Tartarystan
04-08-2007, 06:01
Alright, I'll start talking what it is first. I just got an idea while reading a vast horde of history books when I had no other time. Feedback is useful; it's my first time doing this. I was thinking it'd be kinda fun to do an RP about an alternate World War II (any maybe its aftermath).
The RP is pretty grounded in reality and its kinda pre-modern tech. It takes place in 1946, so please refrain from using anything like railguns or assault rifles, because they're obviously not out yet.
I'll give a summary of what happens. I don't want to describe everything that ever happened in history., so I'll only talk about the things that are significantly different. It's not really a serious timeline, but it's really just there to make the world different.
Anyways, the timeline diverges in the eighteenth century. Poland successfully beats back the partition by Russia, Austria, and Prussia by defeating Russia in the Confederation of Bar. The agreement between Austria and Prussia collapses without Russian mediation, the partition is averted. Poland quickly industrializes under the King as an aristocratically-dominated state much like Prussia.
The debate between Austria and Prussia explodes into a war. The only real territorial change is the Prussian annexation of Hesse. This worried Great Britain because they were planning to hire Hessian mercenaries to quell a possible rebellion in North America, but now they cannot.
In 1775, British colonists in North America rise against Great Britain declaring independence in what would be eventually known as the American Revolutionary War. British forces fare so poorly without Hessian mercenaries, that France sees a chance and declares war on Great Britain. The British fleet is decisively defeated by a smaller Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. The huge defeat shook Parliament, and combined with defeat after defeat by the American revolutionaries, decides to make peace. In 1776, British forces withdraw from the newly formed "United States of America" into Canada.
The Napoleonic wars go as normal except with a few differences.. The United States of America greatly strengthened its ties with France, even after the revolution. The United States of America enters in a formal military alliance with France aimed against Great Britain. This balances out Poland's declaration of neutrality. America's contribution to the war was minimal, and Napoleon is defeated attempting to invade Russia, and later exiled after his defeat at Waterloo. American forces triumph against British forces in Canada and force Great Britain to cede New Brunswick.
The next major change is the Carlist War in Spain. After the collapse of the Spanish Colonial Empire, a vast civil war that arose from a succession dispute arose in Spain. Tomás de Zumalacárregui survived the real life incident that killed him, and managed to bring the Carlist forces more and more victories. Russia, Poland, and France all financed the Carlists. They were eventually pushed back into Navarre but saved themselves with another heroic victory in the Basque. Seeing a chance, the Carlists declared the independence of Navarre, or the Basque country, crowning King Carlos V of Navarre. Spain, under Isabella, attempted to invade Navarre, but intervention by France and international condemnation of Spain forced them to withdraw and also recognize the independence of Navarre.
The United Provinces returned after the Napoleonic Wars. When Belgium declared independence, France was on an nationalist goal to unite all French-speakers. Instead of siding with Belgium, France sided with the Netherlands and agreed to partition Belgium. With overwhelming French force, Belgium was partitioned with Luxembourg and Wallonia going to France, and Flanders going to the Netherlands.
The Revolutions of 1848 shook Europe. The Austrian Empire would have collapsed if not for the timely intervention of Poland and Russia. Napoleon III was elected by an overwhelming popular vote in France and declared the enormously popular Second French Empire. German nationalist and republicanism opposed to both the absolute monarchism of Austria and Prussia popped up everywhere in Germany. Prussia collapsed into revolutionary fervor. German nationalists, bitter and angry over the defeat of Prussia by the combined forces of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, attempted to topple the power of the Junkers. The civil war that followed tore apart Prussia. The Rhineland, not physically connected to the rest of Prussia, declared independence as the German Republic. Prussia frantically attempted to suppress it, only succeeding in 1857. Scandinavian liberals, filled with nationalist fervor, called for the unification of Scandinavia. With huge revolts on its hands, all three Scandinavian kingdoms entered into a state union and established a liberal constitution, placating many Scandinavians.
