Luckymoose
The World is Mine
I already sent mine. Azale probably never will, Thomander may forget and Das just needs a PM from you to get him to send them if he forgot.
DaNES I: At the Precipice
- Thread starter Dachs
- Start date
Abaddon
Deity
Soltan Ahmad Shah of the Qajar Persian Empire has sent orders.
Flavius Aetius
Ruler Of Liguria
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 774
Orders finnally sent °ghasp° wrote rapidly...
jeps
Arcadefire
Sorry dachs, sending orders now, fell asleep at 1 with them half done last night, and couldnt get to CFC until now.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
Thomander told me he can't access cfc site for some reason and is sorry.
JosefStalinator
Я буду снова здесь
Sorry Dachs, but time constraints abound. I gotta free up Hungary for now.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
Update Status?
Jason The King
Deity
Jason The King
Deity
TO King Christian X, Prime Minister Niels Neergaard
FROM King Oskar III, Speaker of the Riksdag Hugo Hamilton
CC Unification
My dear King and Prime Minister, I bring you tidings from the prosperous and growing Nordic union of Sweden and Norway. In this growing danger in the world, I come to you with a proposition to better safeguard your people and freedom. Neither alliance, whether it be the British, Americans, or Germans, is safe to join, and being alone in a world such as ours is even more dangerous. I come to you not only for your people's sake, but Sweden-Norway's as well. Our peoples, who share the same customs, the same culture, should not be seperate in this world. Instead, we need to band together, defend each other, and promote our own prosperity.
And that is why I come to you with the Treaty of Oslo in hand. Signing this document would cement the connection of our two nations, bringing all of our people together, forever combining our strength and binding our peoples. Unification is the safest way to go in this world, and I implore you to take this issue seriously.
OOC: dachs, I assume its too late to send orders? If so, I hope you remember to NPC my country for now since I was on vacation.
FROM King Oskar III, Speaker of the Riksdag Hugo Hamilton
CC Unification
My dear King and Prime Minister, I bring you tidings from the prosperous and growing Nordic union of Sweden and Norway. In this growing danger in the world, I come to you with a proposition to better safeguard your people and freedom. Neither alliance, whether it be the British, Americans, or Germans, is safe to join, and being alone in a world such as ours is even more dangerous. I come to you not only for your people's sake, but Sweden-Norway's as well. Our peoples, who share the same customs, the same culture, should not be seperate in this world. Instead, we need to band together, defend each other, and promote our own prosperity.
And that is why I come to you with the Treaty of Oslo in hand. Signing this document would cement the connection of our two nations, bringing all of our people together, forever combining our strength and binding our peoples. Unification is the safest way to go in this world, and I implore you to take this issue seriously.
OOC: dachs, I assume its too late to send orders? If so, I hope you remember to NPC my country for now since I was on vacation.
Update 1 Year 1926
The early parts of the year were dominated by an outbreak of conflict in the Balkans upon which world attention focused, outside of relatively minor diplomatic and internal squabbles in a few nations; later in the year, though, a crisis would erupt that threatened to initiate the long-awaited or long-dreaded Global War.
Domestic Events
Canadian railway companies have launched some government-assisted railway reforms, and have begun trying to increase immigration; while the latter especially hasn't really borne much economic fruit yet, Prime Minister King has begun to grow again in popularity, and by concentrating on the acid test areas of Ontario and Alberta has seen his Liberal Party gain in the by-elections (+1 Canadian Confidence).
Primarily due to the Garvey Incident (see below) and President Coolidge's strong diplomatic stance on the issue during the crisis that led to the initial declaration of war, the Republican Party has gained in the November off-year elections, securing a firm majority in both House and Senate. This, along with the easily-passed civil service reform, has resulted in an impressive increase in government popularity (+1 American Confidence).
Minor uprisings in Mexico near the end of the year are put down fairly easily by the Spanish colonial troops; the same cannot be said for Spain's puppet Colombia, where most of the countryside is in flames. (see Military Events) (-1 Mexican Colony Confidence, -2 Colombian Confidence)
Brazil's initiation of the domestic Estado Novo policy and the concurrent military expansion are beginning to alarm nearby countries, although most Brazilians themselves are pleased as punch about the virtual elimination of the paulistas from politics and the other measures that are putting Brazil once more on the path to Great Power status. (+1 Brazilian Confidence)
A major expansion in the size of the British regular army has somewhat alarmed those who believe that Britain's role in war is to fight on the sea, not the land; however, it has quieted opposition from those who believe that the UK hasn't been doing enough to combat the Triple Alliance. Apparently, also, the Prime Minister has begun to examine the prospect of an Imperial Reform, although the actual course of that remains undetermined. (see International Events) (+1 British Military Upkeep)
Dutch PM de Beerenbrouck has instituted a new economic policy to hopefully clear out the recession that the Dutch economy has been in; the initiation of this project has met with approval amongst most members of the Dutch Parliament, as has the apparent decision to maintain neutrality in the imminent conflict.
