DaNES I: At the Precipice

I pronounce thlayli 'furhead'.

and the next update should be interesting if a certain thing did or did not happen.
 
I pronounce it Mr. T, like I do with teachers when I don't think its worth it learning their names.

I'm certain things happened in the update.
 
actually, it should be TWO certain things, both pertaining to Canada. Obviously the belgian and greek invasions

:rolleyes:
 
And if my stormtroopers can find the rebel base.
 
Victoria? Only iggy cares.

Take Toronto and Ill be impressed. (Not the US, Greece or belgium)
 
We need the update soon before I do something really insane. Because I have a feeling that will happen soon.
 
Bah- I'm tired of waiting to die :(.

For the record, I pronounce it Thy-lay-lee :).
 
Update 3 – Year 1928

Domestic Events

The United States presidential election has ended in victory by the Republican incumbent, President Coolidge, who handily defeated the Democratic challenger Cordell Hull with over 60% of the vote. This is a surprisingly low total for an Administration that has gained such great successes in the war to date; many believe that it is attributable partly to the paucity of campaigning and growing public dissatisfaction with the loss of trade and the slowdown in the economy, which has only been partly made up through increased war production. (-1 American Confidence, American Economy to Bull Market)

A major election in Mexico held under the auspices of the American military authorities – and with no small number of charges of corruption and/or vote-buying – between the choices of being a “Commonwealth” affiliated with America (with possible statehood later) and a quasi-independent “protectorate”; the elections have yielded an improbable victory for the “commonwealth” scheme, as mostly American supporters even cared enough to turn out for the referendum, and the other voters seemed cowed by American military force and not a little grateful for the “liberation”, such as it was. The whole scheme has not yet been ratified by the U.S. Congress, and of course there are many segments of Mexican society that are opposed to the whole scheme anyway, so for now the commonwealth project is on hold with at least official support from the Mexican population but of course a vastly different situation on the ground.

As the cold war of last year goes hot for the Canadians the relative lack of preparedness by the government is decreasing public confidence in Prime Minister King's Liberals; rumors abound that there will be an election next year; the recent events in the war have also damaged national prestige, of course. (-2 Canadian Confidence)

Colombia and Panama have decided to remain united, mainly due to Panamanian apathy and the guarantee of their representation in the new Republic; elections have yet to be held, primarily due to the state of emergency that has persisted through most of the year as the remaining militarist rebels are hunted down in both Ecuador and southern Colombia. (+2 Colombian-Panamanian Confidence)

Peru has dispatched oddly garbed soldiers into the jungles of the northeast to search for a supposed “rebel group” that doesn't actually exist; the expedition was something of a failure in that regard, of course, but it did yield some results in the form of a vast number of new species cataloged for further study in Lima. (+1 Peruvian Education)

Brazilian government inactivity has encouraged a resurgence of paulista activity and general anti-Vargas sentiment, but fortunately the lack of real combat in the continuing Quasi War has precluded any significant reductions in the President's popularity. (-1 Brazilian Confidence)

Argentina continues gearing up for a land war that seems not to have come; despite their and Uruguay's official declarations of war on Brazil, no real ground actions have begun; the partial mobilization isn't really having much of an effect on the economy yet, but President Yrigoyen has been receiving criticism from right-wing enemies and has only barely managed to scrape by with a victory in the elections of this year.

The gigantic army that Prime Minister Lloyd George is insisting on raising is having a rather deleterious effect on the economy; combined with the lack of real victories in the war, the loss of the undefended Malaya, and the massive naval losses of the previous year in the Mediterranean and the North Sea, a general election has been called, unseating the PM and ushering in an uneasy “National Coalition” of Liberals and Conservatives, headed by Prime Minister Lord Curzon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin, and aging Foreign Minister Edward Grey. This new government, formed due to the lack of a real majority by either Conservatives or Liberals due to the surprising growth of the anti-war Labour party, is the result of a rather uneasy truce; the political instability in Britain is of course not contributing to the successful prosecution of the war. (Government from Liberal to National Coalition, -1 British Confidence, -2 British base economy, -1 British EC economy)

Apparently the Netherlands have managed to vastly revamp their education system while nobody was watching; the fact that Holland is now the technological focal point of the world, as well as the continuing armed Dutch neutrality (and the accompanying vast trade bonus) have improved national confidence in the government, which is easily reelected. Due to the recent events in Belgium and France, though, the government has taken the precaution of mobilizing part of the army, which has been met with much acclaim in order to maintain Dutch sovereignty in the face of the widening global war. (+1 Dutch Confidence, +1 Netherlands East Indies Confidence, +1 Dutch EC economy)

Belgium's government has undergone another change due to the incredible unpopularity of van de Vijvere's policies; breaking off from the old Catholic Party, Henri Jaspar has created the new moderate RMR party, aimed at prosecuting the war (such as it is) to its end and keeping the effects of fighting off Belgian soil. Jaspar's contacts with the German government have allowed him to negotiate the withdrawal of the German occupying troops, which alone swept the RMR into office after national elections. With a slightly disorganized policy based somewhat on revenge against the French – whose perfidy is fifty years old – and extermination of the Spanish, the RMR is still somewhat shaky, and its attempts to have Belgian troops participate in the prosecution of the war in France were nearly as unpopular as van de Vijvere's platform, but all in all the effects of having the Germans finally gone is still keeping the RMR afloat for now. (+4/-2 Belgian Confidence)