The Americans had better luck diffusing sectional tension. Sectional tension did not really become a major issue and the possibility of a civil war was never recognized, because of how unrealistic it seemed. After the Mexican-American war, it appeared America had entered into a new era of prosperity and expansion. American forces sailed to Hawaii in 1851 with the intent of colonization. America would join the world ranks of colonial empires. Hawaii, recognizing the American intent, immediately attacked the American envoy with every soldier they had. In one of the most dramatic moments in American history, one hundred and forty soldiers under the command of the relatively unknown Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee repulsed five to six thousand enemy soldiers for days until friendly reinforcements arrived. A large American army utterly wiped out the Hawaii and annexed it to America in a month. On the other side, American forces in the Atlantic immediately started setting up colonies along the Ivory Coast and in the rest of West Africa. America had found its place in the sun. America never had an internal war, but as a result, slavery still persisted in a few states in the Deep South for many years. Slavery declined without being outlawed with the slave population dropping yearly as slavery became more economically infeasible.
In 1850, China was languishing under Manchu rule. Hong Xiquan, a Christian Chinese convert, lead an anti-Manchu revolution that was both Chinese and Christian. Foreign powers flocked to China. The United States sympathized with the somewhat Protestant revolutionaries and provided needed aid they propelled them to victory against the Manchu. In 1863, after a bloody war that had consumed tens of millions of lives, the Manchu Empire collapsed and China declared itself an independent nation. The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace established theocratic Chinese rule over China. Manchu, the foreigners who had subjugated China for three hundred years, became subject to much racial, ethnic, and almost genocidal hatred. Fleeing violence and anti-Manchu violence, millions of Manchu fled overseas to a new haven, Japan. With their Emperor dead, they found a new Emperor in the Emperor of Japan who they immediately accepted after they made up a myth of how the Japanese Emperor was an reincarnation of the Manchu Emperor. Manchu manpower brought the Emperor quick victories against the Shoguns in the Meiji Restoration. The Manchu were almost all educated and highly knowledgeable in the running of a state. After all, they had done it for three hundred years to all of China. Manchu quickly filled up many Japanese government posts and with Japanese, pushed forward modernization of Japan quickly. The Netherlands signed an agreement to also help modernize Japan in return for Japanese trade concessions and close relations. The Dutch-Japanese alliance would survive all the way into modern times. Japan quickly exploded. With Manchu agricultural expertise, the population of Japanese exploded. Japan quickly became the third most populous nation on Earth after China and Russia. And speaking of Russia, after the collapse of the Manchu Empire, Tibet declared itself independent. The Tibetans argued that their agreement of suzerainty was not with China, but with the Manchu Emperor! Because of this, they quickly declared themselves independent and established an alliance with the land where the Manchu had fled, Japan. In the chaos of the revolution, Russia seized control of East Turkestan, and Mongolia, though they left Manchuria alone.
After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, Russia not only emancipated the serfs but embarked on more Great Reforms, mostly because the defeat was even worse due to Russia's lack of power of Poland. The Era of Great Reforms truly did deserve this name as Russia reformed and entered into a new golden age complete with civil and judicial reform, a new constitutional, a duma, and Russia's transformation into a constitutional monarchy.
Napoleon III found himself victorious in Mexico again. A successful suppression of the Mexican insurgency against the new Emperor had been made. The Mexican Empire quickly found itself growing economically under Franco-Austrian tutelage. A border clash led to a successful Mexican invasion of the United States of Central America.
Prussia and Austria went to war again, this time in 1866, over control of Germany. Both wanted to claim the mantle of "Protector of the German Country", so they unsurprisingly went to war. However, Prussia was highly unprepared. The assassination of Otto von Bismarck by an anarchist radical in 1859 left Germany without a capable statesmen. Immediately, Austria garnered support from France, Poland, and Scandinavia. France was more cordial to Austria after it had declined to assist Sardinia-Piedmont in its botched attempt to unify Italy. The alliance smashed Prussia in weeks. To ensure foreign support, Austria had agreed to award itself the mantle of Germany. Instead, Austria, France, Poland, and Scandinavia partitioned Germany. Poland annexed West Prussia, East Prussia, Posen, and Silesia. Scandinavia annexed Schleswig-Holstein. France annexed the Rhineland. Austria annexed Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Saxony, Hesse, and the rest of Southern Germany. Prussia was reduced to a far smaller state after this. This war solidified Napoleon III's power in France and solidified the position of all four nations.
Japan quickly proved itself formidable. When a Korean man murdered a Manchu man and threw him in the Yalu River, Japan demanded Korea to pay reparations that were flat out ridiculous and impossible, especially since the Manchu in question was also a Korean citizen, not Japanese. When Korea refused, Japan invaded. By 1868, Korea had capitulated. Japan quickly started colonizing the Pacific with their Dutch partners, which caused both to race against the United States.
