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LeoXiao

2013-08-29, 17:00

This is the first of three parts in a 4000-word update. It will provide an in-depth look at what Grand Marshall Yuan Kewen and his regime are doing to Manchuria.
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BEIYANG MANCHURIA 1919-1939

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u263/LeoXiao/nroc_flag_med_zps92e32a7c.png
Flag of the National Republic of China, adopted in 1922.

Beginnings

Since the late 1800s, many Han Chinese had looked to Manchuria (the Northeast) as a new frontier. By the time of the Four Uprisings and the rise of the Two Chinas, the Han far outnumbered the native Manchurians. Farmers and workers from northern and central China, in particular provinces such as Henan, Zhili, Shandong, Shanxi, and Anhui, were flooding the vast, empty landscape.

As warlords looked to make their power permanent, the entire country was rife with banditry and criminal activity. Manchuria was no exception. The extreme poverty faced by migrant men with dim hopes in life often made them turn to a life of violence. After the end of the Qing and throughout the 1910s, countless bandit gangs had formed in the Northeast, taking advantage of the loss of government.

Yuan Shikai's establishment of the NROC legitimatized his Beiyang Army's hold over Beijing and the Northeast. The civil legislation was in fact staffed entirely by Beiyang officers and minor toadies, while the Beiyang high command was vested with actual power and merely made use of the legislature as its mouthpiece.

The Beiyang regime set about instituting order across the Northeast. This was done not by upholding laws, but for the most part through military subjugation. Yuan's divisions fell upon and destroyed minor warlords while co-opting the larger ones, such as the army of Zhang Zuolin. If the armed elements of a region pledged their support to the Beiyang troops, that region could hope to receive gifts in the form of the loot plundered from restive ones. In the Anti-Restoration War, for instance, seized goods from Beijing and its environs were hauled off to the Northeast and used as bonus payment for turned bandit and warlord soldiers.

By the time of Yuan Shikai's death in 1919, the Beiyang regime had proven itself to be little more than a vast warlord army masquerading as a government. Using violence and bribery to keep other armed groups from challenging its rule while pandering to Western investors, it was disliked by nationalist and leftist intellectuals. These voices, however ardent, were crushed under the boots and bayonets of illiterate fighting men, and the regime remained firmly in place. The rise of Yuan Kewen would establish the sword as mightier than the pen. And before long, it was to be found also that the sword could be used to write in blood.

An Army With a Country

Yuan's lifelong fascination with the military began early on in his childhood. Having witnessed the destruction wrought by the 8-Nation Alliance in Beijing during the Boxer War and lost his elder brother, Keding, to the conflict, the 11-year-old Kewen was said to have been possessed - part awed, part traumatized - by the sounds of artillery and marching. His father, appalled at the loss of his firstborn, devoted to Kewen a newfound attentiveness. Ever since the foundation of the NROC, Yuan Shikai had intended for his second son to succeed him, and so Kewen was educated and prepared expressly for leadership. He mastered Russian, and instead of a conventional education, was made to command units of increasing size and importance. By 1919, he was a division commander. Even if imbued with an inevitable arrogance, Kewen was a charismatic figure. In his twenties, he had formed his own clique of officer peers - rising Beiyang soldiers, former bandits, and patriotic college graduates looking to serve their country. His status also granted him an audience with numerous foreign statesmen and industrialists. The extensive contacts he landed in this period would prove instrumental in his future political and military career immediately after his father's death.

Following the defeat of the Old Officer's Conspiracy in 1920 and the purge of the Beiyang commanders, a total rearrangement of authority had taken place. Senior generals who played direct roles in the conspiracy had been executed, while lesser offenders were sidelined to the command of rural militias. Yuan filled the empty ranks with his peers, most of whom were between the ages of thirty and forty, and Yuan himself was only 31 at the time of his attempted assassination. In a society that afforded such respect and authority to the elderly, he was anxious to build a name for himself and his military. With virtually all of the senior Beiyang officers dead, jailed, or sent to minor posts, the prestige of the army was in peril, to say nothing of the mess that was now the high command.

At a 1922 meeting with Guo Songling, Feng Yuxiang, Tong Lin'ge, Zhang Xueliang, and other military peers, Yuan presented his proposals for the future of the military. In order to secure the country, he stated, it was not enough to simply have the means to defeat external enemies. Instead, where adversaries could just as easily sprout up as "a disease of the internal organs" (a reference to Zhang Zuolin's conspiracy), it would be necessary to unite the entire people with a proper attitude towards not just authority, but specifically the military. The centuries-old social and cultural perception of soldiers as little more than bandits would have to change. The idiom "good men do not make soldiers" was to be stamped out. Chinese would have to realize that the country was at war, and that those who did not fight for their country and commander could not be good men. This led to Yuan's stated policy of "All Folk to Arms" (全民皆兵), introduced in 1924 after the abortive "Southern Expedition".

Actually bringing "All Folk to Arms" was, however, easier said than done. Even the professional Beiyang divisions had trouble finding the resources to equip itself properly, to speak nothing of the millions of young men and boys were put into militia service in the years 1924-26, ostensibly on a voluntary basis. The truth was laughable. Beiyang personnel scoured the factories and countryside for candidates between the ages of 12 and 30, who were "encouraged" to sign documents, mobilized into units, gathered for some ceremonies, and then sent home and into "reserve". Even uniforms could not be immediately delivered in most cases, and a militiaman's weapon, if he had one, was likely to be nothing more than a beheading knife, a scythe, or just an iron pipe. "Training" tended to consist of group workouts and hikes conducted once or twice a week.

Yuan was aware that his new multi-million-man "army" was anything but, and had no intention of actually sending the masses into combat. For the present, his goal was psychological. Making the warrior's occupation a universal one, even if in name only, would effect a cultural shift, and belittling the soldiery would become impossible. In the years of recruitment, the self-titled "Grand Marshall" Yuan and other top generals attended numerous military rallies composed of tends of thousands of recruits, where they gave polemic-filled speeches. The late Yuan Shikai was a disciplined visionary whose surviving second son would see his work through to the end; the old officers were in the same league as the "bandit Federation" that was supposedly condoning warlordism and destroying China's traditional foundations to allow for conquest by foreign powers; the soldiers of the Beiyang Army were heroes who would draw upon the people's strength and labor to march all the way to smash the federalists at Canton.

The now-exalted Beiyang troops found themselves in a new social class. Aside from public respect, they also received pay raises, property for their families, and easy access to advantageous civilian positions upon completion of their terms. In 1926, higher education (after 8th grade) was barred to anyone not in service or selected to serve with Beiyang formations. Unlike the ubiquitous "Republican Guard" (the name given to the militias), getting into the Beiyang Army was no easy task. Applicants had to first prove their loyalty and then either martial or intellectual merit. Interestingly, many of the skilled belonged to the "intellectual" category, due to Beiyang service being a requisite for high school or college education. This system, in place until 1930, would lead to the creation of a rather "scholarly" force. Since Yuan had originally planned for parts of the Republican Guard to be brought up to Beiyang standards, by 1930 there was an overabundance of new officers trained for this purpose. In practice, however, like the militiamen they were intended to teach, their status as soldiers was mostly for show. But even if not soldiers in the conventional sense, they would enter battle on a different front.

Part 2 of Manchuria 1919-1939, "The Military of Industry", will be up soon.

LeoXiao

2013-08-30, 13:02

The Military of Industry

Upon gradation, the excess of Beiyang officers were sent to "discipline" Guard units. As noted above, Yuan knew exactly how effective they would be as soldiers, so many formations were re-designated as "Republican Guard engineering units", which was in fact a euphemism for "state labor details. The millions of "soldiers" now set off to "combat" in the fields and factories from whence they had come. All that had changed was their management and temperament. This was an intentional part of Yuan's plan to have "the nation guided by the gun". By 1930, collaboration between generals and industrialists was so universal that the two were often indistinguishable. The aforementioned "engineering units", led by Beiyang officers, slowly developed into de facto corporations that engaged in all sorts of industrial endeavors. Legitimate private businesses were co-opted or forced to give up their assets when faced with sudden visits from squads of army "employees". Wielding the authority of the Republic in their grey fatigues and jackboots, they "mobilized" many a shop or factory for the sake of "national defense".

Inside the military-industrial framework, Yuan and his cohorts instituted a comprehensive legal system to regulate economic activity, thus maintaining a satisfactory level of discipline. Military officers risked court-martial if they engaged directly in illicit behavior. Beyond the military, however, the powerless Legislature allowed civil affairs to run amok. Economic crime (and crime in general) was hardly dealt with except by military units, if even then. Drugs, prostitution, human trafficking and slavery were all widespread to some extent, and, if run by civilians, could not be easily prosecuted unless deemed a "military threat". Though officers themselves could not safely break the military laws, they could and did establish contacts with civilian entrepreneurs to make a profit on the side by turning a blind eye to the latter's business for a share of the earnings. Foreigners in particular loved the environment because merely paying off the relevant officers would grant them access to and protection in the Manchurian free-for-all.

The higher echelons of the Beiyang military regime loved foreigners; more specifically, they were attracted to their technology and coffers. Higher officers made a point of purchasing expensive German automobiles, constructing Western-style houses and even castles, dining on exquisite French cuisine, bedding Russian emigre women, and flying in American airplanes. There was in particular a special relationship to be had with Russia, most "accessible" of the Western nations. In some cases, entire White divisions had escaped into Manchuria and given up their weapons, or were even directly incorporated into the Republican Army.

Ever since the Russian Revolution, the influx of White migrants fleeing the Soviet system had resulted in the arrival of a significant pool of skilled labor as well as wealthy individuals. Their know-how and financial wherewithal was attractive to the resident militarists, perhaps most of all Grand Marshall Yuan himself, who saw the future as being one dominated by industry and technology. Relations with the new Soviet Union were cordial. Yuan and his diplomats were careful not to disturb existing Russian influences in the region, such as control of the Chinese Eastern Railway or the naval base at Dalny (Dalian), which was turned over to the Soviets even before their final triumph in Siberia. 1911 War-era arms and artillery were sold dirt-cheap to the Beiyang Army through the 1920s as the Soviets modernized their own troops.

Further to the west, the German Reich had begun to look into opportunities to expand its influence around the globe. Ever since 1900, German Qingdao served as a channel for Sino-German negotiations and business. Not a traditional colonial power, they lacked the military projection to hold on to anything beyond a few African possessions. Manchuria with its fast-growing population and lack of heavy regulation looked like a good area for German industrialists to develop by husbanding the latest European methods with expendable labor. Siemens laid the vestiges of an electrical infrastructure, including power stations, Krupp built steel works and later armaments factories, the newly-founded Daimler-Benz supplied Beiyang officers and government officials with their cars, and Henschel brought in improved locomotives and the new and mobile armored weapon, the ram.

The ram, known formally as just "armor", was originally a Russian development of the War of 1911, called the vezdekhodnyye boyevoy poyezd, meaning "all-terrain combat train". The German responded with their own Panzer, and Western observers called the weapons "rams", as they rumbled undeterred by virtually all fire across the front lines. The initial Russian design was a heavily-armed and armored, treaded locomotive with a powerful diesel engine. These behemoths equipped multiple cannons and had a dozen or more operators. Both sides deployed and improved on these war machines throughout and after the conflict. To Marshall Yuan, the ram was a perfect vision of what the wars of the future would look like. While it would be a long time Before China could produce her own such weapons, he saw to it that a number of rams be added to the Beiyang Army and given their own special unit. Additionally, he made plans for a Chinese tractor plant, which would be operational in the late 30s and built with German help. The industry would prove instrumental in both mechanizing Manchurian agriculture and laying the groundwork for indigenously-produced Chinese armor.

Aircraft was another area given special attention. Originally used for the rapid transport and prestige of officials and officers, their military usefulness was by no means overlooked. Even by 1916 the elder Yuan had procured several aircraft for the exclusive use of the Beiyang Army. The program was expanded considerably in the early 30s as generals like Zhang Xueliang solicited European and American firms for their planes. While impressive, the Beiyang "air fleet" was not immediately useful except in limited reconnaissance and support roles until the 1940s. The first Chinese-built interceptors would be deployed in 1944, yet even then they would prove lackluster.

The Republic's army was an army of laborers and businessmen. For the most part, the average soldiers were more interested in laying railroad tracks and making ends meet, just as they would as civilians, than training or conquest. In 1935, the richest Chinese were either soldiers, criminals, or both. The only legitimate way to success, even in civilian life, was to become a Beiyang officer. The lives of criminals were uncertain and dangerous, while once in the army, one had an ordered system to rely upon. The industrialization of Manchuria under the guidance of military business was looked upon with sad, cynical mockery. Meiji Japan, it was commonly said, had "enriched the country and strengthened the soldiers" (富國強兵), while Yuan and his underlings were "enriching the soldiers and bankrupting the country" (富兵貧國).

This overall state of affairs established the soldier, in particular the Beiyang officer, as the arbiter of order and authority. Every family wanted their sons to either get into the Beiyang divisions or build up amiable relations with their superior officers. A family or business with few military connections was likely to be victimized - their property seized, their sons sent to labor details, and their daughters abducted and sold as concubines or to brothels, the last being in part a result of Manchuria's unequal male-female population ratio. Officers and wealthy entrepreneurs made a point of flaunting their fortune by showcasing their collections of women at parties and banquets, while disenfranchised workers and Guardsmen went unmarried. The human trafficking business skyrocketed. Traffickers made deals all over China and beyond, in places like Siberia and Korea to procure girls and young women for slavery. This barbaric practice would sadly continue, largely unchecked, for the next generation. The plight faced by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of victims would only be acknowledged after the Mainland war had been brought to an end.

To be continued in: Part 3 of Manchuria 1919-1939, "Writing in Blood"

LeoXiao

2013-08-30, 18:48

Last part of the Manchuria arc.
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Writing in Blood

In the first twenty years of Yuan Kewen's rule, North Chinese society and culture experienced changes just as great as those wrought upon its political and economic scene. For starters, the Manchu natives faced a massive identity crisis as their centuries-old empire fell apart around them and as the Han Chinese settled their ancestral lands. The Qing court had been gradually sinicized over the years, but now, with the end of the dynasty, what did it mean to be Chinese? This issue was debated hotly across the entirety of the former empire and the Northeast was no exception. Zhang Xun's failed Restorationist movement showed that a return to the Qing was out of the question, yet much of the Manchu royalty were still possessed of great wealth and influence. In the seven years after the 1912 founding of the National Republic, they generally sided with Yuan Shikai, whose weak hold on political power disposed him to treating the former oppressors of the Han with leniency in exchange for much-needed support. Yuan himself believed in a unified China under his control, a goal that necessitated a modernized, post-imperial conception of the Chinese nation.

As has been explained, the Beiyang Regime under Marshall Yuan Kewen mobilized millions of Manchurian youth under a common banner, and sought to wield military and political power over them through the use of officers, who in turn had, until 1930, exclusive access to conventional higher education. By incorporating as many young men as possible into the military system, even if only nominally, it was hoped that the nuclei of dissent would be nipped in the bud. But the situation was more complicated. The existence of corruption, increasing by rank and effectively institutional in nature, was obvious to just about anyone. Young men in the engineering units soon understood themselves not be soldiers, but workers and thugs in uniform. For the vast majority of them, merely being in the military would not grant them entrance to high school or university. The vaunted privilege of entering the Beiyang divisions was, quite frankly, only available to a fraction of the millions of Republican Guards. For many, distrust of the Beiyang system led them to search elsewhere for solutions.

One such "elsewhere", as irony would have it, lay with the foreign missionaries. Since the Opium wars, the Chinese governments had been forced to honor agreements with the Western powers that allowed those spreading the Gospel to proselytize and operate as they wished. Though it was not their preference, both Yuans continued to abide by the old treaties. By 1922, missionaries of virtually all European nations, as well as Canada and the US were active in Manchurian cities and villages. Besides spreading their faith, the missionaries also brought education and some limited technology with them. They opened schools for the poor and often aided those in need, much more than the Beiyang regime or the Republicans would or could. Christianity became a popular faith among the poor, especially farmers and Republican Guards stationed in rural areas to do hard labor. Marshall Yuan recognized the danger and tried to take steps to confine the missionaries to large towns and cities, but in practice this was difficult as spreading the Gospel could be done through word of mouth. The white missionaries found that emphasizing the liberal, egalitarian aspects of Christ made the religion far more appealing than if they simply preached religious doctrine, and at the same time, the destitute and illiterate peasants took the themes of universal salvation and redemption to heart. The sight of these foreign benefactors who had seemingly come halfway around the world and learned their language in order to help find God, had a profound emotional effect. Everyone, rich or poor, healthy or ill, male or female, white or colored, could find their way to salvation through Christ. A 1939 estimate put the proportion of Christians in Manchuria at ten to fifteen percent, or several million.

But Christ was not the only symbol of salvation that originated the West. The theories of Karl Marx, the specter of which had failed to take root in Europe but manifested in the form of state socialism in Russia and Japan, had by the 1910s made its way to the Middle Kingdom. In the 1920s historical materialism and revolutionary aspirations had become popular in schools and colleges all over the country, including Manchuria. Adherents of the ideology saw a rotten capitalist dog-eat-dog world around them, full of lies, inequality, injustice, and misery. Religion could only serve the corrupt interests of the ruling superstructure and keep the masses bound in ignorance and suffering, cheated forever out of their fair share in life. This was particularly the case in Manchuria, where capitalist development was in many cases literally driven at gunpoint. Like Christianity, Marxism gained a following in the Northeast. However, its spread was seen much more negatively by the authorities due to its popularity among the educated population (including those to be Beiyang officers) and its specific political agenda of violent revolution.

These fears were substantiated when radical members of the Northeast Chinese Communist Party (NCCP, founded in 1924) were found to have allied with bandits in Heilongjiang. Along with several thousand deserters from the Republican Guard, a number of college-educated Beiyang officers had joined their ranks. One of their chief leaders was the civilian Li Dazhao, a Communist from Hebei who had studied in Beijing and emigrated to Manchuria during the Anti-Restorationist War. Li led a cadre of a few dozen young co-ideologues recruited from various schools. Using weapons and supplies stolen from Beiyang depots, they waged sporadic warfare against the regime for a few years until 1928. At first, they were regarded as a minor concern, until a platoon of their fighters launched an attack on a foreign factory in Jilin city.

Yuan dispatched Colonel Sheng Shicai from Liaoning and his elite brigade that had fought in Beijing ten years prior to crush the NCCP. Unlike many of his generation of officers, Sheng displayed natural leadership skill in deftly clearing out towns and villages where the communists made their bases by making use of local Republican Guards and informers to corner the Reds, and then surrounding and destroying them directly. Everyone who had participated in the revolt, about six thousand in all, were either killed in battle or beheaded. Li Dazhao barely escaped with his closest "commanders" to Japanese-controlled Korea, where they continued to run the NCCP until 1937 when it merged with Mao Zedong's and Zhang Jingyao's CCP. Li himself returned to China, making the fateful decision to join the Wang Jingwei faction. He would not live to see the birth of the People's Republic, however, as he, along with Wang and many others, would be violently criticized and purged in the 1940s. It was perhaps in apt fashion that Li would be reunited with the Manchurian comrades he had left back on the frozen Manchurian plains nearly two decades prior: beheading by machete.

As communist idealism was gunned down in rural Heilongjiang, Manchurian society continued to pull the cart of industrialism forward with bleeding feet. By the early 1930s, the poor stayed poor, the rich continued to profit, the soldiers abused the poor in hopes of themselves becoming rich, and the scholarly gradually resigned themselves to study the philosophy of machine guns and bank accounts. Opium addiction, a favorite subject of the new vernacular novelists, was still widespread among all except the combat ranks of the Beiyang and the clergy. In the dark, soot-filled, gang-ruled cities, there remained these two possibilities open to all: warfare or worship. It is the legacy of Grand Marshall Yuan to have crafted a combination of both and etched it into the modern Chinese consciousness.

While the actual state of Manchurian society was a grim world of crime and oppression, the citizens of the National Republic had begun to collectively rediscover something that their people had lost in the Opium and Boxer Wars: pride. Even as their families shivered in the cold or labored for unforgiving capitalist masters, all soldiers - from the boys in the Republican Guard wearing oversized feldgrau greatcoats to the solid warriors of the Beiyang crack divisions - went to their training and assignments to learn not only how to fight and work, but to love their army -and hence their country, unconditionally. A 1927 law made it mandatory for all students to take at least one "Nationalism" course a year starting in middle school; in 1929, all educational staff and students were assigned "instructional officers" who, as their title implied, filled the minds of the young with martial attitudes while reminding the teachers of their place in the new society. Many of the instructional officers, chosen for charisma, were themselves barely adults. As "older brothers", they often formed fraternal bonds with the students to whom they were responsible. Under the guidance of the instructional officers, it became acceptable to criticize teachers for not being patriotic enough or respecting "defenders of the country", indeed a revolutionary step considering the degree to which educators commanded respect in China's history. This included any attempt to pass on pacifistic or socialist doctrines. the teachers who offended would "be corrected" and often be confronted by the instructional officers. Middle-aged teachers looked on helplessly as their pupils became the protégés of hotheaded young soldiers who trained not their marksmanship but their tongues.

Militarist-nationalist indoctrination was pushed not only in schools, but all around the public sphere. "Propaganda divisions" of the Republican Guards of were active in putting up posters, holding group "nationalist study" sessions, and spontaneously forming choirs to sing patriotic songs in crowded areas. They would visit commercial, government, and even religious establishments to "kindle the patriotic sentiments" of the people there. Artists were given substantial incentive to write novels, draw lianhuanhua comics, and produce music, plays, and films that glorified the army and country. Heroes of China's past, from the legendary Xia Dynasty up to the Boxer War, were played up and put in exorbitantly martial roles. One illustrated children's book even depicted Confucius in armor and named him as "General Kong".

The "proper" role of women in early Republican China remained more or less in line with conservative standards, something that stood in marked contrast to the feminist tendencies of metropolitan areas in the Federation. Females were expected to remain chaste until marriage - ironically, something that not all women could do even if they wanted to, given the pervasiveness of involuntary prostitution and concubinage - and receive only limited education. They were to stay loyal to their soldier husbands and raise many sons for the inevitable defeat of the Federation. On the other hand, however, Marshall Yuan stressed the importance of ensuring the literacy of all Chinese regardless of gender, and took steps to improve female primary school attendance rates, at least in urban areas. He himself expressed a personal disdain for "stupid women" and refused the company of illiterate concubines, deferring them to his underlings.

The display of China's might culminated in a grand parade held annually in Fengtian since 1925, military capital of the National Republic. A huge avenue, called the Great North China Square, was created and paved specifically for the event in Shenhe district, passing the Beiyang Army Headquarters* and the Military Supreme Court. Every year, tens to hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, mostly from the Republican Guard, would march through the Avenue, which was over twice as wide as the Champs Elysees and nearly as long. Multiple perpendicularly-oriented streets with auspicious name led to the Square, and would be used by different units to get there. Once all the civilian and Republican Guard units were assembled and the officers at their observatories, a Beiyang division would be marched through the Square to lead the procession. When this concluded, a ceremony of various rites would be performed before official speeches and statements (which was sure to include the presence of at least one ministerial general**) lasting a few hours. Then celebrations would take place, which would end the affair.

On of the eve of the First Japanese Intervention, Marshall Yuan's military society had proven a huge political success, bringing much of the people, economy, and ideology into unison and hence under his direct influence. That said, however, with the exception of the Beiyang divisions, Yuan's army was not ready for war. It could march, it could sing, it could work, it could even turn a profit, but it could not fight. By and large, soldiers had neither weapons nor a tested will to fight, despite their nationalist fervor. Likewise, generals and officers were more suited to the business, political, or criminal worlds, than the army. Despite a superficial fascination with cutting-edge motorized weaponry and innovative doctrines, the political and entrepreneurial nature of the Beiyang regime made the true institution of effective operational technique impossible above the divisional level. It is a common criticism made by many modern amateurs that Marshall Yuan, even in the Federation's darkest hours, when it was threatened with collapse by the Yunnan regime and rebelling generals, did not "do the right thing" by taking advantage of the chaos to unify China thirty years prior to the historical date. The answer to this is simple: He simply lacked the means. Yuan's army, good only for parades and labor, was a paper tiger, to become pulp if soaked in water or ashes if burnt with fire.

*= this would have been the site of Zhang Zuolin's Mansion
**= "Ministerial general" refers to any one of the several Beiyang generals holding a post in the Ministry of Defense

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After this, I'll probably be doing a piece on weapons and military stuff in general between 1919 and 1936 so as to give a better view of how the war is being fought.

Fireminer

2013-08-30, 20:17

Oh, have anyone try to write one about South America, particular in Cold War.

Ridwan

2013-08-30, 20:40

I've been looking for a way to get communist Brazil. Any thought ?

Fireminer

2013-08-30, 22:08

Che Guevera alive?

Ithekro

2013-08-30, 22:29

What is slavery wasn't abolished the way it was historically in Brazil? Having it removed violently instead or phased out even later under Marxist dogma?

Ridwan

2013-08-30, 22:45

Why do I doubt Che will fare nearly as well there as he'd done elsewhere in real world ? Brazil is a much bigger beast. It is much stronger and has a firmly established system of stability maintainance, where the army rules over and decides what regime can govern. Didn't the countries he stirred troubles in were all small-to-medium size with vulnerable stability ?

Fireminer

2013-08-31, 04:27

Just another part of my "No Domino" scenario. Che and Castro turned into political means.

Ridwan

2013-08-31, 05:51

Not sure if I follow you here.

LeoXiao

2013-08-31, 07:14

I think what he's trying to say is that Castro and Che run away to Brazil, perhaps.

Sumeragi

2013-09-05, 17:05

I have to say I hate this AH (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=280585) for various reasons. It's a piece of trash as far as I'm concerned.

LeoXiao

2013-09-05, 22:45

Explain. I rather liked it, even if it seemed somewhat implausible at times. The style of writing makes it interesting.

Sumeragi

2013-09-06, 01:43

Let's just say the Japanese part of the story requires so many out-of-character moves that it's an insult to quite a few historical figures. You can pass that on to the writer if you wish.

LeoXiao

2013-09-06, 10:37

I think one has to give him credit for creating a scenario involving seemingly futile changes that nonetheless work a complete and interesting change upon WW2's endgame, be there may some faults in the research. It's a step up from the usual "I want to write x TL about WW2 but don't know anything about Asia so let's just have it go exactly as IOTL".

Ridwan

2013-09-06, 21:02

I kinda don't like a TL dedicated to shell a country flat the ground or to simply to win Vlad Teppes Award, but Japan has it much better then either Turkey or Indonesia in AH fandom.

Ridwan

2013-09-07, 18:59

I've come to like this man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyuh_Woon-hyung) for some reason. I can easily see him becoming something of a Korean Attaturk.

Sumeragi

2013-09-07, 20:29

He's far from Attaturk. Too much of a left-wing centralist to pull that off.

Ridwan

2013-09-07, 22:35

Left-wing centralist was pretty much what Kemal and co. was and the CHP still is. Until Montreux convention, Soviet-Turkey relations was actually rather friendly.

Sumeragi

2013-09-07, 23:10

I'm pretty sure we're talking about different left-wing centralists.

Ridwan

2013-09-08, 00:58

Perhaps. I haven't really specified anything, and I might be stretching things up here. Basically I've got an idea for an ultra-futuristic independent Korea a la Kemal's Turkey as a reaction to what is perceived as backward(airquotes may apply) regime capitulatory(airquotes don't exactly apply) to foreign dictation. So it means retaining Joseon royalty as a front to Japanese effective colonialism and facade of independence satisfactory to cooperative traditionalists, later alienating critical Korean patriots from anything reeks of conservatism. Admittedly, this idea is partly inspired by your (abortive?) work "Red Plum Blossom".

Aside from the whole ultra-progressive center-left nationalism thing, everything else may vary. I'm admittedly still blind-rubbing things by bringing him up since I know next to zero about Korean history. He, if not this idea does seem to have possible obstacles. First is that Kemal was military, and commanded a strong, experienced military force in combating foreign occupiers, something Japan won't ever going to permit developing. This will necessitate military intervention from outside, most likely Russia (assuming liberal butterflies, Soviet Union, and WW2), so I guess indeed post-Japan Korea will be a wee bit too lefty and not very independent to make this possible. Second is that I suspect retaining Korean state on paper will possibly rewrite just about everything of 20th century Korean history and I'm not sure what this leads to, especially for Japan and its foreign policy, which can also possibly mean rewriting everything 20th century Japanese history and thus, everything 20th century East Asia.

Fireminer

2013-09-08, 03:47

Hey, if you are a Code Geass fan, you could read "Rebellion on the Other Side"! A great story about Lelouch/Zero got dumped into 1920s Korea and start a rebellion himself.

Ridwan

2013-09-08, 12:54

Hey, if you are a Code Geass fan, you could read "Rebellion on the Other Side"! A great story about Lelouch/Zero got dumped into 1920s Korea and start a rebellion himself.

You shouldn't bring Code geass and treat it as a credible AH material next time. This also applies to almost everything Turtledove and Stirling and any derivative thereof by the way.

Anyway, looking at my previous post really shows how bad it is to make a spontaneous post while your attention is divided. To summarize it, the goal is anti-traditional authoritarian Korea, preferably united with both ultra-progressive(western-oriented) and ultra-primordial socio-cultural experiments a la RL Kemalist Turkey. The main problem here, so far as I see it, is that it will either require external military intervention that will might render it too lefty and clientized for too much independent posturing and "cultural modernization". I think this is manageable though, looking at how OTL North Korea managed to shake off Soviet dictation. OTOH, I'm wary that we'll might walk into Juche direction this way anyway. But that also should be preventable with either the entire Peninsula(making it easier to switch side) or saner leadership. The bigger problem here is how much change will be generated from the pre-condition I proposed to achieve this, which might pretty much rewrite just about everything should it to fundamentally change Japanese foreign policy approach in Asia.

