OOC: What can I say, I DID get inspired after all... One more part after this, about the Great Depression and the rise of National-Socialism (utterly unrelated to NSDAP
).
IC:
1920-1927.
During World War One, nearly 7 millions have perished, and many more were crippled or wounded. The countryside and the cities alike were ruined; economy was shattered by the deaths, the devastation and the war expenses.
But that, ofcourse, was not enough to stop more war. Already in 1918, the year the Treaty of Versailles was signed, war, after a short retreat, returned - not yet in full force, but returned. In some places, like in Mexico (though by now, Carranza's victory was assured if not for his "problems" with the USA) or in China (where Sun Yat-sen, with clandestine Russian support, took over the south and defeated the warlord Duan Qirui), it never even went away. In Europe, the British had put down the Irish rebellions, both with local volunteers and with parts of the forces from France, despite the protests of the free press and the Americans (the former being concerned with the slowness of the demobilization, the latter - with the Irish cause). Although the Irish Volunteers were defeated, having not received neither German nor American military help, and the provisional government of Ireland was arrested, an underground resistance movement persisted, while terrorists tried to attack the Parliament, failing miserably but causing much concern. Violent risings took place in Germany, where the Spartakusbund made an ultimately-unsuccesful bid for power as a republic was being set up, and in the rump Austria-Hungary, which was even more confusing as Hungarian, German and Slavic nationalists fought each other, the government, the intervention forces and the rare local communists.
In Turkey, one of the primary causes for war in the post-war world was exhibited as General Kemal Mustafa, of Dardanelles and Armenia fame, launched a coup d'etat against the weak government of the Turkish Sultanate. Immediately, he begun preparing for a revision of the Versailles Treaty. His preparations, however, were not as covert as he would have liked, and the Entente had learned of it. Deciding to act together for once, the Entente also prepared - with limited forces available after the de-mobilization - for a war with Turkey. A casus belli was needed, or, more importantly, a provocation. British and French ambassadors pushed the Greek government to claim that the Turks were massacring Pontic Greeks. Greece declared war on Turkey after a brief diplomatic exchange. Ioannis Metaxas led the Greek army from victory to victory over the weak Turkish forces, until arriving at Ankara where Kemal Mustafa had gathered all that he had. Having ordered a levee en masse, Kemal Mustafa prepared a massive attack that, in the end, succesfully overwhelmed the Greeks, Metaxas dying in the process. By then, the furious Venizelos had realized what sort of a game the Entente was playing, but it was pointless for him to do anything about it. The Turks begun their counter-offensive, pursuing the Greeks back to Smyrna, when the Entente governments begun offering intemediation and demanding that the Turkish army is lowered to allowed levels. When asking about details of the Entente peace plan, Mustafa was outraged but not surprised by the way it created a Pontic Greek autonomous republic, disbanded much of Turkish army, crippled Turkey with war reparations to be paid to Greece and surrounded it with demilitarized zones. Knowing that such a treaty would be political suicide, Mustafa stalled negotiations while his army was being clandestinely increased further - he intended to take advantage of enemy war-weariness by bleeding them white against Turkish defenses and getting a more favourable peace. He had planned all this well, too - Turkey consisted of easily-defendable terrain, and he was going to make the Entente fight for every pass. Germany agreed, very secretly (so secretly it wasn't learned for many years later), to smuggle arms and ammunition, and the few illegal U-Boats that were not yet disassembled, to the Turks; they were assisted in this by a good old friend of the CUP, Aleksandr Israel Lazarevich Helphand. And manpower could always be found...
Yet Kemal Mustafa forgot about one thing - the loyalty factor that can only be tested in such a difficult situation. When the Entente powers declared war and first skirmishes begun in late 1918, Mustafa's old friend, Ismet, led a military coup against him, convinced that Turkey cannot survive. Mustafa was shot by one of the soldiers he had mobilized, out of one of the first German rifles. Ismet founded a government along with Fevzi, the Sultan's Minister of Armaments that at first defected to Mustafa. Now they hid the German weapons and U-boats for future use or sale, and urgently requested for an armistice. As the Entente governments were having some problems with anti-war riots and a few crises back in Europe, they were only too happy to attain peace without struggle. The Sultan's government was restored, with Ismet becoming the Minister of War (pre-coup position of Kemal Mustafa, as it happened) and Fevzi becoming the Minister of Finance as well as of Armaments. Turkey paid out some reparations (not as bad as the ones first proposed), announced DMZs and granted autonomy to the Pontic Republic.