Emperor Napoleon V has ordered the creation of the Office for the Emergency Direction of the War Effort (BDUG) under the control of General of the Armies Louis Franchet d'Esperey; while Napoleon fled to Marseilles, d'Esperey has remained in Paris, issuing several decrees to codify the war effort for the defense of France. Ordering a general levee en masse, evacuating Paris, and seizing critical properties, d'Esperey has finally shown the French people some kind of leadership, and combined with adroit use of propaganda the government's popularity is finally rising, checked only by those annoying denials of civil liberties that many Frenchmen didn't have anyway. Allons, enfants de la patrie! (+2 French Confidence, +2 banked EP, +30 French conscript infantry divisions, +1 Military Upkeep)

As confidence in the Spanish government is rocked by defeats in the New World and even more significant trouble nearer to home (see Military Events), the Spanish Emperor Carlos has been searching for a solution to his domestic woes; a constitutional convention has been called, to which el Emperador is willing to give up many powers, including the reduction of his own status to that of a figurehead, somewhat similar to the German and British governmental systems. The Madrid convention begins amidst Marxist and Portuguese terrorist bombing attacks, but the large number of Spanish troops stationed in the vicinity establishes martial law over the city and manages to prevent the Convention from being attacked further. With the remarkable concessions granted by the monarchist government, the Convention delegates manage to hammer out a compromise document that allows the Emperor significant remaining powers, such as the right to appoint the Chancellor instead of having that office elected, while an elective Cortes is created with power to declare war, orchestrate economic policy, and negotiate treaties, all of which must be signed into law by the Canciller. This major power of the Canciller's is balanced by the fact that only the Cortes can propose laws, which must first be ratified by said parliament before they can be passed on to the Canciller. Finally, in late July, the Convention's official document was finished and signed by Carlos V; elections for the Cortes have not yet been held due to lack of money, but are scheduled for next year. This whole episode is boosting confidence in the national government among many Spaniards, including the various separatist groups, who feel like they can finally get a voice in the government; these actions have however not placated the Marxist organizations, who seem to be growing stronger if anything and who have initiated a major terror campaign along the Portuguese frontier and in the industrialized cities of Catalonia. (+2/-1 Spanish Confidence, -1 Spanish Bureaucracy)

Kanzler Stresemann easily wins the German elections, calling for a last push to fully wipe out the French menace; the victories at the front and the utter lack of hardship at home for the general populace has kept the National Liberal government in firm control. (+1 German Confidence)

As riots spread through the defunct Italian Confederacy and Mussolini's fascisti gain more and more power in the northern cities, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies has unilaterally declared the Confederation dissolved and the Pope to be under the “protection” of the Neapolitan government in order to maintain order and destroy the fascist mob. While this gains some support among the masses (and the Pope does hurriedly agree after large portions of the Confederation army defect to the Neapolitans), the King of the Two Sicilies must first smash the Marxist insurrection to have any chance of success in his apparent goal of reuniting Italy. (Italian Confederation and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies stats merged and adjusted, +1 Neapolitan Confidence)

Everything has quite brilliantly gone to hell in the Russian Empire. At the beginning of the year, the Tsar emerged from his reclusion at Tsarskoye Selo and announced his plans to abdicate after national elections are held to determine the structure of the national government. Mikhail Kolmogorov's Blues entered a brief frenzy of campaigning, strangely unhindered by the Tsar's remaining supporters; the mid-January elections, rigorously checked for accuracy and to eliminate vote-buying and other corrupt practices, ended in a landslide Blue victory. Now legally the head of the provisional government to create a constitution, Kolmogorov's official announcement of his new policies – including some sort of equitable solution to the nationalities problem – has alienated much of the Russian military, who, furious, have instead turned to the Tsar’s younger brother Mikhail to lead them. Russia has entered a civil war, with the monarchist faction under Mikhail II directly in opposition to Mikhail Kolmogorov’s Blue-led quasi republican government. (+Russian Monarchist rebels, Russian Empire stats generally fiddled with)

The defeats of the previous year have forced the Serbians out of most of the productive regions of their country; Prime Minister Pasic has died of old age, and one of his cronies, Velimer Vukicevic, has become Prime Minister in his place in lieu of a general election, made impossible by the current state of emergency. Fortunately the population seems to be rising to the occasion despite the war's very dubious beginning. (+1 Serbian Confidence, -1 Serbian base economy)

Prime Minister Venizelos hangs on to power in the Aegean Empire primarily through playing the old “defend the nation” card; he has also managed to dig up some support among some of the richer Greeks, allowing his Liberal Party and its newly formed Turkish equivalent to keep control of the Vouli, but with a somewhat diminished majority; many citizens are just tired of the constant war that has raged for three years, despite admirable attempts at propagandizing by the government, and many Liberal and Turkish members of the Vouli have been asking the Prime Minister to negotiate some kind of peace with the British. (-1 Imperial Confidence)

The Arabians have been busy little beavers…the official Mullah of the country has issued an anti-British fatwa which has gone down fairly well with most Arabs in the British colonies near Arabia – as well as of course Arabia itself – as they get gouged on trade with the British controlling all major trade routes in and out of the desert wastes anyway. Besides, the whole colonialism trip isn’t really working, and the fact that Mecca and Medina are both under the control of the British Empire also smarts. To make a long story a good deal shorter, the Islamic clerics in Arabia have succeeded in riling up the populace in Arabia and the immediate vicinity into an anti-British fervor, which has been harnessed fairly adeptly by the Republican regime. (+1 Arabian Confidence)