It's been both kinda goofy and intriguing to see the cultural effects on Korea. Imagine this hypothetical regime clamping down any trace of Confucianism, or perhaps even Buddhism while at the same time rabidly sought to rediscover "native spiritual roots" AND coating national culture in western icing and championing laicitism. Buddhism is up to discussion, since who knows what will happen to it without direct Japanese annexation. That in turn, also effects the spread of Christianity there. Then again, perhaps it will only set back Christianity inroad for a while, since I'd presume this Korea's cultural policy will benefit Christianity more then the native Mudang tradition.

I'll also assume this Korea will rebound economically easier then OTL Turkey due to various advantages. To start with, it would have better literacy start up(Hangeul obviously will stay no matter how western mania this Korea will be. Very efficient and designed especially for Korean language). I can also see the Korean right making a come back earlier and with more bang! then OTL AKP, especially if the right and their figurehead(the royalty) has managed to refuge abroad, like in Japan for example.

Well, this is just whimsical brainstorming. ;p Any thoughts ?

LeoXiao

2013-09-08, 15:58

You shouldn't bring Code geass and treat it as a credible AH material next time. This also applies to almost everything Turtledove and Stirling and any derivative thereof by the way.

Consider what these forums are. Any AH is better than nothing. Not mention you get these kinds of ISOT scenarios on AH.com all the time, in the ASB section.

Ridwan

2013-09-08, 20:45

It's not ASB thread, and is intended to exclude ASB scenarios. To Fireminer, if you want more details regarding this rule, feel free to ask me in my visitor page.

Anyway Leo, what was that book again, that Sumeragi recommended to you about the evolution of Japanese military between Russo-Japan war and WW2 ?

LeoXiao

2013-09-08, 22:02

Here it is:

For the best book in English, read The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920's by Leonard Humphreys.

The Korean idea is interesting. It could be a good mini-scenario for someone making an ATL with a PoD at the turn of the century.

Sumeragi

2013-09-08, 22:04

The Korean scenario is very difficult unless you have foreign backing or drastically change the childhood of key figures.

Cosmic Eagle

2013-09-09, 05:57

Military buffs here, how good is Cpt Tameichi Hara's memoir as a historical source? And is Minoru Genda's 真珠湾作戦回顧録 accurate generally speaking? Considering how Fuchida is generally discredited by various sources...

Ridwan

2013-09-10, 00:50

1) Here it is:

2) The Korean idea is interesting. It could be a good mini-scenario for someone making an ATL with a PoD at the turn of the century.

1) Thanks.

2) Frankly, it started as a temptation to make an equivalent to Kemalist Turkey in a world where Kemalist Turkey doesn't happen.

The Korean scenario is very difficult unless you have foreign backing or drastically change the childhood of key figures.

Those two conditions are pretty much how I picture this can happen. That's why I take up the general idea of keeping Korea technically independent as Japanese puppet instead annexing it to Japan. That will change a lot. Actually this idea came up when I wondered how Japanese-influenced lasting Joseon Kingdom will end up.

MrTerrorist

2013-09-10, 05:33

Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler (http://io9.com/why-you-can-t-travel-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler-1267520777)

I always wonder why sci-fi writers use this plot when they could use other non-killing ways to stop WW2 from happening? (eg. help him get accepted into the art college he wanted to join thus he didn't join the German Army during WW1)

Fireminer

2013-09-10, 07:02

Well, that is the easiest way! Getting him in Artistic would be a good way, though. I remember seeing a book name "Alfred and Hitler" with similar idea.

Xellos-_^

2013-09-10, 11:20

Sumeragi

2013-09-10, 11:23

and give steroids to Fidel Castro and he would have been a Allstar baseball player instead of a revolutionary.

http://i.imgur.com/3W1AV.jpg

Ridwan

2013-09-10, 11:55

Iosib Dzugashvilli could've been an Orthodox priest.

Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler (http://io9.com/why-you-can-t-travel-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler-1267520777)

I always wonder why sci-fi writers use this plot when they could use other non-killing ways to stop WW2 from happening? (eg. help him get accepted into the art college he wanted to join thus he didn't join the German Army during WW1)

Hitler has become the personification of evil and thus an acceptable target for revenge fantasies, especially the ones that are entertainingly simple.

Ridwan

2013-09-12, 11:51

My mind. It was blown. Such a holy clusterfuck of epicness this country is !! (http://forum.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=287409)

Sumeragi

2013-09-12, 12:15

You need an account to read it.

Ridwan

2013-09-12, 20:46

It's about a fictional island country south of Cyprus which has all the fun, ranging from feudal mafiosi, Phalangist, Enosisist radicals, Arab Nationalists, Mujahideens, communists, Christian Talibans and Levantines that actually matter, all clash in a stewpot of Caucasus, Lebanon and Cyprus happening in a single country.

Fireminer

2013-09-18, 07:21

I'm trying to write a scenario which the Soviet could survive until 1999. But outside of that "No Dominoe" idea, not much has came into stable. The West and the East could be more opened to each other (even accept some of the other idea to a margin). But there are something still missing. Any suggestion?

Sumeragi

2013-09-18, 07:42

Yuri Andropov managed to survive for another ten years?

Sumeragi

2013-10-05, 11:24

I've been working on and off on an old alternate history project. It starts from here (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=225887).

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn71/empireofrisingsun/Daikoraikoku.jpg

A proposed state by some crackpot Japanese ultranationalists. Name will be "Daikoraikoku" (Great Koryo State), and will be the bulwark against Russia. Also, this will be a Korean-centric state with its capital at Yongcheon.

It's a Japanese puppet state. The map was made sometime around 1908, when the population of Manchuria and Korea were someone similar (15,834,000 to 12,960,0000). Assimilation plans were made to have the Manchu and Mongols recognize themselves as cousins of the Koreans while also stopping Chinese immigration, leading to a Korean-dominated country that would be in an "alliance" with Japan against the Russians.

What's strange about this plan was that Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui agreed to it, saying that to them Manchuria and Mongolia didn't mean much to them as long as the "Tatar barbarians" are expelled of China Proper and the Russians are stopped. Since the Tongmenghui was funded by Kokuryukai (who were the ones pushing for this resurrection of Koryo), it did make in a Machiavellian way.

After the annexation of Korea, the plan was sunk until 1921 when an even more serious crackpot plan was came up to continue the original legacy. Here's the map from a news article on April 1st, 1921 (no, it wasn't an April Fool's Joke) in the Taisho Daily News, as part of a series that started in March:

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn71/empireofrisingsun/d0050576_4b054a4b07e28.jpg

So, the basic idea is that we have a dynastic link between Japan and Korea, and this Korea is basically the Germany of East Asia based on the large mineral reserves and labor it has.

Basic Outline

1. An assassination attempt in 1909 does not succeed.
2. Korea is not annexed in 1910, but still remains a de facto colony of Japan as a protectorate.
3. Xinhai Revolution occurs, with Manchuria/Mongolia becoming a Japanese/Korean joint protectorate.
4. Siberian Intervention of 1918 ends with the establishment of a Far Eastern Republic under Kolchak, with Transamur coming under Japanese/Korean joint protectorate.
5. The Great War is done similarly to OTL, with the exception of Korean royal observers being able to see what kind of military reforms are needed.
6. Industrialization programs with much German input changes Korea into a major industrial country of East Asia, second only to Japan with a focus on heavy industry and agriculture. Chemical industry effectively reaches German levels on a per capita basis. Basically, Korea takes the place of China in a German-Korean cooperation.
7. Large numbers of Koreans move to Manchuria, effectively turning the southern part into a Korean majority area.
8. In late 1920's Transamur/Manchuria/Korea are unified into a single empire of Daikoraikoku under Prince Chichibu.
9. Europe until 1939 is similar to OTL. Reinhard Heydrich manages to be in de facto control of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the start as opposed to 1941, thus accelerating various things in the Protectorate.
10. WW2 occurs on schedule, and is similar until 1942. Starting from there, chain reactions lead to Hitler making some sensible decisions. Among other things, this timeline's equivalent of the Battle of Kursk (undecided whether it is forehand or backhand operation) succeeds in forcing an already exhausted Red Army (limited Lend Lease due to no Pacific Route strains logistics) to delay various operations. This and other previous changes extends the war into 1946.
11. Asia/Pacific is similar to OTL, although Japan makes greater inroads into China due to the support of Daikoraikoku. Things change in 1944 when Japan and Daikoraikoku clash, leading to the "War of the Brothers" and eventual regime change in Japan. USSR takes advantage of this to invade and annex the Far Eastern Republic.
12. Mark Oliphant of the MAUD committee in 1941 dies in a plane accident, thus not getting the US all worked up about nuclear weapons. This delays the development of Western Allies' nuclear weapons.
13. With the defeat of Germany, the final campaign starts against Daikoraikoku/Japan by the Allies in August 1946, eventually ending in the start of the nuclear era.

Side Stories

- Ferdinand Porsche goes to Daikoraikoku for an year between 1929 and 1930 after meeting with a member of the Imperial Family. This will have future influences on tank designs.

Tank designs

1. Oyamaneko/Surasoni (Lynx): Korai version of T-25, with autoloader and a gun capable of penetrating 135 mm at 100 meters
2. Korou/Horang (Tiger): Korai version of Chi-To, fully sloped frontal armor upgunned with Type 99 8 cm AA Gun to face the T-34/85s.
3. Shishi/Saja (Lion): Porsche-designed heavy tank. Basically a VK 45.02 (P) which was designed to be around 60 tons, with 125 mm frontal hull armor and a 10.5 cm gun.

LeoXiao

2013-10-05, 14:03

One way to get the Han Chinese to be more receptive to breaking off Manchuria would be to have the anti-Manchu movement turn into a larger civil war. IOTL much of the Manchu elites were killed in the uprisings, so there is definite possibility for extra conflict there. Both sides (loyalists and republicans) would be tired of fighting after some time, and thus enter negotiations. Sun could get everything south of the Great Wall; the Manchus would keep their dynasty and move back to their ancestral land.

The real problem is getting the millions of Manchus who have undergone varying degrees of Sinicization for hundreds of years to see themselves as Korean when they have never done so in history (always they were regarded as northern barbarians).

Xellos-_^

2013-10-05, 15:25

One way to get the Han Chinese to be more receptive to breaking off Manchuria would be to have the anti-Manchu movement turn into a larger civil war.
by that point in time, how much Anti-Manchu feeling were still around to provoke a ethnic clash?

LeoXiao

2013-10-05, 15:30

by that point in time, how much Anti-Manchu feeling were still around to provoke a ethnic clash?
I'm not sure about the details, but in Xi'an for instance about 20,000 Manchus were specifically targeted and killed during the Xinhai revolution. In history, it's often possible for events (good or bad) to happen, but if the right people aren't there to take the initiative, they don't occur even if they're possible or even probable.

In late Qing China, people like Cixi were in fact quite sacred of making comprehensive reform because that would cause the end of Manchu hegemony over the Han, so they put it off as long as possible. There was probably quite a bit of anti-Manchu sentiment by then.

Xellos-_^

2013-10-05, 15:33

I'm not sure about the details, but in Xi'an for instance about 20,000 Manchus were specifically targeted and killed during the Xinhai revolution. In history, it's often possible for events (good or bad) to happen, but if the right people aren't there to take the initiative, they don't occur even if they're possible or even probable.

In late Qing China, people like Cixi were in fact quite sacred of making comprehensive reform because that would cause the end of Manchu hegemony over the Han, so they put it off as long as possible. There was probably quite a bit of anti-Manchu sentiment by then.
Anti-Manchu or Anti-Imperial?

by the 1900s most Manchu's have Sinicization to a extant that you can't tell a Han form a Manchu by looks or accent. Also with so many Han in civil and military positions how much Manchu hegemony were actually left?

LeoXiao

2013-10-05, 15:38

Anti-Manchu or Anti-Imperial?

by the 1900s most Manchu's have Sinicization to a extant that you can't tell a Han form a Manchu by looks or accent. Also with so many Han in civil and military positions how much Manchu hegemony were actually left?

Anti-imperial can easily be turned into anti-Manchu. The Manchus being the imperials, so they should be expelled back to their ancestral land, would be the Republican thinking. And it doesn't even all have to be about ethnicity. You could have the Xinhai revolution start under different circumstances, with perhaps different decisions made by various generals that leads to a civil war. I don't know enough about the details about how this could be done, however. IRL most of the army just turned over to Yuan Shikai or Sun Yatsen; I'm not sure why they didn't put up more of a fight for the Qing to be honest.

Sumeragi

2013-10-05, 15:45

Well, I think LeoXiao missed one footnote: Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui already agreed to let Japan establish a puppet state in Manchuria/Mongolia in OTL. Given that Sun changed his original views halfway to include all of former Qing, I would say it's a matter of Japan actually holding up its part of the deal and supporting Sun, thus making the split complete.

LeoXiao

2013-10-05, 16:50

Well that's all well and good, but we have to then think about what happened that led to Manchuria not becoming a Japanese protectorate as early as c. 1912. Why didn't the Japanese support Sun Yatsen? Perhaps it's because of how the Xinhai revolution unfolded. The Qing collapsed more easily than it might've if things had gone differently. If the Qing put up more of a fight, perhaps the Japanese might find reason to intervene and ensure that it gets its slice of the pie (i.e. Manchuria).

Xellos-_^

2013-10-05, 16:59

It's a Japanese puppet state. The map was made sometime around 1908, when the population of Manchuria and Korea were someone similar (15,834,000 to 12,960,0000). Assimilation plans were made to have the Manchu and Mongols recognize themselves as cousins of the Koreans while also stopping Chinese immigration, leading to a Korean-dominated country that would be in an "alliance" with Japan against the Russians.How much of the population in 1908 Manchuria were Manchus? for this to work the majority of the pop has to be Manchus.

And how do convince a Mongolian that he is related to koreans?

Sumeragi

2013-10-05, 18:23

How much of the population in 1908 Manchuria were Manchus? for this to work the majority of the pop has to be Manchus.

Around 7 million or so, with the remainder being a mix. Less than half was Han at this point.

And how do convince a Mongolian that he is related to koreans?

There is always the Mongol-Koryeo connection to consider.

Sumeragi

2013-10-06, 00:42

Well, I tried sending an appeal to Ian. Let's see what happens.

Fireminer

2013-10-06, 05:11

So, have been reading about Soviet - Afghan war, but could anyone point to me a material (book or essay) about the relationship of it with Osama bin-Laden?

LeoXiao

2013-10-06, 11:59

Well, I tried sending an appeal to Ian. Let's see what happens.Apologize profusely for past actions and promise never ever to visit PolChat again. It doesn't matter who's wrong or right, since Ian is the site's boss and your goal is simply to get unbanned.

Barring that, you could write the updates and have someone else post them in your name, as a few banned writers do.

So, have been reading about Soviet - Afghan war, but could anyone point to me a material (book or essay) about the relationship of it with Osama bin-Laden?
I would suggest looking for a biography on him. In it you will probably find something about his early life and connections to the anti-Soviet resistance. The book will probably cite sources, which you can look up.

Fireminer

2013-10-06, 20:01

Thanks! But the more I read about Islamic world, the more contradiction that I see. For example, Iranian Revolution. As I see it, not a true revolution, since it doesn't bring much freedom and prosperity to the people, compare to the Shah.

The same thing could be said for them now. Sometime I wonder this world is so corrupted that people don't even have a clear hope in future, but instead finding it in religious, even if it's extremist.

Ridwan

2013-10-06, 21:32

Apologize profusely for past actions and promise never ever to visit PolChat again. It doesn't matter who's wrong or right, since Ian is the site's boss and your goal is simply to get unbanned.

Barring that, you could write the updates and have someone else post them in your name, as a few banned writers do.

What's so good about TTC nowadays ? Well, there is Jonathan Edelstein, Badshah. Jared and DValdron but little else if one isn't muslim/darkie/native sympathetic like me and my kids and besides their works have all amounted to hundreds of chapters to catch up anyway. I'd say just post your TL here.

Thanks! But the more I read about Islamic world, the more contradiction that I see. For example, Iranian Revolution. As I see it, not a true revolution, since it doesn't bring much freedom and prosperity to the people, compare to the Shah.

The same thing could be said for them now. Sometime I wonder this world is so corrupted that people don't even have a clear hope in future, but instead finding it in religious, even if it's extremist.

Iranian revolution was of little improvement to the country compared to the Shah. The revolution finally brought up consistent democratic procedural cycle and better checks-and-balance system on the power of the autocracy(The Shah had less restrictions of actions compared to the Ayatollahs, even if the latter are still authoritarians). That has brought Iran into becoming the most democratic country in the middle east for most of the time since the revolution, which isn't saying much, really. The whole regression into ultra-conservative religiosity is certainly not a step forward. However it must be understood by the historical context and precedents. The Shah regime forced the country to abandon the already deeply rooted Islamic identity. Not a realistic goal. And his social-modernization was basically putting a secularized elite on top of the urban lower class and religious rural population. It was a prime example why secularism and despotism make a ruinous, if not outright dangerous, potentially highly explosive combination. Foreign patronage and economic dominance also didn't help. What has happened is just your usual action-begets-reaction thing.

If you really want to pursue your learning of Islamic World, I'd suggest this blog here (http://www.juancole.com/) as an excellent starting point.

Ridwan

2013-10-06, 21:49

Sumeragi

2013-10-06, 22:15

Though I wonder how much freedom of movement Japan will actually give this giant Korean puppet state. A modern national army is one thing, but one that can potentially challenge Japan ?

It's basically mega-Manchukuo with a Japanese Imperial Family member as Emperor.

Also, what will happen to Joseon dynasty ?

Absorbed into Korai, as a branch of the Korai Imperial Family.

Fireminer

2013-10-07, 00:44

@Ridwan: You've got a point! I just say that the Iranian Revolution is based on the theocracy phylosophy - based on a religious. And that is pretty much a step back when you were born in a communism country.

Also, what I want to ask is the nationlism of a typical Middle East citizen. As I see it, religious-racism pretty much overshadowed it. For example, the appearance of foreigner Sunni and Shia fighters in Syrian.

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 02:35

Religiosity doesn't necessarily equal bad. Authoritarianism more often is, in places which are actually prepared enough for some form of democratic system. The current Iranian system largely owes to Khomeini. Take him out of the picture and Iranian revolution could've resulted in a more genuine democracy, with even representations for leftist and centrist parties, if would still be dominated by the clergy, the main opposition force against the Shahdom regime, at least for a while.

It's not only quite misleading to think that secular despotism is better then religious one, it's often toxic. Secular despotism is in fact one of the main reasons why Middle East region has grown as sectarian as we know it now. Kemal's laicite has given Turkey the rise of AKP, which is while much better then Iran's Ulema-cracy and has in fact freed Turkey from its long stagnation and pushed political liberalization somewhat, still essentially Islamic equivalent of Christian right and has grown decadent. And Turkey is the better part of the region since it has much longer experience of democratic system that was NOT trashed around by foreign intervention. Arab countries experienced under colonial rule, either retribalization or antagonization of majority demographics by accommodation of minorities by colonial regime, or both, poisoning inter-cultural relations. The following era of leftist military regimes during Cold War only exacerbated the problem, since their policies either conducted persecution towards traditional sense of identity, which radicalized it, or ended up giving preferential treatment for "more reliable" groups (which country leaders are always part of) and antagonizing the rest, or both. Also don't forget Israel as the odd, arrogant kid in the neighborhood, which reallllly doesn't help, since its existence provides for a perennial scapegoat.

Also, the important part of the problem here is the thinking that humankind will someday "graduate" from religion. It's gravely misleading, well intentioned such a vision maybe. The answer to religious challenges against liberal secularism is to accommodate religion into modern society, instead of alienating it.

It's basically mega-Manchukuo with a Japanese Imperial Family member as Emperor.

Absorbed into Korai, as a branch of the Korai Imperial Family.

I suspect the ascendancy of Prince Chichibu into Korai throne would be downright arbitrary arrangement.

Fireminer

2013-10-07, 04:29

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 05:41

Fireminer

2013-10-07, 06:42

Why do those two things matter anyway ? They're all polemical chips, majority of which are non issues. Atheism doesn't make you automatically intellectually superior anyway, and I'm saying this as a formerly faithful muslim. It's just that criticism of religion must be defended as part of free expression. Rather then bothering yourself about how more superior and logically valid your worldview is, it's better to befriend better people of any background you can find. That's the least you can do for humanitarian progress.

"Formerly Faithful Muslim"?

And yes, it's what I'm doing everyday. In fact, all of my homeroom teachers are Christianity. And you would surprised of how deep Buddhism exist in Vietnamese society.

Anyway, I'm thinking about a scenario for my Muv-Luv fic. Basically, Emperor Hirohito was assassinated and replaced by the main character's great grandfather. But what I want to ask that whether would it be legit that after all that ruckus, Japan managed to conquer China - since the Civil War between Communist and Nationalist happened earlier due to Japan late anticipated in the war - meaning no Pearl Habor.

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 06:49

I'm only culturally muslim nowadays. I don't give much thoughts about existentialism stuff anymore. And my family isn't the monolithic kind of muslims either. I'm basically agnostic with Sunni, Shiite, Sufistic and Hindu-Buddhist Kejawen influences.

Fireminer

2013-10-07, 06:51

I'm only culturally Muslim nowadays. I don't give much thoughts about existentialism stuff anymore. And my family isn't the monolithic kind of Muslims either. I'm basically agnostic with Sunni, Shiite, Sufistic and Hindu-Buddhist Kejawen influences.

... Weird...

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 06:53

Indonesia is a weird country. Even us natives never really get used to it :p

Sumeragi

2013-10-07, 06:54

I suspect the ascendancy of Prince Chichibu into Korai throne would be downright arbitrary arrangement.

Nope. He's the "perfect" candidate given who his wife is in the timeline. Plus, his personality and education (both which are similar to OTL) will be fundamental to how the timeline plays out.

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 07:08

Well, I'm aware that he clashed with Hirohito rather often IOTL. I thought you'll make an Austria-Hungary style dual monarchy out of Japan-Korea union, but apparently you're pushing for something more dramatic ;) And I'd assume you're aiming to prevent American occupation as well this way.

Sumeragi

2013-10-07, 07:26

Well, I'm aware that he clashed with Hirohito rather often IOTL.

For reasons different from what many outsiders assume.

I thought you'll make an Austria-Hungary style dual monarchy out of Japan-Korea union, but apparently you're pushing for something more dramatic ;)

Such a dual monarchy wouldn't work out, given that the Korean Imperial Family existed.

And I'd assume you're aiming to prevent American occupation as well this way.

It goes further.

Ridwan

2013-10-07, 09:57

This makes me torn again about what I should do with Indonesia in my planned Ottoman TL. I've been undecided whether to make it a dominion of Osmanli through Pan-Islamic liberationary expedition during Inter-war period, or to make it a Republic through Ottoman-brokered Indo-Netherlands treaty post WW2. I've been rolling towards the latter until your Daikoraikoku idea refreshes my interest for an Indonesian monarchy, if an indirect, British-commonwealth type one.

Anyway, I have a question about Japanese view of Pan-Islamism. IOTL Japan seems enthusiastic enough to cooperate with Islamic world within the context of Pan-Asian agenda. However it was under the condition that Ottoman Caliphate was a beaten, handicapped man after defeat against Russia in 1878. With an Ottoman Empire that wins that war, how will an elevated Ottoman standing, thus a more effective Pan-Islamism, factor in Japanese approach in Asia ? Given that there's a good 23 years between Russo-Ottoman war and the birth of Kokuryuukai, a stronger Ottoman Empire might re-write Japanese perception of Islam as political force altogether. I planned for the two powers to have a fall out eventually, but if this will change more things then I thought, I might have to scrap the idea. Basically I wonder if Japan will 1) engage in coordinated policy with OE concerning Asia, especially in containing Russia; 2) be more interested with Islam that there will be closer ties with Ottoman Empire and Islamic world, and thus ; 3) might consider "Muslim zone" off limits for expansion.

The first possible immediate effect for Japan from Ottoman 1878 victory will be perhaps Russia. I think that defeat against Ottomans in '78 will drive Russia more militarized and her attention eastward, possibly making the later Russo-Japan war tougher for Japan. I'm also still undecided about China. OE will be involved in oppressing Boxer Rebellion, and thus there will be Nine instead of Eight Nations Alliance, and later since Ottomans will take Turkestan during Russian chaos, there will also be intervention in Xinjiang. This will make muslim issue a question in China, which from what I see it, can go either way : either it will further sour Sino-Ottoman relations, or that OE will take steps to amend it(which I think will be more likely). This will be the point where later Japan-Ottoman relations be decided, IF Japan will still take aggressive stance towards China here.

Ridwan

2013-10-25, 23:00

http://www.mediafire.com/download/gfft829n9dsw18w/Constructing+Ottoman+Modernity+in+the+Hamidian+and +Young+Turk+Eras.pdf

This is unsurprising of course. Hamidiyan regime was navigating the empire from the point of near destruction and was struggling to rebuild the empire's strength from scratch, while a non-western, non-christian nation was a rising power contemporarously, defeating the big bad that was responsible for their then condition. The interesting revelation for me was that the late empire's militarism also drew inspiration from Japanese model. It does help me in picturing how the empire will possibly develop had she avoided/survived WW1. It also explains something about the strains of rhetorics we get to hear throughout 20th century after the empire's dissolution, in addition to several other things.

More interesting however, is that how a lot of things in that article will be different had Ottomans won 1878. Ottoman Empire will have remained undisputably European-based, and will lead over a more credible Pan-Islamic movement, something that Japan will take note of and likely try to get benefit from.

Vallen Chaos Valiant

2013-10-25, 23:33

So you mean that we will never get out of the gap of Religion? Maybe, because we still have two questions:

- What created the Singular Point, start of Big Bang?

- What awaits us beyond the gate of Death?

The first question, we're clueless. The second question, we have something that we couldn't make sense. That combine with the fact that human tend to keep everything in control and explainable make us turn to religion.

Oh well, can't change something since the dawn of mankind. But I remember this quote of V.Hugo: "There is no one completly happy. There are only the enlighted and who not."

Religion doesn't answer either of these two questions. The answers offered are no better than those offered by fortune cookies.

More importantly, what matters is what one's beliefs make one do. For example, if you think a good man is going to paradise when he dies, is it truly a crime to stab him in the back, murdering him, thus sending him to paradise sooner?

I mean, by religious standards you are doing him a favour. Sure, stabbing someone is likely a sin, and the stabber will be punished accordingly, but as far as the "victim" is concerned he got the better end of the deal.

This means the simple question of "is life after death better than life before death" ends up with "isn't it best if we just murder everyone else so they can all go to Heaven RIGHT NOW?"

Thus, doomsday cults and those who wants to hasten the end times. This is simply the logical conclusions pushed to its sensible end. The sooner everyone dies, the better. This is what happens when you try to make death a temporary state of affairs.

Ridwan

2013-10-26, 02:04

This is a thread to discuss history. Let's just rant about religion elsewhere.

Fireminer

2013-10-26, 02:50

Ok, do you guys think that Alexander the Great know what will happen after his death?

Vallen Chaos Valiant

2013-10-26, 03:26

Ok, do you guys think that Alexander the Great know what will happen after his death?

He knows he will be remembered forever. And that's one way of becoming immortal.

Ridwan

2013-10-26, 04:31

I know he didn't plan to die so soon.

And I also know that he in fact cared about state building, not just about conquest. Had he kept on living he would see through the development of Greco-Persian elite class to centralize the empire.

Anyway, am I the only one with any care for Muslim world related topics here ? :<

Fireminer

2013-10-26, 04:41

Well, if Muslim-realated media were more widespread...

But really, why people rarely making show and document about Muslim on English, entertainment channel?

Vallen Chaos Valiant

2013-10-26, 04:52

There several comedy shows starring Muslims in Australia, the ratings are apparently pretty good. The idea is that Muslims decided they need to portray themselves as who they actually are and not only what the News media does, which is describing Muslums only in terms of bad news.

As they said in one episode, the Irish, the Greeks, and the Chinese all had their period of being mistreated in Australia, but they all managed to get over that bumps and be Australians. And it is now Muslim's turn.

Fireminer

2013-10-26, 05:33

Vietnam isn't the place you could expected to stumble on Muslim, you know. Only a handful of Kmer is follower, and even half of them are un-scripted - A.K.A They don't follow Sharia or even go to Mequee.

Ridwan

2013-10-26, 10:37

The reason why there's practically no muslim media for international audience is that compared to Prominent Asian Cultures like Japan, China and India, they missed the wagon of "emerging eastern powers" because the only leading muslim power got violently slammed in WW1 and it caused a severe self-esteem crisis that we still see today.

That's why I vest so much interest in Ottoman Empire. It was the only hope muslim civilization had in 20th century to prove itself, and its survival would've spared us a lot of our current Islam-related problems.

LeoXiao

2013-10-26, 11:23

I hate to say it, but I'm only [semi-]knowledgeable in places/cultures I have a personal connection to, e.g. I know some stuff about America because I'm American, China because of family, Germany because I took it in high school and lived there for some time.

Of course I'm always glad to read about other places if the material is written interestingly.

Ridwan

2013-10-26, 12:06

I can suggest you some titles on Ottoman Empire and Indonesia. For the former, Stanford Shaw's "History of Ottoman Empire an Modern Turkey", Caroline Finkel's "Osman's Dream" and anything by Kemal Karpat. The article I posted in previous page just introduced me to Renée Worringer which seems to focus on the empire's relationship with East Asia.

For the later, start with books by Anthony Reid.

Fireminer

2013-10-26, 17:40

Ok, how about something connect to early Pakistan - A.K.A the 50s-60s?

And the 70s Turkey, if you can.