And Venizelos lost the next elections, allowing for a brief "civil war" in which the Greek military defeated rebellions and forced the conservative government to restore monarchy under King Constantine.
Back in Asia, Arabic revolts in Hejjaz were put down by the British, who by then had determined to maintain as much control over the Red Sea as possible; however, some internal autonomy was granted to inland Hejjaz. Other Arab insurrections had to be dealt with as well. In Persia, the Majles, an oligarchic parliement, were losing control as the country descended into anarchy, and had to rely ever-more on British support. In Afghanistan, prince Amanollah killed his father and took power, declaring war on the United Kingdom and signing peace after some inconclusive skirmishes, having forced Britain to acknowledge the full independence of Afghanistan.
In India, a few riots and local insurrections took place as well, and ended with lots of martyrs.
As the 1920s begun, it was increasingly obvious that the War to End All Wars didn't end any but itself. Still, the end of World War One and the Old World Order certainly have changed things, and before the next big war could take place, a period of "picking up the pieces" should take place. The great powers rebuilt themselves, the winners consolidated gains, the losers - prepared for revanche. In the new world order, new strategies were needed; plans were made and changed, and the preliminary power-struggles and conflicts begun.
In the Americas, USA, despite Wilson's efforts, firmly withdrew from the affairs of the Eastern Hemisphere. The economy, however, was prepared for war, and the army was already raised, so it had to be used somewhere. Thankfully, Mexico existed for just such purposes - Venustiano Carranza's unstable government, despite the de jure recognition extended to it by USA, still was quite anti-American and nationalistic. Now, Wilson himself was opposed to any new intervention attempt, but he was won over by the proponents of such an intervention, most notably the rising American oil capital. When in 1918 Carranza attempted to nationalize the Mexican oil industries, a diplomatic crisis has started and was inflamed, and the Americans invaded Mexico, easily crushing it as civil war resumed when Alvaro Obregon launched a coup d'etat. By 1919, the war was over and by the Treaty of Veracruz, Mexico's new, pro-American puppet government leased several military bases and ports, ceded some tiny borderlands and Baja California to USA, and entered a customs union with America as well. Woodrow Wilson dedicated the rest of his presidency to extending said customs union across Central America and the Carribean; he also tried to create a League of Nations, but, even on the American scale, it was not very succesful and was abandoned after 1921 when Warren Harding won the elections. USA, however, was firmly turned to the economical domination of the Western Hemisphere.
The United Kingdom and France were now closer together than ever before. Though France, at least, still maintained pretty good relations with Russia (these declined overtime, admittedly), the true Entente consisted of these powers. All territorial disagreements in Africa were regulated by a series of treaties in the early 1920s. Both countries underwent gradual economic recovery (in part thanks to the steady arrival of German reparations), coupled with social reforms, most notably the creation of universal suffrage. In foreign policy, the two countries were also in agreement - together, they blocked German attempts to intervenne in Austria-Hungary, and consistantly acted to weaken the Germans; for this purpose, relations with Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia were improved as to form a
cordon sanitaire in the event of Germany trying to rearm.
But the Germans, for now anyway, had other pursuits, such as making the French withdraw from Saar, paying off the reparations as fast as possible and trying to recover from the sorry state German economy was in - though Germany itself was uninvaded apart from the 1914 Russian offensive, its economy was just as damaged as say that of Britain, WITHOUT the reparations. The German government had to take loans from USA as well, and at the same time suffered an alarming rise of inflation.
Italy was dominated by the national-liberal government of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, who emerged a hero from Versailles, having secured many territorial gains for Italy as he had promised. The economy was being bolstered by the initial Austrian reparations and the integration of newly-gained lands, social strife was dealt with by radical social reform. In 1923, when Albania (which Italy occupied from time to time since late WWI) collapsed into yet another civil war or maybe just a large blood feud between the clans, Italy has annexed Albania, but, to improve relations with Greece that have been strained as of late, sold North Epirus to King Constantine. The Entente didn't protest - it didn't really care about Albania, and wanted a strong Italy to help it oppose Germany and (a new, rising concern) Hungary. Yes, Hungary.
Austria-Hungary was falling apart ever since 1918. By 1922, it ceased to exist altogether - despite the best Entente diplomatic efforts, there just weren't enough people in either Austria or Hungary interested in the union being continued. A republic was declared in Austria and requested German annexation, but Italy and the Entente prevented this; Karl IV remained the parliamentary monarch of Hungary, introducing liberal reforms to some consternation of the local conservatives. All communist risings were crushed as well.