In the War of the Pacific, Chile invaded both Bolivia and Peru in what almost was a surprise attack. Argentina, stronger as ever after defeating and annexing Paraguay single-handedly, joined in against Chile. In only a year, Chile found that it no longer existed, partitioned between Argentina, which would soon become the Kingdom of La Plata, and the Bolivian-Peruvian confederation. Argentina had swallowed Chile, Uruguay (after Uruguay had merged with the Piratini Republic, Brazil and Argentina partitioned it), and Paraguay before declaring itself as the Kingdom of La Plata.
The USA, Britain, France, as well as the Netherlands, rushed to colonize Africa. The USA seized control of large parts of West Africa, Namibia, and parts of East Africa. The British and French took most of the rest of Africa, with the Netherlands taking control of the Congo and Madagascar. The USA seized Spain and Portugal's last colonies in Asia soon after in the Spanish-American war.
The Ottoman Empire was near collapsing, it had lost most of it's territory in Europe to Greece, a newly liberated Serbia, and a newly liberated Bulgaria who comprised an organization they called the Balkan League.
In 1914, German revolutionaries toppled the disgraced Prussian monarchy and Junker aristocrats (who mostly were now in Poland), establishing the famous German Republic. In a day, the German black-red-gold tricolor hung over the Brandenburg gate, replacing the absolutist Prussian monarchy with a liberal democracy and a republic. This move drew applause from states such as Poland (an elective monarchy but de facto Republic), the United States of America, but drew condemnation from most of the world. After radical German-Austrian nationalist artist, Adolf Hitler, assassinated Franz Ferdinand at the cost of his own life, the Austrian government blamed it on the German Republic. Many nations were edging for an excuse to invade Germany, and they did. Poland, the United States of America, the Ottoman Empire, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and China rallied to the German cause. They were opposed by the nations of the British Commonwealth, France, Scandinavia, Austria, Japan, the Netherlands, and Greece. Strings of alliances caused this incident to explode in World War I. Germany had an alliance with Poland, and Poland had one with the USA and Serbia. Serbia had one with Montenegro and Romania, while Romania had an alliance with Bulgaria and Bulgaria one with the Ottoman Empire. China was allied with the United States. The Austrians were allied with the French who had an alliance with the Netherlands. The Netherlands had an alliance with both Japan and the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia and Greece both had alliances with the United Kingdom. Don't worry, it's not meant to make sense.
The German Volkswehr was swamped by an invasion from Scandinavia, France, and Austria. The Scandinavian army was forced to fight on a tiny front and was unable to break through German trench lines. The French and Austrian armies had very long borders and often planned huge human wave assaults at the trench lines. The French army had languished over the last sixty years becoming rather antiquated and ineffective. The French army actually learned something from its defeat IRL from the Franco-Prussian war that it did not here. The French had poor supply systems, no general staff, poor leadership, and generally terrible tactics. A German army far smaller than the French was able to defeat the French again and again. Morale gone from defeat after defeat, a revolution exploded in Paris and quickly started consuming the rest of the country. The French Emperor desperately attempted to defeat it, but he was eventually captured by radical Communists and shot along with his entire family to international shock. A new French republic guided by moderate liberals, social democrats, and other mild socialists lasted for a few months until radical Communists overthrew the government and sparked the French Civil War. After several months in 1918, the French government was overthrown and replaced with a Communist government. In the chaos, nations often snatched land from France. Sardinia-Piedmonte snatched Savoy back, the Netherlands snatched Wallonia, and the Austrians snatched Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Rhineland back, with Britain snatching Britanny and Calais.
At the same time, British and Greek forces defeated both Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and the Ottoman Empire after a long and bloody campaign that devastated the people of Greece. Montenegro capitulated first and Serbia soon followed. The Austrian army smashed the Romanians and Romania also capitulated. Very soon, Bulgaria collapsed from Greek pressure. The Ottomans, stricken by a two front war against both Britain and Greece capitulated. The Central Powers appeared to be on the run, with only Germany, Poland, and the United States remaining. China collapsed soon after Japan destroyed it in battle after battle. China signed a desperate treaty with Japan, ceding huge tracts of land in Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, parts of Northern China, Taiwan, Hainan, and Shanghai. The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace collapsed as Chinese nationalist revolutionaries sought to rebuild China from the ashes. On 1917, after the collapse of the Chinese Empire, Sun Yat-sen proclaimed the Republic of China. The most noticeable difference the Chinese Empire had wrought was a dramatic shift in Chinese demographics. China, now, had the worlds largest population of Christians in its border, with a majority of Chinese clearly Christian.