LeoXiao

2013-10-26, 18:09

New update in my Chinese civil war TL

THE YELLOW RIVER WAR 1937-1940

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u263/LeoXiao/Tairiku%20Sensou/kouga_sakusen_nov_1937_zps670a3d3d.png

Key Figures and Concepts

Central Plains Alliance（中原軍系）
Wu Peifu (deceased 1936) - NROC governor of Shandong
Duan Qirui (deceased Mar 1937) - former Hubei (Wuchang) Clique general and Federal Chinese Marshal
Jia Deyao - Federal Chinese General, successor to Duan
Liu Zhennian - New NROC governor of Shandong
Sun Liren - Federal Chinese Major General under Duan
Federal China（中联）
Zhao Hengti - Federal Chinese General
Li Zongren - Federation-aligned Guangxi warlord
Zhang Zongchang - Federal Chinese General with Maoist leanings
Su Yao^ - Young Federal officer from Guangdong
Zhang Guotao - Maoist guerrilla general operating in the Central Plains region
Japanese Marines（日本陆战军）

^=Non-OTL character

THE FUNERAL CONFERENCE - 1937

In the year 1937, the already-unstable Chinese Federation was reeling from the recent anti-Yunnan war. Its regular forces had withdrawn to the security of Liangguang, Fujian and Jiangsu, the locus of Federal order. The years of fighting had accomplished nothing except to eat away at the nation’s men, money, and materiel, while the hinterland continued to teem with warlord factions and outlaws. The left-centrist Wang Jingwei administration met with increasing unrest as it consistently failed to address the country’s problems despite many attempts at reform and restructuring.

Unrest in the Ranks

Wang Jingwei and his administration, were, in a word, overstretched. Learning from their mistakes that resulted in the arduous war with Yunnan, statesmen and officers in Guangzhou decided to consolidate zones which were economically or politically expedient; the rest of the country could come later. Many generals and men were now tasked with bolstering the defenses of central China for possible showdown against the Beiyang regime. At the same time, it was decreed that the Mao Zedong’s and Zhang Jingyao’s guerrillas were comrades with the same goal of a prosperous New China. This move was made in light of pragmatic considerations of Mao’s ideological strength to fight the warlords in the countryside, but it also had severe negative repercussions.

The generals and soldiers of the former Wuchang (Hubei) Clique, which had since the late 1920s been absorbed into federal allegiance, tended to belong to the category of those who now opposed Wang Jingwei and the Guangzhou legislature. These military men tended to share in a common resentment of the administration’s favorable treatment of the Maoist radicals, whom they understandably viewed as thieving bandits with an undue sense of ideological righteousness. To make matters worse, the civilian administration constantly attempted to meddle with military affairs with the goal of rooting out “warlordism”, leading to gross leadership and structural inefficiencies.

Until now, Marshal Duan Qirui, himself of the Wuchang clique, had deigned to serve Wang faithfully despite maintaining his personal network. His competence and prestige had helped stave off the worst of political opposition in the ranks. Additionally, Duan made himself small by not meddling in politics whenever it could be avoided. His death in March 1937 thus came as a great misfortune to the Wang administration’s hold on the military, though by the time this was noticed it would be too late.

The Funeral Conference

Many, if not a majority of Duan’s officers, did not share his loyalty to the Guangdong government, and decided to take action. At a lavish funeral ceremony held in Duan’s native Anhui Province, many officers who had served Duan as well as a full division of troops were in attendance. During the period of mourning, a handful of federal officers held a secret conference to conspire. The central figure in this affair was Jia Deyao, commonly recognized as Duan’s second-in-command. Also quietly invited to the meeting was Liu Zhennian, Beiyang general and boss of NROC military affairs in Shandong province.

The ambitious Liu Zhennian had taken his post from the late Wu Peifu, who in 1936 died prematurely at age 63. Wu had been propositioned on multiple occasions since the late 1920s to enter into allegiance with officers of Duan’s clique, but uniformly turned them down based on his interpretation of directives from Fengtian. With both Duan and Wu safely in the next world, the Wuchang clique and the Beiyang presence in Shandong could safely conduct negotiations

Creation of the Central Plains Alliance

Since the abortive “Southern Expedition” of the mid-1920s, Yuan Kewen and others in Fengtian had consistently displayed a lack of interest in any more big campaigns until the time was ripe. While Wu Peifu had dutifully abided by this sentiment, Liu Zhennian regarded the policy as “a grave misunderstanding of geopolitical realities” and in the long run, self-destructive. It is now known that at the Funeral Conference, Liu had made a promise to Jia Deyao to secure the full support of the Beiyang Army, even though he himself was barely in control of a single division and several units of the militarily useless Republican Guard. He betted on first making an agreement with the federalists, and then finding a way to convince the Beiyang High Command of its merit. The result of this agreement, made in April 1937, was the Central Plains Alliance （中原軍系）.

Road to the Yellow River Incident

In October 1937, Jia Deyao began large-scale drills in the Yellow River area. The exercise was ostensibly meant to bolster unity among Federation troops and intimidate the Beiyang threat, but Jia’s true intent was to use the opportunity to bring large numbers of supplied and equipped men to this strategically advantageous location.

Among his officer staff were generals He Yingqin, Wang Jiasheng, and Zhang Zhizhong. Jia could also rely on Beiyang support from at least the forces of Liu Zhennian and tacit approval of his campaign by Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan. Altogether the Central Plains Alliance mustered an impressive 300,000 men, equipped with above-average arms from a variety of sources.

In late October, Jia decided he was ready to take on the Federation. What awaited him was a bitter three-year struggle that would claim the lives of nearly a million people, including that of his own.

NEXT: Yellow River Incident - Nov. 1937-Mar. 1939

--------------------------
Note: The "Hubei Clique" mentioned in prior updates will from this update in be referred to as the "Wuchang Clique".

____________________________

I can suggest you some titles on Ottoman Empire and Indonesia. For the former, Stanford Shaw's "History of Ottoman Empire an Modern Turkey", Caroline Finkel's "Osman's Dream" and anything by Kemal Karpat. The article I posted in previous page just introduced me to Renée Worringer which seems to focus on the empire's relationship with East Asia.

For the later, start with books by Anthony Reid.

I'll start with the article.

Also, if you're interested, I have a document full of detailed notes through about Chapter 4 on that "Way of the Heavenly Sword" book. I also transcribed its entire concluding chapter, which is a great summary of the contents.

Sumeragi

2013-10-26, 22:02

Also, if you're interested, I have a document full of detailed notes through about Chapter 4 on that "Way of the Heavenly Sword" book. I also transcribed its entire concluding chapter, which is a great summary of the contents.

I would be interested. That book is great, no?

LeoXiao

2013-10-26, 23:34

I'll PM you the content.

LeoXiao

2013-10-26, 23:54

The message would have required no fewer than 7 PMs, so I will just put it here in two parts.

I kinda stopped after Chapter 3 since I found the material less relevant to my TL matter. I did however take photos of what looked like the important parts of each chapter I skipped as well as the entirety of the reference section. If you want I can send you them by email or something.
__________________________________________________ __

HEAVENLY SWORD NOTES FOR “THE EAST IS RED”
Full Title: The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s

By Leonard A. Humphreys

Table of Contents

A. Preface
I. The Background to Army Politics (p.1)
II. the Army Faces Change (p.30)
III. The Changing of the Guard: Ugaki Comes to Power (p.60)
IV. Reduction and Modernization: The Ugaki Era (p.79)
V. The Growth of Dissidence (p.108)
VI. The Manmo Problem and Tanaka's Positive Solution (p.127)
VII. Jinan and Mukden: The Army Sets its course in China (p.147)
VIII. Conclusion (p.171)
IX. Notable Figures (for notes)

The Way of the Heavenly Sword Notes

Chapter 1: The Background to Army Politics

“The secret of Victory lies in the spirit of the men and not in their weapons.” – Rai San’yo, 1780-1832

The Japanese Army was revered and considered heroic after the Russo-Japanese war; the 13-division strong army had its size increased to 17 infantry divisions. Notable were senior field general Oyama Iwao, who had fought successfully against China and Russia and his chief of staff Kodama Gentaro.

National Army, localized leadership: Marshal Yamagata Aritomo of the Chōshū clan was the highest officer and served twice as PM. He gave up the position of chief of staff to Kodama Gentaro. Terauchi Masakata (or Masatake) was army minister; both were also of the Chōshū clan. The generals who had fought on the field in Manchuria were the aforementioned Oyama, Kuroki Tamemoto, Kawamura Soroku (Satsuma), and Nozu Michikane. Only one Oku Yauskata was not of the Satchō circle.

Yamagata was of the Chōshū clan and worked hard to keep his clan in a superior position in the national army. Between 1872 and 1912, of 32 men promoted to the rank of taisho (full general), 5 were of the imperial family, 11 from Chōshū, 9 from Satsuma, and 8 from other areas. 7 of these generals were eventually promoted to gensui (marshal).

Yamagata’s Army and Civil Politics: Yamagata wanted to ensure that the army remained apolitical (and at the same time keep politics from messing up the army), so he formed the kenpei or military police to keep an eye on them. He himself was a powerful politician and a member of the genro who advised the emperor. Yamagata got rid of civil influence on the military by making it so that the army could communicate directly with the emperor instead of using a go-between. Army and navy ministers could only be generals or admirals on active duty. This independence of the military would lead to it having an disproportionate degree of influence later on.

Yamagata’s Chōshū Clique and its rivals: Yamagata had some officers below him. General Katsura Tarō was a competent staff officer trained by the Germans, had adopted their military staff structure, and became army minister in 1898. In 1901 he formed the 1st of 3 governments. He became a prince in the court and ascended to the ranks of the genro before dying in 1913.
Kodama Gentaro was powerful and influential but died in 1906. Replacing him as head of the Chōbatsu was Terauchi Masataka, who was army minister from 1902 to 1912. He annexed Korea and ruled it from 1910 to 1916 when he became PM. General Baron Tanaka Giichi was a brilliant staff officer and 30 years younger than Yamagata. He would become important later on.

Oyama of Satsuma died in 1916 but before this was a war hero and became part of the genro. Marshal Uehara Yūsaku (Satsuma) was similar to Tanaka Giichi in his later political influence.

Yamagata had to please the Satsuma men as well as his own, but he made sure that Chōshū was always one step above them. Tanaka Giichi was elevated to replace Terauchi in 1911 as head of the military affairs bureau.

The Effects of the Russo-Japanese War: Terauchi was promoted to viscount due to service in the RJ War, which strengthened the Satchō hold on the army and gave the military in general a large degree of prestige. Industrial power was also strengthened and Japan gained control over Southern Manchuria, in particular the once-Russian South Manchuria Railway and Port Arthur. However, Japanese military men got the idea that their seishin (spirit) was the decisive factor. Victory disease and a notion of superiority over the West set in. Russia, though defeated, was still around and an enemy. The idea of Yamato Damashii was accentuated.

The Changes to the Army Standing Orders: The army set up the Teikoku Zaigo Gunjikai (reservist’s association) and promoted nationalistic values in education and whatnot to bring the military together with the general population. Many members of the Zaigo Gunjinkai were never in the army per se, and enrollment in the organization was prolific. It was headed by Tanaka Giichi. The hohei soten (infantry manual) put the focus of warfare on the infantryman at the expense of other branches and tech, which would retard Japan’s military doctrine later on.

The Problem of an Integrated War Plan: Japan had defeated Russia at sea, so the IJN now turned its attention to possible war with the USA (Britain was still an ally at this time) while the IJA remained focused on Russia and demanded growth. The struggle for funding against the navy and government brought the army into the political arena. This also ended up decreasing its standing in the eyes of the people. (The first sign of victory disease?)

A Glimmer of Hope for the Army’s Outsiders: Lt. General Ishimoto Shinroku was associated with Terauchi and replaced him as war minister in 1911, but died the next year. The army fought with Prince Saionji Kinmochi’s Seiyuukai over the proposed increase in army strength. Lt. General Kigoshi Yasutsuna was a protégé of Katsura Tarō, and Uehara Yūsaku was another choice, both non-Chōshū, to replace Ishimoto. Uehara was army minister only from April to Decemebr 1912 when he resigned, but he became a hero to the army while the civilians hated him. Saionji ended up getting his way and the army was not expanded. Oka Ichinose (Chōshū), Hasegawa Yoshimichi, Marshal Oku Yasukata, and Oshima Ken’ichii were other men in this chapter. Machida Keiu (Satsuma) was a supporter of Uehara. Uehara’s resignation messed up Saionji’s cabinet. Uehara’s promotion also broke the clan clique mold; no Chōshū man would hold the army minister position until 1918. Admiral Yamamoto Gonbei did something similar in the navy.

Army Activity in China during the First World War: Ōkuma did the 21 Demands on Yuan Shikai’s China. As China fell to warlordism, Japanese officers became more important than civilians in their work in that country. Tanaka Giichi talked with Chinese Republican leaders like Sun Zhongshan and thought that China needed to be strengthened. In 1918 the army had four garrisons in China – The China garrison Army in Tianjin and Beijing (from the Boxer Rebellion) and the Kantougun (Manchuria Garrison Force). The Korean (Chosen) Army had two divisions. Many Japanese were trained as China specialists.
The Disastrous Siberian Venture: Hara Kei (Seiyukai)

Chapter 2: The Army Faces Change

“Wars of the future will not be won or lost on the strength of armies alone. The ordinary people must be strong as well.” – Tanaka Giichi

Japan had stood up to the West and emulated it through ceaseless struggle. In the enterprise the army had led the vanguard as the nation’s shield and sword. The Great War and the tech, ideological, and psychological changes it brought about also affected Japan.

The army, being part of the Confucian, conservative state bureaucracy, was reluctant to adopt tech and ideas that might mess up the tried and tested ways. By the end of the Great War, the old Meiji military leaders were getting old. In 1920, Yamagata was in his 80s. Uehara was 64, Tanaka was 60. Ugaki Kazunari was Tanaka’s protégé and was 52 in 1920.

When Yamagata died, the genro system died with him. His absence also led to new struggles in the army leadership.
The Army’s Anachronistic Leadership: Young and rising officers were irked by the continued domination of the military by the Chobatsu. By 1920, younger officers no longer had much faith in the Chōshū hegemony, which had outlived its usefulness and now just seemed rather unfair and elitist. The army would continue to be dominated by the gunbatsu structure until 1945. The Meiji army was mostly composed of low-class samurai, so an elitist system developed that was only challenged by the effects of conscription. Only in the Taisho era would the officers be composed less of samurai, the most powerful group being the samurai.

Yamagata Aritomo’s Chōshū Clique: In the Yamagata, Chōshū or Satsuma officers were the most preferred for promotion and positions of prestige. Tanaka Giichi was described in the book as “spoiled young child” who had ridden on the successes of his predecessors. He was confident that the clique would naturally stay in power; when asked about having Chōshū preservation meetings: “That’s all very well, but since all Chōshū men are capable of walking by themselves [that won’t necessary].” Though Tanaka was ambivalent about the preservation of the clique, the younger officers saw him as the object of their complaints.

Young Staff Officers Move for Staff Reform: The army became sensitive to what the government described as “dangerous thought” and was active in preventing its spread in the ranks. This did not prevent political subversion among the officers and in fact increased it. In October 1921 three officers met in Baden-Baden and Frankfurt in Germany. The group was led by Nagata Tetsuzan, soon to be a leader in the army reform movement; at the moment he was a military attaché at the Japanese legation in Bern. The second member was Obata Toshishiro, who was the military attaché for Russia but living in Berlin because the Soviets were being jerks and didn’t let him in. The third was Okamura Yasuji, who later was a ruthless general in China and became in 1944 the supreme commander of the China Expeditionary Army. He wrote that Ito Masanori has said things as if…

“…in 1921 at Baden-Baden in southern Germany Nagata Tetsuzan, Obata Toshishiro, and I raised the standard of rebellion. That’s an exaggeration. At the time we didn’t think the least bit in terms of other countries like the Manchuria problem. What the three of us considered was the reform of the army. We took things seriously at the time. Frankly, what we meant by reform was, first, that personnel matters were all [settled by] clique, weren’t they? The Chōshū clique made arbitrary personnel [decisions], and again, through [the Chōshū clique’s exercise of] the army’s right to command [tousuiken], it had become separated from the people. We resolved to change this to a direction that was at one with the people’s. That’s the truth of the matter, and it was because we’d gone to Europe and seen the military situation there, wasn’t it? At the time all three of us were majors. It was the beginning.”
These men were anxious that Japan’s army was stuck in the clique mentality and as such would not be able to modernize. The army was tremendously proud of their victory over Russia, and planned to increase the size of the army. But the younger officers had not fought in the war, and so arose a divide between the senjuha (zhan zhong pai) and the sengoha (zhan hou pai). Nagata and the others wanted to lead the new army, and they understood the division.

Their method would be subversive and secretive to return the army to harmony with the people to avoid a Russian Revolution. They began to contact reliable like-minded men, their classmates and friends. The first was Tōjō Hideki who was in Leipzig and felt resentment for the Chōshū clique. Okamura headed back to China and began recruiting people there. The objectives remained to institute personnel reform, bring the army and people back together, and prepare the nation for total war. In the next few years, more organization of officers like at Baden-Baden formed and multiplied, opposed one another, resorted to extremist tactics, and joined hands with civilian and naval groups. These groups and tehri growth goaded the nation towards foreign adventure and war, such as the Manchurian and February 26th Incidents.

The Baden-Baden group and others like it grew out of changes brought about by the Great War. The movement embraced external aggression, esp. in China, but at this point remained relatively rational. The original form of the “staff officer’s movement” was geared to specific goals, later it had hardened ideological positions, verging on revolutionism, but drew back. The following movement of the late 20s and 30s came from desperation in the face of economic hardship, and advocated social revolution in more emotional, violent outbursts.

The Natural Evolution of the Army Clique Structure: At the time of the BB meeting, Yamanashi, a surrogate of Tanaka, was army minister, and Ono Minobu (Satsuma) the vice-minister. Chief of military affairs bureau was Sugano Hisaichi (Chōshū), chief of staff was Uehara, vice chief to whom was Kikuchi Shinnosuke (Ibaragi). Others included Akiyama Yoshifuru and Kojima Sōjirō.

All those who the BB conspirators had contacted were graduates of the army staff college, except for Uehara. Only 10% of the military academy graduates had also gone to the staff college, yet by 1921 those who had power were all graduates of this group. Thus, the hanbatsu-style military clique gave way to a gakubatsu (academic clique) sort with the death of Yamagata. In the Showa "gakubatsu era", two factions would form: The Kōdōha (Imperial Way Faction) and the Tōseiha (Control Faction).
Clan loyalties were dimmed as the new generation of officers began to think about the country as a single unit and as a modernizing entity. Ability over ascription was emphasized. Education was highly valued so those with merit were likely to be promoted. Though the Satchō bias remained, the general preference for high academic standing (see the yōnen gakkō for general military education) underhandedly diminished the worth of clan credentials. Nevertheless, graduates who were not Satchō felt discriminated against.

The struggle between han- and gakubatsu really only involved about 10% of the officer corps and was a feud of equality among the elite. The chūōbu (central sections) of the army was where this took place and did not concern the taizuki shōkō, or unit officers, who were largely inactive until the Showa era.

The Anti-Chōshū Conspiracy: The BB conspirators planned to attack Chōshū hegemony by preventing its clansmen from graduated from the staff college, thus causing the clan's influence to wither. The schemes around this thinking were probably planned by Hideki Tōjō, who was an instructor at the staff college from 1922 to 1926. One Ōba Jirō (Chōshū) found it strange that no one from Yamaguchi was graduating from the rikudai (staff college) and so tried to investigate, but the school was not in his jurisdiction.

Ultimately, the conspirators' atatcks against Chōshū were atatcks against an empty shell that no longer had any potency after Yamagata's death. What the conspiracy did accomplish was the political radicalization of young officers.
The Saga Clique: One General Utsunomiya Tarō, who was competent and popular, could not be promoted to more prestigious positions due to his lack of experience in the RJ war. He formed the Saga sakentō, to oppose Chōshū and protect officers from the prefecture of Saga. Utsunomiya died in 1922 but was survived by Lt. Gen. Muto Nobuyoshi, who later led the sakentō to join with Uehara Yūsaku to oppose Ugaki Kazunari's clique. Members included Araki Sadao (later to the Kōdōha), his military academy classmate Mazaki Jinzaburō (also Kōdōha), and Yanagawa Heisuke, an outspoken rightist. The clique later began to attract other elements and people such as Obata Toshihiro, Yamaoka Shigeatsu, and Yamashita Tomoyuki. Saga also gathered ultranationalists and hardcore rightists. Araki and Mazaki attracted such folk.

External Factors Accelerating Change - The Rice Riots (kome sōdō): The [1st World] War brought prosperity to Japan, but it also caused inflation and increased property prices. Steeply rising rice prices led to the kome sōdō of Aug. and Sept. 1918. The Terauchi govt. was uncareful regarding the economy and ignoring warning signals in the rising prices and inflation. Korea didn't supply enough rice for Japan and Indochina and Burma's markets were closed in order to help France and Britain get back on their feet. The riots were started by fishermen's wives in Toyama Prefecture, who discussed the financial straits in July and rioted the next month. The riots spread to 36 prefectures, 33 cities, 200 towns and villages, and about 700,000 people participated.
These riots could not be contained by civil police, so they turned to the army and navy (ITTL, WI the army and navy were not available?) for help and crushed the riots. About 60 incidents required the use of military force, and about 20 died. Sometimes local Reservists Association units were armed, something not legally called for.

The kome sōdō caused the downfall of Terauchi's Chōshū "transcendent" cabinet and brought true party govt. to Japan for the first time; Hara Kei's Seiyūkai took control. The army was further alienated from the people during the riots. (ITTL they support the rioters, leading to even more splits and forced reforms, which leads to backlashes in 1922-24) The mobilization of the Reservists Association just added to the people's indignation.

The Diet and the People Turn on the Army: In the late 1910s, empires were falling everywhere, and while the expression of democratization was not as pronounced in Japan, there such things as party govt. in 1918, multiparty influence, blossoming labor movement, and popularity of socialism and communism. JCP founded in 1922.

The war led to a big peace movement in Japan as well as in the west. "in today's world armies and things of that sort are like a bed warmer in summer and a mosquito net in winter." However, the army and navy still increased expenditures. In the 1910s two divisions for the defense of Korea had been added (ITTL it will be much higher) to the army while the navy started a hugely expensive expansion program which only was curbed by the 1921-22 Washington Conference. Between 1914 and 1921, the army and navy's budgets increased by 3 and 10 fold respectively.

The Siberian Expedition and independent military negotiations with China were greatly resented by the Japanese public, a fact reflected in their press. The Hara govt. bore the brunt of criticism of the Siberian venture for an army over which it could exercise little control. In January 1921 Katō Kōmei, who was responsible for the 21 Demands against China, denounced govt. policy and military actions in Siberia and got good press for it. Inukai Tsuyoshi of the Kokumintō punned the Shiberia shuppei (chu bing) as a Shiberia shippai (shi bai).

Japan's economy was already contracting after WWI and the shuppei only exacerbated this problem. The kome sōdō attests to this. Wages dropped all over the country, and production lagged and factories closed. The antimilitary intellectuals thus influenced the opinions of labor who also claimed that military expenditures were ruining everything. In the 1921 May Day demonstrations, the Sōdōmei labor federation's slogans (one of them) was "Reform the Conscription System", and in October it resolved to "abolish armaments". The rise of the USSR also led to workers saying to get out of Siberia.

The Washington Naval Arms Limitation Conference was hailed as a great victory for the antimilitarists and fueled Diet and public-borne opposition against the army. By the 45th imperial Diet in 1922, Japan's international position seemed pretty good, with the USA, USSR, and China all bothered by other matters rather than to oppose it. As the 45th Diet got underway, member Ozaki Yukio made a speech calling for total arms reduction. The Takahashi cabinet of the time opposed the military. All parties saw the military as political enemies.

At the time of Yamagata's death in 1922, the military was on the decline. The Seiyūkai and Kokumintō jointly introduced a bill to limit the army to save the govt. 40,000,000 yen a year and reduce the conscription time to 14 months. The KKMT made a bill to abolish the qualifications for army/navy ministers to open the way for civilian ministers. The Diet attacked the military's exclusive right to direct access to the Emperor.

The Plight of the Soldier: All the aforementioned problems combined created an unfortunate reaction against military men themselves. Younger officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men bore the brunt of this popular feeling. If an officer wore spurs on a streetcar, laborers would kick at them. If the handle of his sword or the end of his cape touched another passenger, men swore and women screamed that they were being molested. Soldiers could also be beaten. Inada Masazumi, an army lieutenant, said he was accosted on the streetcar by laborers who claimed that Lenin and not the Emperor was their boss. Utsunomiya Naokata, a second lieutenant at the time, said his men were refused water by farmers during maneuvers in Narashino, Chiba Prefecture. Nishimura Susumu, another subaltern, said that his military academy instructors told them to stay out of trouble on Sundays. Officers living off-post would wear civilian clothing and only change upon getting to work, and those invited to civilian functions would conceal them with morning coats. Marriage was another problem. Inada says that Gen. Abe Nobuyuki would tell them to study more since they wouldn’t find girls anyway. “You young officers are all buzzing with the prospect of getting married, but since you won’t find brides, study!”

“The officers dissipate, the NCOs go into business, but truly loyal are the privates.” People sang, “There are those fools who volunteer for an army people detest.” The professional soldier was looked on as a blackguard or worse. Recruitment for military schools fell sharply. Of 300 students chosen for entry into the military academy in 1920, 100 changed their plans and even recruited others to leave. Tanaka Kiyoharu, a JCP zhongyangweiyuanhui and later an industrialist, said that in 1921-22 they (Hakodate, Hokkaido Middle School) received the ideas of democracy and almost nobody wanted to become soldiers. “In our class not one person took the exams for military or naval academies.”

Young officers were accustomed to low pay. Binbō shōi, yattoko chūi, yarikuri taii (second lieutenants penniless, first lieutenants struggling, captains barely making it) is a saying predating the 1920s. A shōi’s salary was 43 yen back then, or about $21 a month. Soldiers were super poor. Gen. Araki Sadao was one of them and was reported to have seen officers living on the streets. Thievery was common (soldiers had to hang their clothes in the shower to keep them from being stolen) and the canteen kept all its food locked up. Araki later fixed this mess.

The Army Reaction: Soldiers had been trained to respect and revere the emperor, and the people were supposed to in turn respect them, but now the people insulted them. The old system of warriors being the highest class was overturned. Western bourgeois democracy fostered not only individualism, which went against their training, but also the kind of economic competition that led to gross disparities in personal income between certain unscrupulous but privileged businessmen and the broader masses of people. The army reacted strongly in particular to the “boorish” nouveaux riches who had made their fortune in the [world] war. The army passed on stories of conspicuous public consumption while officers lived in poverty. They despised the niwaka narikin, or “suddenly rich” who had parties with other rich people at geisha restaurants, where a plate might cost 5000 yen (16 sen was an average meal for a soldier in 1919).

Utsunomiya told a story of a niwaka narikin who drove his expensive car illegally through the Yoyogi renpeijo (lian bing chang) in Tokyo and got it stuck in the mud. He demanded Utsunomiya’s platoon get his car out, but they found him in the company of three geisha. They then overturned the car instead.

The army also hated socialist ideology. Soldiers identified more with attitudes of the rather conservative, tradition-oriented peasants, who contributed most heavily to the army’s manpower. Instead of Lenin, the soldier had faith in the emperor and kokutai. 1921, a year of labor unrest, involved the use of soldiers to put down riots and strikes. At the Mitsubishi and Kawasaki shipbuilding works in Kobe, the disputes involved arms production. Many military officers must have found the strikes treasonous.
To the army, the entire situation was threatened. They were being separated from the emperor by democracy and its multiparty system. To satisfy their own lust for money, the leaders were oppressing the emperor’s soldiers. While most men took all this BS lying down, others, like Araki Sadao, believed in action. Nishimura Susumu said: “As in the army song: ‘In the muddy stream that is the world’ – something-something- ‘it rises steeply to the heights of Ichigaya (location of the military academy in Tokyo). The world is a muddy stream, and only we are pure.’ Those men, in just the same way that the young fellows in today’s self-defense forces think that the guys who call them tax robbers are creeps who don’t make sense, thought that they were correct, and their belief grew stronger and stronger.”

Satō Kōjirō was the first officer to talk in print about the “social problem” in Kokubōjō no shakai mondai, published in 1922. In Guntai to shakai mondai, He focused on the deep division between Volk (im Gegensatz zu der Kriegsmarine) und Armee. SALIENT He found nothing new in democracy and socialism. Both ideas, he wrote, have existed in Japanese thought for centuries, and if the Japanese come fully into contact with them, they will lose their novelty and be placed in proper perspective. He felt that the army needed to talk about these new ideas. He said that the army was too arrogant and needed to become more transparent. Officers needed shakai kunren, he said.

On the other hand, Satō did not doubt for one instant that the army’s cause was just. Since future wars, like the Great War, would be total wars, Japan must be prepared. Because the army did not understand this situation, the Japanese nation must be militarized while the army was democratized and socialized. Japan must change to an emperor-centered democratic national socialism to ensure the protection, even the survival, of the unique Japanese state in the social-Darwinist—imperial jungle. Satō’s works caused a sensation and, while not immediately accepted, became the first piece in a long line of reasoning that would resonate with the people as well as the army.

The Great Kanto Earthquake and Fire: In Sept. 1923, Japan was hit by the bigass Kantō earthquake that destroyed two-thirds of Yokohama and half of Tokyo. Civil order in these areas collapsed and so the military sprang into action, partially as a way of redeeming their prestige in the public view.

Kawabe Torashirō was an army captain in 1923, who hastened from Kushiro, Hokkaido, back to Tokyo in time to see the scene. He said that people were immensely grateful to see his uniformed figure, a total flip from circumstances prior. Horike Kazumaro was a young officer in the mid-20s who noted many complex changes brought about by the earthquake, which affected a “gradual reaction to the influence of the decadent atmosphere of the after the earthquake disaster.” This began the political unrest in the army. 30 regiments of troops worked in the months following the disaster and built temporary housing to help the victims.