British India is beginning to seethe again; with the onset of the Global War and the complete British lack of interest in maintaining any sort of control over India, several different organizations have sprung up or become more active, each competing for its own solution to self-determination. The All India Muslim League , led by one Muhammad Ali Jinnah, has espoused the heretofore-unpopular "Two State Solution", which creates two states out of India, a "Pakistan" for the Muslims and India for the Hindus and everyone else. The AIML's primary antagonist, other than the British, is the Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi-led Indian National Congress, which has advocated non-cooperation to put pressure on the British during wartime to perhaps lead to independence later on. Gandhi's satyagraha program, of nonviolent boycotting and protest, has begun auspiciously with a “salt march” from the interior of India to the sea, where he and thousands of followers boiled seawater to illegally extract salt. Gandhi's movement is currently the strongest, and the British have him to thank for the comparative dearth of violence thus far, but in Bengal and the Punjab Muslim and Hindu militant groups have been growing more powerful and have started fighting not only with each other but also with the British occupiers. All in all, the Raj is beginning to see increasingly hard times, and the utter lack of interest Whitehall has shown in retaining the jewel of the British Empire is hurting greatly. (-2 British India Confidence)

Rumors of Yuan Shikai's death in February have initiated a premature Marxist revolution in Manchuria, which was completely unconnected with any other actions taken whatsoever (and indeed seems to be a huge mistake); the gigantic number of troops in the area, under the control of the rising star young general Xu Zongren, have drowned the insurrection in blood in conjunction with the slowly coalescing gendarmerie. This has pretty much forestalled any further anti-government protest or armed revolt this year, combined with a vigorous counterespionage program that has netted many suspected Marxists and Han nationalists. Many Chinese, through sheer fear of reprisal, have turned away from active support of the Marxists, but dissent still smolders throughout China. (+1 Qing Chinese Confidence)

Due to the state of emergency in which Japan now has found itself (see International and Military Events), the Taisho Emperor has instituted an emergency Wartime Council of key military officials and the Prime Minister (plus the Emperor himself) to run the nation of Japan until the “crisis” abates.

International Events

Under American initiative, the Triple Alliance has been renamed into the “Global Alliance” to better include the many other Powers that have joined since the initial signature; this is mostly a cosmetic change, although apparently plans to create some sort of postwar peace maintenance framework are being developed.

China has apparently recovered from its lethargy of the last year; Prime Minister Yuan Shikai, who is recovering from his apparent illness with the best medical support money can buy, has announced an official policy of armed neutrality, with the usual de rigueur protests of Global Alliance actions. Obviously enough, though, the Qing government is most concerned with the domestic situation.

The Imperial Japanese have abrogated their Entente with Britain, France, and Spain, declaring that due to the fact that a Spanish attack by submarine was what started the whole war, the alliance is therefore null and void. Tokyo has subsequently initiated a policy of “armed unilateralism”, whatever that means; while making sure not to associate themselves with the Global Alliance, the Japanese have pretty clearly become a nation at odds with the Entente, as can be shown by their subsequent military operations.

Military Events

As the Global War drags on, several nations have mobilized all or part of their national armies, either to participate in the struggle itself or to defend their neutrality from other encroaching Powers.

(15 Dutch infantry divisions, 15 Belgian infantry divisions, 5 Belgian artillery brigades, 40 French infantry divisions, 40 German infantry divisions, 15 Serbian/Montenegrin infantry divisions, 20 Japanese infantry divisions from reserves to regular army)

(+1 German military upkeep, +1 Qing Chinese military upkeep)

President Coolidge and the American General Staff have begun a program to clear North America of Entente forces entirely; their immediate target, obviously enough, is Canada. The planned attack on the Canadian western provinces under the command of General Frederick Funston went fairly well, with very minor Canadian resistance for much of the campaign in British Columbia. In Alberta, resistance began to stiffen as Canadian troops were shifted westward via the recently upgraded railroad system, and Funston's advance was stalled during the summer months in a grueling series of positional battles around Calgary and Edmonton as the VII Corps (also known as the Army of Western Canada) struggled to emerge from the Rocky Mountain passes. Eventually, Canadian troop strength dropped off, and Funston was able to capture both major Alberta population centers in October, though further advances were stalled due to the losses suffered in the capture of the western coast. Meanwhile, to the east, a far larger battle was commencing. General William Graves' I and II Corps crossed Lake Erie and the Detroit River with ease and began advancing on Ottawa. A massive armored slash behind Canadian lines in the Battle of Woodstock pocketed many of the Canadian Army troops in Ontario, but it took two months to clear the pocket while the remaining Canadian troops evacuated Ontario – clearing the government from Ottawa – and fled for Quebec and the Maritimes. Thus it was a comparatively empty Toronto that fell to American troops in July, and Ottawa a few weeks later; Graves began to advance into Quebec in October, expecting rebel support, but the Quebecois generally failed to launch their own uprisings, though they did cooperate amiably with the American invaders. The American troops finally managed to break into Montreal over Thanksgiving weekend due to events further east (see below), but further advances were stalled by the end of the year as the Canadian government regrouped in Quebec City.