Germany was quickly overwhelmed from all sides as the entire Austrian and Scandinavian armies bored down on them. The Volkswehr found itself defeated by Austrian tanks. Germany quickly figured it did not want to share the fate of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. Germany quickly signed a rather lenient peace treaty switching sides. The Austrians were far more willing to make a reasonable peace than the Greeks or British were. With Germany taken out of the war, it left only Poland and the United States left. Poland was quickly torn apart by a combined force of the Entente powers. Poland was subjected to humiliating peace treaties that forced the cession of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Posen to Germany, as well as the cession of Silesia to Austria. Poland found itself having to pay huge and unreasonable reparations, limit its army, and prohibited from creating a general staff or navy. The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was forcibly broken up in two, into Lithuania and Poland as the Polish monarchy collapsed. On the first day of 1917, the United States was the sole remaining Central Power.
Japan, fresh from its victory against China, won another victory against the American navy. The USN was completely torn apart at the Battle of Honolulu. With the navy on the run, Japanese troops quickly occupied island after island, annihilating the American garrisons on each one. The European Entente powers invaded from Canada. Regardless of American resistance, the combined nations of the world claimed a phhyric victory against the Americans. America was subjected, like Poland, to a humiliating peace treaty. In March, 1919, World War I was over. America was forced to cede California and Oregon (a combined population of one million, a very small amount actually) to Japan, as well as Washington and Maine to the British. America ceded all of its foreign colonies, a significant amount, to France and Britain, and was also subject to the same treatment as Poland in terms of brutal restrictions.
After World War I, Spanish influenza swept the world. The only place where it had real effect was when it completely wiped out India.
In the 1920's, both the United States and Poland fell into huge depressions complete with hyperinflation. With social disorder exploding in each other, small Communist rebellions, completely crushed in a few weeks, erupted in both the United States and Poland. New political groups arose in both countries quite similar to one another. The National Syndicalist Party, a new party in the United States, won disaffected and disillusioned voters. In 1930, the National Radical Camp, warped into ultranationalism and outright fascism by the charismatic Jozef Kowalski (totally fictional), won a small group of seats in the Polish parliament. Josef Kowalski would eventually go forward to seize control of the state by 1931, abolishing the Polish republic in favor for a dictatorship.
In 1932, the United States followed suit and elected Carl Johnson(also fictional) of the National Syndicalist party, though the legitimacy of the elections were put in questions. Carl Johnson immediately also started seizing control of state apparatuses and gearing the country for war.
In 1936, in a famous speech by Carl Johnson, he announced the formation of a "Warsaw-Washington axis". Poland and the United States quickly started militarising. The United States broke the Treaty of Toronto that ended World War II by remilitarizing New England.
When Civil War broke out in Spain, communist revolutionaries backed by France attempted to overthrow the Spanish monarchy. Teetering on collapse, the Spanish monarchy appealed to Portugal to help them. Portugal agreed to do so, but demanded union with Spain as a demand. The demands were agreed toward, and a new Iberian kingdom emerged on the ashes of Communist revolution. Foreign volunteers flew to Spain to assist either the Monarchist forces or the Communist forces. Though the League of Nations advocated non-intervention, the USA and Poland broke this by sending troops. France than also broke it by sending assistance. The Monarchists prevailed in August, 1939.
In March 1938, Lithuanian voters voted YES for unification (or some claimed, annexation) with Poland while the United Kingdom sat complacent. Russia immediately started cultivating ties with its new Polish neighbour. In September 1938, Polish and Allied nations signed the Treaty of Memel, a treaty that allowed Poland to annex the Latvian-portion of the Union of Latvia and Estonia in exchange for leaving the rest of the union. In March, 1939, Poland shocked the world when it broke this treaty, walked in, and conquered Estonia. The United States and Poland jointly planned to launch attacks on the Allied nations at the same time. The American and Polish militaries secretly drilled in preparations for their invasions, invasions that would spark World War II. World War II is just about to erupt...
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/4139/untitled6aq1.png
1939
I'm still looking for any feedback. Would anyone be interested in this? I'm not sure if it should be character or nation based, so I'm also asking that. I wrote the timeline up in half an hour, so don't expect it to be good, it's just a rough draft. Same with the map. If people are interested, I'll just probably go to Invision and start an off-site map.