Fueling Alliance war scares, the Spanish have begun very publicly testing and designing new varieties of tanks that are far superior to the former design. Meanwhile, Carlos V has made vague promises of a constitutional monarchy; the military and right wing especially are not too sure what to think, with major military expansion on one hand and a serious subtraction from their power on the other. The Marxists, on the other hand, seem to have intensified their activities, what with the bomb scare in Barcelona and the assassination of the governor of Andalusia. The few moderates that exist in Spain, however, do rally to the new program, but they appear to be the only ones. (-1 Spanish Confidence)
The Russian Tsar seems to have done an about-face on most of his previous program; a general education reform seems to be in the works, though no funds have yet been devoted to it. Apparently the Tsar is also interested in state subsidizing of peasants; the workers wouldn't have been too happy about it normally, but the Tsar forced a controversial labor bill through what passed for a duma that initiated a government-mandated 40-hour week and 8-hour day. Oh, and for good measure, the Tsar began to look at eliminating all vestiges of Russification, though again there were no funds for this. Naturally, a lot of people got angry at all this: the capitalists were furious at the massive reduction in profits that the labor act was going to cause while the Tsar did try to bribe them with increased subsidies, the costs of such a program clearly outweighed the benefits while many Russians were angered by the abandonment of Russification and the early attempts to alter the woefully inadequate national education system to emphasize loyalty to the empire over ethnic groups. The confusion at the highest levels of government with several different plans being put forth for not only national defense but also the domestic agenda has prevented any of these plans from actually being implemented (save the labor bill and the increase in subsidies for most of big business), and the national frustration with these half-hearted attempts to change the status quo is apparent. In essence, antagonizing the folks who are in power to try to gain the support of some of those who aren't didn't quite balance out. (-1 Russian Confidence)
The Two Sicilies have officially recognized Carlos V, Emperor of Spain as the future successor to the Neapolitan throne; this, a direct breach of the Treaty of Frankfurt, has gotten both Germany and the UK rather angry, while Carlos V, no spring chicken himself, hasn't indicated his own position. This also seems in direct contravention of the new Neapolitan program in media and cinema, where the government is apparently trying to increase Imperial Roman nostalgia with films such as Mare Nostrum, a historical flick; what Italian nationalism does exist is relatively quiet at this point in time anyway, and most people just ignore the whole thing. Many Habsburg nobles are pretty happy about Carlos becoming the absolute monarch, though, although at the same time many are worried about getting dragged into the war along with Spain. (+/-1 Neapolitan Confidence)
Empress Zauditu has begun to improve roads and the lot of her people; naturally enough, focusing on this instead of absurd schemes to conquer the Sudan has improved her popularity (+1 Ethiopian Confidence), but the recent events involving the attack on the Black Star Lines and the death of Marcus Garvey have begun to rile the populace against the Entente.
The Qajars have exploited the growing oil industry rather well (+1 Persian Base Economy); still, those nasty Constitutionalists are somewhere out there, and they may be getting feisty...
The Rashid Emirate has collapsed, as basically everyone would have expected; the coalition of ibn-Saud's Wahhabi rebels and Muhammad Hanbal's Bedouins that has replaced the Emirate is somewhat uneasy, as the two differ in their approach to government, but it has asserted its control over the country fairly easily.
Nepal's insidious plan to unite Bhutan and Nepal has failed largely due to opposition within the British Government (see International Events); the expected reforms were canceled, with little change in the overall situation.
Qing China, strangely enough, is still alive; while riots have intensified throughout the Middle Kingdom and the Marxists, seemingly everywhere, have begun to act as though there is some organization behind them, the Chinese military has stayed very visible and as such has acted as a fairly good deterrent to most rabble-rousing. Most of the other strikes and such were fairly easily dispersed by a combination of force and fairly good intelligence; nobody of consequence in the Marxist organization seems to have been caught yet, and indeed they seem to be growing more numerous. Fear is keeping most of the people in line, though, and most of the powerbrokers are quiescent due to bribery. (+/-1 Chinese Confidence)
International Events
The Triple Alliance has received several new members this year, the most prominent of these being Brazil; Belgium has also joined, following intense governmental infighting and the near-collapse of the government (which had to resort to a coalition as it was), and most people are definitely not reconciled to Belgium basically throwing away safe neutrality, though the memory of the Great European War does keep some in line. The Liberians, infuriated by the Garvey incident, have signed a separate defensive agreement with the United States, to the consternation of the French, who fear the creation of an African empire. (-2 Belgian Confidence, +Belgian coalition government)
Brazil has signed the Treaty of Asuncion with Paraguay and Bolivia; this essentially turns the two countries into economic and military colonies of Brazil, which makes many policymakers in both countries rather irked; however, money is finally beginning to flow into both countries, somewhat lessening complaints. Peru has also apparently joined the Brazilian orbit, with a trade and tariff agreement to match the one that Lima has also signed with the Chileans though the Peruvians, unlike the Bolivians and Paraguayans, retain military and political autonomy. In addition, the Brazilians seem intent on keeping protective tariffs up with the European Powers and America to allow the development of their Estado Novo project. This tariff war has also begun to extend to Brazil's southern neighbors; Uruguay and Argentina, one a staunch Brazilian enemy and the other fiercely neutral, have been largely excluded from Brazilian markets. (Paraguayan Economy to Stagnant)
British-Nepalese diplomacy has suffered a major setback. Prime Minister Lloyd George's project of the Treaty of Kathmandu, which would cede large productive areas of the Indian Raj to the puppet Nepal, as well as abandon Bhutan to the Nepalese, has caused much consternation in the British Government. The Treaty failed to pass the Commons, despite the Prime Minister spending most of his political capital; this, combined with the Cabinet's inactivity in the face of the Balkan and Spanish crises with the sole real difference of a brief squawk in favor of Albania has significantly lowered confidence in the government. The confusing step of expanding the military has also somewhat weakened the support for the current Liberal government. The Conservatives are beginning to call for a vote of no confidence; Lloyd George may hold them off, but the fact is that the Liberal government has the potential to rapidly weaken and may lose power soon. (-1 British Confidence)
The Garvey Incident, November 1926.
Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm.
-Marcus Garvey
The lights are going out all over Europe and I doubt we shall see them go on again in our lifetime.
-Edward Grey, Liberal MP and former Foreign Secretary
The background behind the events of November and December 1926 remains something of a mystery; the collision of a few characters on a world stage and the mess that resulted threatens to envelop the world once more in global war; the pieces are already beginning to move on both sides, and the other members of the alliances are liable to find themselves dragged into a terrific conflict the likes of which the world has not yet seen.
Marcus Garvey, a well known African American Republican and founder of the Black Star Lines, which carry aid from the United States to the African states of Liberia and Ethiopia, was personally on board the SS Shadyside on the return leg of its maiden voyage back from Liberia with a few immigrants bound for New York harbor in November 1926. Off the northern Brazilian coast in international waters, within clear view of an American destroyer and a Brazilian flotilla on patrol, as well as several other civilian vessels, a Spanish submarine first went through a mutiny, led by the Marxist captain Juan Maceo and the members of the crew that adhered to him; the Spanish then torpedoed the Shadyside, which sank, though with minimal loss of life. The killing itself came when the submarine surfaced and began to gun down the survivors; at this point, the American destroyer USS San Bernardino torpedoed the submarine, which was lost with all hands. No survivors were recovered from the wreck of the Shadyside.
In America, the public went into an uproar; after photographic evidence confirmed the submarine as Spanish in origin and after Madrid confirmed that there was indeed a submarine under their command missing, Congress began to speechify about extending a declaration of war. At the same time, the Colombian revolt was just beginning to really gain steam, and the Hearst papers began to churn out reports from the Colombian front, including the infamous massacre of Montena; rumors of a Spanish-led Entente conspiracy riled up the American public and intensified the demands for war. Finally, on December 8, at a joint session, Congress finally passed a declaration of war against Spain. Madrid came back with their own declaration the next day.
While no real combat has yet begun, as the two sides appear reluctant to engage, the American Second Fleet has bombarded the western Mexican coast, specifically Acapulco. As yet neither Entente nor Allies have honored their treaty agreements; while it is still not certain, the oft-mentioned imminent Global War seems to have just begun. It remains to be seen whether or not either side has recognized that.
(-1 Spanish submarine)
Military Events
The United States has begun preliminary mobilization as a result of its declaration of war on Spain. (10 infantry divisions, 5 tank brigades, 5 artillery brigades from reserves to active service)
Colombian rebels have caused the virtual disintegration of the country following the suspicious death of President Nel Ospina; the military has attempted to stay in control of most of the major cities, but most of the Andes and the jungle interior are under rebel control, as is the majority of Panama. A Christmas offensive by the Colombian loyalists which have mobilized the military - has managed to reestablish communications between most of the major strongholds which the military controls (viz. Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Cali), with not a few atrocities along the way, but it seems as though the rebels have the advantage especially since they appear to have acquired rather modern weapons and ammunition.
(-6 Colombian infantry divisions, -1 Colombian artillery brigade) (mostly to rebel defections)
Meanwhile, Venezuela has decided to initiate partial mobilization to prevent escalation of the neighboring Colombian conflict into their own territory. (5 Venezuelan infantry divisions from reserves to active service)
The Great Balkan Crisis
The Megali Idea is finally coming into its own! Go forth, to vanquish the vile Turk and restore Greater Greece to her rightful lands!
-Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos
Serbia has always desired a port on the Adriatic, as she deserves. No Power on Earth will keep us from this destiny!
-Prime Minister Nikola Pasic
The events in the Balkan Peninsula in 1926 overshadowed the events elsewhere in the world; even as diplomats in the Entente blundered their way through other issues worldwide, plans were being made by the Allies in the Balkans to launch their own projects against the Entente-allied Powers there. The winter months were spent building up troops and waiting for the weather to turn; in middle March, the moves were made and those poor unfortunate souls who were their targets soon faced disaster.