The Dark Side of the Disaster: The behavior of the victims was bad which made the disaster even worse. Many Koreans, Chinese, and even some Japanese who spoken with a dialect were slaughtered for being considered “Korean”. There is evidence that much of these crimes were perpetrated by soldiers and not just those from the Reservists Association in Zimmerman style. On the other hand Inada (from above) said that his unit protected Koreans wherever possible, and some anti-establishment writers Itoya Hisao and Inaoka Susumu did not charge the army with direct acts of atrocities, so maybe it is true that they didn’t do it much. The Funabashi Naval Wireless Station broadcasts false reports that Koreans were rampaging in the ruins.

Like Koreans, known radicals came under attack. Those on the left, who professed “dangerous thoughts”, had failed to endear themselves properly to the general public. In the minds of many, those individuals could take advantage of the chaos and screw things up.

General Tanaka (Giichi?) had been in his second term as army minister in the hours-old Yamamoto cabinet when the quake struck. He declared martial law. The military govt. of the area under Fukuda Masatarō gave broad powers to the military police who were then able to search the homes of and round up leftists and others deemed dangerous. This led to the killing of Ōsugi Sakae, a known anarchist, and Itō Noe, a feminist, as well as Ōsugi’s nephew. His killer, Captain Amakasu, received only ten years, but it led to Fukuda’s resignation and Tanaka’s attempted resignation. Many in the army supported the killing, however. Cmdr. Koizumi Rokuichi, deposed kempeitai Maj. General, said it was a courageous act.

Althought Amakasu’s sentence seemed light at the time (1923), it would be in 1932 that even a prime could be killed and the act excused as a patriotic motive, see the May 15th Incident. After the trial, fellow anarchist of Ōsugi Wada Hisatarō tried to kill General Fukuda. He got life in prison. Amakasu later got out of jail and went to France then Manchuria. He committed suicide in 1945 and said “we have taken a great gamble and lost. That ends the first round.”

Chapter 3: The Changing of the Guard: Ugaki comes to Power

“There was no way of treating these stoneheads other than to replace them.” – Itō Masanori

As explained in the previous chapter, the public hated the army with its 300,000 men and called them “zeikin dorobō” (tax robbers). This sentiment compelled Marshall Uehara to concede that cuts were unavoidable and that withdrawal from Siberia would have to happen.

Postwar (RJ war) legislative activity against the military began in the 44th Diet of 1921 of the Hara govt. In a prophetic moment at its annual party conference, the Kokumintō advocated exchanging militarism for industrialism and proposed to cut the number of army divisions in half and make the draft 1 from 3 years. Ozaki Yukio made a resolution in the Diet to cooperate with the UK and US on naval limitations, but was voted down.

The Yamanashi Reductions in Army Strength: Ozaki received 31,517 postcards after his 1921 Diet speech, with 92.8% of them positive. Military expenditures reached their peak under the Hara govt. and would from there go down. The day after Yamagata died, fmr. Maj. Gen. Tsunoda Koreshige of the Seiyūkai introduced to the 45th Diet his own bill for army reform and reduction. In addition to financial savings, Tsunoda’s far-sighted proposals called struck heavy blows at the army’s privileged status and feudal heritage.

SALIENT Adopting a triangular division organization, Tsunoda’s plan called for the abolition of the two brigade HQs in each division and the elimination of a complete regiment. The remaining regiments would be streamlined as well, to three battalions of three companies each. In total this would save six divisions of personnel. But Tsunoda’s proposal went far beyond changes in divisional changes and personnel reductions to include shortening the draft time to 14 months, getting rid of youth schools and one-year-service, establishing a system of civilian service ministers, a supreme defense council, and a unified command structure for the army and navy. By reducing draft time, more people would be drafted and the reserve pool increased in preparation for possible total war. (TL, c. 1960s: Little did the civilian bureaucrats know that the “total war” would be fought by Japanese against other Japanese; there would be JCP army and Navy/Marines). A supreme defense council also served the concept of total war by integrating civilian political, economic, and psychological factors into the overall war planning function, but it struck a blow to the traditional right of the armed services to independent decision in defense matters (perhaps this fucks them up in China ITTL). By all the above reforms, the independent political position of the military would be threatened. Neither would the army ministry nor the general staff allow such a plan. However, Yamagata was no longer there to fight the political battle for them.

This job went to General Yamanashi Hanzō, who pressured tactlessly PM Takahashi to decline Tsunoda’s proposals. Tsunoda’s bill had its weakness: it planned to get rid of the urban garrison regiments which would also disrupt local economies and cause problems for reelection. Yamanashi had his own gunshuku (arms reduction) proposal. It got rid of the draft length reduction and cut about 60,000 personnel. About 5 divisions’ worth of peacetime strength were cut, saving 35 million yen a year. The plan also called for some technical improvements, such as the addition of machine gun units to each infantry regiment. In 1923 the Diet again wanted to seek gunshuku measures, but by the then the political will had slackened and Yamanashi, who was now PM (Admiral) Katō Tomosaburō’s army minister, and only approved minor reductions, such as the closure of a railway facility, some youth schools, which Itō Masanori likened to “a drop of water on a hot stone”.

Uehara and Tanaka and Sword’s Point: Katō Tomosaburō’s cabinet fell in 1923 and was replaced by that of Yamamoto Gonbei. At this time Yamanashi Hanzō let Tanaka Giichi replace him. Uehara Yūsaku also retired in 1923. Both these two were conservative and dull, and had caused a delay in meaningful reforms by simply cutting personnel. This changed with Tanaka’s return.
Yamamoto’s cabinet lasted only four months – it fell after the “Toranomon Incident” in which someone tried to kill Crown Prince Hirohito on Dec. 27 1923. Tanaka chose a remarkable general, Ugaki Kazunari (or Kazushige) to replace him as army minister. Ugkai was not from Chōshū but Okayama, but was so skilled that he could not be ignored. He and Tanaka had a longstanding work partnership. In 1911 Ugkai had been Tanaka’s assistant in the gunjika (military affairs bureau). Ukgai stayed on the general staff (Tanaka had become the vice chief of the staff) when Tanaka went to serve as army minister.

By 1923 the Chōbatsu, if it still existed, had fallen into a state of decay. 1918 had been its zenith and Tanaka showed little interest in keeping it in that position, though he was reputed to their boss. He did not insist on surrounding himself with Chōshū officers, though his gunjika chief was Lt. Gen Sugano Hisaichi of Chōshū. All but one of his close associations were graduates of the army staff college. Before the Siberian expedition, there was one Ōi Shigemoto, who had displaced a non-Chōshū officer as commander of the 12th Division. Others like him were Oba Jirō, who commanded the 3rd Division in Siberia and later in Korea.

When Ōyama died in 1916, Uehara become head of the Satsuma clique. He was willful and egotistic. To assert his position before Chōshū, he used his seniority to oppose the army’s “big three” – Oba Jirō, inspector general of military training, Kawai Misao (from Oita), the chief of staff, and finally Tanaka. One Kiyoura Keigo, a friend of Uehara’s who had tried to form a cabinet in 1914, worked with Uehara to try again in 1924. Uehara got Kiyoura to accept Fukuka Masatarō (Saga; also the guy who ruled Tokyo during the earthquake) as army minister. Uehara thus retired. On New Year’s Day 1924 Kiyoura got an imperial mandate to form his cabinet. Later however, the outgoing Tanaka got Ugaki to stay on in a conference. This created the contradiction of there being two men in line for the position of army minister. Tanaka did not know about Fukuda being recommended by Uehara as that exchange had been private.

One Lt. General Ishimitsu Maomi, in line to become a General if Fukuda became minister, begged Kiyoura to let Fukuda take the post, but Kiyoura went with Tanaka’s will instead, partially because Fukuda had been involved in the Kantō earthquake/Ōsugi murder and would cause controversy.

Tanaka moved to check Uehara. He informed dieser that he had urged Kiyoura to accept the recc of the big three for army minister, and that the reply was positive. This shows that the line of retreat was left open, but Uehara kept silent. On Jan. 5 Tanaka sent Lt. Gen. Tsukushi Kumashichi (from Kumamoto) to tell Uehara that the Big Three would decide on a few reccs and have negotiations, but Uehara still kept silent, saying that he would not negotiate.

The reccs went Fukuda, Ono Minobu, Ugkai. Kiyoura ended up selecting Ugaki. Ono was old and wanted to retire, and was from Satsuma, but Uehara did know this when he heard of the recs, so Ugaki was selected when he did not expect it. The result of this trickery made Uehara so angry that he never dealt with Tanaka again. Fukuda for his part was also angry, and widely considered to have been an innocent victim of both Kantō and now this episode by many officers from Satsuma and elsewhere. “I will oppose Tanaka in all he does”, Fukuda said.

The episode highlighted a divide in the army between cliques. Younger, reform-minded officers redoubled their call for change, many of them ironically rallying about the conservative Uehara. Tanaka’s position became untenable and he escaped into politics, leaving the Chōbatsu to fend for itself. It would not survive. Another result was that Tanaka’s system of picking army ministers; it reestablished the requirement that the minister on active duty and became a stick used by a highly politicized military to control the selection of cabinets. It was used against Ugaki in 1937 when he himself tried to form a cabinet.

Ugaki Takes Control of the Army: Ugaki was dictatorial and ambitious in his role as army minister. His contempt for Tanaka, who he considers to have used him as a tool, is indicative of the divisive character of the army’s professional staff system modeled off the Germans. Ugaki, unlike a Briton or American, was not satisfied as a divisional commander. The positions of power and influence were at the top positions of the army ministry and the general staff; the assignment of an officer to command a division usually signaled the height to which he could be allowed to advance.

Ugaki only accepted his position at the encouragement of Kawai and Oba on Jan. 6. He came in a at bad time – the government and country had incurred a big economic hit from the earthquake and the army would be expected to contribute to expenditure cuts. Because of Yamanashi and Uehara no organizational reform had been made; the central organs were rent with factionalism, and the modernization of weapons was slow in coming. Ugaki got all the flak from Uehara, Fukuda, and the Kyushu clique that was directed at Tanaka. The Ueharabatsu kept messing with him.

The Kiyoura cabinet fell in June 1924 and Katō Kōmei, leading a 3-party coalition, asked Ugaki if he wanted to continue. Dieser almost declined, but saw that Fukuda would probably not carried the needed administrative reforms. Kōmei’s cabinet was reformist, and Ugaki wanted to do his reform himself. He ordered his vice minister Lt. Gen. Tsuno Kazusuke to continue the work already started. The committee (of military systems investigation) recced a 3rd army reduction to be carried out in 1925.

Ugaki couldn’t create his own clique, so he just hired everyone who was competent without caring from where they came. These included many from the military academy classmates of his – Lt. Gen. Suzuki Sōroku and Lt. Gen. Shirakawa Yoshinori, who he used to influence younger officers. Suzuki brought in Kanaya Hanzō, Minami Jirō, and Tatekawa Yoshitsugu; Shirakawa got Kawashima Yoshiyuki; Ugaki himself salvaged Sugano Hisaichi and Tsuno Kazusuke from the defunct Chōbatsu, and had under him Hata Eitarō, Hara’s younger brother Shunroku, Abe Nobuyuki, and Matsui Iwane (later implicated in the Nanjing Massacre and executed). More of hata Shunroku’s classmates – Ninomiya Masashige, Sugiyama Hajime, and Koiso Kuniaki. Takekawa brought Hayashi Katsura.

All of these associates became Ugaki’s “clique” and were put into key positions. Uehara’s retirement from being head of the general staff was a boon for Ugaki, whose strong grip on the army ministry began to redress the balance between the administrative and operational organs of the army. Kawai, who succeeded Uehara, was sometimes at odds with Ugaki but never dominated him.

The massive reform was in April 1925 in its last planning stage. Tanaka was prepared to exit the army for politics. Tanaka became head of the Seyūkai and had to leave elave active duty. With this retirement, Ugaki sent 11 more generals and Lt. Gens., many of them in the Uehara camp accompany Tanaka. These included Yamanashi, Fukuda, Machida Keiu, and Ono Minobu. Only marshals Oku and Uehara, chief of staff Kawai, and Oba (inspector general of military training), and some of Ugaki’s associates now outranked him. Uehara’s position as destroyed. In August Ugaki became a General.

Chapter 4: Reduction and Modernization: the Ugaki Era

“I tried to seize the initiative, but the tendency of the army was to go in the opposite direction. Resisted by my juniors, everything I wished to do came to naught.” – Ugaki Kazunari

SPOLIER: It ends badly and puts the army on the warpath.
The army was alarmed by the political and military changes that had come about as a result of the Great War. The collapse of Germany, Russia, and other imperial states was particularly scary. The German army, while not defeated was supposedly betrayed by its civilian base, which showed a lack of “Volk und Armee sind Vereint” that the Japanese would later strive to avoid.
The Circumstances of Ugaki’s Reform:
The Ugaki Gunshuku:
The Reaction to Ugaki’s Reforms:
The Relative Importance of Military Spirit:
Ugaki’s Opposition:

Chapter 5: The Growth of Dissidence

“Unions based on private interest for self-protection are factions. There is but one faction; there are no others.” – Nagata Tetsuzan

The Formation of the Issekikai:
New Dissidence: The “Young Officers Movement”:
Army Politics Fan the Flames of Factionalism:

Chapter 6: The Manmo Problem and Tanaka’s Positive Solution

“For Japan, afflicted with domestic instability, the only way out is to solve the Manmo Problem.” – Ishiwara Kanji, Guandong Army Plan for the Seizure of the Manmo Region

Japanese Army Activity in China, 1915-25:
Japanese Opinion Toward China Hardens:
The Manmo Problem Quickens to Crisis:
Tanaka and the First Shandong Expedition:
Tanaka’s “Positive Policy” for Manchuria:
Tanaka Diplomacy in Action:
Chiang Kai-shek’s Unexpected Visit to Japan:

Chapter 7: Jinan and Mukden: The Army Sets its Course in China
“If the gods are in your way, do not be afraid to deny them; do not hesitate to forsake them, for Bushido is madness, and no great deeds will be accomplished without madness.” – Hagakure
The Jinan Incident:
The Exploitation of Zhang Zuolin’s Defeat:
General Araki Speaks his Piece:
The Assassination of Marshal Zhang Zuolin:
The Crisis in Tokyo over Zhang’s Assassination:

LeoXiao

2013-10-26, 23:56

And now for the rest:

Chapter 8: Conclusion

“When the Way is that of the Heavenly Sword, children are the flowers of heartbreak.” – Ōkishi Yoriyoshi

In spite of tragic losses, the Japanese nation acclaimed the army as heroes after the Russo-Japanese War without realizing how very narrow the victory was. For the people, the army and the navy had defeated a formidable European enemy, smashing once and for all the myth of Western military invincibility. They could take pride in this race of Japanese, who would no longer be counted as inferior to whites, and they could provide an example to other Asian and nonwhite people suffering under the heel of Western imperialism. Japan was unique – the nonwhite world power and the only one representing an Asian people. Buoyed up by a new self-confidence, the nation turned to a reexamination of the traditional values it had consciously rejected or neglected during the fearful years when Japan modernized in the image of the West to meet the Western challenge. For the army, the Russo-Japanese War confirmed the principles on which army discipline was anchored- nationalism, patriotism, and above all loyalty to the emperor, the living embodiment of the national essence. Like the rest of Japanese, the army could, on reflection, attribute its victory in the face of a numerically superior Western enemy as much to the unmatched, traditional qualities of the Japanese fighting man as to the Western weapons and military concepts acquired and applied over the past half century. After all, the Russians had those things, too. There must be something exceptional about Japan and the Japanese people that made their extraordinary victory possible. True nationalism could not, when all was said and done, be built on borrowed values.

The people tended to consider the defeat of Russia as final, while the army and the government elite knew that the country faced a vengeful Russia. They realized that it would be only a matter of time before the tsars would again challenge Japan’s foothold on the continent. Fear of a resurgent Russia gnawed at the army even as the adoration of the Japanese people bred in it an attitude of superiority and arrogance. The social-Darwinistic view of nations, common in late nineteenth-century Europe, impressed Japanese military men as it had their counterparts in Europe and America, adding to their perception of the relative importance of the emperor and the nation. The combination evolved into an apocalyptic vision of Japan’s future, which the military men, in their view, faced with a realism and awareness more acute than that of the average Japanese1. This awareness later gave them license to exhort and lead the nation to “safety” through the formation of a militaristic, almost Spartan, national defense state.
After the Russo-Japanese War, when the victorious nation began to reexamine and reaccept traditional thought and values, this new conservative tendency did not go unchallenged. Japan was now in the mainstream of intellectual communication, and stimulating Western ideas continued to challenge the minds of Japanese. But the army, as a more or less isolated, self-contained subsociety, received perhaps less influence from the Western intellectual world (with the exception of Western military thought, which had to be considered from a professional standpoint), and it placed more emphasis on the reinstitution and reintegration of traditional values. From this time the army and the people began to grow apart.

Within a few years after the Russo-Japanese War, there was a reaction in the civilian community against growing militarism and increasingly frequent interference in civil government by the army and navy. Even before the end of the Meiji era, the Diet erupted in opposition to military spending, proposed increases in military forces, and the special position of the military ministers in the government. The world war closed ranks in Japan once again, interrupting this confrontation, but in the postwar period the movement against the entrenched military oligarchy gained new momentum, and the battle between the representatives of the people and the military was joined with redoubled vigor. The apparent victory of the world’s democracies in the Great War gave the Japanese people and the Diet renewed faith in that amorphous political form. The victory of a kind of socialism in Russia gave many victims of Japan’s capitalist system, or those with pangs of social conscience, new gods to worship. The ideas of both democracy and socialism entered the Japanese intellectual atmosphere in all their permutations and perversions, and they attracted an active and article proportion of the Japanese community.

Japan emerged from the war a creditor nation, economically well off by previous standards, and an accepted member of the world of nations. It was, in its new international role, receptive to the world of ideas that surrounded it. Like others touched by the horror of the first “total war”, many Japanese felt a revulsion toward war. The postwar flowering of prosperity, plurality, and pacifism, however, contained elements certain to repel the army. Prosperity was, of course, no evil of itself, but the nature of Japan’s wartime prosperity was worrisome. Its fruits seemed to accrue largely to the urban middle class and fostered glaring examples of frivolity and selfishness. Besides, the uneven distribution of the nation’s profits could cause internal unrest and discontent, as situation antithetical to national solidarity. Intellectual pluralism aggravated these corrupting influences, but, far worse, it permitted the introduction of beliefs inimical to the need for military power, the supreme folly in a world of ferociously competing nation-states, especially in the view of men who had dedicated their lives to the defense of the state and whose highest values lay in its glorification.

All three in varying degrees represented a challenge to a central belief of the Japanese army (and the Japanese people in general) that antedated the modern era – the Confucian concept that the goal of society was harmony. The importance of this belief in explaining the army’s ability to enlist the support of the people of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s has been forcefully argued by R. P. Dore and Tsutomu Ōuchi as follows:

“The collectivist ideology (to which Japan doubtless owed a good deal of her military and economic strength) had a transcendent moral authority in Japan which was not matched in any other contemporary industrial nation. The family, united and transcendent, demanding the subordination of individual interests to the interests of “the house”, was a paradigm for all social groups. The state was likened to the family, with the emperor as pater familias; the enterprise was a pseudo-family; family-like unity was the ideal state of the harmonious village; even army officers were spoken of as ‘mothers’ to the other ranks, who were called their ‘children.’… In Japan… the emphasis on harmony precluded the view of society as a balancing of conflicting self-interests. The demand for recognition of one’s rights was in itself unworthy. All should have the interests of the collective at heart, and it was only in terms of Japan’s interests that demands for a change in the status quo could properly be framed. Of course, as is usual in such situations, those who held power could claim a monopoly right to interpret what the interests of the nation were.”2
The unforeseen après-guerre reaction against the military in Japan was a shattering experience for the army, neither used to such treatment nor so apt to accept it philosophically as the British or American armies would, which were quite accustomed to an unappreciative public. The estrangement between the army and the people alarmed not just the army leaders but also the younger officers, who felt the barbs of civilian intolerance more directly. Many of the younger men, following a line of reasoning close to that of Satō Kōjirō, believed that at least a portion of the blame for what was happening lay in the oligarchic nature of army (Chōshū) leadership.

Meanwhile, the army, responding to the opportunity presented by Russian political, social, and economic disintegration, attempted to pursue a course of action that aimed to free the empire permanently from the Russian enemy. The plan was probably unworkable and in any case ended a misfortune for the army, but unable to admit its folly, the general staff found ways to blame the result on government vacillation, the divisive tactics of political parties, foreign interference, and weak and indecisive Chōshū clique leadership within the army3.

The failure in Siberia again fixed the army’s attention on protecting the empire – that is, Japan’s continental holdings in Korea and China. But at the time the army had less to fear from Bolshevik infiltration into Manchuria, Mongolia, China, and Korea than from the activities of Japanese statesmen answering the postwar urge for worldwide arms control. The army’s lone victory in World War I, at Qingdao, which led to the acquisition of the German concessions in Shandong province (confirmed at Versailles), was reversed at Washington in 1922, where the Japanese made concessions that trimmed naval expenditures substantially and ended the army presence in Siberia. That year, the army faced a hostile Diet bent on cutting its size and budget. It salvaged a victory in defeat only by persuading the Diet to accept an army retrenchment plan that eschewed internal reform.

It was at about this time that the most significant changes began to take place within the army itself. Unresponsive to outside pressures for reform, the army for the first in its 50-year history faced an internal challenge to its policies and leadership, from a small group of young field grade officers. Their rebellion, miniscule in its beginnings, had clearly received the influence of European military thought. One of its objectives was to prepare Japan and the army for total war - -the lesson of World War I. But just as clearly, the officers involved in the conspiracy were under the influence of the tumultuous postwar European political atmosphere, which introduced mass political movements, mass political awareness, and revolutionary activism to levels of society relatively inert before. In their conspirational opposition to Chōshū’s monopoly on army power, the movement reflected the impact of European political thought. “The people” were on the move in Europe, acting against traditional or established leadership in their own diverse perceived interests. That these young Japanese officers met in Europe indicates their involvement in this ideological ethos. They had before them the example not only of civilian activism but also of the activism of Russian, German, and Central European soldiery.

The subsequent evolution of this handful of young Japanese officers reflects the method, though not the ideology, of Europe’s activism. Their value system had been set by their upbringing and their military school; it was bolstered by the inculcation of nationalism and the habits of collectivism that permeated all of Japan. They had no complaint against the value system of which they were a part; they merely sought reform to restore harmony and justice to it. Neither democracy nor socialism not any other of Europe’s “isms” attracted their notice except as a threat to Japan’s emperor-centered national polity, but in using subversion and conspiracy to attack Chōshū, they displayed a current mode of European revolutionary political activism that was by no means new to Europe or Japan but had only recently come into use.

This slowly expanding movement among the elite young staff officers was the single most important agency internal to the army leading to the unfortunate political-military situation of the 1930s and 1940s. Their organization, the Futabakai, was the focal point of the anti-Chōshū movement. The Futabakai and its offspring, the Issekikai, helped spawn the anti-government revolt against Tanaka Giichi in 1929, which succeeded in covering up one member’s responsibility for an infamous international political assassination. Later, in 1931, Issekai members planned and executed the seizure of Manchuria, and their support helped bring the ultranationalist General Araki to power in the army ministry. Ensuing political differences within the army split its elite members into two primary factions, the Kōdōha and the Tōseiha4. Former Issekikai members were active in each. This situation resulted in an ugly internal confliuct solved only after the Februray 26th Incident of 1936 with the victory of the Tōseiha. Many of these former Issekikai men were in the forefront of army leadership during the China Incident and the Pacific War.

This is not to say that the Futabakai/Issekikai led the army, but the organization was at the core of a critical mass of an explosive political movement within it. Their discussion formed and reinforced the thoughts and fears of members and outsiders alike and gave the members the resolution to act individually and collectively in a general reflection of the less well articulated concerns and fears of the entire army. Although the group effectively disbanded in 1934, the army had already gained the great political momentum with which it swept everything before it until 1945, and former members of the Issekikai continued to perform duties at the political center.

The less rational and less sophisticated “young officer’s movement” reflected the indirect effect of European ideologies and mass movements on Japan in that the inspiration for these men came from Japanese revolutionary sources. Unlike the senior group, they had no direct contact with Europe, but, more amenable to changes in the social structure, many of them espoused homegrown (national) forms of socialism or agricultural communism without ever abandoning the emperor as the central figure of kokutai. The “young officers movement” influenced the trend of army and civil politics for about five years, but neither it nor its individual members ever wielded great power and authority as did the men who rose from the Issekikai.

There seems little doubt that the psychological atmosphere in the decade after the war contributed to the rise of the army in the 1930s. The economic high of 1918 was followed by inflation and the rice riots in 1918 and a depression in 1920. The nation had not yet recovered when the great earthquake struck a crippling blow to the capital in 1923. This was followed by another, more serious depression in 1927 and the world depression in 1929. The army was, of course, no less affected by those events than the civilian populace. As an institution it endured two sizeable (and to it ominously threatening) retrenchments, one by popular demand and one by economic necessity. Army personnel suffered economic privations and the loss of livelihood, and young officers responded sympathetically to the depressed economic lot of the army’s constituency, especially the hard-pressed peasantry.

The postwar period aggravated old intra-army tensions and added new ones. Yamagata Arimtomo’s ties to the imperial person had made the position of Chōshū in the army unassailable while he lived, but the changing structure of the army officer corps began to place heavy pressure on the Chōshū hegemony even before he died in 1922. The hanbatsu system was the first casualty of the still lingering Meiji army structure. But favoritism for Chōshū (and Satsuma) in matters of promotion, assignment, positions after retirement from the army, and elevation to court rank was only a part of the army’s postwar problems. Pay and living standards for young active army officer personnel were not subjects for legitimate open discussion, but the economic pressures on the young officers were a certain, perhaps underestimated, factor in army discontent5.
External pressures added to the army’s problems. Changes in world military thought fanned controversy in an army whose traditions and standards were set in the Russo-Japanese War and which had virtually no experience in World War I. Standard for organization, equipment, strategy, and tactics were debated endlessly. The importance of psychological and economic factors in total war was discussed.

Though the army engaged in no foreign war in the 1920s, its soldiers fought several crucial battles in Japan. Among themselves they battled for a truly national army, which would do away with the privileges long held by cliques built on feudal clan loyalties. By a strange twist of fate the outcome was a new perniculous elite system with its foundation in the graduates of the staff college. A reaction against staff officer domination became a problem of the 1930s. Although the mass of line officers remained politically inert, the “young officers movement” articulated the unspoken grievance of the line by criticizing “staff fascism” and refusing to compete for places in the staff college. Permutations of various loyalties and beliefs factionalized this new elite into warring interest groups by the 1930s. Thus, the sub-rosa movement for army unity ended in further disunity, and the preoccupation with basically nonmilitary problems weakened the army and its leadership significantly.

This internal political struggle was complicated by the impact of postwar European military thought, though emphasized thorough preparation for war on a gigantic scale national scale to include political, economic, and psychological as well as purely military consideration considerations. It also stressed military organization based on the massive used of firepower. All officers generally agreed on the national collective aspects of war, but not on the absolute necessity for the provision of new weapons and ammunition in prodigious quantities. As a result, modernization became a political football dividing the army roughly into two camps, one of modernizing pragmatists and the other of those who scorned the unattainable goal of modernization in favor of a “native” spiritual approach to military problems. A reformer like Ugaki Kazunari found himself at a disadvantage because the economic constraints of the decade hamstrung his program for change. The advantage fell to men like Araki Sadao, who stressed inexpensive irrational solutions such as dependence on the human spirit instead of expensive materiel that Japan could not afford. The irrationalists received the support of the young officers, whose philosophy was similarly irrational, and the unit officers, whose outlook and training were rooted in the traditions and perceptions of a war fought in 1904-05.

Ugaki temporarily solved the vexing internal problem of dual leadership in the army by bringing the chief of staff’s office under the control of his Ugkaibatsu, but when Shirakawa became army minister, Araki was able to use the general staff headquarters as a springboard to launch his own rise to power and to form the ranks of the spiritually oriented Kōdōha. In 1931, when the momentarily triumphant Araki emerged as the minister of the army, he was unable to duplicate Ugaki’s feat. Less radical elements blocked the elevation of Araki’s ally Mazaki Jinzaburō to the post of chief of the general staff, and Prince Kan’in filled the office as a compromise candidate. This solution proved durable, for the imperial prince remained chief of staff until 1940.

The wave of antimilitarism that struck the army in the years 1920-23 and the growth of ideologies destructive to the established view of the national polity, which stressed collectivism and denied plurality in society, gave the army reason to suspect the loyalty and good sense of the common people. These phenomena led them into a debate with the people that cast army men in the role of teachers to the nation in order to rectify wayward thought by reestablishing the collective ethic and love of country. They thereby reflected their own social-Darwinist fears for the safety of the Japanese state and race in a world struggle for survival. The changed international atmosphere of the middle and late 1920s, which seemed to put increasing economic and political restraints on Japan, swung the debate in the army’s favor. The concessions at the Washington Conference in 1922, America’s alien exclusion laws, rising tariff walls, and finally, the London Naval Conference, all enhanced the credibility of the army’s argument.