The RP is pretty grounded in reality and its kinda pre-modern tech. It takes place in 1946, so please refrain from using anything like railguns or assault rifles, because they're obviously not out yet.
I'll give a summary of what happens. I don't want to describe everything that ever happened in history., so I'll only talk about the things that are significantly different. It's not really a serious timeline, but it's really just there to make the world different.
Anyways, the timeline diverges in the eighteenth century. Poland successfully beats back the partition by Russia, Austria, and Prussia by defeating Russia in the Confederation of Bar. The agreement between Austria and Prussia collapses without Russian mediation, the partition is averted. Poland quickly industrializes under the King as an aristocratically-dominated state much like Prussia.
The debate between Austria and Prussia explodes into a war. The only real territorial change is the Prussian annexation of Hesse. This worried Great Britain because they were planning to hire Hessian mercenaries to quell a possible rebellion in North America, but now they cannot.
In 1775, British colonists in North America rise against Great Britain declaring independence in what would be eventually known as the American Revolutionary War. British forces fare so poorly without Hessian mercenaries, that France sees a chance and declares war on Great Britain. The British fleet is decisively defeated by a smaller Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. The huge defeat shook Parliament, and combined with defeat after defeat by the American revolutionaries, decides to make peace. In 1776, British forces withdraw from the newly formed "United States of America" into Canada.
The Napoleonic wars go as normal except with a few differences.. The United States of America greatly strengthened its ties with France, even after the revolution. The United States of America enters in a formal military alliance with France aimed against Great Britain. This balances out Poland's declaration of neutrality. America's contribution to the war was minimal, and Napoleon is defeated attempting to invade Russia, and later exiled after his defeat at Waterloo. American forces triumph against British forces in Canada and force Great Britain to cede New Brunswick.
The next major change is the Carlist War in Spain. After the collapse of the Spanish Colonial Empire, a vast civil war that arose from a succession dispute arose in Spain. Tomás de Zumalacárregui survived the real life incident that killed him, and managed to bring the Carlist forces more and more victories. Russia, Poland, and France all financed the Carlists. They were eventually pushed back into Navarre but saved themselves with another heroic victory in the Basque. Seeing a chance, the Carlists declared the independence of Navarre, or the Basque country, crowning King Carlos V of Navarre. Spain, under Isabella, attempted to invade Navarre, but intervention by France and international condemnation of Spain forced them to withdraw and also recognize the independence of Navarre.
The United Provinces returned after the Napoleonic Wars. When Belgium declared independence, France was on an nationalist goal to unite all French-speakers. Instead of siding with Belgium, France sided with the Netherlands and agreed to partition Belgium. With overwhelming French force, Belgium was partitioned with Luxembourg and Wallonia going to France, and Flanders going to the Netherlands.
The Revolutions of 1848 shook Europe. The Austrian Empire would have collapsed if not for the timely intervention of Poland and Russia. Napoleon III was elected by an overwhelming popular vote in France and declared the enormously popular Second French Empire. German nationalist and republicanism opposed to both the absolute monarchism of Austria and Prussia popped up everywhere in Germany. Prussia collapsed into revolutionary fervor. German nationalists, bitter and angry over the defeat of Prussia by the combined forces of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, attempted to topple the power of the Junkers. The civil war that followed tore apart Prussia. The Rhineland, not physically connected to the rest of Prussia, declared independence as the German Republic. Prussia frantically attempted to suppress it, only succeeding in 1857. Scandinavian liberals, filled with nationalist fervor, called for the unification of Scandinavia. With huge revolts on its hands, all three Scandinavian kingdoms entered into a state union and established a liberal constitution, placating many Scandinavians.
The Americans had better luck diffusing sectional tension. Sectional tension did not really become a major issue and the possibility of a civil war was never recognized, because of how unrealistic it seemed. After the Mexican-American war, it appeared America had entered into a new era of prosperity and expansion. American forces sailed to Hawaii in 1851 with the intent of colonization. America would join the world ranks of colonial empires. Hawaii, recognizing the American intent, immediately attacked the American envoy with every soldier they had. In one of the most dramatic moments in American history, one hundred and forty soldiers under the command of the relatively unknown Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee repulsed five to six thousand enemy soldiers for days until friendly reinforcements arrived. A large American army utterly wiped out the Hawaii and annexed it to America in a month. On the other side, American forces in the Atlantic immediately started setting up colonies along the Ivory Coast and in the rest of West Africa. America had found its place in the sun. America never had an internal war, but as a result, slavery still persisted in a few states in the Deep South for many years. Slavery declined without being outlawed with the slave population dropping yearly as slavery became more economically infeasible.