On March 18, Serbia and Greece culminated a month-long diplomatic offensive against Albania which had gone relatively unchecked by the British save for a few minor complaints from Whitehall and finally used the country's instability (and handy crypto-Orthodox populations) as a casus belli; Serbia initiated partial mobilization and launched an overwhelmingly large army down the Drin River valley while the Greek Navy bombarded Vlore and Durres and itself drove down the Vjose valley. The Greeks got some handy support from the small Greek populations that lived along the border in the south, but it wasn't as though the Albanians offered much resistance at all. Completely lacking support and overwhelmingly outnumbered, the Albanian government collapsed and Tirana was besieged by a combined Greco-Serbian army for three days, after which the Allies broke in and the city was conquered. What minor Albanian resistance remained was easily mopped up by the large numbers of Allied troops stationed in the country.
This was but a prelude to the disaster that was about to be visited upon the Turkish Republic. Still officially ruled by Ahmed Djemal in a military dictatorship, the Ankara government has been intensifying its state-sponsored pogroms against ethnic enemies in an effort to finally create a nationalist Turkish state; driven to desperation by this and apparently supplied with excellent weaponry from somewhere, the Kurds launched a rebellion in February that drew several Turkish divisions to try to crush it; using this as not only a distraction but a casus belli, the Greek Parliament joyously declared war and launched a multi-pronged offensive against their eternal eastern enemies who evilly evinced ethnic execrations. [1]
The initial assault was made in the air and on the sea: the Greek Air Force launched an attack on the Turkish air fields scattered throughout the country; most of the air force wasn't really on a war footing and was thus out in the open, easy prey for the Greek zeppelins and fighter-bombers, who got away practically scot free with fairly few losses. The few Turkish planes that were already in the air, who had been terrorizing the Kurds, did manage to break up a few Greek formations, but on the whole the Greeks managed to minimize losses and effectively annihilate all Turkish air power. At the very same time, most of the Greek navy was approaching Constantinople, blockading it with the surprise assistance of...the Russians, who had dispatched Admiral Kolchak's Black Sea Fleet to wipe out the Turkish Navy. The Turkish naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Ramiz Bey, pulled his fleet together despite bombing attempts by the Russians and Greeks (which were mostly ineffectual) and engaged the two navies in the Sea of Marmara, having been adroitly trapped by the Allied fleets; the Greek war hero Pavlos Kountouriotis and Kolchak utterly smashed the outnumbered Turkish navy as though they were shooting fish in a barrel, crammed into the narrow space of the Marmara. With the annihilation of the Turkish Navy, the minute Constantinopolitan garrison surrendered to the Greek army detachment that had driven east from the Greek Chersonesus [2] and the Greeks finally managed to recapture the Second Rome, with the attendant Orthodoxal ceremonies some Constantinopolitans claimed to have seen the priests of Hagia Sophia wandering around in the city, and a man with a remarkable resemblance to Constantine XI was spotted down by the Golden Horn.
With that symbolic victory, the Greeks immediately turned to Phase II; while the Russians infuriatingly refused to invade Turkey despite the state of war that technically existed between those two countries, the Greeks could do the whole thing by themselves, right? Aided by throwing a bone to the Turkish people and relatively limiting massacres by the army troops, the Greeks landed all along the Turkish coast, from Brusa to Attaleia to Tarsus, which faced no small opposition but nonetheless secured lodgements along the coast. They were immensely helped in this by the rather inconvenient (for the Turks) assassinations of the Minister of War, Mustafa Kemal, which inhibited transfer of Turkish divisions from the Kurdish front to the west. This way the Greeks only had to fight against a few parts of the Turkish army at any given time; this and the relatively flat terrain inland from Brusa to Ankara facilitated a relatively rapid Greek advance on Ankara itself, which fell in July after a failed Turkish counterattack with the meager remnants of the army and the entire tank reserve on the Sakkaria River. After this and the subsequent disappearance of President Ahmed Djemal, the Turkish army collapsed, and since it was the only thing holding up the State, that collapsed too; by the end of the year and the Garvey Incident which led to war between the US and Spain, there were still significant areas of Anatolia which had to be brought under control by one group or another, and the Kurds were now clamoring for complete independence, or autonomy under the UK. In death, the Turkish Republic may present more problems than it did in life. And this, combined with the Garvey Incident, may be the catalyst that kicks off the global war...
(+1 Greek Confidence, -1 Greek Bureaucracy)
(-Kingdom of Albania as an independent country, -Turkish Republic as a cohesive and independent polity, -3 Serbian divisions, -6 Greek divisions, -3 Greek tank brigades, -1 Greek artillery brigade, -1 Greek fighter squadron, -1 Greek cruiser, -2 Greek destroyers, -3 Russian destroyers, -2 Russian submarines)
[1] = Execration doesn't really work here, but everybody likes alliteration.
[2] = Gallipoli.