In the beginning years of the decade when antimilitarism was rife, the army first defied and then submitted to the demands of the civil government to reduce the size of the army, but international pressures on Japan and the devastating earthquake of 1923 conspired to present the army an opportunity to neutralize its critics and later, under Ugaki, to take the offensive. Popular opinion was as changeable as the economic situation in Japan, but the army clung steadfastly to the righteousness of its position, spurred on by the vision of a future’s total war. The tide turned when the army placed its officers in the nation’s secondary and higher schools and enlisted the Reservists Association to train the youths who did not go on to secondary education. Ugaki laid the basis for the assault on the minds of young people. Araki later greatly expanded the scope of army activity in these psychological operations to the adult population. Both sought an alliance with civilian ultranationalists, and, as the relationship between the army and the political right grew, it affected many leader, the staff officers, and the “young officers movement” in the army and the credibility of the political parties without.

Another major external challenge to the army in the postwar “democratic era” was the rise of political parties and the emergence of party governments. The army faced the situation soberly. Like Yamagata, it had no taste for party governments, but the truth is that the army as an institution handled the parties with relatively little difficulty, at times playing one off against another, but more often effecting advantageous compromises with the “democratic” forces. In the end, economic and psychological conditions weakened popular confidence in the parties, and the parties lost confidence in themselves. Beginning with Tanaka Giichi, the only party prime minister of military background, the army applied divide-and-conquer tactics to force its will on the ruling party’s leader and his civil government.

Hara Kei, the first of the party prime ministers, had to establish his bona fides with the bureaucracy, with the army and navy, and above all with the genrō Yamagata. He trod lightly with regard to military reform, establishing his own and his party’s loyalty to the system as he nudged the army toward change. He held out the hope (since he had no other recourse) that the army could police and reform itself. In this he was mistaken. Army Minister Tanaka, who appeared to favor certain reforms, failed to avail himself of his opportunities. Yamanashi Hanzō, his successor, obdurately refused to countenance reform, given the chance.

Uehara Yūsaku, as chief of staff, did not lead the army in those days; he anchored it. When it came Ugaki’s turn he accepted the challenge to affect a partial internal reform in which all the initiative lay with him and his followers. By this time, however, the process of change was no longer governed by a tiny group of men at the pinnacle of the army pyramid. A ground swell of rebellioiusness within the army itself rose to aid in the defeat of the reformists. In Ugaki’s relationship with the parties, however, things went quite smoothly. During his tenure the government under Katō Kōmei had its attention fixed on reform, but it its primary focus was not on the army. What Ugkai proposed, the civil government approved, even to the subversion of the public school system. Meanwhile, a new problem had arisen to plague army-government relations.

In Tanaka, Hara had an ally on matters of continental policy through whom army opposition could be partially controlled, but Katō Kōmei, Wakatsuki Reijirō, and Shidehara Kijūrō found no champion in Ugaki. The changing world situation had estranged Japan from the United States and Britain. The reemergence of Russia as a power and the threatened unification of China caused nightmares in the army, whose lifeblood seemed to flow in Japan’s continental holdings. Even Prime Minister Tanaka’s “positive” policy in China grew increasingly aggressive as fear for its position in Manchuria mounted. The army destroyed Tanaka’s government, as it had helped to topple Wakatsuki’s, in reaction to failures in continental policy. It is ironic that army impetuosity contributed substantially to the failure of the policy.

Added to this amalgam of intra-army and extra-army strife, the individual rivalries between classmate and classmate, the conflicts between officer and officer for the satisfaction of personal ambition within the army bureaucracy, and the individual officer’s struggle economic survival complete a picture of subtle but nonetheless intense competition at all levels of army life. The nature of the military service, based on a spirit of willing lifelong sacrifice, forbade the outward display of ambition. Autobiographies and friendly biographies of army officers may attribute the curse of ambition to the less scrupulous fellows who were in rivalry with the biographic subject, but never to the subject himself. Ambition tended to be sublimated into the support of the principle, thus justifying acts that incidentally advanced the subject’s own interests. This may have resulted in intensifying belief and sharpening the difference in positions not really far apart. The perpetuation of cliques was at least in part a device to assure personal success through collectively action.

It is probably unnecessary to remind ourselves of the bitter personal rivalries that darken the pages of this work – Uehara and Tanaka, Tanaka and Fukuda Masatarō, Ugaki and Uehara, Ugaki and Mutō Nobuyoshi, to mention just a few. Tanka was a man of towering ambition. The egotistical Ugaki sanctimoniously deplored this flaw in Tanaka’s character 9as did many others) while he carefully constructed a clique to ensure his own success. These personal rivalries, present in all the army but affecting its performance most seriously among the elite, adding in some incalculable measure to the stresses of life within the rigid military bureaucracy.

The Japanese army of the 1920s presents a strange and contradictory picture – a mixture of pride, arrogance, and hubris on the one hand, and the haunting fear of impending calamity on the other. Under assault by advancing technology and aggressive ideologies, the army, fighting a rearguard action against both, sought refuge in the established traditions of Meiji. The Confucian view of the state as a harmonious family under an imperial pater familias fit nicely into the concept of national solidarity for the successful prosecution of total war. The idea of the transcendent value of morale and spirit in combat provided a satisfying, if erroneous, answer to a technologically advanced war machine too expensive for Japan to afford. The army’s problem was to re-create the lost consensus of the Russo-Japanese War, and it was compounded by the lack of harmony within its own ranks, which, paradoxically, began as a reaction to the injustices of the Meiji system. The warring factions all recognized the need for internal agreement, but each blamed the other for discord. Even so, by maintaining secrecy on internal disharmony, the army managed a façade of unity toward the civilian population and successfully represented itself as the one institution on which the nation could depend in a time of adversity. The army stood as a shield for the emperor, his people, and the sacred soil of his empire; it was a sword to hew the nation’s destiny in the face of world revolutions and international hostility.

It is little wonder that when the army bullied its way to power over the debilitated and ineffectual political armies, it provided no better leadership for Japan than the discredited parties had. The army had failed to reach a viable consensus, and soon the disarray within it moved to the stage of national politics.

Reference Matter (copy this entire section)

Ridwan

2013-10-27, 05:47

Leo, A-san, perhaps we should start exchanging stuff now. I'm eager to see what I can get from you guys with the stuff I have, though they're not much.

MrTerrorist

2013-10-27, 08:13

It's old news but interesting. (http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/syfy-ridley-scott-frank-spotnitz-set-miniseries-1118066024/)

Syfy is adapting Philip K. Dick’s book “The Man in the High Castle” into a four-part miniseries, with Ridley Scott attached to exec produce.

Dick’s novel, set in 1962, depicts a world where Nazi Germany and Japan were the victors in WWII and occupy the U.S.

LeoXiao

2013-10-27, 10:16

Leo, A-san, perhaps we should start exchanging stuff now. I'm eager to see what I can get from you guys with the stuff I have, though they're not much.
I have some notes from a 1939 book about kokutai, the semi-religious conception of the Japanese-state that was hyped up in the Meiji and militarist eras.

I've got a bunch of assorted pdfs as well.

It's old news but interesting. (http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/syfy-ridley-scott-frank-spotnitz-set-miniseries-1118066024/)
This is interesting. The book is wildly implausible but hey doesn't mean it can't be a good story.

Ridwan

2013-10-27, 10:24

To be honest, I'm not into alternate history novels. I've grown too much into realism that I simply ignore stuff that depicts implausible scenarios like Axis occupation of America or anything with similar overstrecth. I'll may watch the movie though if it will receive good reviews. I watched "Fatherland" and it was good.

I have some notes from a 1939 book about kokutai, the semi-religious conception of the Japanese-state that was hyped up in the Meiji and militarist eras.

I've got a bunch of assorted pdfs as well.

I have Shaw, Kemal Karpat and Reid. And if you have interest for American policy towards Indonesia/East Indies since colonial period I can look for some in my folder.

LeoXiao

2013-10-27, 11:42

I'm more interested in the story, to be honest, but of course, if a novel/film tries to make the AH a big part of it yet still fails totally on the plausibility aspect, it's kinda meh. The Draka series are like that.

More TL:

YELLOW RIVER INCIDENT, Nov 1937 - Mar 1939 （黃河開戰）PART I

The CPA had three initial operational goals. The first of these was to capture the urban and industrial centers of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang, a task entrusted to generals Jia Deyao, Wang Jiasheng, and their force of 100,000 troops. Simultaneously, the Shaanxi Route Army, under the command of He Yingqin, would take another 80,000 men to advance along the Yellow River to Xi’an, driving straight at the locus of Mao and Zhang’s base area. Then, general Zhang Zhizhong would take 60,000 shock troops to take the Jiangsu coast and prepare to link up with Jia’s army group for a joint assault on Nanjing.

Advance on Xi’an and Wuchang, Nov 1937

The first shots of the war, known as the Yellow River Incident (Chinese: 十一零一事變, i.e. Nov. 1 Incident) broke out early in the morning of Nov. 1 when elements of He Yingqin’s forces conducting exercises between Zhengzhou and Luoyang attacked known Maoist bases. For the first few days, the radicals assumed that the violence could simply be attributed to the usual rivalry between warlords that had persisted since the fall of the Qing, but as whole peasant militias began disappearing, with survivors reporting back to Xi’an their clashes with regiment-sized formations, it became clear that war had broken out. By the end of the month, three divisions were near Xi’an, having marched along the Yellow River and capturing everything in their path. Few casualties were sustained by the attackers, but between 10,000 and 20,000 Maoist militia fighters were killed or taken prisoner. Seeing that Xi’an stood no chance against Liao’s numbers, organization, training, and artillery, Mao made plans to abandon the city and take to the hills to preserve his forces.

Meanwhile, Jia Deyao and Wang Jiasheng’s thrust to Wuchang had gone even more smoothly. There was virtually no fighting until the police of the Wuhan area finally began to question the need for moving thousands of men and weapons by rail to the cities. It was too late for any organized resistance and the urban area was taken by mid-November and put under martial law. General Wang was left to defend the cities with a 30,000-strong garrison while Jia continued on to Nanjing.

Nanjing Offensive, Nov. 1937

Generals Sun and Zhang, based out of Xuzhou, moved at a brisk pace, securing all of Jiangsu north of the Yangtze River delta within two weeks. They set up positions near the Gaoyou and Hongze lakes north of Nanjing and began to shell federal positions in anticipation of the general assault to occur on arrival of Jia’s army. Sun and Zhang’s forces, which were the best-motorized, were also supported by Liu Zhennian’s single Beiyang division, while several thousand personnel of the Republican Guard aided in performing logistical duties.

1st Battle of Nanjing, Dec. 1937 - Feb. 1938

By late November, Guangdong had received word of the organized insurrection and was taking steps to rectify the situation. An enraged Wang Jingwei entrusted the “complete annihilation” of the “traitorous elements” to generals Zhao Hengti and Li Zongren. They were promised initial command of an army of 600,000 to consolidate the Central Plains. Wang, who had a reputation for remaining aloof, was described by an aide as “completely adamant” during a meeting on Nov. 13.

Of course, only a fraction of that 600,000 were actually available for the immediate defense of Nanjing and other towns. Zhao and Li pulled troops from all over the country on their way north, and managed to scrounge up about 100,000 soldiers of varying quality. They reinforced the 20,000-strong Nanjing garrison and braced for the assault.

Jia’s army joined with Zhang and Sun’s, forming a wide front north of the city. The combined force totaled about 150,000 men as the impression of local militias into joining the offensive had added a few thousands to the mix. They had with them over two thousand artillery pieces of various calibers, as well as a motorized brigade of 7,000 men commanded by Colonel Sun Liren, who would later become famous as the “Lightening General” for his role in the Second Japanese Intervention and the latter stage of the Mainland War.

The defenders were, for their part, not badly outfitted either. Li and Zhao had been given exclusive access to whichever available supplies and transport routes they required. In addition to almost a thousand artillery guns, a few dozen fighter aircraft based in Shanghai were available for use. Most of them were older models provided by the Japanese, but they were better than nothing and could be used in a ground attack role to suppress the enemy.

After a period of sustained artillery bombardment and gradual approach to the city, the CPA forces finally attacked head-on on Dec. 16. Zhang Zhizhong took the northeastern route while Jia Deyao came in from the west. Col. Sun Liren and Liu Zhennian, the latter of whom had returned from a week-long meeting with member of the Beiyang High Command in Beijing, combined their forces in an attempt to drive east and then south around Nanjing to cut it off the Shanghai-bound railroad.

When the invaders entered the city, they saw the results of their bombardments. Thousands of civilians had been killed or wounded and many buildings had been reduced to rubble, but the federalists’ will to fight had not wavered. Instead, they turned the fight for northern Nanjing into a vicious trap. Federal troops would dress in civilian clothing and use their feigned innocence to maneuver into the enemy rear before opening fire, the result being numerous reprisal attacks against the city’s male residents. The CPA troops, especially the militias and the Beiyang soldiers, also discovered that they were at a simple technological disadvantage due to the fact that the Japanese-supplied Federalist troops were often armed with submachineguns and light machine guns, in following the Japanese idea of superior firepower. By contrast, they themselves were often armed only with rifles, which in an urban setting made for awkward handling.

By New Year’s Day, the forces of Jia and Zhang had sustained over 40,000 casualties and yet the city still had not succumbed. Making things worse was the fact that while Li Zongren and Zhao Hengti’s troops were being reinforced as quickly as possible, Liu Zhennian had failed to secure the full support of the Beiyang Army. Reportedly the Grand Marshal was angry that his non-interventionist policy had been violated and had refused to meet with Liu when he had gone to Beijing in November. The High Command members present, recognizing that the situation demanded at least some measure of action, allotted Liu a trickle of reinforcements pulled from the ranks of the Republican Guard, and even ensured that each soldier would be acceptably armed and supplied. However, it was a far cry from the “full support” that Liu had promised Jia at the Funeral Conference.

By the opening days of February, Jia Deyao met with Zhang Zhizhong and the two decided that the assault on Nanjing could not continue without meaningful Beiyang intervention. As the CPA forces retreated, the defenders celebrated the end of the First Battle of Nanjing.

State of Affairs circa 1938

National Republic of China
Description: The best-organized faction, based in Northeast China. The Beiyang troops are arguably the most effective fighting force in the country. Emerging military-industrial complex, with native small arms, artillery, and aircraft production.
Locus: Fengtian, Manchuria.
Leader: Grand Marshal Yuan Kewen
Governance: Parliamentary republic subordinated to military administration. Effective martial law.
Subject Population: c. 50 million
Military Strength: About 300,000 "Beiyang troops" and officers, 3-5 million "Republican Guard" militia units.
Economy/Industry: Significant regional exporter of coal, iron, and various agricultural products. Intensive light industrial development and limited foreign heavy industrial presence in Fengtian, Jilin, and Harbin areas (primarily German and Soviet). Economic capital and manpower largely subordinated to military.
Foreign relations
Federation: POOR/WAR
USA: NEUTRAL/FAIR
USSR: GOOD
Germany: FAIR
Japan: POOR
UK: NEUTRAL
France: NEUTRAL

Chinese Federative Republic
Description: Loose, left-leaning federation of regional leaders in China proper with central government in provisional capital of Guangdong. founded on the democratic ideals of Sun Zhongshan, whose 1926 assassination remains a mystery. Actual land under its effective administration is limited to coastal regions and certain urban centers.
Locus: Guangzhou, Guangxi+Guangdong
Leader: President Wang Jingwei
Governance: Democratic federal system loosely based on American separation of powers ideal, varying levels of actual representation depending on region and social strata.
Subject Population: c. 100 million (actual), c. 300 million (nominal)
Military Strength: About 1 million regular and semi-regular, warlord-aligned troops, plus unknown number of militiamen. Less than 500,000 fit for use.
Economy/Industry: Intensive light industrial development in Liangguang, Shanghai, Fujian, and Wuhan areas. Growing coal production. Extensive trade and development in cooperation with Japan.
Foreign Relations:
USA: NEUTRAL/POOR
USSR: NEUTRAL/FAIR
Germany: NEUTRAL/POOR
Japan: EXCELLENT
UK: NEUTRAL
France: NEUTRAL/FAIR

Yunnan Regime
Description: A de facto independent state in southwest China with aspirations to conquer the whole country. Influence among the warlords that plague the Federalists. Has decent discipline among both military and civilians and isn't a complete hellhole.
Locus: Kunming, Yunnan
Leader: General Tang Jiyao
Governance: Military government, martial law.
Subject Population: c. 30 million
Military Strength: About 400,000 troops, including those of warlord allies
Economy/Industry: Intensive light industrial development in Kunming. Foreign trade and investment largely limited to France and Britain.
USA: NEUTRAL
USSR: POOR
Germany: NEUTRAL
Japan: POOR
UK: FAIR/GOOD
France: GOOD

Maoist Peasant Movement
Description: A grass-roots Marxist movement born out of the warlord conflicts in the 1920s in southern China. Immediate, lumenproletariat revolution focus as contrasted with the Federalist position which allows for modulated change.
Locus: Xi'an, Shaanxi Province
Leader: Chairman Mao Zedong/General Zhang Jingyao
Governance: "Classless proletarian commune system under guidance of revolutionary personalities"
Subject Population: c. 50 million
Military Strength: 150,000 Red Army members, plus unknown number of peasant fighters and warlord allies.
Economy/Industry: Collectivized subsistence agriculture. Command economy in urban areas.
Federation: GOOD
Beiyang: WAR
Muslims: WAR
CPA: WAR
USSR: NEUTRAL/FAIR
Japan: FAIR

Central Plains Alliance/Wuchang Clique
Description: Alliance of rebelling Federation generals unimpressed with Federal incompetence. Most officers are of the Wuchang (Hubei) clique that was absorbed into the CFR in the late 20s. They intend to ally with the NROC in order to unify China.
Locus: Xuzhou-Zhengzhou, Central Plains area
Leader: General Jia Deyao
Governance: Military occupation zone, martial Law
Subject population: c. 75 million
Military Strength: Around 400,000 troops of all sorts, including about 150,000 regulars.
Economy/Industry: Agriculture, light industrial development in urban areas impeded due to warfare.
Foreign Relations:
Beiyang: FAIR
Federation: WAR
Japan: POOR

Muslim Warlords
Description: Various local strongmen and factions in western China and areas such as Xinjiang. Elements extend from west of Shaanxi Province down into parts of Sichuan.
Locus: Western China
Leader: Various
Governance: Military government
Subject Population: c. 30 million
Military Strength: > 200,000 militiamen of varying quality and allegiance.
Foreign Relations:
Federation: POOR/NEUTRAL
Beiyang: NEUTRAL/FAIR
Yunnan: POOR/WAR

Next: YELLOW RIVER INCIDENT Nov 1937 - Mar 1939 PART II
We will get to see the Beiyang High Command's reactions in greater detail.

Ridwan

2013-10-27, 12:00

Leo, have you read "The Power of The Gun" by Edward McCord ?

LeoXiao

2013-10-27, 12:02

Leo, have you read "The Power of The Gun" by Edward McCord ?

I think I may have read parts of it but didn't get it because I was looking for something else in the library. I'll have to give it a shot.
To be honest my detailed knowledge of the warlords and dynamics between them is somewhat limited. I guess that says something about the depth of my TL...

Ridwan

2013-10-27, 19:47

I have it here. I can upload it to you if you want.

Sumeragi

2013-10-27, 20:50

I would definitely like that book. I really don't know what to do with China in my project.

LeoXiao

2013-10-27, 22:33

Give it here.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 01:24

Here you go. (http://www.mediafire.com/download/cii6oj9ywqk85s2/Edward+A.+McCord+The+Power+of+the+Gun+The+Emergenc e+of+Modern+Chinese+Warlordism+1993.pdf)

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 01:56

Question: Are there any person from South East Asia that has large impact on Muslim Philosophy?

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 03:04

Locally ? A lot. But you can say that South East Asia was one of the main theaters of the clash between sufism and strict orthodoxy. Nuruddin ar-Raniri wasn't a native south east asian, but he was active in Acehnese court and helped the country blossoming into one of the most reputed international Islamic center of learning. A champion of Orthodoxy, he was the one who paved the road for Sunni Orthodoxy into the region and naturally responsible for the reactions against it. Though you can't say his role was irreplaceable, but he was part of the general development of anti-mysticist orthodoxy that included Aurangzeb and Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 03:45

Thanks! Just imagine how would Muslim be if it was spread through northern Indochina. Would be any crossed with China influenced?

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 04:13

It's definitely a wonder why some parts of Indochina didn't go Islamic. Perhaps because it began developing strong polities at roughly the same time Islam was making inroad into the archipelago. But Champa was conquered pretty late by Vietnam so one can wonder how to save it. Vietnam will be hard though since it had already found basis for strong statehood in Chinese Confucian model, unless it will be imposed by converted Chinese conqueror, which is another set of question.

China has never been a stranger to Islam. First contact happened during Tang Dynasty and muslim community had been growing in China ever since. Chinese muslims were important and powerful during both Yuan and Ming eras, and the Qing regime was often quite suspicious towards them and 5 muslim rebellions happened during their rule. If you want a muslim China it'll be quite hard, and it can't be done immediately. A religious movement set to reform China will end up like Taiping but simply a muslim dynasty would be doable. Zhu Yuanzhang employed many muslim generals in his service. Had the late Yuan chaos proceeded a bit differently a muslim dynasty is fairly possible. Chinese Islam will be more a case of sinicization of Islam rather then the other way around though, and it will have to share the slot with the traditional big 3 in Chinese spiritual and intellectual discourse.

erneiz_hyde

2013-10-28, 04:23

It's definitely a wonder why some parts of Indochina didn't go Islamic.
You know, when I play Europa Universalis, I was wondering the same thing. Or rather, the reverse of it. How did Islam manage to take root that strongly in the first place? I'm expecting the answer lies in our people's knack at syncretism.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 04:35

Syncretist tendencies certainly helped smoothening the process, but the trigger was gold. Converting to Islam helped you gathering muslim traders from across Indian Ocean to your kingdom to buy your produce and invest money in your domain, giving you an edge against your rivals. Which is the same way the region converted to Indian religions a millenia earlier. The Hindu wave though, included Indochina region while the later Islam wave largely excluded it.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 04:48

Well, I might not know much about Islam, by traditional Vietnamese believe and Confusian certainly giving us a boost in nationalism.

And trading with Muslim did occur as early as Tran Dynasty. But during Mongolian rule of China, Muslim merchants also dubbed as spies. Maybe that's one of the reason that Muslim is not very popular here.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 05:14

More likely candidate for conversion would be Khmer and Siam. Khmer would need a strong Champa next door. Siam is a more difficult question. It's not particularly resistant or anything, but I guess the geography is relatively isolated. It converted to Hindu-Buddhism through Khmer and Sumatran influences but at the time Islam started to take root in SE Asia both countries were at the down swing and only one of them took up Islam.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 05:37

That or An Nam finally conquered both Cambodia and Laos... Could make Hindu a lot more prominent.

Also, I just want to ask whether are there connection between Muslim and Hindu?

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 05:55

Nothing essential, but both religions meet, clash and intermingle in the entire Indic sphere.

That or An Nam finally conquered both Cambodia and Laos... Could make Hindu a lot more prominent.

That's definitely not the way. If anything it will spell doom for ethnic Lao and Khmer, or at least they will become minority in their own country.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 07:03

You know, I've been imagine about a "Soviet Union of Indochina" after Red Khmer. The domestic picture pretty much completed, but I want to ask about the international impact - for example, an arm race between Vietnam and Thailand,...

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 07:13

Would any kind of Indochina union be tenable without an outside patron ? Besides, Vietnam did clientized both Laos and Cambodia IOTL. Why didn't they form the Soviet Union IOTL with two other countries already under control ?

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 07:52

Well, do you know that even after Saigon Liberation, there are still leftover of the SVA wandering in the border. What if they managed for one last strike to Vietnam? A coalition with Red Khmer - remember that their backers, China and US were pretty much friendly then, unlike China to Vietnam, which were standing with Soviet.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 08:16

I know that Khmer Rouge was friendly to China, that's why Vietnam invaded and installed a friendly regime. Laos was already Vietnam's client by then. There, two fellow Indochinese states already under your dominance. Why didn't take the relationship further ? Was the idea even proposed back then ?

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 08:41

Well, Vietnam had been quite exhausted then, and we still have Thailand to fear of. Beside, there were some rift between Vietnam and Laos because their friendliness to China. The idea itself had been raised up but soon rejected because we still need to recover.

But first, get rid of Cambodia Royal Family. I could made the rescue operation failed.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 10:48

It seems like it won't be tenable after all. I just don't see how to circumvene things. Perhaps if US won't jump into the regional affairs to prop up South Vietnam the north can save up enough energy for this idea but that won't gonna happen.

Ironically, the one idea I have to keep Indochina united is to have it under a more inclusive French rule that has gone far enough left. That's what I plan for France in my Ottoman TL. France will experience a revolution that brings up a Leftist regime to the top and turns the French colonial empire into something of a reasonably bottom up federation where colonies' nationalist leaders like Ho Chi Minh get accommodated into the power structure, some of them becoming important figure in the new regime. It will be allied to Moscow and hostile to capitalist powers at first, before Germany declared war against "enemies of European civilization", occupying France which later necessitated liberation by the Allied forces, drive them into eventual neutrality in following Cold War as well as a shift rightward economically. It won't last until present day, but French Empire will get a nice bit of extension. I've been thinking about what to do with Indochina post-France here. It will avoid the devastation of OTL for sure though, to say the least.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 19:52

I could see it as a possible scenario, but unlikely. It's more of a mindset problem - You see, even if you are a middle-class French, when you go to a colony like Vietnam, you would be hailed as a royal. And that make Colony-Citizen French a dangerous mindset. They're arrogant, selfish,... For example, when Léon Blum became president, a wide wave of democratic activities lead by Indochina Communist Party occured. And when the French Socialist party Government slowly fell apart, these Colony-Citizen immidiately erased any rights that were archived by Vietnamese.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 20:09

It was a democratic government led by a cat-herding coalition of parties. Here we'll have a leftist authoritarian government to last for decades. It won't be all good, but there will definitely be efforts at egalitarization that will achieve success to a degree. A part of this project is a genuine "Mission civilisatrice", however, which will replace arrogant colons with arrogant French-ified elite.

Ithekro

2013-10-28, 20:35

With no American interest in stopping the spread of Communism, I doubt the South Vietnamese government would have been able to say anything of note about the Geniva Accords of 1954. Though there still would have been issues as a lot of Vietnamese Catholics moved south to escape procicution by the communist government in Hanoi.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 21:11

Hmm... Genuine French... Possible! But then we still have the problem of Nguyen Dynasty. You see, Vietnam under France was divided into three parts. The South is under direct control, Middle belong to the feudal government, and the North is sharing power. The South could accept your change well, but the landlord and feudal classes of the rest won't welcome it well. The only way to change the mindset is a Revolution, then the Re-distribution of Farming Land.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 22:07

Yes, feudal class is toast under the new regime. Initially, the new regime will be fairly popular because of this. Later, due to increasing centralization and increasingly less considerate cultural policy there will be a growing movement for independence, dominated by centrists and rightists. Post-France Vietnam might see something like an equivalent of AKP gaining power which then attempt to reverse just about everything the previous leftist regime had achieved, though I have to be careful not using that trope too much in this TL ;p

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 22:19

Hmm... And then we will have General Giap or President Ho? A Coup or a Vote?

Beside, the relationship with China, please!

Oh, and I wouldn't mind if you give Vietnam some Su-25 or Mig-29.

LeoXiao

2013-10-28, 22:31

Fireminer, how much early 20th century Vietnamese history do you know? I may have to ask you for help on what to do what that country in my timeline.

Ridwan

2013-10-28, 23:19

About relationship between France and China, I'm still not quite decided. I actually intend for them to form a non-bloc alliance after Sino-Soviet split, but I'm still figuring out what such alliance will do to geopolitics and the consequences for each relevant nation, also whether I should also include India in this non-bloc camp. Ironically, Indonesia will be pro-west from the start due to its ties to Ottoman Empire, which helped Indonesia achieved independence peacefully after the war.

I've always liked Giap. I wonder if I can make him among the leading generals in this Socialist French Federation.

Fireminer

2013-10-28, 23:44

@Ridwan: Remember that everyone, even himself, considered him to be a Politician before a General before a History Teacher.

@LeoXiao: I know the events and basic layout of society. Let's see, what can I help you for?

And don't expect much from this 7 years-old.

Sumeragi

2013-10-29, 06:50

http://i.imgur.com/FTxhf5fl.jpg (http://imgur.com/FTxhf5f.jpg)

Nice ROC map

Ridwan

2013-10-29, 12:48

I'm bored at the moment, so I'll post some basic outline on my Ottoman TL :

1) The PoD is the failure of assassination of Hüseyin Avni Paşa (http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hüseyin_Avni_Paşa) by Çerkes Hasan in 1876. IOTL his death left him with effective absence of leadership in the army, which proved to be of fatal consequences in the following war against Russia in 1877-78. Ottoman Empire was superior in weaponry, quality and military doctrine to Russians, but weak in command architecture and lacking central control, which was where Russia had the upper hand, and it payed off. With a respected senior figure in charge of the war effort, it will negate the non-sensical excesses of rivalry between commanders on the field, which IOTL prevented the right things from being done and led virtually the entire army into being butchered by the invading Russia.

2) Alternate Berlin settlement will be rather light on Russia. Serbia and Romania will be granted full independence as to give Russia some face-saving. It will be pushed to pay war indemnity though, to secure the Ottoman states debt held by European bankers, as well as to shore up the Ottoman Empire's position as a useful bulwark. On the other hand, the great powers will also use the opportunity to impose as much control over the empire as possible. There will be some sort of financial arrangement to deal with the Ottoman debt, "reform" on christian areas(quotes may also apply here) and perhaps getting some territory for Montenegro. Aside from the first though, they'll be all easy to fend off. Even the empire managed it IOTL. Also, while still be rendered by debt and capitulations, the empire will still be better off financially then OTL.

3) Russia is in for trouble. IOTL the war was a such disappointment that they never attempted anything again until WW1. In here, Russian prestige in the Balkans is shattered, her capability will be underestimated and the shock of losing war to Ottomans will going to cause socio-political turmoil. This is the first of the big questions I'm still struggling with. Perhaps anarchist terrorism will intensify, and the Poles will possibly try something as well.