Poland, at the moment, was still ruled by the pro-Entente President Roman Dmowski, whose coalition government was rather unwieldy and fragile. The primary domestic problem was that of social reform, but there Dmowski and Pilsudski pretty much agreed, and the Polish conservatives were way too weak to oppose this. Foreign policy was more confusing - though both Pilsudski and Dmowski were in agreement that the Entente was Poland's best friend as of the moment, Dmowski also wanted to maintain good relations with Russia, whereas Pilsudski was in a more militaristic mood; he was also less hostile to the hypothetic prospect of a future alliance with Germany, if relations with the UK and France were to worsen.
In the Balkans, a re-alignment was taking place in the wake of the weakening and the eventual destruction of Austria-Hungary - both a one in the local diplomacy, and a one at home. Serbia, in the wake of the defeat of the "Yugoslavists" that wanted an united South Slav state, was dominated by the Serbian nationalist prime minister Nikola Pasic. The aging King Peter I was increasingly falling under Pasic's influence, but remained himself a firm liberal, and also a commited ally of the Entente; however, under his son Alexander I Serbia begun distancing itself from the radical republican Russia, instead courting the Entente, Italy, Greece and Romania. One of the main reasons for this was the Russian-backed revolution in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria was at the time obviously weakened by the defeat and the reparations, and this economic weakness has increased social strife. The firmly anti-monarchist Agrarian prime minister Aleksandur Stamboliyski passed radical reforms, introducing universal suffrage and giving land to the peasants. He was also taking an anti-military stance, instead relying on militias and encouraging "soldier soviets" and other reforms along the lines of Boris Savinkov's "people's army" in Russia. Thusly he outraged the military leaders, and they have prodded King Boris II of Bulgaria into assisting a coup d'etat in 1923, just after Stamboliyski's landslide electoral victory. It was succesful at first, but Stamboliyski escaped for Plovdiv, where he had some supporters; having won over the local garrison, he led an armed insurrection that quickly spilled out into the countryside. Still, the Bulgarian army, after the defeat of a few mutinies, was more than capable of defeating Stamboliyski's militias, and soon it begun crushing the countryside revolts, forcing Stamboliyski to resort to guerrila tactics. He would have been doomed if not for the Russian government, which provided his troops with advisors and weapons, including many WWI officers of Savinkov's. As it was, he had pulled through with their help, having organized his rag-tag forces into something like an army. The royal forces were being harrased at every step and were outnumbered, and though they have defeated Stamboliyski's first real offensive in this war at Pazardzhik, he then took personal command and rallied his troops. In an operation that was officially led by him, but really by two of the Russian advisors from the eSeR party - Alexander Antonov, who, having distinguished himself during Savinkov's reconstruction of the army and in dealing with the rising of the generals (see below), took command of the military side of the operation, and Vladimir Burtsev, the "Sherlock Holmes of the Russian Revolution", controlled the intelligence. In a daring operation, the Agrarian (or "Green") forces advanced along the Balkan Mountains, losing many men to disease and attrition but in the end suddenly arriving at Sofia itself. It was taken in a well-planned assault asisted by a local socialist rebellion. The captured Boris II abdicated and went into exile in Switzerland in 1924.
As mentioned before, Pasic has assembled against it a coalition of Romania (where the pro-Agrarian prime minister Iuliu Maniu was assassinated, and was replaced with General Alexandru Averescu, through whom King Ferdinand I had gained more infleunce than ever before over the Romanian politics) and Greece (where, too, the monarchy was regaining power). This coalition was, however, loose, uncoordinated and unprepared, and its intervention on the "White", i.e. monarchist, side in Bulgaria came too late. The Greeks failed to force the passes in the Kardzali Mountains due to logistical problems, while the Serbs, having advanced all the way to Sofia, were met with well-prepared defenses that kept the Serbs at bay. Romania had the worst of it - after the first few victories, the Parliament begun demanding the end of the intervention, and just as a domestic political crisis was ignited, Russia declared war on Romania (but Romania alone), and was soon supported by Hungary ('tis an alliance of convenience). Romanians tried to put up some defenses, but they were not strong enough for a three-front war, especially as an armed republican revolt begun in Wallachia. Soon, Ferdinand I joined Boris II in Switzerland. By the Treaty of Satu Mare, Romania restored South Transylvania to Hungary. By the Treaty of Bucharest, Romania, under its new democratic Russian puppet government, ceded Dobruja to Bulgaria in exchange for not having to pay reparations, was nonetheless guaranteed rights of transit on the Danube and recognized Stamboliyski's new Provisional Government; it was also temporarily occupied by Russia for "demonarchization", and ceded South Bukovina to Russia. Greece promptly backed out of this war, recognizing Stamboliyski; Serbia followed suit, but kept a grudge.