NPC Diplo:
From: Kurdish Rebels
To: United Kingdom
Please help us we'll gladly submit to your rule, so long as you treat us better than those dastardly Turks did!
From: Colombian Rebels
To: United States of America
Help!
OOC:
It'd be fantastic if I were able to get everybody's orders, and on time. You know...it'd be great and all. Since France and Germany have no players, somebody else needs to take them over, and ThomAnder needs to send orders.
I realize that it wasn't that important this turn, and that a lot of people didn't have much time in which to send orders, but always note how many troops you have in each location. Especially major powers who like to use fractions that result in less than 1 division being in each place.
Flyingchicken, try not to send contradictory addenda. Your orders were bloody confusing to parse what with that story and the extra additions and all, and not devoting any funds to half of your programs hurt as well.
I'm sorry about the comparative lateness of this particular installation, but putting back the deadline sort of wiped out all of the time I had set aside to do the update itself. Oh well. Next orders fall due next Tuesday at 1200 GMT.
The early parts of the year were dominated by an outbreak of conflict in the Balkans upon which world attention focused, outside of relatively minor diplomatic and internal squabbles in a few nations; later in the year, though, a crisis would erupt that threatened to initiate the long-awaited or long-dreaded Global War.
Domestic Events
Canadian railway companies have launched some government-assisted railway reforms, and have begun trying to increase immigration; while the latter especially hasn't really borne much economic fruit yet, Prime Minister King has begun to grow again in popularity, and by concentrating on the acid test areas of Ontario and Alberta has seen his Liberal Party gain in the by-elections (+1 Canadian Confidence).
Primarily due to the Garvey Incident (see below) and President Coolidge's strong diplomatic stance on the issue during the crisis that led to the initial declaration of war, the Republican Party has gained in the November off-year elections, securing a firm majority in both House and Senate. This, along with the easily-passed civil service reform, has resulted in an impressive increase in government popularity (+1 American Confidence).
Minor uprisings in Mexico near the end of the year are put down fairly easily by the Spanish colonial troops; the same cannot be said for Spain's puppet Colombia, where most of the countryside is in flames. (see Military Events) (-1 Mexican Colony Confidence, -2 Colombian Confidence)
Brazil's initiation of the domestic Estado Novo policy and the concurrent military expansion are beginning to alarm nearby countries, although most Brazilians themselves are pleased as punch about the virtual elimination of the paulistas from politics and the other measures that are putting Brazil once more on the path to Great Power status. (+1 Brazilian Confidence)
A major expansion in the size of the British regular army has somewhat alarmed those who believe that Britain's role in war is to fight on the sea, not the land; however, it has quieted opposition from those who believe that the UK hasn't been doing enough to combat the Triple Alliance. Apparently, also, the Prime Minister has begun to examine the prospect of an Imperial Reform, although the actual course of that remains undetermined. (see International Events) (+1 British Military Upkeep)
Dutch PM de Beerenbrouck has instituted a new economic policy to hopefully clear out the recession that the Dutch economy has been in; the initiation of this project has met with approval amongst most members of the Dutch Parliament, as has the apparent decision to maintain neutrality in the imminent conflict.
Fueling Alliance war scares, the Spanish have begun very publicly testing and designing new varieties of tanks that are far superior to the former design. Meanwhile, Carlos V has made vague promises of a constitutional monarchy; the military and right wing especially are not too sure what to think, with major military expansion on one hand and a serious subtraction from their power on the other. The Marxists, on the other hand, seem to have intensified their activities, what with the bomb scare in Barcelona and the assassination of the governor of Andalusia. The few moderates that exist in Spain, however, do rally to the new program, but they appear to be the only ones. (-1 Spanish Confidence)
The Russian Tsar seems to have done an about-face on most of his previous program; a general education reform seems to be in the works, though no funds have yet been devoted to it. Apparently the Tsar is also interested in state subsidizing of peasants; the workers wouldn't have been too happy about it normally, but the Tsar forced a controversial labor bill through what passed for a duma that initiated a government-mandated 40-hour week and 8-hour day. Oh, and for good measure, the Tsar began to look at eliminating all vestiges of Russification, though again there were no funds for this. Naturally, a lot of people got angry at all this: the capitalists were furious at the massive reduction in profits that the labor act was going to cause while the Tsar did try to bribe them with increased subsidies, the costs of such a program clearly outweighed the benefits while many Russians were angered by the abandonment of Russification and the early attempts to alter the woefully inadequate national education system to emphasize loyalty to the empire over ethnic groups. The confusion at the highest levels of government with several different plans being put forth for not only national defense but also the domestic agenda has prevented any of these plans from actually being implemented (save the labor bill and the increase in subsidies for most of big business), and the national frustration with these half-hearted attempts to change the status quo is apparent. In essence, antagonizing the folks who are in power to try to gain the support of some of those who aren't didn't quite balance out. (-1 Russian Confidence)
The Two Sicilies have officially recognized Carlos V, Emperor of Spain as the future successor to the Neapolitan throne; this, a direct breach of the Treaty of Frankfurt, has gotten both Germany and the UK rather angry, while Carlos V, no spring chicken himself, hasn't indicated his own position. This also seems in direct contravention of the new Neapolitan program in media and cinema, where the government is apparently trying to increase Imperial Roman nostalgia with films such as Mare Nostrum, a historical flick; what Italian nationalism does exist is relatively quiet at this point in time anyway, and most people just ignore the whole thing. Many Habsburg nobles are pretty happy about Carlos becoming the absolute monarch, though, although at the same time many are worried about getting dragged into the war along with Spain. (+/-1 Neapolitan Confidence)
Empress Zauditu has begun to improve roads and the lot of her people; naturally enough, focusing on this instead of absurd schemes to conquer the Sudan has improved her popularity (+1 Ethiopian Confidence), but the recent events involving the attack on the Black Star Lines and the death of Marcus Garvey have begun to rile the populace against the Entente.