(-6 American infantry divisions, -4 American tank brigades, -1 American artillery brigade, -7 Canadian infantry divisions, -2 Canadian tank brigades, -2 Canadian artillery brigades)

The United Kingdom has dispatched a sizable expeditionary force to assist their Canadian brethren; unfortunately for them, a gigantic American blockading force, made up of the First Fleet under Admiral Harold Stark, was waiting for the British attempt to convoy troops. With no naval escort, the British convoy decided to abort and didn't run into the American ships; this allowed Stark to cooperate with John Lejeune's Marine/Army combined expeditionary force to land on Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, where the scanty Canadian troops there were scattered. An attempt by the Royal Canadian Navy under the command of Admiral Walter Hose to drive back the American Navy contingent and smash the Marine beachheads near St. John's and Pictou was turned back by the First Fleet in the Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in late August with heavy Canadian casualties. Hose managed to withdraw through the Strait of Belle Isle and made his way back to the United Kingdom, but this leaves the remnants of Canada with no naval protection whatsoever and a rapidly contracting area of control around Quebec and New Brunswick (along with of course the Prairie Provinces, which have been largely untouched by the war anyway).

(-2 Canadian infantry divisions, -1 Canadian cruiser, -6 Canadian destroyers, -2 Canadian submarines, -3 American infantry divisions, -1 American marine division, -2 American cruisers, -4 American destroyers, -4 American submarines)

1928's New Year arrived with the reluctant surrender of Spanish General Primo de Rivera and the subsequent internment of most of his army (those who decided to stop fighting; General Marshall's American troops had to subdue a fair amount of resistance in the following months), ending the official war in Mexico. However, despite the introduction of the new American program for a Mexican Commonwealth and the “successful” vote, much of Mexico remains in turmoil, with several major warlords arising and refusing to stay quashed despite Marshall's best efforts. The Republic of Gran Guatemala has also been shelved due to utter lack of support from the zapatista rebels, who were angry at the lack of inclusion of many of the major regions of Mexico where they are supported.

(-3 Spanish infantry divisions, -1 Spanish artillery brigade, -4 American infantry divisions)

The US Marines have finally managed to secure Cuba; the meager Spanish forces remaining in the East Indies have been largely wiped out with the surrender of the garrison at Santiago de Cuba in the south of the island. With the virtual elimination of all real resistance on the part of the Entente, the US Navy has been free to conduct an island-hopping campaign throughout the West Indies, unobstructed by any naval resistance and only facing ground fighting on Jamaica, where the entrenched two British divisions managed to fight off two waves of American amphibious assault before finally succumbing to the massed US infantry. Puerto Rico, the planned Spanish hideout, was occupied by a total of zero Spanish troops due to a lack of naval capability to evacuate Primo de Rivera and the troops of the Cuban garrison, so nothing came of the “fortress island” concept what had been germinating in the Spanish military hierarchy. A political solution has been proposed for the West Indies in Congress, but thus far nothing has come of it, since Congress is working on a massive backlog as it is and the President hasn't issued an executive order or anything like that regarding the islands' fate.

(-British West Indies, -3 American infantry divisions)

An new front in the naval war has opened in the South Pacific; while Argentina prepares for a Brazilian attack that has not come, her ally France has been marshaling ships to her aid, sending the detachment of one Admiral Jean Decoux south to aid the Argentineans. With the sole exception of a minor incident with the US Navy off the West African coast (see below), Decoux managed to make Buenos Aires in June and unite his navy with that of the Argentineans for an attack on the Brazilians in preparation for an amphibious assault somewhere along the Brazilian coastline. The Brazilians, though, were joined not just by their American allies’ Second Fleet under William Sims but also a German flotilla under the command of one Friedrich von Ingenohl, which had come from Sudafrika after dropping off troops on St. Helena to secure it for the Germans. The American Second Fleet, the German Sudafrikan squadron, and the Brazilians had total air superiority and the vast advantage of numbers; Decoux, cannily realizing this, first sought for opportunities to separate the various national navies from one another and, when this failed, tried to use his destroyers to sink Allied shipping and to skirmish with the Allied navies. With very few exceptions, this has failed, and the Entente has reached a stalemate point in the South Atlantic; not powerful enough to attack the vastly more powerful enemy, but at the same time fighting an enemy whose main mission is not to destroy the Franco-Argentinean fleet (for various reasons).

(-3 French destroyers, -1 Brazilian cruiser, -2 American destroyers)
 
The German plan for the final destruction of the UK and France has gone slightly awry this year due to an epic series of struggles in northern France. General Charles de Gaulle, in command of the majority of the French armor and a significant force of backup infantry, designated the First Army, opened the French counterattack against the northern wing of the German army under von Mackensen. At the same time, a significant British Expeditionary Force under the command of aging Field Marshal Horace Smith-Dorrien landed at the Pas de Calais with support from the French and Royal Navies, completing the operation successfully before the Kaiserliche Marine could intervene. Von Mackensen, under heavy fire from several directions, outnumbered, and with his rear areas a mess due to the confusing presence of large numbers of Belgian troops, was forced to withdraw from the Channel ports during the epic Lille Campaign, but successfully covered his rear and, using the Belgian troops more or less as cannon fodder, halted the Anglo-French drive just inside the Belgian border during June and July, turning Lille into a black hole, a “hornet’s nest” after the famed American tactic at Shiloh during their Civil War. Having successfully halted the main Entente sucker punch, Chief of the General Staff Hans von Seeckt spent much of the remaining summer months sorting out his supply situation and repelling disjointed and weak attacks by Joseph Joffre’s Second Army in Burgundy. Finally, in late August, the siege of Paris began in earnest; the coordinated Belgo-German attack on the Paris forts that guarded the entrances to the cities was surprisingly repulsed by vast numbers of French civilian conscripts along with the support of a select few Regulars, who had spent the time gained by the Lille campaign by strengthening the defenses of the city of Paris. Both sides suffered tremendous casualties in the battles outside Paris, especially the titanic fight for the suburb of Le Bourget. By mid September, von Seeckt could see that the French were not committing reserves to the Paris siege as had been expected; Joffre and Tassigny, the commanders of the French troops in the main body south near Orleans and in the northern Rhone Valley, refused to try to relieve the beleaguered city and expose themselves to German counterattack. Husbanding the German strength, von Seeckt merely launched probing attacks against the French main body south of Paris and continued to tighten his siege of the city itself, but the Germans’ inability to cut Paris off completely has allowed the defenders to keep fighting into the New Year. Practically the only decisive action of the year took place in the air, where the meager Royal Air Force attempted to cover the British landings at Calais during April and May; the Luftwaffe, with overwhelming numerical superiority, crushed the RAF in the skies over Lille. German air superiority has allowed some attempts at using zeppelins to damage the industrial regions of France and the UK, but thus far damage has been negligible and has mostly resulted in an angry Entente home population rather than any real industrial slowdown. Close air support, on the other hand, has proven somewhat valuable to the Germans during the Siege of Paris.