4) TTL OE will be much stronger then OTL, and remain a considerable factor in balance of power. Ottoman Empire will retain their army, and also their navy, until the time of war the third largest in the world. It will soon to be obsolete though, but will likely still be strong enough to defeat a navy of minor country. Like Netherlands, for example.

5) What's with Netherlands ?

Apparently just a few years before Russia invaded, Netherlands started what would prove to be a 3 decades long exhausting war against their long-standing vassal in the Far East since 16h century, Aceh. It caused quite a debate in Constantinople and public demand to liberate fellow muslims from European colonialism was intense. It was in fact a factor in the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Aziz. IOTL, the battered empire post-war simply couldn't afford anything like sending an expedition across Indian Ocean. In ATL, there's a small window of opportunity for this, provided Britain will either approve or be too distracted to prevent it. The Ottomans will likely arrive rather late because of that, but once they do, the Dutch defeat is ensured and it will send a shockwave across Oost-Indische as well as proving Pan-Islamism as a credible ideology. It will become as much an sensational event as Japanese victory against Russia did IOTL, if not more so. It will might also provide a precedent for other non-christian power to conduct similar adventure against European imperialism in Asia.

6) To provide the empire with access to Indian Ocean, she'll might need an African port. IOTL, Britain actually requested OE to occupy Egypt at the start of political crisis there. Ottomans ignored it, so they moved in themselves. ITTL the empire will have no qualms about accepting the invitation since they will still retain their veteran army(aside from having to take over Egypt's debt at least). With Egypt, they will also take over its empire in Sudan and Somali northern coast. This will change a lot of things in Africa and we will likely see more of the native polities surviving, most notably Zanzibar and Sokoto in east africa and Nigeria respectively. Zanzibar was under British sphere of influence, but was later forced to partition it IOTL because Germany held their presence in Egypt hostage. Without Britain getting tied in Egypt, Germany might won't get any slice of Africa at all. In Sahara and eastern Sahel, taking over Egypt will grant Ottomans massive upperhand there against French expansion in the region, which they managed to temporarily sabotage indirectly even IOTL. We'll going to see a large swath of Africa under Ottoman rule, though the size will be rather deceiving since most of it will be desert with very few people living there. It'll be at least of a strategic advantage on the continent though.

7) ITTL, the liberal reform and parliament won't be suspended and the empire's government won't be as militarized, providing muslim world a genuine model for parliamentary democracy for muslim monarchies such as Afghanistan. It will be one with strong monarchy at first though, especially under Abdul Hamit II which will still reign ITTL. IOTL Abdul Hamit suspended the parliament since he believed the empire needed a steady hand after 1878 disaster, and also because the foreign influence was so paramount in the parliament. Even then it was only at the center, while still continued on local level. In here, it won't be necessary, but being the person he was, Abdul Hamit will still retain a significant amount of power. In OTL, he proved to be a cold handed genius stateman who managed to steer the empire away from dissolution after the war and capable of presenting Pan-Islamism as a dangerous threat Europe had to be worried of. In here, he'll be in a much, much stronger position.

8) "National principle" will suffer a setback, and at least the conservative interpretation of nationalism will hold for longer. By agreeing to the creation of Bulgaria, the great powers IOTL had given their seal of approval for smaller nations to struggle for statehood, something previously only reserved for big nations like Germans or Russians. This later became one of the points of Wilsonian Principles. ITTL, perhaps smaller ethnic states will be less common and big multinational states more of the norm.

As for the big questions I need to figure out :

1) Russia. How big an effect will the defeat have on Russia? How will Russian state evolve down the line ? How will Russian intellectual discourse be affected ? What impact would it have on Russian policy? Would they push expansion into Asia to try to regain prestige, or give up expansion for the time being? The last question will affect Japan considerably.

Post-defeat turmoil is definite certainty. The question is what comes after that. My thinking is that Russia will come out of it even more repressive then before, and will be more motivated to reform its military.

Also without the Balkan controversy, Russo-German relations will might become closer. Perhaps we will see the continuation Dreikaiserbund in the place of OTL's Central Powers, though it's by no means guaranteed. Frankly, I'd like to avoid this outcome.

2) Japan is likely also a big question here even taking aside Russia. IOTL the rebuilding Ottoman Empire looked up to Japanese success in addition to Germany to reorganize the state and Japan was interested in partnership with Ottoman Empire and muslim world to further its Pan-Asian agenda. ITTL, the admiration might possibly go the other way, especially after Aceh. Of course, it won't be a case of both countries simply switching places. Japan will still be the one more economically powerful and overall stronger until some time since it lacked the disadvantages the Ottomans were facing. Ottoman success in foreign policy, especially in Aceh, will likely become something to admire though, and perhaps be regarded as a model to formulate their own Pan- ideology. A more effective and motivated Pan-Islamist movement will perhaps be able to help Japan forming links across Asia more successfully. We can also safely assume that OE will still be interested in partnership with Japan. There's also the possibility of coordinated initiative between both countries against European imperialism in Asia, especially that of Russia. It raises the question over how Japan will conduct relations with muslim world and Asia in general, as well how the general Asian intellectual discourse be affected. Perhaps more things will change in this regard by the PoD then what is immediately apparent.

The funny irony here is that TTL Ottoman Empire will identify itself more with Europe and the west, since the empire will still be based in the Balkans. Even IOTL the empire never abandoned its European orientation. Even today's Turkey still gravitates towards Europe.

3) Oil. TTL Ottoman Empire will be the single largest source of oil on the planet. Arabia ? Check. North Africa ? Check. Sudan ? Check. That's not counting if the empire will also occupy Caucasus and Central Asia later. Basically, will Ottoman Empire be able to enslave the entire world with all those oil ? Or will this situation encourage many, perhaps even the Ottomans themselves, to invest more on energy source alternative to fossil fuel much earlier ?

These 3 questions above will determine crucially whether my plans so far for TTL's future can pass or I have to scrap them entirely. They are for the most part, lazily convergent to OTL after all. I mean, will this TL's Russia give born to communist ideology we are familiar of, or something else ?

erneiz_hyde

2013-10-29, 16:57

To other members, be aware that I'm not actually well-versed in history, just that I'm interested. :heh:

As for Ridwan's TL's questions:
1. Say, does that mean TTL Russia would be somewhat like OTL German? Would they then actually share ideology instead of just being allies?
2. Speaking of Japan and Germany, I'm curious what TTL WW2 dynamics would look like. There will be WW2, right? I don't see any effect that can butterfly that away.
3. I'm thinking when you get this big and the oil boom comes, the threat of seceding would be greater for OE, perhaps riled up by some interested third party nations.

Ridwan

2013-10-29, 22:01

1) I'm not sure. Russia lacked the socio-economic condition that could allow them to be even German democratic. They were both of course conservative. But while Balkan vacuum in OTL was a major point of contention, there were another points of frictions between the two. Both possible Kaisers after Wilhelm I were antagonistic toward Russia. Frederick was liberal and anglophile, while Willy junior had issues. There is a good decade long between the PoD and the eventual ascension of Wilhelm II for the later to change his view of Russia, but this is not guaranteed. There's also Russian side of things. Alexander III didn't like what he perceived as German influence and had had differences on the issue with his father even since Franco-Prussian War, and IOTL was disappointed by German failure to support Russian position on Eastern Question. ITTL Russia will lose, so it won't be in position to push for anything. It remains that Alex III was a xenophobic reactionary, and also had mutual personal dislike with Wilhelm II.

2) I'm asking about Japan because I'm not too sure about this. A general imperialistic war in europe would may still happen, but it can proceed in anyway. Balkan issue will be absent, Russian military will be possibly stronger and Germany might won't have its way in Africa or even getting a colony at all. Even IOTL WW2 wasn't a sure thing until well into 30s.

3) TTL OE will be a lot more formidable against both political manuevering and military invasion, as well as have a huge headstart contra OTL to build the empire. And with even the sickly OTL empire muslims were still mostly loyal to the empire, especially since the empire worked its best to placate the Arabs, though there were the Young Turks. ITTL the Arabs will be regarded somewhat less important with Balkans retained, which means the government has the upperhand and development of Asian territories less prioritized. Arabs will be less organized and relevant here. Nevertheless they'll still be a big part of the empire and will be accommodated, here by a stronger, more reliable empire.

Fireminer

2013-10-29, 22:35

Question: Why don't we have our own Social Group?

And any possibility for a drift between GDR and Stasi could lead to a Coup from GDR?

Ridwan

2013-10-30, 00:23

I considered making a Social Group at first, but to be honest animesuki's social group format is kind of lousy, and is easily forgettable. It's more comfortable here where the thread is exposed and easily accessible but doesn't attract too much posters. When there is enough AH enthusiast maybe we should make one, especially when enough of us will actually write their TL.

LeoXiao

2013-11-02, 00:28

The Stasi under the SED had too much of a monopoly on security and internal spying that no coup would have ever been able to get off the ground. The best bet is for the Stasi boss (whoever he may be) to be assassinated by some pissed-off soldier or something.

-------------------------------------------------------
YELLOW RIVER INCIDENT Nov 1937 - Mar 1939 PART II

The Manchurian Reaction

In Fengtian, the Grand Marshal was livid. With the exception of the embarrassing Southern Expedition, Yuan Kewen had run the Northeast for nearly twenty years without getting embroiled in any of the chaos that reigned in China proper. Despite official propaganda calling for forceful reunification by means of crushing the Federation, the 48-year-old “Young Marshal” maintained that the country remained militarily, industrially, and politically incapable of all-out war. In fact, the NROC was undoubtedly the preeminent economic force in the former Qing empire, and probably its greatest military power as well. Yuan’s assessment held true only on the final, political point, which nonetheless justified his anxiety. He was painfully aware of the corrupt, bloated bureaucracy he had turned his father’s army into - even should the nation put all its effort into a war of reunification, it would be a Pyrrhic victory as the military government, running on relationships and nepotism, rather than solid government process, was sure to destabilize and fail.

As mentioned above, when Liu Zhennian reported back to Beijing with the news that he had sent his division to fight alongside the Central Plains rebels, Yuan did not even meet him. The Grand Marshal could not afford to disown Liu entirely - such a move would have been political suicide in a state that believed fervently in its dominance over all of China and had officially for over a decade enlisted millions of men for just this purpose. Instead, he simply decreed by way of the Beiyang High Command that “appropriate” men and supplies would be allocated for the campaign.

By mid-January 1938, with the Battle of Nanjing underway and going badly for the attackers, generals of the High Command met to discuss broadening the scope of NROC involvement in the war. Among them were Feng Yuxiang and Gao Songling, both of whom had been ardent supporters of Yuan during the early years of his rule, as well as Zhang Xueliang, who was Yuan’s right-hand man and generally accepted to be his successor. Feng and Gao proposed general mobilization to support the CPA, arguing that Liu’s actions had already taken the state down a path of no return. Yuan responded with his usual policy statement that the Republic was not ready for war, and added that the Soviet and Japanese reactions needed also to be taken into account. The danger of the Japanese responding with force to active Beiyang involvement need hardly be mentioned, the High Command agreed. However, though the Soviet Union had tacitly taken the side of the Beiyang regime in its China policy, this support was likely conditional - should the NROC make any sudden move to move out of Manchuria and contest the whole country, it could lead to Soviet displeasure or worse. The Grand Marshal dared his opposition to consult Soviet opinion on the matter.

To Yuan’s consternation, however, Liu Zhennian had already gone to the Soviet concession in Beijing in November 1937 and spoken with ambassador Richard Sorge, future Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Sorge confirmed that his country would take no issue with Beiyang involvement in the Yellow River incident and considered it a “Chinese internal affair”.

When Feng and Gao brought out this revelation at the Fengtian meeting, Yuan was humbled. Zhang Xueliang immediately suggested a compromise. An “expeditionary force” of 50,000 Beiyang men, under his command, would be deployed to assist the CPA. Later, personnel from the Republican Guard would be mobilized as needed. These units, tasked with police operations, would require comparatively little in the way of supply and armament, being able to live off the land. Their commanders would be given ample compensation to ensure their loyalty. Marshal Yuan praised the plan, calling it an “opportunity to introduce the Central Plains folk to the immeasurable strength of the Republican Army and lay the foundation for imminent unification.”

In the next few months the comparatively well-disciplined armies of the CPA and Beiyang forces would continue to make gains in consolidating their hold on the Central Plains and making gains in the provinces of Shaanxi and Hubei. They often faced and prevailed against superior numbers of Federal forces. The “immeasurable strength” of the Republican Guard, however, would come to manifest only in its troops’ ability to plunder and terrorize the local communities, ruining whatever positive currency the CPA and Beiyang troops had with them beforehand. These mobs of proud, uniformed young men knew neither law nor etiquette. From the train stations they descended upon the land, helping themselves to whatever goods they could lay their hands on. In the vast majority of cases this simply meant food, but naturally money and jewelry were also fair game. Additionally, many of these men, who came from the disenfranchised, disproportionately male class of Manchurian society, saw indecent congress with local women as being included in their quartering rights as defined by their commanders. Outrage caused by the behavior of the Republican Guard is considered to be a primary factor in the success of Zhang Guotao’s Communist guerrillas.

Maoist Underground Campaigns

Though by early 1938 the Maoist base of Xi’an had been captured, the movement was far from dead. The Peasant Proletarian Party (PPP) and its associated forces dispersed into the countryside, bound together by a strict doctrine and system of correspondence. Zhang Guotao, a former warlord soldier from Jiangxi who had converted to the revolutionary cause in the 1920s, had long been actively in northern Hubei and continued to resist the CPA even after they had conquered the Central Plains. He and his men would set out on daring night missions to sabotage railways, steal from supply depots, and collect intelligence on the enemy, which they passed on to Mao. For several months, the Maoists encouraged the peasantry to blame landlords and warlords for their plight, explaining in simple terms that they needed only to seize what was rightfully theirs.

As the CPA and NROC occupation became harder on the rural folk, support for the cause grew. Men and women of all ages collaborated with the underground movement. Numerous pieces of literature have been written detailing the exploits of impoverished farmers in this era, including authentic period works as well as Maoist and socialist propaganda of later decades. Notable feminists, for instance, wrote of the heroic peasant women who liberated themselves after seeing and suffering the “brute manifestation of patriarchy” exhibited by the ravenous Republican hordes.

Communist guerrilla operations became so widespread in the spring and summers of 1938 that the CPA and Beiyang forces had to divert combat units from their posts at the front to neutralize them. In many cases, communist personnel turned out to be deserted or turncoat Republican Guards.

Next: Yellow River Incident Nov 1937 - Mar 1939 Part III

Ridwan

2013-11-02, 00:42

I wonder how long until the Soviets would jump in.

Also, how is Korea at the moment ? Surely still under Japan, but in what form ?

LeoXiao

2013-11-02, 00:48

I wonder how long until the Soviets would jump in.

Also, how is Korea at the moment ? Surely still under Japan, but in what form ?

lol is this a portal to the AH.com page or something

The Soviets... well we'll have to see.

Korea is not doing all that well as things stand. Cultural degradation and ethnocentrism on the part of the Japanese is still happening, this time in the name of "socialist development". Ironically, there were quite a few Korean leftists from before the Revolution who the Japanese are now busily trying to co-opt. They are allowed to make some small social improvements to placate the population, but the overall trend is still colonial oppression. To be honest, I don't know all that much about Korea so I've been avoiding the specifics of that topic for some time now.

Ridwan

2013-11-02, 01:06

Well, if you can simply copy paste your question... ;p

I expected more along the lines of Warsaw Pact situation, if not something even more genuinely sympathetic if still with commanding military presence in Korea. I would expect that Japanese left will be bigger in lofty Pan-Asian brotherhood then the Black Dragon type but anyone with better knowledge can correct me.

LeoXiao

2013-11-02, 01:15

Okay, well, some things are definitely improved. I was thinking that officially, Koreans are a "minority group" in the Japanese state. There are many open-minded Japanese scholars and civil servants, along with soldiers and average folk, who have chosen to go to Korea to develop the area. But many policymakers are either military types who have worked on the peninsula under a chauvinistic mindset for many years, or Party administrators in Tokyo who aren't all that well-versed on how things are actually going over there. They value strengthening the country over making sure the "peninsular people" are satisfied with their sense of identity under socialism.

Sumeragi

2013-11-05, 00:56

AHC: Korean Empire restored after the Second World War (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=294551)

This one is too easy: Have Prince Imperial Uihwa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Yi_Kang) succeed in his attempt to escape to the ROK provisional government.

Someone mind passing that along?

Ridwan

2013-11-05, 03:08

I've passed the article there. I'm quite skeptical it can avoid impulsive dismissals though.

Anyway, for those who are connected to alternatehistory.com one way or another, are you subcscribed to any of the ongoing TLs there ?

Sumeragi

2013-11-07, 10:22

While I was researching stuff for an AAR over at paradoxplaza over two years ago, I came across a Korean alternate history novel published in 2010 titled "Stalin's Letter". The premise is that the USSR vetoed the UN involvement in the Korean War, and after secret negotiations between the US and USSR (USSR gets Germany in exchange for US getting East Asia and freezing of Soviet expansion), the US drops 41 nukes in both DPRK and PRC on October 1st, 1951. The ultimate result would be the establishment of the East Asian Federation and "Free China".

http://i.imgur.com/i73szcD.jpg

The long-term aftermath of the end of the East Asian War revibrates into the 21st century, with an almost dystopian East Asian Federation, only being held together by no other than the 14th Dalai Lama and a Free China slowly falling apart because of Han Chinese Nationalism. There's also massive Han Chinese persecution in the United States following the nuclear terror attack on New York by Chinese radicals, which only feeds the vicious cycle.

The story itself goes between 1951 and 2010, where we have a Korean researcher attempting to look into why the USSR just stood by as the US started a nuclear holocaust and established pro-US regimes. It's basically a conspiracy story along the lines of those so-so thrillers. The writing was pretty dull, but the idea itself was pretty good, something like the game Homefront (good solid background, horrible execution).

LeoXiao

2013-11-07, 12:48

I remember that. It's an interesting idea. But I can't imagine the Federation would last very long, since it has no center and so many different groups living in it.

Sumeragi

2013-11-07, 13:25

I remember that. It's an interesting idea. But I can't imagine the Federation would last very long, since it has no center and so many different groups living in it.

It was basically Koreans oppressing the rest with US support. The first six presidents or so were all Koreans.

Ridwan

2013-11-07, 23:21

It sure seems Turanism is fairly big in Korean current.

I'm still figuring out what to do with Pan-Turanism for my TL. OE, by exploiting post-Great War Russian chaos, will end up occupying the entire Russian Turkestan, and from there eventually Xinjiang as well, reaching Mongolian border. Being THE Islamic State and multi-ethnic as it is, any kind of ethno-racially based nationalism will sure to get overshadowed by Universal Islamism. On the other hand, occupation of Turkestan will going to increase interest for Turkic world. All those post-soviet -stan states were mostly artificial Soviet creation on a downright feudal region under a comfortable blanket of shared historical, ethno-linguistic racial and cultural roots. The region is also quite low in population for its size. Ottoman direct rule perhaps won't last indefinitely, but a Greater Turkestan will easily make for a viable unitary state. With time, it will shift its orientation from OE to Asia the way Canada has done so from Britain to Americas. Pan-Turanism might become a viable vehicle of cooperation with non-muslim but supposedly Turanic countries like Korea and Mongolia to fend off China and Russia. Ironically, the ideology will be regarded of less relevance in where it originates.

Sumeragi

2013-11-07, 23:45

Haven't been following your timeline.

You might consider what Ármin Vámbéry was doing, since he was a major contributor to the spread of Turanism.

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 00:08

It's still in planning stage.

Yeah, there might be an Asian Vámbéry who'll argue persistently for connection between Turkic languages, Mongolian and Korean. I won't be surprised if this person might actually turn out to be Korean. Since OE will sure to become one the Great Powers, not to mention having Xinjiang under her sphere, alliance with OE would be natural, concerning China.

Sumeragi

2013-11-08, 00:15

This person might be the best Korean candidate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Chaeho).

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 02:10

Jaa, he seems to be the type of people this ideology has seemed to often attract ! :eek:

Well this will significantly impact the modern concept of Korean minjok in formative phase. A lot more accentuation on outside connection, perhaps ? This can lead to slip into general Islamophilia. Previously I was skeptic of Islamic influence making inroad in any significant manner to Korea, but I might have to rethink it now... [1]

There's one thing though : while Korea won't be annexed to Japan, Ottomans will probably become a close ally of Japan. It can lead us to direct Ottoman-Korean diplomatic relation. On the other hand, Ottoman alliance with Japan will may lead it be perceived negatively by Korean nationalists. So I wonder if Shin would might be too early to bring Turanism into Korean nationalist ideology...

[1] By the way, will no annexation by Japan and subsequent cultural repression(which unintentionally undermined Buddhism in Korea) compromise the spread of christianity in Korea ? Or was there something more then just anti-Japanese sentiment and disillusion to Buddhism to the strength of christianity in the country ? I might have to postulate a stranger religious demographic situation in Korea then I initially thought it would become....

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 05:38

Have been thinking, how many percentage of wining that the democratic would possess in the Spanish Civil War if Capitalist countries send manpower to them?

I know that is unlikely, but all we need is a sign of winning for the leftist faction...

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 05:43

Thought the capitalists countries were more sympathetic of the nationalists ? Their anti-leftist paranoia began before the Cold War, you know.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 07:39

Thought the capitalists countries were more sympathetic of the nationalists ? Their anti-leftist paranoia began before the Cold War, you know.

I know, I know, but it's kind of a diplomatic problem. The leftist suddenly having a much higher chance as a winner, and so everyone want a piece of the pie...

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 07:45

Well, unfortunately I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about Spanish Civil War period. But I just remembered that Franco initially offered to fight for the Republic, but it was basically rejected so he opted to exploit the situation for his own gains. I don't know how crucial his force was to nationalists' victory but if it was sufficient to enable his victory IOTL, then perhaps having him in Republican side will be enough to change the result.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 08:33

Thanks!

Also, I want to ask about your style of writing TL. With me and my TL or fanfic, I tend to making many small, un-connected What-if scenario, then find a focal point to make the big change.

Anyone here wrote TL about Paris Commune?

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 09:10

Frankly, all of my TL's have never escaped planing phase so far :p Real Life keeps interfering my creative process and leave me too little time to research. And I'm originally a mappist anyway...

For me I tend to gravitate towards single PoD scenarios since it enables you to actually analyze the consequences intellectually. Of course, as for maps I don't mind with multiple PoDs. I actually do that by combining my favorite scenarios for simple fanboyism :D Also I tend to be whiny about things I find weird in even the scenarios I like. Which is also part of the reason why I still haven't managed to actually write down my AH ideas: I have a frustrating perfectionist tendency. I also have too many ideas I want to experiment with I have a hard time focusing on just one of them. Even now I'm still undecided whether I want to write an Ottoman-centric timeline first, or an Indonesia-centric one...

As for Paris-Commune, I'm also interested in that part of history. It was a crucial event that contributed in shaping the form of socialism today, and also a model for Soviet type of government. Its absence would've profound change on the development of socialism, likely making it less antagonized and more willing to adapt into democratic process. 19th century in general has a lot of temptingly potential divergence points that still lead to largely recognizable present day.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 09:39

Hmm... You are the same as every artist: Perfectionist. Not a bad thing, though.

Agree with you on the 19th Century. Actually, one of my first idea is the winning of Paris Commune. Not enough research material, though.

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 10:01

It had no hope of surviving, really. The only way to avoid massacre would be to somehow compromise with the establishment, which I seriously doubt was possible.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 10:27

How about the other cities's Commune grow stronger? The long disputed between Theirs and Prussian? And lot of other thing.

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 10:37

There were attempts to communicate with other cities' communes to unite against the government, but they were all successfully sabotaged. It had faced full blockade for being the center of attention since day one. Should they somehow manage to reach other communes and convinced them to wreck havoc across the country France will might get dragged into an actual civil war but I doubt the revolutionaries would win as it will also likely to increase foreign intervention. What's certain is that it will change just about everything.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 11:04

Of course it would be. And that is also what I'm stuck at: must find a way to win the war for the Communate, but it would be disastrous. Help would be scatthered, both domestic and foreign. The seize of National Bank would be the first step, then guerrilla war would be the next. Any suggestion in the Geography of French?

It could end with diplomatic, though.

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 11:46

It was a bunch of civilian rebels facing against a professional army backed by foreign support. They just got no chance. Unlike Russia, France is smaller and at the center of Western Europe. The Communards simply got no chance.

Sumeragi

2013-11-08, 16:35

WWII Pan-Turanian Map (http://totentanz0.deviantart.com/art/WWII-Pan-Turanian-Map-347058450)

http://i.imgur.com/URJ8Wngl.png (http://imgur.com/URJ8Wng.png)

"The future of Turkey had not been decided, but Hitler would probably have been willing for it to go to Italy, along with the Middle East."
(Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders; Gerhard L. Weinberg)

“In order to prove to Turkey that Germany was sincere and wished to work with Turkey on a long-range basis, Germany should aid the Turks to gain territories they desired for reasons of security. These included Edirne (Adrianople) and a rectification of Turkish frontiers at the expense of Greece; the creation of buffer states in the Caucasus under Turkish influence; a rectification of the Turkish-Syrian frontier (the Bagdad Railway and Aleppo) and the Turkish-Iraq frontier (Mosul); and a solution to the question of the Aegean islands in order to give Turkey security against Italy after the removal of the Russian threat.”
“Ribbentrop was prepared to be even more specific; in April 1942 he informed the Turks that Germany would completely understand any desire on the part of Turkey to rectify its frontiers along the border of the Arab world.”
“…but whether the Germans would have conceded supremacy in the Arab world to Italy or Turkey, or even to the Arabs themselves, it may be taken for granted that German interests in the Near East, especially in Arabian oil, would have been safeguarded.”
(Hitler’s War Aims, the establishment of the New Order, Norman Rich)

“The Caucasus, however, should later be handed over to Turkey, though ‘exploited’ by Germany beforehand. This suggests that the civil administrations referred to four days earlier, on 13 March, would be a temporary measure before the final fate of the respective territories – in the case of the Caucasus, to be handed over to Turkey – was to be decided and fullfilled.”
(Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941.)