The Qajars have exploited the growing oil industry rather well (+1 Persian Base Economy); still, those nasty Constitutionalists are somewhere out there, and they may be getting feisty...
The Rashid Emirate has collapsed, as basically everyone would have expected; the coalition of ibn-Saud's Wahhabi rebels and Muhammad Hanbal's Bedouins that has replaced the Emirate is somewhat uneasy, as the two differ in their approach to government, but it has asserted its control over the country fairly easily.
Nepal's insidious plan to unite Bhutan and Nepal has failed largely due to opposition within the British Government (see International Events); the expected reforms were canceled, with little change in the overall situation.
Qing China, strangely enough, is still alive; while riots have intensified throughout the Middle Kingdom and the Marxists, seemingly everywhere, have begun to act as though there is some organization behind them, the Chinese military has stayed very visible and as such has acted as a fairly good deterrent to most rabble-rousing. Most of the other strikes and such were fairly easily dispersed by a combination of force and fairly good intelligence; nobody of consequence in the Marxist organization seems to have been caught yet, and indeed they seem to be growing more numerous. Fear is keeping most of the people in line, though, and most of the powerbrokers are quiescent due to bribery. (+/-1 Chinese Confidence)
International Events
The Triple Alliance has received several new members this year, the most prominent of these being Brazil; Belgium has also joined, following intense governmental infighting and the near-collapse of the government (which had to resort to a coalition as it was), and most people are definitely not reconciled to Belgium basically throwing away safe neutrality, though the memory of the Great European War does keep some in line. The Liberians, infuriated by the Garvey incident, have signed a separate defensive agreement with the United States, to the consternation of the French, who fear the creation of an African empire. (-2 Belgian Confidence, +Belgian coalition government)
Brazil has signed the Treaty of Asuncion with Paraguay and Bolivia; this essentially turns the two countries into economic and military colonies of Brazil, which makes many policymakers in both countries rather irked; however, money is finally beginning to flow into both countries, somewhat lessening complaints. Peru has also apparently joined the Brazilian orbit, with a trade and tariff agreement to match the one that Lima has also signed with the Chileans though the Peruvians, unlike the Bolivians and Paraguayans, retain military and political autonomy. In addition, the Brazilians seem intent on keeping protective tariffs up with the European Powers and America to allow the development of their Estado Novo project. This tariff war has also begun to extend to Brazil's southern neighbors; Uruguay and Argentina, one a staunch Brazilian enemy and the other fiercely neutral, have been largely excluded from Brazilian markets. (Paraguayan Economy to Stagnant)
British-Nepalese diplomacy has suffered a major setback. Prime Minister Lloyd George's project of the Treaty of Kathmandu, which would cede large productive areas of the Indian Raj to the puppet Nepal, as well as abandon Bhutan to the Nepalese, has caused much consternation in the British Government. The Treaty failed to pass the Commons, despite the Prime Minister spending most of his political capital; this, combined with the Cabinet's inactivity in the face of the Balkan and Spanish crises with the sole real difference of a brief squawk in favor of Albania has significantly lowered confidence in the government. The confusing step of expanding the military has also somewhat weakened the support for the current Liberal government. The Conservatives are beginning to call for a vote of no confidence; Lloyd George may hold them off, but the fact is that the Liberal government has the potential to rapidly weaken and may lose power soon. (-1 British Confidence)
The Garvey Incident, November 1926.
Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm.
-Marcus Garvey
The lights are going out all over Europe and I doubt we shall see them go on again in our lifetime.
-Edward Grey, Liberal MP and former Foreign Secretary
The background behind the events of November and December 1926 remains something of a mystery; the collision of a few characters on a world stage and the mess that resulted threatens to envelop the world once more in global war; the pieces are already beginning to move on both sides, and the other members of the alliances are liable to find themselves dragged into a terrific conflict the likes of which the world has not yet seen.