In 1850, China was languishing under Manchu rule. Hong Xiquan, a Christian Chinese convert, lead an anti-Manchu revolution that was both Chinese and Christian. Foreign powers flocked to China. The United States sympathized with the somewhat Protestant revolutionaries and provided needed aid they propelled them to victory against the Manchu. In 1863, after a bloody war that had consumed tens of millions of lives, the Manchu Empire collapsed and China declared itself an independent nation. The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace established theocratic Chinese rule over China. Manchu, the foreigners who had subjugated China for three hundred years, became subject to much racial, ethnic, and almost genocidal hatred. Fleeing violence and anti-Manchu violence, millions of Manchu fled overseas to a new haven, Japan. With their Emperor dead, they found a new Emperor in the Emperor of Japan who they immediately accepted after they made up a myth of how the Japanese Emperor was an reincarnation of the Manchu Emperor. Manchu manpower brought the Emperor quick victories against the Shoguns in the Meiji Restoration. The Manchu were almost all educated and highly knowledgeable in the running of a state. After all, they had done it for three hundred years to all of China. Manchu quickly filled up many Japanese government posts and with Japanese, pushed forward modernization of Japan quickly. The Netherlands signed an agreement to also help modernize Japan in return for Japanese trade concessions and close relations. The Dutch-Japanese alliance would survive all the way into modern times. Japan quickly exploded. With Manchu agricultural expertise, the population of Japanese exploded. Japan quickly became the third most populous nation on Earth after China and Russia. And speaking of Russia, after the collapse of the Manchu Empire, Tibet declared itself independent. The Tibetans argued that their agreement of suzerainty was not with China, but with the Manchu Emperor! Because of this, they quickly declared themselves independent and established an alliance with the land where the Manchu had fled, Japan. In the chaos of the revolution, Russia seized control of East Turkestan, and Mongolia, though they left Manchuria alone.
After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, Russia not only emancipated the serfs but embarked on more Great Reforms, mostly because the defeat was even worse due to Russia's lack of power of Poland. The Era of Great Reforms truly did deserve this name as Russia reformed and entered into a new golden age complete with civil and judicial reform, a new constitutional, a duma, and Russia's transformation into a constitutional monarchy.
Napoleon III found himself victorious in Mexico again. A successful suppression of the Mexican insurgency against the new Emperor had been made. The Mexican Empire quickly found itself growing economically under Franco-Austrian tutelage. A border clash led to a successful Mexican invasion of the United States of Central America.
Prussia and Austria went to war again, this time in 1866, over control of Germany. Both wanted to claim the mantle of "Protector of the German Country", so they unsurprisingly went to war. However, Prussia was highly unprepared. The assassination of Otto von Bismarck by an anarchist radical in 1859 left Germany without a capable statesmen. Immediately, Austria garnered support from France, Poland, and Scandinavia. France was more cordial to Austria after it had declined to assist Sardinia-Piedmont in its botched attempt to unify Italy. The alliance smashed Prussia in weeks. To ensure foreign support, Austria had agreed to award itself the mantle of Germany. Instead, Austria, France, Poland, and Scandinavia partitioned Germany. Poland annexed West Prussia, East Prussia, Posen, and Silesia. Scandinavia annexed Schleswig-Holstein. France annexed the Rhineland. Austria annexed Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Saxony, Hesse, and the rest of Southern Germany. Prussia was reduced to a far smaller state after this. This war solidified Napoleon III's power in France and solidified the position of all four nations.
Japan quickly proved itself formidable. When a Korean man murdered a Manchu man and threw him in the Yalu River, Japan demanded Korea to pay reparations that were flat out ridiculous and impossible, especially since the Manchu in question was also a Korean citizen, not Japanese. When Korea refused, Japan invaded. By 1868, Korea had capitulated. Japan quickly started colonizing the Pacific with their Dutch partners, which caused both to race against the United States.
