearly need to be represented to avert at least some internal warfare once they gained freedom. The best way to do this, the Montgomery Report stated, was to grant them each independence.

Parliament practically broke out in fits when they read the Montgomery Report. 500 independent nations?! The notion was absurd. The most they’d considered in their wildest dreams was half a dozen dominions, with a total of 150 provinces combined. To have that many was positively insane.

And yet, as they moved these lands slowly toward freedom, along the Canadian model, they knew they didn’t want their soldiers breaking up fights everywhere. If they made the lands large enough, it would be the nations’ internal problems, and not fights between nation of the Commonwealth itself. South Africa was separated from Namibia, which was attached to a Dominion whose northern border was Angola and the southern coast of the Zambezi River. Another Dominion was formed out of Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Urundi. Kenya, Uganda, the Southern part of Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia formed a third nation, with Abyssinia given Djibouti so it had an outlet to the sea. The Senegal, Niger, and Benue Rivers formed much of the border between two other nations formed by the British, the northern Muslim-dominated, the southern a combination of many religions. As with Sudan, the British were carving up their colony of Nigeria. Northern Sudan was sold to Egypt, since it was only more of the Sahara Desert. Central African colonies comprised the final Dominion created by the British.

One look at the proposed mess caused one Parliament member to scoff "it appears as if we have played ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ with an entire continent, only instead of the tail we have pinned borders on it in such a haphazard manner, it would not have surprised me had one of the African nations been given land in India!"

The British may have made some very odd decisions in their nation-making. However, overextension and pressure from the Germans had forced them to do. They carved up their empire. At least with Africa, they had managed to keep them, like Canada and Australia, within the Commonwealth.

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WWI in 1905, Part XX - Finis...The world in 1998

The last 50 years have not been nearly as wild as the first 50, but there are some interesting things to note. They will be discussed in alphabetical order:

Africa:

Each of the Dominion nations created by Britain has undergone civil strife. South Africa has just overcome the evils of apartheid, and is somewhat stable. Most other nations have gone through at least one coup or attempted coup, and an average of half a dozen Constitutions. The larger Dominions generally have had fewer problems because they are more able to withstand some smaller group’s attempts to rebel by sheer numbers, such as the civil war of 1993-1996, when a small tribe in the Rwanda province of Swahililand attempted to break off from that nation and declare independence, a move which failed.

Some still contend they would have been better off as hundreds of nations, but others insist that just would have led to much internal strife.

Asia:

Japan is a militaristic behemoth which got its comeuppance in the Indochinese War for Independence of 1944-1952. When Japan lost the Battle of Saigon - a Japanese equivalent of Waterloo for Napoleon - its military government was overthrown, and Emperor Hirohito ordered a new Constitution drawn up, which finally granted the vote to all males over 21; women were given the vote ten years later.

Since Japan’s efforts at reform, they have focused on maintaining other colonies close to home, like Korea, Formosa, Manchuria, and several other small parts of China. China is Communist, but so battered by the Japanese it is helpless versus the economic powerhouse which is the Japanese. Several times, America has been afraid Japan will declare war on them - there was a small war in the late ‘40s and early ’50s when the U.S. aided Indochinese rebels - but relations have thawed each time. Still, the U.S. remains wary of the Japanese, as they control all of Asia’s economy, it seems, and they continue to seek new markets.

As an aside, Japan purchased the Kamachka Peninsula and the area up to the Amur River from Russia during a severe financial crisis in Russia in the middle 1950s.

France:

One of the more powerful nations since they crushed a revolt among Algerians in the 1950s. They achieved even more power after easing the oil crisis on Western nations by supplying them with reduced price oil during the Arab Oil Embargo.

Germany:

Along with the U.S. one of the major supporters of Israel, thanks to the liberal tendencies of Kaiser Karl. Karl strengthened the Reichstag just enough to keep people happy, while at the same time retained quite a bit of power himself. His son has done likewise, though his health is failing, and there is nervousness about what lies ahead once he passes away.

Middle East:

Much as in OTL with creation of state of Israel by British. A major pogrom in the late 1930s, after the Allies left Russia, caused many Jews to flee to British-held lands, and Russia was sanctioned severely for the action or inaction of its government. Several Arab nations also were created; the main difference in them from our timeline is that Jordan controls most of OTL’s Syria, as well.

Russia:

Some feared the old alliance between Russia and Japan might be reforming as the two grew closer after Allied sanctions sue to the persecution of Jews. Once the persecution et up, many Jews continued to leave en masse, fearful it could begin again.

Russia’s economy is not great, but it is steady, and they have been a great help for the Allies in containing China, which went Communist in 1946 and is the only Communist nation on Earth. The large population make up for a struggling economy, and the world often considers what would happen if Russia, China, and Japan should all join in trying to conquer the world. Allied nations are constantly trying to provoke hostility between China and one of the other two to ensure that if a Third World War ever does break out, only one or two of the three will be against them.

United States:

A strong economy, but because Britain and France were mostly unscathed by World War Two, the U.S. has never had to grow into the world feeder it did in our timeline. While not isolationist - as the involvement in the Vietnam War for Independence points out - they never developed the mentality of fixing all the world’s problems. America is involved in its own hemisphere, though, such as in the several Cuban revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s.

The harsh pogroms in Russia brought home the realization that race problems in the U.S. needed fixed, too. The Civil Rights Movement occurred rather peacefully, though there were incidents with a number of southern states.

The U.S. victory in Indochina did heighten its desire to become involved in other affairs, such as the aforementioned Cuban revolutions. However, the effort required enough of a struggle that the American people turned back toward isolation for quite a while.

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