Marcus Garvey, a well known African American Republican and founder of the Black Star Lines, which carry aid from the United States to the African states of Liberia and Ethiopia, was personally on board the SS Shadyside on the return leg of its maiden voyage back from Liberia with a few immigrants bound for New York harbor in November 1926. Off the northern Brazilian coast in international waters, within clear view of an American destroyer and a Brazilian flotilla on patrol, as well as several other civilian vessels, a Spanish submarine first went through a mutiny, led by the Marxist captain Juan Maceo and the members of the crew that adhered to him; the Spanish then torpedoed the Shadyside, which sank, though with minimal loss of life. The killing itself came when the submarine surfaced and began to gun down the survivors; at this point, the American destroyer USS San Bernardino torpedoed the submarine, which was lost with all hands. No survivors were recovered from the wreck of the Shadyside.
In America, the public went into an uproar; after photographic evidence confirmed the submarine as Spanish in origin and after Madrid confirmed that there was indeed a submarine under their command missing, Congress began to speechify about extending a declaration of war. At the same time, the Colombian revolt was just beginning to really gain steam, and the Hearst papers began to churn out reports from the Colombian front, including the infamous massacre of Montena; rumors of a Spanish-led Entente conspiracy riled up the American public and intensified the demands for war. Finally, on December 8, at a joint session, Congress finally passed a declaration of war against Spain. Madrid came back with their own declaration the next day.
While no real combat has yet begun, as the two sides appear reluctant to engage, the American Second Fleet has bombarded the western Mexican coast, specifically Acapulco. As yet neither Entente nor Allies have honored their treaty agreements; while it is still not certain, the oft-mentioned imminent Global War seems to have just begun. It remains to be seen whether or not either side has recognized that.
(-1 Spanish submarine)
Military Events
The United States has begun preliminary mobilization as a result of its declaration of war on Spain. (10 infantry divisions, 5 tank brigades, 5 artillery brigades from reserves to active service)
Colombian rebels have caused the virtual disintegration of the country following the suspicious death of President Nel Ospina; the military has attempted to stay in control of most of the major cities, but most of the Andes and the jungle interior are under rebel control, as is the majority of Panama. A Christmas offensive by the Colombian loyalists which have mobilized the military - has managed to reestablish communications between most of the major strongholds which the military controls (viz. Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Cali), with not a few atrocities along the way, but it seems as though the rebels have the advantage especially since they appear to have acquired rather modern weapons and ammunition.
(-6 Colombian infantry divisions, -1 Colombian artillery brigade) (mostly to rebel defections)
Meanwhile, Venezuela has decided to initiate partial mobilization to prevent escalation of the neighboring Colombian conflict into their own territory. (5 Venezuelan infantry divisions from reserves to active service)
The Great Balkan Crisis
The Megali Idea is finally coming into its own! Go forth, to vanquish the vile Turk and restore Greater Greece to her rightful lands!
-Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos
Serbia has always desired a port on the Adriatic, as she deserves. No Power on Earth will keep us from this destiny!
-Prime Minister Nikola Pasic
The events in the Balkan Peninsula in 1926 overshadowed the events elsewhere in the world; even as diplomats in the Entente blundered their way through other issues worldwide, plans were being made by the Allies in the Balkans to launch their own projects against the Entente-allied Powers there. The winter months were spent building up troops and waiting for the weather to turn; in middle March, the moves were made and those poor unfortunate souls who were their targets soon faced disaster.
On March 18, Serbia and Greece culminated a month-long diplomatic offensive against Albania which had gone relatively unchecked by the British save for a few minor complaints from Whitehall and finally used the country's instability (and handy crypto-Orthodox populations) as a casus belli; Serbia initiated partial mobilization and launched an overwhelmingly large army down the Drin River valley while the Greek Navy bombarded Vlore and Durres and itself drove down the Vjose valley. The Greeks got some handy support from the small Greek populations that lived along the border in the south, but it wasn't as though the Albanians offered much resistance at all. Completely lacking support and overwhelmingly outnumbered, the Albanian government collapsed and Tirana was besieged by a combined Greco-Serbian army for three days, after which the Allies broke in and the city was conquered. What minor Albanian resistance remained was easily mopped up by the large numbers of Allied troops stationed in the country.