This "Third Balkan War" has greatly raised the concerns of the Entente, and strained its relations with Russia greatly. The sinister phantom of a Russo-Bulgaro-Hungaro-German alliance was in sight. That was the worst-case scenario, anyway.
Anyway, in Russia itself, the post-war years were very controversial, but certainly quite exciting. Though Kerensky won election after election with remarkable ease (not much of competition left free and in the country itself at the same time), he still had to enact various radical social reforms, divide all land among the peasants and further strenghthen his government. His reforms, ofcourse, angered the army. Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky, a young, rising-star general, has organized in 1920 a military coup with the support of some old-guard generals, including Brusilov who was only a grudging supporter of Kerensky in the best of times. The coup itself, known as the "Rising of the Generals", had failed - Boris Savinkov had learned of it and took precautions, arresting Tukhachevsky's supporters in the Petrograd and Kronstadt garrisons, and sending loyal troops to arrest Tukhachevsky's forces, with the help of the railroad workers, en route to the city. Tukhachevsky himself was captured with his army, with scarcely a shot being fired. As for Brusilov, he got ill and could not join the abortive coup; having learned of his participation from questioning, Kerensky had him retire, but honourably and with a fairly large pension.
Yet that was not the end yet - despite Tukhachevsky's defeat, one of his followers, Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel, who commanded the Russian forces in the Ukraine, raised a monarchist rebellion that was soon backed by Grand Prince Kirill, who came back from the English exile of the Romanovs. From Ukraine, he struck out towards Smolensk, where he was joined by more rebelling troops, and from there moved to take Moscow; only there, he was stopped by the local militais and the loyal part of the army. Though eventually, he took Moscow by assault, valuable time was lost and a guerrila war had commenced in the territories he has seized; in the end, Wrangel was surrounded in Moscow, and, after the failure of his break-out attempt, he negotiated amnesty for his followers and shot himself (some claim that he was shot by Kerensky's men). Anyway, after these events Kerensky's power was only reinforced, despite the grave threat that came to it. Kerensky continued his radical reforms and encouraged the gradual industrialization of Russia, attracting much foreign investment. And, as I already mentioned, he also assisted likewise-minded regimes, strenghthening Russia abroad.
Africa was quite uneventful - a few rebellions here, Ethiopia modernizing there...
The Entente - meaning, as said before, the UK and France - had detiriorating relations with USA, due to the issue of their loans; their staunch opposition to Wilson's self-determination and the British supression of Ireland furthered the estrangement. Rather than rebuild their relations with USA, the Entente, fearful that the Americans might one day side with the Germans, strenghthened its ties with Japan. These ties were improved further as relations with Russia begun declining as well, again due to the loans and Kerensky's vaguely-socialist domestic policies. USA did nothing about that yet, aware that the Entente was unlikely to attack it first; however, as the American capitalists were already investing much into Russia's improving economy and as trade with Russia grew due to the development of its Far Eastern and Siberian territories, American diplomats begun probing Petrograd for hypothetic cooperation against theoretical Japanese aggression. Same with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary Chinese Republic, which was largely armed with Russian and American weapons and crowded with Russian advisors. Said Republic was, by 1927, in firm control over China Proper sans rebel-held Yunnan (which was secretly assisted by the British, who disliked the prospect of an alliance between Russia and China, particularily a strong China), and formally at least its authority was acknowledge in Manchuria and Sinkiang, with much Russian help; Mongolia, meanwhile, was an autonomous province. Radical social reforms were in place, the coutnry was being forcefully modernizing, industries were being built up and the army was also being trained and re-fitted. Yet China's stability was fragile, as the country was to find out in late 1927, when Sun Yat-sen finally died from old age.
Japan itself was growing in strenght, especially building up its fleet as the Chinese direction of expansion seemed potentially dangerous, due to the prospect of a war with Russia and China at the same time.
possibly not knowing what the heck to do with them.
to whoever gets the reference sans googling for it 