“According to Gerede’s ‘personal opinion’ the Axis should arrange for the establishment of an independent ‘Turanian’ state in the territory between the Black and Caspian Seas.”
“In mid-1942, with the Wehrmacht again on the advance and nearing the Caucasus, Papen was confronted by Saracoglu and Menemencioglu about the future of the Turkic peoples in the Soviet Union. Within weeks of Saracoglu’s outspoken inaugural speech (see above) both he and his foreign minister were again demanding the creation of a series of Turkic buffer states along the Turkish border. In addition, both desired a say in the administration of these territories.”
“Still, the new foreign minister was audacious enough to suggest to Papen that a written promise to transfer Syria to Turkey at the end of the war might help to accelerate chromite deliveries. Again, however, Turkish expansionist aspirations clashed with Hitler’s objectives. Not surprisingly, the Führer was not at all inclined to make territorial concessions to a country which had not even committed itself to the German war effort.”
(Nazi Germany and neutral Europe during the second world war, by Christian Leitz)

“Within a few months of presenting his credentials to President Ismet Inönü, Papen recommended to the foreign minister of the Axis powers to return two of the Dodecanese islands, situated within the Turkish three-mile zone, as a token of good will toward Turkey and a guarantee of her European positions, in return of a policy on neutrality and leaving exposed the flank of the English land bridge to India. In July 1940, he went one step further and suggested offering the Turkish government the entire island group as a security if she was willing to support the German-Italian-Soviet pincer operations, then being debated, against key British positions in the Near and Middle East. During the Berlin-Moscow Four Power Pact discussions, Papen felt empowered to offer leading Turkish politicians comprehensive territorial assurances in order to tie them to the dawning European and Near Eastern “new order”.
“In May 1941, he offered his Turkish negotiating partners parts of North Syria and a strip near Edirne/Adrianople to gain their agreement for the transfer of war materiel and supplies from Syria to Iraq in support of an uprising there. These discussions soon produced a draft treaty negotiated between Papen and the Turkish state secretary for foreign affairs, Numan Menemencioğlu, which in return for permission to transfer extensive arms shipments – a de facto abandonment of Turkish neutrality – anticipated, in case of an early end to the war, extensive territorial concessions in Thrace and in the Eastern Mediterranean archipelago and, in case of an expansion of war, “guarantee of Turkish whishes in southern and eastern zones.”
“Papen reported in a dispatch to Berlin of July 18, 1941, for the first time about the Pan-Turanian Movement. He invoked the name of his friend the commander of the Turkish military academy, Ali Fuad Erden, who let it be known that Turkey would welcome a discussion with Germany concerning “a federation in the Caucasus of the more or less Turkic tribes in that region while for the region east of the Caspian Sea, an autonomous Turanian state was regarded as the best solution.” These remarks outlined the basic points. Ribbentrop immediately requested a detailed report and a week later Papen presented a first scenario. He pointed to the “more than 40 million Turkic Muslims” populating the southern provinces of the Soviet Union and with whom the Turkish Pan-Turanian movement was increasingly identifying.”
“In the months that followed, Papen clarified the steps that had to be taken toward this concretization. If handled skillfully, it would be possible to kill two birds with one stone: With the help of Turkey, Germany would at last be able to draw the pan-Turkic movement to her side and, at the same time, exploit Turkish expansionist interests in schieving a political and cultural consolidation of the southern border of the future German sphere of power on the European Continent all the more so, since Germany’s interest in this region was limited to the economic exploitation of strategic raw materials.”
“Papen’s idea of turning Turkey into an imperial satellite state within the German sphere of hegemony that, at times, reached into the higher Nazi leadership and his practical proposals found, in many cases, a quick transformation.”
“During World War II, Germans favored the idea of a Greater Arabian Empire or a federation associated with the free countries of the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”
(Germany and the Middle East, 1871-1945, by Wolfgang Schwanitz)

“Von Papen reported that on 17 May Saracoğlu told him that Turkey would be willing to abandon the alliance with Britain in return for large arms deliveries from Germany and recognition that Iraq was within Turkey’s sphere of influence. This account relates that von Papen then prepared a draft treaty, which Saracoğlu had helped to prepare, which was cabled to Berlin on 23 May. This offered Turkey the cession of some Bulgarian territory near Edirne, two or three of the Greek Aegean islands and ‘the advancement of Turkish interests in the southern and eastern neighbouring zones’ (presumably, in Syria and Iraq) as part of a Turkish-German alliance which would give Germany transit rights across Turkey. The second account, also based on German records, suggests that the initiative for a treaty to allow German transit rights came not from von Papen but from Ribbentrop, who suggested on 18 May that Turkey could be offered frontier rectifications near Edirne and possibly ‘one or other island in the Aegean sea’. If Turkey resisted this offer then Ribbentrop suggested that the Turks should be told that Germany was in a position to ‘blot out the Turkish state within few weeks’.
“The fear that Germany would attack Turkey if the Soviet Union were defeated was not baseless. The German archives show that in June 1941, before Operation ‘Barbarossa’ had begun, German military planners had confidently expected to defeat Russia in three months. Following this, during the late autumn and winter of 1941-42, Germany would attack Egypt from the west, and mass large forces in Bulgaria. Turkey would be forced to submit, preparatory to the launch of a German attack on the Suez canal through Turkey, Syria and Palestine, combined with an invasion of Iran from the Caucasus. “
“An important question in Turkey’s relations with Germany during 1941-1942 is whether Turkey hoped to gain territory in Transcaucasia and possibly other Turkic areas of the Soviet Union, in collaboration with Germany, assuming the Soviets were defeated. Certainly, von Papen promoted the proposal, as a means of bringing Turkey over to the Axis size, and it had some support in Berlin.”
“In Berlin, Nuri urged the sestablishment of a pan-Turanian state stretching as far as the Chinese province of Xinjiang. However, both the Germans and the Turks then abandoned this fantasy. Those Germans who favoured the idea also claimed Fevzi Cakmak as one of its supporters, but the furthest Cakmak was apparently prepared to go was to tell the Germans in May 1942 that he was willing to allow Turkish civilians to go to Germany to prepare for the establishment of separate states in the Turkic areas captured from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Hüsrev Gerede, who had supported the idea at first, bluntly turned down the proposal that Turkey should take over Turkic areas of the Soviet Union, when Hitler suggested it to him in August 1941.”
(Turkish foreign policy, by William M. Hale)

“One likely way to draw Turkey closer to Germany was by playing upon it´s perceived irredentist temptations. In July 1941 Papen suggested to Ribbentropp that "Turkey´s territorial ambitions in northern Syria should be answered." 9th of July, two days before the British and Free French troops succeeded in their military campaign in Syria, the Turkish Foreign Minister Saracoğlu had inquired whether Germany would agree to his country´s occupation of northern Syria "as a provisional solution until a peace agreement has been signed." According to Hans Kroll, Papen’s first secretary, Aleppo and Mosul were additional targets on Turkey’s potential wish list. In October 1941“
“Such actions would prepare Turanian Russia for independence after Germany’s victory over the Soviet Union. Taken to its ultimate stage, Hentig looked forward to the unification of all Turkic people between the Volga and the Great Wall under the political leadership of Turkey.”
“Would Hitler really have abandoned hard-won territory in an effort to please Turkey and the Pan-Turanists? It seems a very unlikely assumption indeed, in view of Hitler’s firm claim on areas dear to Pan-Turanists. In a July 1941 meeting with Hermann Göring, Karl Lammers and Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler called for the Crimea, the Baku oilfields and the Volga region to be turned into German military colonies. Consequentlu, Hitler argued against making Turkey any promises in these areas.”
(Nazi Germany and neutral Europe during the second world war, by Christian Leitz)

“The new trend of Turkish-Arab propaganda dovetails with trustworthy reports that the wily von Papen has offered Armenia and convenient parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan to Turkey in return for neutrality or non-belligerancy. Seventy-five per cent of the Azerbaijan’s population is Turkish. Armenia was Turkish territory until the last war.”
(War Has Seven Faces, by Frank Gervasi)

“The German response to the pan-Turkist advances was cautious. The pan-Turkists’ goals did not exactly coincide with German goals in either Turkey or Russia, and the German feared that open encouragement of the group would alienate high-ranking officials in Turkey. But the Germans still hoped to use pan-Turkist sentiments. As German armies marched on the Crimea and Caucasus, Papen developed a plan to gain Turkey’s collaboration by conceding to Turkey the right to reorganize the Turkic speaking areas. Papen also considered offering Iranian Azerbaijan to Turkey in return for a breach in Anglo-Turkish relations.
(The politics of Turkish democracy: İsmet İnönü and the formation of the Multy-Party System, 1938-1950, by John M. VanderLippe)

“The Turks appeared confident of a German victory and had expressed interest in the Soviet territories of Armenia and the Turkic border states.”
“As an inducement for the plan, Ambassador von Papen promised Turkey several of the Aegean islands and the rectification of the Turkish border near Edirne (Adrianople), although the latter would have been at the expense of Bulgaria.”
(Bulgaria during the Second World War, by Marshall Lee Miller)

“The foreign policy was aimed at winning the neutral Turkey's consent to participate in the far-reaching long-term creation of a Grand- Turkic empire, modelled on the "Grossdeutsches Reich". It is no coincidence that von Papen, who was once German ambassador in Ankara, had in mind a Crimean-Tatar puppet state, which would have a strong political effect on Turkey. The s.c. Pan-Turanian movement "unofficially supported by the Turkish government, advocated the unification of all Turkic peoples living on Soviet territory into a state, that while nominally remaining independent, would be in the orbit of Turkey.”
(Karaites and Dejudaization: A Historical Review of an Endogenous and Exogenous Paradigm by Roman Freund)

“In May 1941, when the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop met with Mussolini and with the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano to discuss Axis plans for the summer, Mussolini asked if Turkey would soon join the Axis. Ribbentrop replied that he was confident Turkey would join the Axis, and as extra enticement Hitler was considering offering Syria to Turkey. Papen telegraphed Berlin that the Turkish government would not respond to such attempts at bribery.”
(The politics of Turkish democracy: İsmet İnönü and the formation of the Multy-Party System, 1938-1950, by John M. VanderLippe)

"Our government has stated on several occasions," said President Inonu to the National Assembly, "that Turkey does not covet an inch of territory outside its frontier, that it has no intention of tres- passing on the rights of anyone." Thus, no territorial offer is able to induce and seduce Turkey to belligerency. As a matter of fact, Turkey has refused all German offers of this kind. The Turkish ambassador to Berlin was reported to have brought to Ankara the following propositions: 1. In exchange for immediate permission for transit and/or use of Turkish bases for German troops for an operation against the South Caucasus and Iraq, the German government offers: 2. Fifty per cent of the output of the Mosul oilfields for the dura- tion of the war to be handed unconditionally to Turkey; on the conclusion of hostilities Turkey to guarantee preferential tariffs for German purchase of such oil as she needs from the entire output, which would be dispensed by Turkey. 3. Turkish mandate over Syria for a fifteen-year period, after which the mandate on completion of a "plebiscite" (the outcome of which would be guaranteed by the Germans) would revert to the Turkish states as a definitive possession. 4. Immediate cession to Turkey of the [Greek] islands of Lem-nos, Mytilene, and Chios, which, however, for the duration of hostilities, would continue to serve as bases for German and other Axis troops and submarines garrisoned or stationed there. 5. "Rectification" of the western frontier of European Turkey by cession of parts of Greek Thrace. Ambassador von Papen even ventured a public offer by telling a Spanish correspondent in Ankara: "In the Mediterranean Spain and Turkey would control the sea, and Turkey would also be allotted a sphere of interest in Syria and Iran. The peoples of Europe would be forced to co-operate with the new order; if they refused they would be starved into submission, and rebellion would be ruthlessly stamped out." The Turkish reply was: "Our national policy has been to yield territory to no one, and to take territory from no one." No more successful was Hitler's radio address "to the heart of the Turkish nation" on May 4, 1941, or the mission to Ankara of five Hitlerites who carried by air a dramatic message from the Fuehrer himself. A broadcast from Ankara pointed out that "German investigations made before the war established that the self-sufficient European power into which Germany wishes to make herself needs the whole of the Mediterranean, the peninsulas of Arabia, and the plateaus of Anatolia and Persia, as well as the waterways in this part of the world."
(The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, by Ernst Jäckh)

“The reward they demanded is disclosed in the correspondence between von Papen and von Ribbentrop: Bulgarian territory at Adrianople, a couple of islands in the Aegean Sea, the rounding off of Turkish dominions at the expense of Syria, and the inclusion in the secret part of the treaty of a general point concerning the "satisfaction of Turkey's wishes in the southern and eastern zones adjacent to her." Von Ribbentrop readily promised the Turks part of the territory at Adrianople ("primarily its eastern half; in any case, Turkey will get the road from Pytho to Adrianople") and "one or another island in the Aegean Sea," but he resisted the Turkish claim to a part of Syria.”
(New Times)

“The German Ambassador has brought many tempting proposals to Turkey. He has promised Syria, Irak, Grecian Thrace and the whole of Palestine. The Turks have never for a moment listened to this kind of thing, partly because of their loyalty to the British friendship, and partly because the re-incorporation of non-Turkish territories in the State would be inconsistent with Kemalist dogma.”
(Intelligence Digest)

“Germany on the other hand was quick to approach them with offers of frontier rectification in Western Thrace and in the hinterland of Edirne, both territories ceded by Turkey in the First World War.”
(Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality, by Selim Deringil)

“According to allied intelligence, German agents exposed the Kurds to propaganda insisting on the fact that, Turkey being allied by a treaty to Great Britain and France, they could not expect nothing from the Allies, and that it would be in their best interests to follow the policy of the Axis powers. After the decline of French power in the region the German commission in Syria, presided over by W.O. Von Hentig, made contact with Khalil ibn Ibrahim Pasha and Kamuran Badirkhan. At this point, German projects demanded a new reconciliation between the Kurds and the Armenians, further to which the Germans would assure the independence of Kurdistan and Armenia after German victory, on the condition that the Kurds and the Armenians conformed to Nazi directives and provoked trouble in Turkey.”
(Syria's kurds: history, politics and society, by Jordi Tejel)

Although the official attitude of the Ankara Government remained reserved in the Panturanian question and they withstood the temptation to commit themselves to an outsoken policy of territorial aggrandisement, significant soundings were taking place behind the scenes. The German Ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, reported by the end of July the existence of a Panturanian Committee set up in Istanbul which demanded the annexation of the whole of Azerbaijan. Its perhaps most prominent member, Nuri Pasha, the brother of Enver, came to Berlin in September and had a series of talks with Weizsacker and Woermann. At first he denied that Turkey wished to annex large portions of Soviet territory inhabited by Turkic nationalities. But later he came down to listing the Crimea, the Caucasus, the entire region between the Volga and the Urals and as far as Chinese Turkestan, as well as north-western Iran, as areas where Turkey, regardless of the cautious attitude of her present government, might in the future claim political "adjustment", if not direct control.
(India in Axis strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian nationalists in the Second World War, by Milan Hauner)

„Nuri offered the Germans his plans for creating independent states — allies but not satellites of Turkey — out of the Turkic populations in the Crimea, Azerbayjan, Turkestan, northwestern Iran and northern Irak.”
(Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation, by Jacob M. Landau)

“Ribbentrop si dichiara d'accordo con von Papen sui possibili sviluppi della idea panturaniana nel quadro delle sopite aspirazioni imperialistiche dei turchi. E ancora, durante la riunione del 24 agosto nella quale Ribbentrop discusse con Jodl, Ritter e Kroll, la politica verso la Turchia, tra le offerte « per provare la nostra sincerità nell'assecondare i desideri della Turchia riguardanti la sua sicurezza », venne suggerita la possibile costituzione di stati cuscinetto nel Caucaso. Di particolare interesse appare l'attività svolta da Nuri Pasa nel corso delle sue conversazioni berlinesi. È del tutto improbabile che il governo turco non ne fosse a conoscenza : nella sua prima visita a Weiszacker, il 10 settembre, egli affermava « di aver fatto visita al primo ministro turco prima della partenza e di averlo informato dei suoi piani. Questi ultimi erano molto vasti. Secondo il costume dei sogni turanici di tutti i tempi comprendevano la Crimea, l'Azerbajdjan, il Daghestan e inoltre, « parlando in termini generali, il territorio tra il Volga e gli Urali verso nord fino alla Repubblica sovietica di Tartaria », Turkestan incluso e la parte occidentale del Sinkiang, la parte nord-occidentale della Persia giù fino a Hamadan e una striscia di frontiera della Persia settentrionale dalla punta di sud-est del Mar Caspio lungo la vecchia frontiera sovietica, la regione di Kirkuk e Mossul, dal territorio iracheno, cosi come una striscia della Siria. Nuri riteneva possibile realizzare questo piano senza troppe difficoltà dopo la distruzione dell'Unione Sovietica (che era da ritenere scontata) e con una alleanza tra Germania e Turchia. Nuri Paga non parlava certo di annessione e respingeva risolutamente l'insinuazione che un simile programma fosse in contrasto con l'eredità di Ataturk che aveva impegnato la Turchia a non perseguire scopi al di fuori del suo territorio.”
(Il Politico: rivista italiana di scienze politiche)

“Der Anfang der Fünfziger stehende Bruder Enver Paschas bot sich zur Beratung der deutschen Stellen in allen Fragen des Kaukasus an. In der Zeit seines Aufenthalts sei er nicht beschränkt. Das Programm, das Nuri in den Berliner Unterredungen entwickelte, war durch und durch turanisch, pantürkisch, mit der bemerkenswerten Einschränkung, daß es bis auf gewisse Grenzkorrekturen keine Annektion vorsah. Gedacht war vielmehr an selbständige Staatsgebilde, die allerdings ihre politische Ausrichtung durch die Türkei erfahren sollten. Den Rahmen spannte Nuri soweit, wie es in turanischen Träumen eh und je üblich gewesen ist: die Krim, Asserbeidschan, Daghestan, „sowie im großen und ganzen das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural und zwar nördlich hinaufgehend bis zur Sowjetrepublik Tatarien", Turkestan einschließlich des westlichen Teils von Sinkiang, ferner den Nordwestteil des Iran bis hinunter nach Hamadan und einen Grenzstreifen des nördlichen Iran vom Südostzipfel des Kaspischen Meeres entlang der alten Sowjetgrenze, vom irakischen Gebiet die Gegend von Kirkuk und Mossul sowie einen Streifen Syriens.”
(Deutschland und die Türkei im zweiten Weltkrieg, by Lothar Krecker)

„Mit Billigung Ribbentrops arrangierte Papen eine Reise Nuri Paschas nach Berlin. Dort hatte er am 10., 11., 18. und 25. September 1941 eingehende Besprechungen mit Staatssekretär Weizsäcker und Unterstaatssekretär Woermann, über die beide an Rib- bentrop berichteten. Nuri unterhielt Kontakt mit der türkischen Botschaft in Berlin. Ministerpräsident Saydam war außerdem über seinen Besuch informiert. Um gegenüber den faschistischen Diplomaten die türkischen Aggressionsziele nicht zu weit zu enthüllen, sprach Nuri in folgendem Sinne: „Die panturanische Bewegung will für die außerhalb des Gebietes der heutigen Türkei liegenden Turkvölker selbständige Staatsgebilde schaffen. Diese Gebiete sollen also, von gewissen Grenzkorrekturen abgesehen, nicht von der Türkei annektiert werden, wohl aber ihre politische Ausrichtung von der Türkei erhalten." Unter dem Deckmantel der „politischen Ausrichtung" durch die Türkei forderte Nuri folgende Einflußgebiete: Aserbaidshan, Daghe- stan, die Krim, das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural mit der Hauptstadt Kasan, das gesamte sowjetische und chinesische Turkestan, d. h. also Mittelasien und Sinkiang und den Nordwestteil des Irans. Dazu fügte er noch das Gebiet von Mossul und Kirkuk und einen Streifen Syriens, womit wohl die „gewissen Grenzkorrekturen" gemeint waren !“
(Türkei und Afghanistan: Brennpunkte der Orientpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg, by Johannes Glasneck, Inge Kircheisen)

Das Programm, das Nuri in den Berliner Unterredungen entwickelte, war durch und durch turanisch, pantürkisch, mit der bemerkenswerten Einschränkung, daß es bis auf gewissen Grenzkorrekturen keine Annektion vorsah. Gedacht war vielmehr an selbständige Staatsgebilde, die allerdings ihre politische Ausrichtung durch die Türkei erfahren sollten. Den Rahmen spannte Nuri soweit, wie es in den turanischen Träumen eh und je üblich gewesen ist: die Krim, Aserbeidschan, Daghestan, „sowie im großen und ganzen das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural und zwar nördlich hinaufgehend bis zur Sowjetrepublik Tatarien", Turkestan einschließlich des westlichen Teils von Sinkiang, ferner der Nordwestteil des Iran bis hinunter nach Hamadan und einen Grenzstreifen des nördlichen Iran vom Südostzipfel des Kaspischen Meeres entlang der alten Sowjetgrenze, vom irakischen Gebiet die Gegend von Kirkuk und Mossul sowie einen Streifen Syriens . . .
(Die deutsche Türkeipolitik und ihre Auswirkungen auf Kurdistan, by Rudolf Bürgel)

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 19:16

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 20:42

Should I make a military mutiny?

You might should. But that still doesn't address the German troops, and Bismarck.

WWII Pan-Turanian Map (http://totentanz0.deviantart.com/art/WWII-Pan-Turanian-Map-347058450)

http://i.imgur.com/URJ8Wngl.png (http://imgur.com/URJ8Wng.png)

"The future of Turkey had not been decided, but Hitler would probably have been willing for it to go to Italy, along with the Middle East."
(Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders; Gerhard L. Weinberg)

“In order to prove to Turkey that Germany was sincere and wished to work with Turkey on a long-range basis, Germany should aid the Turks to gain territories they desired for reasons of security. These included Edirne (Adrianople) and a rectification of Turkish frontiers at the expense of Greece; the creation of buffer states in the Caucasus under Turkish influence; a rectification of the Turkish-Syrian frontier (the Bagdad Railway and Aleppo) and the Turkish-Iraq frontier (Mosul); and a solution to the question of the Aegean islands in order to give Turkey security against Italy after the removal of the Russian threat.”
“Ribbentrop was prepared to be even more specific; in April 1942 he informed the Turks that Germany would completely understand any desire on the part of Turkey to rectify its frontiers along the border of the Arab world.”
“…but whether the Germans would have conceded supremacy in the Arab world to Italy or Turkey, or even to the Arabs themselves, it may be taken for granted that German interests in the Near East, especially in Arabian oil, would have been safeguarded.”
(Hitler’s War Aims, the establishment of the New Order, Norman Rich)

“The Caucasus, however, should later be handed over to Turkey, though ‘exploited’ by Germany beforehand. This suggests that the civil administrations referred to four days earlier, on 13 March, would be a temporary measure before the final fate of the respective territories – in the case of the Caucasus, to be handed over to Turkey – was to be decided and fullfilled.”
(Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941.)

“According to Gerede’s ‘personal opinion’ the Axis should arrange for the establishment of an independent ‘Turanian’ state in the territory between the Black and Caspian Seas.”
“In mid-1942, with the Wehrmacht again on the advance and nearing the Caucasus, Papen was confronted by Saracoglu and Menemencioglu about the future of the Turkic peoples in the Soviet Union. Within weeks of Saracoglu’s outspoken inaugural speech (see above) both he and his foreign minister were again demanding the creation of a series of Turkic buffer states along the Turkish border. In addition, both desired a say in the administration of these territories.”
“Still, the new foreign minister was audacious enough to suggest to Papen that a written promise to transfer Syria to Turkey at the end of the war might help to accelerate chromite deliveries. Again, however, Turkish expansionist aspirations clashed with Hitler’s objectives. Not surprisingly, the Führer was not at all inclined to make territorial concessions to a country which had not even committed itself to the German war effort.”
(Nazi Germany and neutral Europe during the second world war, by Christian Leitz)

“Within a few months of presenting his credentials to President Ismet Inönü, Papen recommended to the foreign minister of the Axis powers to return two of the Dodecanese islands, situated within the Turkish three-mile zone, as a token of good will toward Turkey and a guarantee of her European positions, in return of a policy on neutrality and leaving exposed the flank of the English land bridge to India. In July 1940, he went one step further and suggested offering the Turkish government the entire island group as a security if she was willing to support the German-Italian-Soviet pincer operations, then being debated, against key British positions in the Near and Middle East. During the Berlin-Moscow Four Power Pact discussions, Papen felt empowered to offer leading Turkish politicians comprehensive territorial assurances in order to tie them to the dawning European and Near Eastern “new order”.
“In May 1941, he offered his Turkish negotiating partners parts of North Syria and a strip near Edirne/Adrianople to gain their agreement for the transfer of war materiel and supplies from Syria to Iraq in support of an uprising there. These discussions soon produced a draft treaty negotiated between Papen and the Turkish state secretary for foreign affairs, Numan Menemencioğlu, which in return for permission to transfer extensive arms shipments – a de facto abandonment of Turkish neutrality – anticipated, in case of an early end to the war, extensive territorial concessions in Thrace and in the Eastern Mediterranean archipelago and, in case of an expansion of war, “guarantee of Turkish whishes in southern and eastern zones.”
“Papen reported in a dispatch to Berlin of July 18, 1941, for the first time about the Pan-Turanian Movement. He invoked the name of his friend the commander of the Turkish military academy, Ali Fuad Erden, who let it be known that Turkey would welcome a discussion with Germany concerning “a federation in the Caucasus of the more or less Turkic tribes in that region while for the region east of the Caspian Sea, an autonomous Turanian state was regarded as the best solution.” These remarks outlined the basic points. Ribbentrop immediately requested a detailed report and a week later Papen presented a first scenario. He pointed to the “more than 40 million Turkic Muslims” populating the southern provinces of the Soviet Union and with whom the Turkish Pan-Turanian movement was increasingly identifying.”
“In the months that followed, Papen clarified the steps that had to be taken toward this concretization. If handled skillfully, it would be possible to kill two birds with one stone: With the help of Turkey, Germany would at last be able to draw the pan-Turkic movement to her side and, at the same time, exploit Turkish expansionist interests in schieving a political and cultural consolidation of the southern border of the future German sphere of power on the European Continent all the more so, since Germany’s interest in this region was limited to the economic exploitation of strategic raw materials.”
“Papen’s idea of turning Turkey into an imperial satellite state within the German sphere of hegemony that, at times, reached into the higher Nazi leadership and his practical proposals found, in many cases, a quick transformation.”
“During World War II, Germans favored the idea of a Greater Arabian Empire or a federation associated with the free countries of the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”
(Germany and the Middle East, 1871-1945, by Wolfgang Schwanitz)

“Von Papen reported that on 17 May Saracoğlu told him that Turkey would be willing to abandon the alliance with Britain in return for large arms deliveries from Germany and recognition that Iraq was within Turkey’s sphere of influence. This account relates that von Papen then prepared a draft treaty, which Saracoğlu had helped to prepare, which was cabled to Berlin on 23 May. This offered Turkey the cession of some Bulgarian territory near Edirne, two or three of the Greek Aegean islands and ‘the advancement of Turkish interests in the southern and eastern neighbouring zones’ (presumably, in Syria and Iraq) as part of a Turkish-German alliance which would give Germany transit rights across Turkey. The second account, also based on German records, suggests that the initiative for a treaty to allow German transit rights came not from von Papen but from Ribbentrop, who suggested on 18 May that Turkey could be offered frontier rectifications near Edirne and possibly ‘one or other island in the Aegean sea’. If Turkey resisted this offer then Ribbentrop suggested that the Turks should be told that Germany was in a position to ‘blot out the Turkish state within few weeks’.
“The fear that Germany would attack Turkey if the Soviet Union were defeated was not baseless. The German archives show that in June 1941, before Operation ‘Barbarossa’ had begun, German military planners had confidently expected to defeat Russia in three months. Following this, during the late autumn and winter of 1941-42, Germany would attack Egypt from the west, and mass large forces in Bulgaria. Turkey would be forced to submit, preparatory to the launch of a German attack on the Suez canal through Turkey, Syria and Palestine, combined with an invasion of Iran from the Caucasus. “
“An important question in Turkey’s relations with Germany during 1941-1942 is whether Turkey hoped to gain territory in Transcaucasia and possibly other Turkic areas of the Soviet Union, in collaboration with Germany, assuming the Soviets were defeated. Certainly, von Papen promoted the proposal, as a means of bringing Turkey over to the Axis size, and it had some support in Berlin.”
“In Berlin, Nuri urged the sestablishment of a pan-Turanian state stretching as far as the Chinese province of Xinjiang. However, both the Germans and the Turks then abandoned this fantasy. Those Germans who favoured the idea also claimed Fevzi Cakmak as one of its supporters, but the furthest Cakmak was apparently prepared to go was to tell the Germans in May 1942 that he was willing to allow Turkish civilians to go to Germany to prepare for the establishment of separate states in the Turkic areas captured from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Hüsrev Gerede, who had supported the idea at first, bluntly turned down the proposal that Turkey should take over Turkic areas of the Soviet Union, when Hitler suggested it to him in August 1941.”
(Turkish foreign policy, by William M. Hale)

“One likely way to draw Turkey closer to Germany was by playing upon it´s perceived irredentist temptations. In July 1941 Papen suggested to Ribbentropp that "Turkey´s territorial ambitions in northern Syria should be answered." 9th of July, two days before the British and Free French troops succeeded in their military campaign in Syria, the Turkish Foreign Minister Saracoğlu had inquired whether Germany would agree to his country´s occupation of northern Syria "as a provisional solution until a peace agreement has been signed." According to Hans Kroll, Papen’s first secretary, Aleppo and Mosul were additional targets on Turkey’s potential wish list. In October 1941“
“Such actions would prepare Turanian Russia for independence after Germany’s victory over the Soviet Union. Taken to its ultimate stage, Hentig looked forward to the unification of all Turkic people between the Volga and the Great Wall under the political leadership of Turkey.”
“Would Hitler really have abandoned hard-won territory in an effort to please Turkey and the Pan-Turanists? It seems a very unlikely assumption indeed, in view of Hitler’s firm claim on areas dear to Pan-Turanists. In a July 1941 meeting with Hermann Göring, Karl Lammers and Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler called for the Crimea, the Baku oilfields and the Volga region to be turned into German military colonies. Consequentlu, Hitler argued against making Turkey any promises in these areas.”
(Nazi Germany and neutral Europe during the second world war, by Christian Leitz)

“The new trend of Turkish-Arab propaganda dovetails with trustworthy reports that the wily von Papen has offered Armenia and convenient parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan to Turkey in return for neutrality or non-belligerancy. Seventy-five per cent of the Azerbaijan’s population is Turkish. Armenia was Turkish territory until the last war.”
(War Has Seven Faces, by Frank Gervasi)

“The German response to the pan-Turkist advances was cautious. The pan-Turkists’ goals did not exactly coincide with German goals in either Turkey or Russia, and the German feared that open encouragement of the group would alienate high-ranking officials in Turkey. But the Germans still hoped to use pan-Turkist sentiments. As German armies marched on the Crimea and Caucasus, Papen developed a plan to gain Turkey’s collaboration by conceding to Turkey the right to reorganize the Turkic speaking areas. Papen also considered offering Iranian Azerbaijan to Turkey in return for a breach in Anglo-Turkish relations.
(The politics of Turkish democracy: İsmet İnönü and the formation of the Multy-Party System, 1938-1950, by John M. VanderLippe)

“The Turks appeared confident of a German victory and had expressed interest in the Soviet territories of Armenia and the Turkic border states.”
“As an inducement for the plan, Ambassador von Papen promised Turkey several of the Aegean islands and the rectification of the Turkish border near Edirne (Adrianople), although the latter would have been at the expense of Bulgaria.”
(Bulgaria during the Second World War, by Marshall Lee Miller)

“The foreign policy was aimed at winning the neutral Turkey's consent to participate in the far-reaching long-term creation of a Grand- Turkic empire, modelled on the "Grossdeutsches Reich". It is no coincidence that von Papen, who was once German ambassador in Ankara, had in mind a Crimean-Tatar puppet state, which would have a strong political effect on Turkey. The s.c. Pan-Turanian movement "unofficially supported by the Turkish government, advocated the unification of all Turkic peoples living on Soviet territory into a state, that while nominally remaining independent, would be in the orbit of Turkey.”
(Karaites and Dejudaization: A Historical Review of an Endogenous and Exogenous Paradigm by Roman Freund)

“In May 1941, when the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop met with Mussolini and with the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano to discuss Axis plans for the summer, Mussolini asked if Turkey would soon join the Axis. Ribbentrop replied that he was confident Turkey would join the Axis, and as extra enticement Hitler was considering offering Syria to Turkey. Papen telegraphed Berlin that the Turkish government would not respond to such attempts at bribery.”
(The politics of Turkish democracy: İsmet İnönü and the formation of the Multy-Party System, 1938-1950, by John M. VanderLippe)