This was but a prelude to the disaster that was about to be visited upon the Turkish Republic. Still officially ruled by Ahmed Djemal in a military dictatorship, the Ankara government has been intensifying its state-sponsored pogroms against ethnic enemies in an effort to finally create a nationalist Turkish state; driven to desperation by this and apparently supplied with excellent weaponry from somewhere, the Kurds launched a rebellion in February that drew several Turkish divisions to try to crush it; using this as not only a distraction but a casus belli, the Greek Parliament joyously declared war and launched a multi-pronged offensive against their eternal eastern enemies who evilly evinced ethnic execrations. [1]
The initial assault was made in the air and on the sea: the Greek Air Force launched an attack on the Turkish air fields scattered throughout the country; most of the air force wasn't really on a war footing and was thus out in the open, easy prey for the Greek zeppelins and fighter-bombers, who got away practically scot free with fairly few losses. The few Turkish planes that were already in the air, who had been terrorizing the Kurds, did manage to break up a few Greek formations, but on the whole the Greeks managed to minimize losses and effectively annihilate all Turkish air power. At the very same time, most of the Greek navy was approaching Constantinople, blockading it with the surprise assistance of...the Russians, who had dispatched Admiral Kolchak's Black Sea Fleet to wipe out the Turkish Navy. The Turkish naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Ramiz Bey, pulled his fleet together despite bombing attempts by the Russians and Greeks (which were mostly ineffectual) and engaged the two navies in the Sea of Marmara, having been adroitly trapped by the Allied fleets; the Greek war hero Pavlos Kountouriotis and Kolchak utterly smashed the outnumbered Turkish navy as though they were shooting fish in a barrel, crammed into the narrow space of the Marmara. With the annihilation of the Turkish Navy, the minute Constantinopolitan garrison surrendered to the Greek army detachment that had driven east from the Greek Chersonesus [2] and the Greeks finally managed to recapture the Second Rome, with the attendant Orthodoxal ceremonies some Constantinopolitans claimed to have seen the priests of Hagia Sophia wandering around in the city, and a man with a remarkable resemblance to Constantine XI was spotted down by the Golden Horn.
With that symbolic victory, the Greeks immediately turned to Phase II; while the Russians infuriatingly refused to invade Turkey despite the state of war that technically existed between those two countries, the Greeks could do the whole thing by themselves, right? Aided by throwing a bone to the Turkish people and relatively limiting massacres by the army troops, the Greeks landed all along the Turkish coast, from Brusa to Attaleia to Tarsus, which faced no small opposition but nonetheless secured lodgements along the coast. They were immensely helped in this by the rather inconvenient (for the Turks) assassinations of the Minister of War, Mustafa Kemal, which inhibited transfer of Turkish divisions from the Kurdish front to the west. This way the Greeks only had to fight against a few parts of the Turkish army at any given time; this and the relatively flat terrain inland from Brusa to Ankara facilitated a relatively rapid Greek advance on Ankara itself, which fell in July after a failed Turkish counterattack with the meager remnants of the army and the entire tank reserve on the Sakkaria River. After this and the subsequent disappearance of President Ahmed Djemal, the Turkish army collapsed, and since it was the only thing holding up the State, that collapsed too; by the end of the year and the Garvey Incident which led to war between the US and Spain, there were still significant areas of Anatolia which had to be brought under control by one group or another, and the Kurds were now clamoring for complete independence, or autonomy under the UK. In death, the Turkish Republic may present more problems than it did in life. And this, combined with the Garvey Incident, may be the catalyst that kicks off the global war...
(+1 Greek Confidence, -1 Greek Bureaucracy)
(-Kingdom of Albania as an independent country, -Turkish Republic as a cohesive and independent polity, -3 Serbian divisions, -6 Greek divisions, -3 Greek tank brigades, -1 Greek artillery brigade, -1 Greek fighter squadron, -1 Greek cruiser, -2 Greek destroyers, -3 Russian destroyers, -2 Russian submarines)
[1] = Execration doesn't really work here, but everybody likes alliteration.
[2] = Gallipoli.
NPC Diplo:
From: Kurdish Rebels
To: United Kingdom
Please help us we'll gladly submit to your rule, so long as you treat us better than those dastardly Turks did!
From: Colombian Rebels
To: United States of America
Help!
OOC:
It'd be fantastic if I were able to get everybody's orders, and on time. You know...it'd be great and all. Since France and Germany have no players, somebody else needs to take them over, and ThomAnder needs to send orders.
I realize that it wasn't that important this turn, and that a lot of people didn't have much time in which to send orders, but always note how many troops you have in each location. Especially major powers who like to use fractions that result in less than 1 division being in each place.
Flyingchicken, try not to send contradictory addenda. Your orders were bloody confusing to parse what with that story and the extra additions and all, and not devoting any funds to half of your programs hurt as well.
I'm sorry about the comparative lateness of this particular installation, but putting back the deadline sort of wiped out all of the time I had set aside to do the update itself. Oh well. Next orders fall due next Tuesday at 1200 GMT.
Attachments
#1 Person
The Cow
From Arabia
To the World
We seek to establish normal relations with all nations. We also are in quite need of economic assistance, in the form of loans to be repayed in full plus interest or some sort (it is a better investment than simply banking ecos which in fact slowly decrease rather than increase!).
To the World
We seek to establish normal relations with all nations. We also are in quite need of economic assistance, in the form of loans to be repayed in full plus interest or some sort (it is a better investment than simply banking ecos which in fact slowly decrease rather than increase!).
Jason The King
Deity
To Arabia
From Sweden-Norway
Just how much in loans were you thinking of?
From Sweden-Norway
Just how much in loans were you thinking of?
Jason The King
Deity
Answer????
LittleBoots
The Bloody Banner
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2006
- Messages
- 1,979
Great update! Silly Turks, Asia Minor is for Greeks!
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