(-4 British infantry divisions, -5 British marine infantry divisions, -3 British tank brigades, -1 British artillery brigade, -11 British fighter squadrons, -3 British zeppelin squadrons, -21 French infantry divisions, -14 French conscript infantry divisions, -6 French tank brigades, -4 French artillery brigades, -1 French fighter squadron, -1 French zeppelin squadron, -7 Belgian infantry divisions, -2 Belgian artillery brigades, -2 Belgian fighter squadrons, -17 German infantry divisions, -8 German tank brigades, -3 German artillery brigades, -5 German fighter squadrons, -2 German zeppelin squadrons)

While the epic Siege of Paris raged on the Continent, the naval war continued in the North Sea. Rebuilding the shattered Royal Navy after the devastating Battle of Heligoland Bight last year took on a priority for the British Government, who managed to complete several new ships this year but strangely enough sent them to the Mediterranean; the onus of defending the UK and attempting to maintain some kind of Continental blockade would have to shift to the French, as the Admiralty’s aim of defeating the Kaiserliche Marine and blockading German ports was clearly an impossibility with the numerical deficiency that the British currently had. Gabriel Auphan, head of the Royale, was determined similarly not to allow a battle with the Germans in the North Sea, correctly believing the Entente to be at a distinctive disadvantage, and thusly outside of a few haphazardly placed minefields the Continental Blockade remained a pipe dream. With virtually a free hand in the North Sea, then, the Germans pursued a strategy of bombarding the British coastline to work on the civilian population and force them to come to terms with Germany’s ultimate victory and also perhaps to lure out the Royal Navy and the Royale. Aside from a few minor casualties to French submarines, the Germans didn’t lose any ships but similarly failed to convince the British People to throw in the towel; a real invasion force is likely necessary for such an endeavor.

(-2 French submarines, -1 German cruiser, -2 German destroyers)

Portugal has dissolved into chaos; the military, under Jose Mendes Cabecadas, has attempted to remove the current republican government, armed with confidence and new weapons presumably acquired from the Allies. Cabecadas managed to topple the Republic after a brief skirmish outside Lisbon with a few loyalist troops in May, removing Afonso Costa and having him quietly executed. Cabecadas’ regime was naturally enough unacceptable to the Spanish government, and during October after a round of Portuguese nationalist bombing attacks on the Spanish Constitutional Convention, Carlos V ordered troops into Portugal to wipe out the militarist regime. A brief battle near Badajoz resulted in the near-complete destruction of the Portuguese army, after which Cabecadas was assassinated and what remained of the militarist regime disintegrated. What remained of the republican government, led now by Antonio Maria da Silva, tried to control the situation from exile in Madrid, but as of right now Portugal is a complete mess and a confusing quagmire for the Spanish troops what have been sent to intervene there.

(-Portuguese Republic as a coherent nation, -8 Spanish infantry divisions, -2 Spanish tank brigades)

Neapolitan armies have launched an offensive to clear Mussolini's fascists from Italian soil; with the support of what was left of the Confederation army and the acquiescence of the Pope (for now, at least), the Neapolitan troops under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani have managed to push Mussolini's disorganized fascisti back from Tuscany and the Romagna, though in the fall further pushes were made virtually impossible by the stiffening fascist resistance in Parma and on the Apennines, as well as the worsening weather and the lack of sufficient supplies to circumvent the rapidly coalescing Po Line on which Mussolini's forces, under the overall command of one Filippo Turati, were establishing a solid barrier to further Neapolitan advances. Still, Graziani managed to launch a successful drive in November that overwhelmed the fascist defenses of Parma and Modena through sheer weight of numbers and dispersed the few remaining fascist semblances of regular army forces; Graziani has had to halt his drive due to adverse weather and renewed Marxist/fascist insurrections behind the front lines, but Milan is threatened and the fascists seem to be on their last legs already.