In the War of the Pacific, Chile invaded both Bolivia and Peru in what almost was a surprise attack. Argentina, stronger as ever after defeating and annexing Paraguay single-handedly, joined in against Chile. In only a year, Chile found that it no longer existed, partitioned between Argentina, which would soon become the Kingdom of La Plata, and the Bolivian-Peruvian confederation. Argentina had swallowed Chile, Uruguay (after Uruguay had merged with the Piratini Republic, Brazil and Argentina partitioned it), and Paraguay before declaring itself as the Kingdom of La Plata.
The USA, Britain, France, as well as the Netherlands, rushed to colonize Africa. The USA seized control of large parts of West Africa, Namibia, and parts of East Africa. The British and French took most of the rest of Africa, with the Netherlands taking control of the Congo and Madagascar. The USA seized Spain and Portugal's last colonies in Asia soon after in the Spanish-American war.
The Ottoman Empire was near collapsing, it had lost most of it's territory in Europe to Greece, a newly liberated Serbia, and a newly liberated Bulgaria who comprised an organization they called the Balkan League.
In 1914, German revolutionaries toppled the disgraced Prussian monarchy and Junker aristocrats (who mostly were now in Poland), establishing the famous German Republic. In a day, the German black-red-gold tricolor hung over the Brandenburg gate, replacing the absolutist Prussian monarchy with a liberal democracy and a republic. This move drew applause from states such as Poland (an elective monarchy but de facto Republic), the United States of America, but drew condemnation from most of the world. After radical German-Austrian nationalist artist, Adolf Hitler, assassinated Franz Ferdinand at the cost of his own life, the Austrian government blamed it on the German Republic. Many nations were edging for an excuse to invade Germany, and they did. Poland, the United States of America, the Ottoman Empire, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and China rallied to the German cause. They were opposed by the nations of the British Commonwealth, France, Scandinavia, Austria, Japan, the Netherlands, and Greece. Strings of alliances caused this incident to explode in World War I. Germany had an alliance with Poland, and Poland had one with the USA and Serbia. Serbia had one with Montenegro and Romania, while Romania had an alliance with Bulgaria and Bulgaria one with the Ottoman Empire. China was allied with the United States. The Austrians were allied with the French who had an alliance with the Netherlands. The Netherlands had an alliance with both Japan and the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia and Greece both had alliances with the United Kingdom. Don't worry, it's not meant to make sense.
The German Volkswehr was swamped by an invasion from Scandinavia, France, and Austria. The Scandinavian army was forced to fight on a tiny front and was unable to break through German trench lines. The French and Austrian armies had very long borders and often planned huge human wave assaults at the trench lines. The French army had languished over the last sixty years becoming rather antiquated and ineffective. The French army actually learned something from its defeat IRL from the Franco-Prussian war that it did not here. The French had poor supply systems, no general staff, poor leadership, and generally terrible tactics. A German army far smaller than the French was able to defeat the French again and again. Morale gone from defeat after defeat, a revolution exploded in Paris and quickly started consuming the rest of the country. The French Emperor desperately attempted to defeat it, but he was eventually captured by radical Communists and shot along with his entire family to international shock. A new French republic guided by moderate liberals, social democrats, and other mild socialists lasted for a few months until radical Communists overthrew the government and sparked the French Civil War. After several months in 1918, the French government was overthrown and replaced with a Communist government. In the chaos, nations often snatched land from France. Sardinia-Piedmonte snatched Savoy back, the Netherlands snatched Wallonia, and the Austrians snatched Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Rhineland back, with Britain snatching Britanny and Calais.
At the same time, British and Greek forces defeated both Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and the Ottoman Empire after a long and bloody campaign that devastated the people of Greece. Montenegro capitulated first and Serbia soon followed. The Austrian army smashed the Romanians and Romania also capitulated. Very soon, Bulgaria collapsed from Greek pressure. The Ottomans, stricken by a two front war against both Britain and Greece capitulated. The Central Powers appeared to be on the run, with only Germany, Poland, and the United States remaining. China collapsed soon after Japan destroyed it in battle after battle. China signed a desperate treaty with Japan, ceding huge tracts of land in Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, parts of Northern China, Taiwan, Hainan, and Shanghai. The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace collapsed as Chinese nationalist revolutionaries sought to rebuild China from the ashes. On 1917, after the collapse of the Chinese Empire, Sun Yat-sen proclaimed the Republic of China. The most noticeable difference the Chinese Empire had wrought was a dramatic shift in Chinese demographics. China, now, had the worlds largest population of Christians in its border, with a majority of Chinese clearly Christian.
Germany was quickly overwhelmed from all sides as the entire Austrian and Scandinavian armies bored down on them. The Volkswehr found itself defeated by Austrian tanks. Germany quickly figured it did not want to share the fate of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. Germany quickly signed a rather lenient peace treaty switching sides. The Austrians were far more willing to make a reasonable peace than the Greeks or British were. With Germany taken out of the war, it left only Poland and the United States left. Poland was quickly torn apart by a combined force of the Entente powers. Poland was subjected to humiliating peace treaties that forced the cession of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Posen to Germany, as well as the cession of Silesia to Austria. Poland found itself having to pay huge and unreasonable reparations, limit its army, and prohibited from creating a general staff or navy. The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was forcibly broken up in two, into Lithuania and Poland as the Polish monarchy collapsed. On the first day of 1917, the United States was the sole remaining Central Power.
Japan, fresh from its victory against China, won another victory against the American navy. The USN was completely torn apart at the Battle of Honolulu. With the navy on the run, Japanese troops quickly occupied island after island, annihilating the American garrisons on each one. The European Entente powers invaded from Canada. Regardless of American resistance, the combined nations of the world claimed a phhyric victory against the Americans. America was subjected, like Poland, to a humiliating peace treaty. In March, 1919, World War I was over. America was forced to cede California and Oregon (a combined population of one million, a very small amount actually) to Japan, as well as Washington and Maine to the British. America ceded all of its foreign colonies, a significant amount, to France and Britain, and was also subject to the same treatment as Poland in terms of brutal restrictions.
After World War I, Spanish influenza swept the world. The only place where it had real effect was when it completely wiped out India.
In the 1920's, both the United States and Poland fell into huge depressions complete with hyperinflation. With social disorder exploding in each other, small Communist rebellions, completely crushed in a few weeks, erupted in both the United States and Poland. New political groups arose in both countries quite similar to one another. The National Syndicalist Party, a new party in the United States, won disaffected and disillusioned voters. In 1930, the National Radical Camp, warped into ultranationalism and outright fascism by the charismatic Jozef Kowalski (totally fictional), won a small group of seats in the Polish parliament. Josef Kowalski would eventually go forward to seize control of the state by 1931, abolishing the Polish republic in favor for a dictatorship.
In 1932, the United States followed suit and elected Carl Johnson(also fictional) of the National Syndicalist party, though the legitimacy of the elections were put in questions. Carl Johnson immediately also started seizing control of state apparatuses and gearing the country for war.
In 1936, in a famous speech by Carl Johnson, he announced the formation of a "Warsaw-Washington axis". Poland and the United States quickly started militarising. The United States broke the Treaty of Toronto that ended World War II by remilitarizing New England.
When Civil War broke out in Spain, communist revolutionaries backed by France attempted to overthrow the Spanish monarchy. Teetering on collapse, the Spanish monarchy appealed to Portugal to help them. Portugal agreed to do so, but demanded union with Spain as a demand. The demands were agreed toward, and a new Iberian kingdom emerged on the ashes of Communist revolution. Foreign volunteers flew to Spain to assist either the Monarchist forces or the Communist forces. Though the League of Nations advocated non-intervention, the USA and Poland broke this by sending troops. France than also broke it by sending assistance. The Monarchists prevailed in August, 1939.
In March 1938, Lithuanian voters voted YES for unification (or some claimed, annexation) with Poland while the United Kingdom sat complacent. Russia immediately started cultivating ties with its new Polish neighbour. In September 1938, Polish and Allied nations signed the Treaty of Memel, a treaty that allowed Poland to annex the Latvian-portion of the Union of Latvia and Estonia in exchange for leaving the rest of the union. In March, 1939, Poland shocked the world when it broke this treaty, walked in, and conquered Estonia. The United States and Poland jointly planned to launch attacks on the Allied nations at the same time. The American and Polish militaries secretly drilled in preparations for their invasions, invasions that would spark World War II. World War II is just about to erupt...
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1939
I'm still looking for any feedback. Would anyone be interested in this? I'm not sure if it should be character or nation based, so I'm also asking that. I wrote the timeline up in half an hour, so don't expect it to be good, it's just a rough draft. Same with the map. If people are interested, I'll just probably go to Invision and start an off-site map.