(-5 Neapolitan divisions, -1 Neapolitan tank brigade)

The Russian Civil War has begun; Mikhail II’s monarchist faction has managed to get a significant portion of the army to defect to his control, although much of Russia has adhered to the Blue regime, which has generally disengaged from the Global War (although without an official cease-fire) and instead turned the Russian Army on other Russians. Mikhail’s generalissimo, one Aleksey Evert, managed to establish control of St. Petersburg as well as much of the Volga River valley, as well as a significant region centering on Kursk south of Moscow and part of Siberia, where the local Army commander, one Vladimir Sukhomlinov, defected to the monarchist cause with most of his troops. Kolmogorov’s government still has managed to command much support amongst the army, and the chief Blue commanders, Sergei Khabalov and Aleksey Brusilov, have developed a cunning plan to smash the monarchists. The disjointed group of monarchist troops south of Moscow under the nominal command of General Aleksey Kaledin was fairly easily smashed by Khabalov’s Army of Bulgaria as it returned from the front in the Balkans, while Brusilov began to mount a full scale offensive through the Volga, coercing support from the civilians there and breaking up the two separate forces cobbled together to oppose him during first the epic Kazan’ Campaign in July and August and then a second series of clashes around Saratov during October, during which the tsarists under the command of one Vladimir Kappel, who managed to extricate his army and marched to join the Ural forces under Sukhomlinov in the winter. As the year ended, the Blues had managed to take effective control of much of European Russia and the associated national territories such as Poland and the Ukraine, but the monarchists were surprisingly enough still extant in Ekaterinburg – where Sukhomlinov made his headquarters – and St. Petersburg itself, which was feverishly being turned into a fortress by not only Russian troops under Evert but also Finns rallied by Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. The Chinese of Manchuria and the Amur Valley had also chosen this moment to rise up in revolt with major elements of Marxist sponsorship – the already-extant “People's Brigade” framework helped to rebel several monarchist assaults. On the other hand, the Navy has relatively unsurprisingly decided to join with the Blues, save for Admiral Kolchak’s flotilla in the Baltic and the North Sea, which has declared for Mikhail II.

(-12 Monarchist Russian infantry divisions, -6 Monarchist Russian tank brigades, -4 Monarchist Russian artillery brigades, -2 Monarchist Russian fighter squadrons, -2 Monarchist Russian zeppelin squadrons, -16 Blue Russian infantry divisions, -4 Blue Russian tank brigades, -2 Blue Russian artillery brigades, -1 Blue Russian fighter squadron)

The Balkans flared back up into heavy fighting before the snow even melted. Serbia’s attempt to mobilize troops from their mountain fastness in Macedonia took time, considering the disorganized state of the Serbian army and nation following the defeats at Hungarian hands over the past year. Kövess von Kövesshaza’s men were able to dig in rudimentary defenses in Serbia before the Entente troops struck despite harassing attempts by a small group of vastly outnumbered Serb troops throughout the winter months. With Bulgarian support, the Serbian attack what began in March and April pushed the Hungarians out of Nish and through sheer élan carried even further, reaching at its high tide the exit to the Morava Valley at Kragujevac in July. Hungarian firepower and numbers began to take their toll quickly, though, and Imperial pressure from the south forced the Serbian Army to commit its reserves to fighting in the Monastir Gap instead of against the hard pressed Hungarians, who managed to effectively regroup in August as Serbian and Bulgarian supplies began to run low and the Entente troops reached the end of their string. The tank reserve that had been husbanded slowly by Kövess von Kövesshaza was then unleashed; Petar Bojovic, the Serbian voivode, was forced to conduct a hasty retreat in the face of a renewed Magyar onslaught, while the Bulgarian Vladimir Vazov decided to cut his losses and withdrew to cover Sofia with his oversized army corps. Bojovic’s Serbs managed to bleed the Hungarians for every inch of ground they gave up the Morava Valley throughout the autumn, but they were being increasingly forced to give more and more ground, while the Imperial troops in the south were overpowering the reserves what could be sent by the otherwise-occupied Serbs. And in the meantime, a British attempt to land troops to assist the Serbs had been crushed by the Hungarian Navy – the British convoy had been once again unprotected by the Royal Navy due greatly to the serious losses suffered in the previous year – and the Hungarians used the local naval superiority thus gained to assist the Imperials in a small scale attack on the Albanian and Montenegrin coastlines. Bojovic managed to finally halt the bloodletting just south of Kosovo and switch many of his troops to Albania, clearing a path to the sea again, but at the price of more territory in Macedonia to the Hungarians and Imperials. The Serbs’ offensive may have failed, but at least they are in roughly the same boat they were in last year and they still have an open route of escape…and further east, the Entente was doing decidedly better. Bulgaria’s defenses held easily; the Imperials were busy elsewhere, attempting to maintain the territorial integrity of their nation, while the Russians under Khabalov were of course occupied elsewhere. Vazov opportunistically decided to switch his attack from the Serbian front – where he could defend easily against the gradually overstretched Magyars but not attack without serious loss without much gain – to Wallachia, which the Russians had more or less abandoned, as well as the Russian-owned Dobruja and the Danube delta. With the onset of winter, Vazov’s veterans easily overran the disorganized Wallachia and Dobruja and consolidated their control against the disjointed and minor Hungarian attacks what were attempted in the last weeks of December against the strong positions the Bulgarians were holding around Craiova. Meanwhile, the fighting to the south was some of the most uneventful all year; the Imperials and Bulgarians both held defensive positions against the other, with only a few minor probing attacks by both sides in the lower Maritsa Valley.

(-12 Serbian infantry divisions, -3 Serbian tank brigades, -3 Serbian artillery brigades, -1 Serbian fighter squadron, -7 Bulgarian infantry divisions, -2 Bulgarian tank brigades, -3 Bulgarian artillery brigades, -1 Bulgarian fighter squadron, -17 Hungarian infantry divisions, -4 Hungarian tank brigades, -5 Hungarian artillery brigades, -3 Imperial infantry divisions, -1 Imperial artillery brigade)

The British have strangely enough renewed their Anatolian campaign for this year, attempting to completely smash the Aegean Empire/Kingdom of Greece once and for all. Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis wisely decided to withdraw from combat with the British upon the news that they were being massively reinforced; the Royal Navy landed extra troops in Anatolia in April and was able to support a massive new push by Allenby’s expeditionary force, which launched a drive aimed at securing the Ionian coastline in June. Outnumbered, the shell of the Greco-Turkish army began to withdraw until it was joined by reinforcements from Thessalonika in August near Brusa. Allenby, in the meantime, had been slowly extending his supply lines and doing his best not to outrun them, but continued Turkish and Greek partisan action in his rear decreased the number of supplies actually getting to his men and forced him to detach extra troops to hold onto his rear areas. Allenby’s army was further weakened by Royal Marine detachments sent to capture the Aegean islands and who were forced to stay there due to further partisan action. Britain’s confusing policy of supporting a bid for Turkish independence alienated the Greeks who were the majority in the lands they were trying to seize, while the lack of any actual actions taken to free said Turks annoyed those who were to have been supported by the British. The fact that Turkish cities were hit by terror bombings from British zeppelins didn’t help the matter. In any event, the British were ripe for counterattack during the scorching days of August and September 1928, and they sure as heck got one. General Leonidas Paraskevopoulos’ extemporized “First Army”, a ragtag bunch of amalgamated Turkish, Greek, partisan, and reserve troops, opened the campaign of Panderma on August 21 and smashed a hole in the British front line; exploitation was slow, but Paraskevopoulos kept up the pressure while coordinating with partisan groups to the rear of the British troops, and Allenby was finally forced to begin a general withdrawal down the coastline towards Smyrna in late September. The Imperial, who didn’t have any tanks or significant amounts of cavalry, weren’t able to properly harry the British as they fled southwards, but the Greco-Turkish partisans took their own toll, and the Expeditionary Force suffered many casualties on the way back to Smyrna. Seizing the meager prepared Imperial defenses around the city, Allenby managed to coordinate a naval withdrawal during the last days of November, and brought off nearly all of his army before the Imperials arrived except for much of his heavy equipment and tanks, with only two last divisions stuck in southern Ionia near Petronion that capitulated to Paraskevopoulos on Christmas Eve. Allenby did however manage to accomplish something productive with his troops after fleeing from Smyrna, effecting control over the Aegean islands save Euboea and crushing the still extant civil disorder on Crete and Rhodes. A serious blow was struck against the Royal Navy force in the Aegean, though, after Imperial submarines sank three of British aircraft carriers – HMS Argus, Vindictive, and Unicorn – in two days, eliminating several other Royal Navy ships on the way out, though this “wolf pack” suffered severe casualties to the skilled Royal Navy destroyer crews. Britain’s Anatolian campaign seems over, and with the change of government further strikes in the Mediterranean seem unlikely at best, especially considering the dire German threat closer to home.

(-6 British infantry divisions, -4 British marine infantry divisions, -5 British tank brigades, -3 British artillery brigades, -3 British aircraft carriers, -2 British cruisers, -4 British destroyers, -2 British fighter squadrons, -1 British zeppelin squadron, -4 Imperial infantry divisions, -2 Imperial artillery brigades, -9 Imperial submarines, -5 Imperial fighter squadrons, -2 Imperial zeppelin squadrons)

Africa is becoming more and more of a grand battlefield as the war stretches into its second year. The US General Staff has proposed a campaign to assist the Liberians and simultaneously wreak havoc with the Entente West African colonies; General George Patton and a small expeditionary force of a reinforced combined arms corps were sent across the Atlantic under guard of the US Second Fleet, in turn under the command of Admiral William Sims. Off Portuguese Guinea, Sims' fleet encountered a French flotilla under the command of Admiral Jean Decoux, apparently bound south; Decoux, weighing the relative strength of his fleet against his mission, decided to refuse battle and escaped Sims' fleet, although one destroyer was sunk by aircraft operating from the USS Lexington. Sims' fleet continued to Liberia, where Patton's corps was offloaded with no incident – although since Liberian harbor facilities weren't quite up to the task, it did take a while – and then moved to support the Brazilian Navy. Patton himself launched a wild rampage through French West Africa, first fighting the hastily mobilized garrison troops – who were unfortunately forced to miss their Kamerun date (see below) - at the Battle of the Lobo River in October and smashing the French in a weeklong running battle that carried his army to Yamoussoukro, which was easily captured. With virtually no resistance by any Anglo-French troops, Patton has been able to run rampant through the colonies during his two months in Africa, spreading confusion and destruction over a wide swath of West Africa.

(-3 French African divisions, -1 American infantry division)

The Islamic Republic of Arabia has declared war on Britain in conjunction with the members of the Global Alliance following some riling-up activity on the part of the Arabian clerics; under the banner of liberating the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from the British oppressors, rebellions have begun in those two cities, and large forces of Arabian tribesmen have ridden in to support them. The utter lack of any fighting forces in the area with any motivation to shoot at their Arabian brethren somewhat hampered the British defense, and most of the Arabs in the Egyptian/Rhodesian territorial army defected to their Islamic Republic comrades. Mecca and Medina were overrun quickly enough, and the Islamic Republic ragtag force moved on to the Suez Canal, avoiding Rhodesia proper, which was heavily populated by Jews, who were indeed highly motivated to fight for the British. In September and October, the Arabs mounted several attacks on the Canal, but were eventually forced to retreat due to the redeployment of regular British troops (backed up by Rhodesian native divisions) from the inactive Caucasus front, but retained control of the Hejaz. Meanwhile, the Arabian regulars what could be recruited launched a whirlwind attack on southern Mesopotamia, but the Shiites living there were unwilling to lend them support and the redeploying British troops managed to achieve some successes later on, pushing the Arabians' troops back to Basra, which they only tenuously hold. Meanwhile, to the south, a token German force has landed and seized Aden with virtually no British resistance.

(2 British Egyptian/Rhodesian infantry divisions to Islamic Republic of Arabia)

(-3 Arabian infantry divisions, -6 Arabian "divisions", -1 British infantry division, -2 British Rhodesian divisions)

The German colony of Kamerun has been the target of a vast swarm of Spanish troops this year; with virtually no resistance apart from the loyal German askaris – and even then not very many of them – the quarter of a million Spanish troops completely annihilated every last vestige of pro-German resistance in that country, although not bothering to put some of the more remote areas under tight Spanish control.

(-Kamerun, -3 Spanish infantry divisions)

Following the pacification of Kamerun, the reinforced Spanish in Angola, under the command of General Emilio Mola, opened an attack on the weak German forces that had invaded Angola the year before. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops withdrew without engaging the Spanish directly, but after Mola continued to attack across the border into German colonial territory von Lettow-Vorbeck began to launch hit-and-run attacks on the vast Spanish force, depriving it of supplies in the trackless Ovamboland wastes. Several individual Spanish detachments were surrounded, cut off, and annihilated by the German askaris and their Regular allies, and Mola was forced to halt the offensive as winter began to set in.

(-6 Spanish infantry divisions, -1 Spanish marine division, -2 Spanish tank brigades, -4 Spanish artillery brigades, -3 German Sudafrikan divisions, -1 German infantry division)

The Constitutionalist Persians manage to drive their monarchist enemies out of Khorasan and into Russian Central Asia with relatively few casualties.

(-2 Persian infantry divisions)

The Qing army takes some minor casualties fighting the members of the “People's Brigade” in Manchuria, though the enemy disperses fairly quickly.

(-1 Qing Chinese infantry division)

As part of their new “armed unilateral” policy, the Japanese have dispatched troops to seize Hong Kong and Macao from Britain and Portugal respectively. The Portuguese were of course occupied with something else, while the Royal Navy was once again conspicuously absent from the scene. A French contingent under Admiral Jean de Laborde was present, but France is not in a state of war with Japan, so de Laborde let the Japanese pass without incident. The two defenseless colonies surrendered to the Imperial Japanese expeditionary force easily enough without any fighting whatsoever, and while Britain has protested (Portugal is a bit busy at the moment) the Japanese are in complete control with no resistance at all.

Instead of fighting against the Japanese, de Laborde's flotilla instead engaged the German Far East squadron under the command of Admiral Erich Raeder in April. The German aircraft carrier SMS Braunschweig provided a critical advantage to Raeder's squadron, which had the ability to first harass de Laborde's ships before the actual engagement and then sink one of the dreadnoughts under de Laborde's command – the Lille – and then harass the cruisers escorting the carriers. A brief submarine battle ensued further out, but the German preponderance in destroyers helped them prevail (although apparently one of the German U-boats was sunk by a “friendly” depth charge) and then launch an attack on de Laborde's flagship, the Tourville; the French were forced to retreat to Cam Ranh Bay after this decisive Battle of the Spratly Islands, and the Germans for now have the run of the South China Sea and the Western Pacific.

(-1 French dreadnought, -2 French cruisers, -4 French submarines, -2 German destroyers, -2 German submarines)

The United States Third Fleet and Raeder's Far East squadron then linked up for a combined attack on British Australia and New Zealand. After securing some of the larger Entente-controlled Pacific islands, the German-American combined fleet forced a landing on the North Island of New Zealand, which was more or less secured by the end of fall. Due to the heavy fighting in New Zealand itself, especially the bloody siege of Auckland, the Allies were unable to conduct their projected assault on Australia, which was postponed in favor of an attack on the South Island, which was more or less secure by year's end.

(-2 British Australian divisions, -2 American infantry divisions, -1 American marine division)

OOC:

Shadowbound, the reason Amsterdam was used instead of Rotterdam for your project was because Rotterdam was already an EC. :p However, it has been duly changed to Batavia. Also, I guess this wasn't sufficiently clear either, but you can't use more than 2 EP to rush a project, and those extra EP have been banked. Also, only one EP was needed to mobilize your entire military, as it costs but 1 EP/20 units.

Aetius, you are still in control of the UK, but your policies should probably reflect the goals of both Conservatives and Liberals now, lest your people lose even more confidence in the government.

The Arabian "divisions" are units of about 10,000 horsemen with fairly good rifles, almost no staying power, and good mobility...the usual Arab trip. They were created due to the very low likelihood that the Islamic Republic could just wave its hand, dispense monies, and create whole new infantry divisions out of practically nothing.

Everyone else – especially Wubba (!) – please note exactly how many troops you are using for each operation. Commands like “spread everything else evenly” isn’t quite specific enough, especially when you’re a world power and have lots of stuff amongst which to spread troops.

Sorry about that whole delay - things got wild this weekend. When I get to my other comp tomorrow morning when I wake up - got to go to bed right now, and I promised Thlayli that it would finally be tonight - I'll be able to post stats and map and assorted frontpage stuff, but for now you get this. :p
 

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Dachspmg said:
Peru has dispatched oddly garbed soldiers into the jungles of the northeast to search for a supposed “rebel group” that doesn't actually exist; the expedition was something of a failure in that regard, of course, but it did yield some results in the form of a vast number of new species cataloged for further study in Lima. (+1 Peruvian Education)
Click to expand...

I'm telling you, the rebel base does exist!
 
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