"Our government has stated on several occasions," said President Inonu to the National Assembly, "that Turkey does not covet an inch of territory outside its frontier, that it has no intention of tres- passing on the rights of anyone." Thus, no territorial offer is able to induce and seduce Turkey to belligerency. As a matter of fact, Turkey has refused all German offers of this kind. The Turkish ambassador to Berlin was reported to have brought to Ankara the following propositions: 1. In exchange for immediate permission for transit and/or use of Turkish bases for German troops for an operation against the South Caucasus and Iraq, the German government offers: 2. Fifty per cent of the output of the Mosul oilfields for the dura- tion of the war to be handed unconditionally to Turkey; on the conclusion of hostilities Turkey to guarantee preferential tariffs for German purchase of such oil as she needs from the entire output, which would be dispensed by Turkey. 3. Turkish mandate over Syria for a fifteen-year period, after which the mandate on completion of a "plebiscite" (the outcome of which would be guaranteed by the Germans) would revert to the Turkish states as a definitive possession. 4. Immediate cession to Turkey of the [Greek] islands of Lem-nos, Mytilene, and Chios, which, however, for the duration of hostilities, would continue to serve as bases for German and other Axis troops and submarines garrisoned or stationed there. 5. "Rectification" of the western frontier of European Turkey by cession of parts of Greek Thrace. Ambassador von Papen even ventured a public offer by telling a Spanish correspondent in Ankara: "In the Mediterranean Spain and Turkey would control the sea, and Turkey would also be allotted a sphere of interest in Syria and Iran. The peoples of Europe would be forced to co-operate with the new order; if they refused they would be starved into submission, and rebellion would be ruthlessly stamped out." The Turkish reply was: "Our national policy has been to yield territory to no one, and to take territory from no one." No more successful was Hitler's radio address "to the heart of the Turkish nation" on May 4, 1941, or the mission to Ankara of five Hitlerites who carried by air a dramatic message from the Fuehrer himself. A broadcast from Ankara pointed out that "German investigations made before the war established that the self-sufficient European power into which Germany wishes to make herself needs the whole of the Mediterranean, the peninsulas of Arabia, and the plateaus of Anatolia and Persia, as well as the waterways in this part of the world."
(The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, by Ernst Jäckh)

“The reward they demanded is disclosed in the correspondence between von Papen and von Ribbentrop: Bulgarian territory at Adrianople, a couple of islands in the Aegean Sea, the rounding off of Turkish dominions at the expense of Syria, and the inclusion in the secret part of the treaty of a general point concerning the "satisfaction of Turkey's wishes in the southern and eastern zones adjacent to her." Von Ribbentrop readily promised the Turks part of the territory at Adrianople ("primarily its eastern half; in any case, Turkey will get the road from Pytho to Adrianople") and "one or another island in the Aegean Sea," but he resisted the Turkish claim to a part of Syria.”
(New Times)

“The German Ambassador has brought many tempting proposals to Turkey. He has promised Syria, Irak, Grecian Thrace and the whole of Palestine. The Turks have never for a moment listened to this kind of thing, partly because of their loyalty to the British friendship, and partly because the re-incorporation of non-Turkish territories in the State would be inconsistent with Kemalist dogma.”
(Intelligence Digest)

“Germany on the other hand was quick to approach them with offers of frontier rectification in Western Thrace and in the hinterland of Edirne, both territories ceded by Turkey in the First World War.”
(Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality, by Selim Deringil)

“According to allied intelligence, German agents exposed the Kurds to propaganda insisting on the fact that, Turkey being allied by a treaty to Great Britain and France, they could not expect nothing from the Allies, and that it would be in their best interests to follow the policy of the Axis powers. After the decline of French power in the region the German commission in Syria, presided over by W.O. Von Hentig, made contact with Khalil ibn Ibrahim Pasha and Kamuran Badirkhan. At this point, German projects demanded a new reconciliation between the Kurds and the Armenians, further to which the Germans would assure the independence of Kurdistan and Armenia after German victory, on the condition that the Kurds and the Armenians conformed to Nazi directives and provoked trouble in Turkey.”
(Syria's kurds: history, politics and society, by Jordi Tejel)

Although the official attitude of the Ankara Government remained reserved in the Panturanian question and they withstood the temptation to commit themselves to an outsoken policy of territorial aggrandisement, significant soundings were taking place behind the scenes. The German Ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, reported by the end of July the existence of a Panturanian Committee set up in Istanbul which demanded the annexation of the whole of Azerbaijan. Its perhaps most prominent member, Nuri Pasha, the brother of Enver, came to Berlin in September and had a series of talks with Weizsacker and Woermann. At first he denied that Turkey wished to annex large portions of Soviet territory inhabited by Turkic nationalities. But later he came down to listing the Crimea, the Caucasus, the entire region between the Volga and the Urals and as far as Chinese Turkestan, as well as north-western Iran, as areas where Turkey, regardless of the cautious attitude of her present government, might in the future claim political "adjustment", if not direct control.
(India in Axis strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian nationalists in the Second World War, by Milan Hauner)

„Nuri offered the Germans his plans for creating independent states — allies but not satellites of Turkey — out of the Turkic populations in the Crimea, Azerbayjan, Turkestan, northwestern Iran and northern Irak.”
(Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation, by Jacob M. Landau)

“Ribbentrop si dichiara d'accordo con von Papen sui possibili sviluppi della idea panturaniana nel quadro delle sopite aspirazioni imperialistiche dei turchi. E ancora, durante la riunione del 24 agosto nella quale Ribbentrop discusse con Jodl, Ritter e Kroll, la politica verso la Turchia, tra le offerte « per provare la nostra sincerità nell'assecondare i desideri della Turchia riguardanti la sua sicurezza », venne suggerita la possibile costituzione di stati cuscinetto nel Caucaso. Di particolare interesse appare l'attività svolta da Nuri Pasa nel corso delle sue conversazioni berlinesi. È del tutto improbabile che il governo turco non ne fosse a conoscenza : nella sua prima visita a Weiszacker, il 10 settembre, egli affermava « di aver fatto visita al primo ministro turco prima della partenza e di averlo informato dei suoi piani. Questi ultimi erano molto vasti. Secondo il costume dei sogni turanici di tutti i tempi comprendevano la Crimea, l'Azerbajdjan, il Daghestan e inoltre, « parlando in termini generali, il territorio tra il Volga e gli Urali verso nord fino alla Repubblica sovietica di Tartaria », Turkestan incluso e la parte occidentale del Sinkiang, la parte nord-occidentale della Persia giù fino a Hamadan e una striscia di frontiera della Persia settentrionale dalla punta di sud-est del Mar Caspio lungo la vecchia frontiera sovietica, la regione di Kirkuk e Mossul, dal territorio iracheno, cosi come una striscia della Siria. Nuri riteneva possibile realizzare questo piano senza troppe difficoltà dopo la distruzione dell'Unione Sovietica (che era da ritenere scontata) e con una alleanza tra Germania e Turchia. Nuri Paga non parlava certo di annessione e respingeva risolutamente l'insinuazione che un simile programma fosse in contrasto con l'eredità di Ataturk che aveva impegnato la Turchia a non perseguire scopi al di fuori del suo territorio.”
(Il Politico: rivista italiana di scienze politiche)

“Der Anfang der Fünfziger stehende Bruder Enver Paschas bot sich zur Beratung der deutschen Stellen in allen Fragen des Kaukasus an. In der Zeit seines Aufenthalts sei er nicht beschränkt. Das Programm, das Nuri in den Berliner Unterredungen entwickelte, war durch und durch turanisch, pantürkisch, mit der bemerkenswerten Einschränkung, daß es bis auf gewisse Grenzkorrekturen keine Annektion vorsah. Gedacht war vielmehr an selbständige Staatsgebilde, die allerdings ihre politische Ausrichtung durch die Türkei erfahren sollten. Den Rahmen spannte Nuri soweit, wie es in turanischen Träumen eh und je üblich gewesen ist: die Krim, Asserbeidschan, Daghestan, „sowie im großen und ganzen das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural und zwar nördlich hinaufgehend bis zur Sowjetrepublik Tatarien", Turkestan einschließlich des westlichen Teils von Sinkiang, ferner den Nordwestteil des Iran bis hinunter nach Hamadan und einen Grenzstreifen des nördlichen Iran vom Südostzipfel des Kaspischen Meeres entlang der alten Sowjetgrenze, vom irakischen Gebiet die Gegend von Kirkuk und Mossul sowie einen Streifen Syriens.”
(Deutschland und die Türkei im zweiten Weltkrieg, by Lothar Krecker)

„Mit Billigung Ribbentrops arrangierte Papen eine Reise Nuri Paschas nach Berlin. Dort hatte er am 10., 11., 18. und 25. September 1941 eingehende Besprechungen mit Staatssekretär Weizsäcker und Unterstaatssekretär Woermann, über die beide an Rib- bentrop berichteten. Nuri unterhielt Kontakt mit der türkischen Botschaft in Berlin. Ministerpräsident Saydam war außerdem über seinen Besuch informiert. Um gegenüber den faschistischen Diplomaten die türkischen Aggressionsziele nicht zu weit zu enthüllen, sprach Nuri in folgendem Sinne: „Die panturanische Bewegung will für die außerhalb des Gebietes der heutigen Türkei liegenden Turkvölker selbständige Staatsgebilde schaffen. Diese Gebiete sollen also, von gewissen Grenzkorrekturen abgesehen, nicht von der Türkei annektiert werden, wohl aber ihre politische Ausrichtung von der Türkei erhalten." Unter dem Deckmantel der „politischen Ausrichtung" durch die Türkei forderte Nuri folgende Einflußgebiete: Aserbaidshan, Daghe- stan, die Krim, das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural mit der Hauptstadt Kasan, das gesamte sowjetische und chinesische Turkestan, d. h. also Mittelasien und Sinkiang und den Nordwestteil des Irans. Dazu fügte er noch das Gebiet von Mossul und Kirkuk und einen Streifen Syriens, womit wohl die „gewissen Grenzkorrekturen" gemeint waren !“
(Türkei und Afghanistan: Brennpunkte der Orientpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg, by Johannes Glasneck, Inge Kircheisen)

Das Programm, das Nuri in den Berliner Unterredungen entwickelte, war durch und durch turanisch, pantürkisch, mit der bemerkenswerten Einschränkung, daß es bis auf gewissen Grenzkorrekturen keine Annektion vorsah. Gedacht war vielmehr an selbständige Staatsgebilde, die allerdings ihre politische Ausrichtung durch die Türkei erfahren sollten. Den Rahmen spannte Nuri soweit, wie es in den turanischen Träumen eh und je üblich gewesen ist: die Krim, Aserbeidschan, Daghestan, „sowie im großen und ganzen das Gebiet zwischen Wolga und Ural und zwar nördlich hinaufgehend bis zur Sowjetrepublik Tatarien", Turkestan einschließlich des westlichen Teils von Sinkiang, ferner der Nordwestteil des Iran bis hinunter nach Hamadan und einen Grenzstreifen des nördlichen Iran vom Südostzipfel des Kaspischen Meeres entlang der alten Sowjetgrenze, vom irakischen Gebiet die Gegend von Kirkuk und Mossul sowie einen Streifen Syriens . . .
(Die deutsche Türkeipolitik und ihre Auswirkungen auf Kurdistan, by Rudolf Bürgel)

I see a distinct lack of Manchuria and Korea :p

Frankly, I'm not into Turan-wank all that much. Even I initially was skeptical of Ottoman ability to occupy Central Asia militarily, until I learned about the relative de-Russification of the region during Russian Civil War and how little liveable space the region has.

This is a map a friend of mine created. Low res and blurry, but you still can see the think red borders. In addition to Ottoman Turkestan, it also depicts Empire of Siberia as Russian monarchy exile. Mine version won't go that route though.

http://i.imgur.com/2ldyX.jpg

And here's something more... umm esoteric from the same man....

It's Ottoman's debt settlement.

http://i.imgur.com/vrGBm.jpg

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 20:48

Hmm... Something to hold Bismark then.

Also, could you tell more about your Ottoman Empire's opinion on Cathaholic, Orthodox and Protestant?

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 21:21

During the 19th century IOTL, muslim-christian relations did suffered to an extent from foreign jockeying of christian millets, and there were issues of capitulations and the disbandment of Janissary and uniformization and secularization of Ottoman law system which undermined non-muslims' judicial autonomy and extending military draft to them. This led to a stream of immigration of christians from Ottoman Empire to the Americas, which is why you have Arabic communities across Latin America. As the empire grows stronger and its muslim bourgeoisie larger and more confident, especially after it manages to shrug off capitulations, muslim-christian relations will get better. Christian groups which are native to and originate in Ottoman territories will be regarded just as Ottoman as the muslims and equal under secular law, while I would think Protestan missionary activities will be viewed with mild suspicion and as for Roman Catholics of Latin Rite, let's just say I have plans for them. Overall, 20th century OE will be just as tolerant as the US.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 21:29

Basically, this is the new hope for Middle East?

And economy, have you think of it?

NoemiChan

2013-11-08, 21:34

Basically, this is the new hope for Middle East?

And economy, have you think of it?

Middleast countries will be so dead when their oil runs out....

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 21:35

Who know? Just a glance at Ridwan's idea and I could tell that he plan not to let that happen.

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 21:42

Not really. I would guess Ottoman economy will basically tread to the right, only it won't be nearly as hostile to safety net and welfare as a number of OTL anglo states. There's the history of capitulations, under which the empire was very free trade but it was imposed by foreign powers and when you come down to it, was very preferential towards the christians, so expect a reaction to that. I don't see anything like Malaysian system happening though.

Middleast countries will be so dead when their oil runs out....

My TL's Ottoman Empire will retain the Balkans, which prior to its essential lost in OTL 1878, was experiencing a proto-industrial phase with rapidly growing muslim middle class. It was well before oil starts flowing, even in this TL where it'll be quite earlier. So while oil is going to be major part of Ottoman revenue, not only it'll be far less dependent on it then our Saudi Arabia, it'll become a full fledged first world industrial power. Still under the US though.

Vallen Chaos Valiant

2013-11-08, 21:53

Middleast countries will be so dead when their oil runs out....

For the ruling class, definitely. But for the common people? I say the sooner the government become dependent on taxes to support itself, the sooner the common people get more power. The greatest issue with oil revenue is that the government can ignore its people and still live in luxury, and this breaks the social contract and prevents the citizens from being able to improve their lives.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 21:55

Move to the next question: Israel. The relationship between the Empire with it?

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 21:59

Ottoman Empire was not anything like bedouin sheikhdoms of the gulf. It was a bureaucratic state with sophisticated political class and experience with democratic system. Add in a thriving middle class, then the empire of modern day will be just another first world industrialized country.

There will be no Israel. Jews will still migrate to Palestine though, but they'll only become one of many cultural communities there.

Fireminer

2013-11-08, 22:11

No Israel?

Weird...

Also, have you made a stat of possible ethnic?

Ridwan

2013-11-08, 22:30

It's Israel which was a weird happenstance, and will have no way of forming with a strong modern state ruling over middle east.

Ithekro

2013-11-09, 00:36

Remember Israel was made via a deal with the British Empire during the First World War (and revised post-war) and then later the United Nations after the Second World War. The Zionist movement would still be trying to get their old homeland back in the early 20th century. The amount of prosecution of Jews in various countries and if the region around Jeruselum is safe for Jews will deturmine how many immigrate from Russia and Europe as oppose to just heading for the United States.

Ridwan

2013-11-09, 02:04

IOTL, Zionists tried to get Palestine, either through diplomatic manuevers, proxies or offer to buy the land, but all were intercepted by Abdul Hamit II, who in OTL governed over an empire whose economy got thrown back into pre-industrial level, her previously veteran army entirely executed by Russia in 1878, and suffering from both burgeoning debt problem and massive refugee-induced social problems caused by territorial loss in Balkans. Even ridden by all those problems, OE managed to rebound and convince the entire Europe, save perhaps Britain, that it will only grow stronger, that only an overt costly decade-long military campaign to violently partition the empire, that she was finally brought down. In here, OE will avoid all the problems I mentioned above. While not up to France and Britain's level immediately, it's still a massive improvement in formidability compared to our world's case. Facing with such difference during its formative phase, I would think Zionism will going to adjust accordingly. Doesn't mean they won't underestimate Ottoman capabilities, but they'll either receive less confidence boost or be in for a greater surprise, facing a much stronger and more resourceful Abdul Hamit.

Fireminer

2013-11-09, 02:42

Who is the most influenced Muslim schoolar in modern day?

Ridwan

2013-11-09, 02:46

I'm not google, you know. Don't just ask random questions.

Ridwan

2013-11-09, 12:08

Quoting this post into Sumeragi's attention :

Jaa, he seems to be the type of people this ideology has seemed to often attract ! :eek:

Well this will significantly impact the modern concept of Korean minjok in formative phase. A lot more accentuation on outside connection, perhaps ? This can lead to slip into general Islamophilia. Previously I was skeptic of Islamic influence making inroad in any significant manner to Korea, but I might have to rethink it now... [1]

There's one thing though : while Korea won't be annexed to Japan, Ottomans will probably become a close ally of Japan. It can lead us to direct Ottoman-Korean diplomatic relation. On the other hand, Ottoman alliance with Japan will may lead it be perceived negatively by Korean nationalists. So I wonder if Shin would might be too early to bring Turanism into Korean nationalist ideology...

[1] By the way, will no annexation by Japan and subsequent cultural repression(which unintentionally undermined Buddhism in Korea) compromise the spread of christianity in Korea ? Or was there something more then just anti-Japanese sentiment and disillusion to Buddhism to the strength of christianity in the country ? I might have to postulate a stranger religious demographic situation in Korea then I initially thought it would become....

ChainLegacy

2013-11-09, 23:00

Who is the most influenced Muslim schoolar in modern day?

Avicenna IMO, for his influence on medicine, but also his contributions to philosophy. Al-Biruni is also up there, though not quite as famous.

Sumeragi

2013-11-14, 01:57

Quoting this post into Sumeragi's attention :

I personally think a "diluted" version of Islam that did not forbid the consumption of alcohol and pork might be an alternative to Christianity. The main reason for Christianity's popularity during the Joseon/Colonial era was because it was a major source of independent (Westernized) education. If the Ottomans can be a source of such advanced education, there is the chance that Islam might be able to make an impact, just like how it had a foothold during the Goryeo era.

Sumeragi

2013-11-14, 02:23

WI:Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni as Japanese Prime Minister in 1941 (http://ns1.alternatehistory.org/discussion/showthread.php?t=296603)

I would say this would be an interesting POD. Consider the following:

- Higashikuni-no-miya studied military tactics at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and École Polytechnique in Paris France, from 1920 to 1926, and actually loved his life in France, having a French mistress, enjoyed fast cars and haut monde. He was also

- Higashikuni-no-miya was opposed to the war with the Western Allied powers from the start, and was part of the conspiracy (with Prince Asaka, Prince Takamatsu, and former Prime Minister Konoe) which ousted Tojo in July 1944 following the fall of Saipan to American forces.

- Higashikuni-no-miya didn't really need to restrain the pro-war faction led by Generals Sugiyama, Tojo, and Muto. Given his popularity in the military (he was the choice of both Chief of staffs of the Army and the Navy for prime minister), all he had to do was to stop the preparations of war from proceeding using his general influence. This is important because of the one of the reasons for the US dropping negotiations with Japan was due to the war plans authorized by Tojo being leaked and Japanese troopships were on their way to Indochina. Given who Higashikuni-no-miya was, he could easily have kept such military actions from taking place and thus get negotiations with the US going.

- This is a bit of speculation, but supposing that the Hull Note is still issued, Higashikuni-no-miya would likely have had the mind to see that the "China" in "The Government of Japan will withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and from Indochina." does not necessarily have to include Manchukuo, and thus use that loophole to make a settlement with the US.

- No soldier was "fanaticial" enough to even consider assassinating a member of the Imperial Family. Even the assassination attempts on the Showa Tenno were not done by right-wing, but either left-wing or Koreans.

Leo, mind posting the above in that thread?

Ridwan

2013-11-14, 05:41

I personally think a "diluted" version of Islam that did not forbid the consumption of alcohol and pork might be an alternative to Christianity. The main reason for Christianity's popularity during the Joseon/Colonial era was because it was a major source of independent (Westernized) education. If the Ottomans can be a source of such advanced education, there is the chance that Islam might be able to make an impact, just like how it had a foothold during the Goryeo era.

I'm not really aiming to replace Christianity with Islam, merely trying to figure out how strong of a wave of Islamophilia will be generated from strengthened ties with muslim world, in which case will be a spilling over from Japan anyway. Should we create the link through Minjok, I can see a comparable situation with Polish Sarmatianism during Commonwealth era which led Polish nobles to emulate Ottoman clothings and behavior. Basically using Ottoman Perso-Islamic culture as basis to "reconstruct" Turanic appearance and spirit. Though I would suspect there will be some more "puristic" approach as well, but Ottoman Turks are still much more advanced then the Kazakhs or Mongols.
There's also the factor of Young Ottomanism as well, which will might provide a model for more moderate approach to modernization(providing native-cultural context to insert modern western ideas and values), being a reaction to overly westernizing Tanzimat reformism.
It's just that Islamic missionarism has never been as organized and pro-active as the Christian counterpart. I can see a Sufi Tariqat or two setting up shop in the country, but it's rather hard to see them appeal so strongly to the lower middle class, or as active in setting up schools as the christian churches, though I'm still not decided on this. My thinking is that at most muslims will make for a sizeable minority, half the number of Catholics, yet pretty influential and associated with the upper class. Might include Hui immigrants, too.

Sumeragi

2013-11-16, 21:52

Something you might like, LeoXiao:

http://i.imgur.com/hfEKjt4.jpg

In 1948, the Soviet Union agreed with the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea on the annexation of three Korean (Majority) Autonomous Regions of Andong, Jilin, and Jiandao to the future government of North Korea. Jiando was to be expanded from just Yanbian to include Mudanjiang.

http://i.imgur.com/AAxxqiO.jpg

Obviously this didn't go well with Mao, and thus until the Korean War there were numerous border clashes which only stopped when the UN forces started marching north towards Manchuria. Kim basically gave up all Manchurian claims in order to get the aid of PRC.

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 01:01

Red Plum Blossom Maps

1912: With the Xinhai Revolution succeeding with Sun Yat-sen at the head with Japanese backing, Manchuria comes under Japanese protection with Mongolia being semi-independent of both China and Japan. Korea gains the formerly disputed region of Kando, which it had claimed against Qing.

http://i.imgur.com/NdVdAW9.png

1923: The Siberian Intervention of the Japanese/Korean forces allows Kolchak to maintain some power in Siberia. However, this comes at a great price: Karafuto was ceded to Japan, and Transmamur became a Japanese/Korean protectorate. At the same time, Korea was rewarded the Korean majority regions of Manchuria for its contribution to the Siberian Intervention, which allowed Japan to keep from being bankrupt and facing rice riots. Meanwhile, Turkic/Islamist forces gain control of Uyghuristan, and has the support of Japan/Korea.

http://i.imgur.com/kM8L5Rd.png

1928: With the marriage of Chichibu-no-miya of Japan to Princess Deokhye of Korea, and with aggressive penetration of Japanese and Koreans to Manchuria combined with pan-nationalism calling for the unity of East Asia, the Empire of Korai is established by the combination of Korea, Manchuria, and Transamur in a federal union.

http://i.imgur.com/hkBVeh3.png

Rokumonsen

2013-11-17, 01:38

^what about the ROC at that time? I'm sure Chiang won't take that lightly. He may prepare for a war with them.

Scenario: A Sino-Japanese War with the Koreans and Soviets.

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 01:49

^what about the ROC at that time? I'm sure Chiang won't take that lightly. He may prepare for a war with them.

Assuming he gains power in the first place. After all, it is no other than Sun who sold the land of the Tartar to Japan.

Ithekro

2013-11-17, 02:04

What's that going on in the north The Soviet Union or Russia suddenly divided?

LeoXiao

2013-11-17, 02:53

Red Plum Blossom Maps
I'm going to leave the Korean and Japanese parts of the scenario to you to figure out.

1912: With the Xinhai Revolution succeeding with Sun Yat-sen at the head with Japanese backing, Manchuria comes under Japanese protection with Mongolia being semi-independent of both China and Japan. Korea gains the formerly disputed region of Kando, which it had claimed against Qing.
Is "Manchuria" is still ruled by the Qing court, or is it some kind of national republic?

1923: The Siberian Intervention of the Japanese/Korean forces allows Kolchak to maintain some power in Siberia. However, this comes at a great price: Karafuto was ceded to Japan, and Transmamur became a Japanese/Korean protectorate. At the same time, Korea was rewarded the Korean majority regions of Manchuria for its contribution to the Siberian Intervention, which allowed Japan to keep from being bankrupt and facing rice riots. Meanwhile, Turkic/Islamist forces gain control of Uyghuristan, and has the support of Japan/Korea.
Seems vaguely plausible so far, depending on which details you back it up with.

1928: With the marriage of Chichibu-no-miya of Japan to Princess Deokhye of Korea, and with aggressive penetration of Japanese and Koreans to Manchuria combined with pan-nationalism calling for the unity of East Asia, the Empire of Korai is established by the combination of Korea, Manchuria, and Transamur in a federal union.

Is the "penetration" on the part of the Japanese limited to Manchuria, or does it include Korea as well? Or would it be correct to say that the "victim" here is Manchuria under the nominal Qing state? And if Korea is being exploited as well, wouldn't that cause the nationalist rhetoric of Prince Eui to result in anti-Japanese backlash, as it did IOTL in China? Is Ito able to "protect" Korea from other Japanese elements who want to utilize the peninsula?

Now, on to China. I recently found a map of the Qing Empire that seems to roughly agree with your proposed boundary, so that's that. As for government and warlords, it seems that the Manchu dynasty has not been ended so much as sent back to its ancestral land. IOTL, General Yuan Shikai was promised the position of President by Sun in exchange for getting Emperor Kangde (Henry Puyi) to abdicate, and this is what led to his abuses of power and disastrous self-coronation. ITTL, the Japanese have done the work of negotiating with the Manchus, again through Ito, I expect, which removes the need for Sun to deal with Yuan Shikai.

Yuan Shikai is, however, still a powerful general, but without his political clout, he won't be able to force the government to move from Nanjing to Beijing. The ROC will thus develop with far less internal chaos, as it was the actions of Yuan Shikai that made military strength more important than political expertise. You would effectively have China begin earnest development in 1912-4 rather than the OTL 1928. Mostly likely instead of being KMT-dominated, you would have a few other major parties as well, such as the Progressive Party (進步黨) led by Liang Qichao.

Chiang Kai-shek would may well still join the military, but not get anywhere politically unless he improves his credentials later on, as a firm civil government has already been established.

Ironically, China and the Chinese would probably be less concerned with Japanese imperialism than IOTL, as most of the Japanese expansion seems to be directed at Manchuria and then Russia. You might even have Chinese Republican troops fighting alongside Japanese and Koreans against the USSR as a diplomatic gesture.

There is a bit of an issue with all the Chinese already living in Manchuria, as many Chinese nationalists in China itself will use that as grounds for claiming the area as rightfully Chinese. This sentiment would not get very far in any serious political sense, however, as long as the Manchu court still has legal sovereignty over the land. This does not, however, erase the millions of Han Chinese and deeply sinicized Manchus living in the area. Even with full-blast Korean and Japanese immiaration, those peopel will stil form a plurality, and you really have to be careful. If OTL 1931-45 is anything to go by, inter-ethnic relations can EASILY go bad. Depending on how you deal with these problems, which range from assimilation policy to demographic relocation/disenfranchment (how much will the "natives" be discriminated against?) to outright genocide (let's hope not, but these things happen), resistance from a) locals and b)"Manchuria lobbies" in the ROC can and will have a profound effect on future developments.

What's that going on in the north The Soviet Union or Russia suddenly divided?
Siberia is ruled by the Whites under Kolchak. I do have a problem with this, however. Once the USSR had firm control on European Russia, they would have full potential to conquer Siberia as well. This would likely force whatever surviving White government there is to end up in Transamur, and it would be a source of neverending Soviet-Japanese tension.

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 04:06

Is "Manchuria" is still ruled by the Qing court, or is it some kind of national republic?

I'm thinking a Manchukuo around Fengtian and the rest being under Chang Tso-lin as Governor. Basically, Japan would use the old divide and conquer.

IIs the "penetration" on the part of the Japanese limited to Manchuria, or does it include Korea as well? Or would it be correct to say that the "victim" here is Manchuria under the nominal Qing state? And if Korea is being exploited as well, wouldn't that cause the nationalist rhetoric of Prince Eui to result in anti-Japanese backlash, as it did IOTL in China? Is Ito able to "protect" Korea from other Japanese elements who want to utilize the peninsula?

Japanese and Koreans are the ones penetrating Manchuria. It's basically the same process that happened in OTL Manchukuo, where Koreans were led to think of themselves as being above the Chinese and thus exploit Manchuria. I'm accelerating the process by two decades, thus industrializing both Korea and Manchuria faster.

Now, on to China. I recently found a map of the Qing Empire that seems to roughly agree with your proposed boundary, so that's that. As for government and warlords, it seems that the Manchu dynasty has not been ended so much as sent back to its ancestral land. IOTL, General Yuan Shikai was promised the position of President by Sun in exchange for getting Emperor Kangde (Henry Puyi) to abdicate, and this is what led to his abuses of power and disastrous self-coronation. ITTL, the Japanese have done the work of negotiating with the Manchus, again through Ito, I expect, which removes the need for Sun to deal with Yuan Shikai.

Yuan Shikai is, however, still a powerful general, but without his political clout, he won't be able to force the government to move from Nanjing to Beijing. The ROC will thus develop with far less internal chaos, as it was the actions of Yuan Shikai that made military strength more important than political expertise. You would effectively have China begin earnest development in 1912-4 rather than the OTL 1928. Mostly likely instead of being KMT-dominated, you would have a few other major parties as well, such as the Progressive Party (進步黨) led by Liang Qichao.

One thing I'm not too sure of is if Sun would be able to keep a stable government. He was never really a good politician, being a pure revolutionary. I'm led to believe that he'll most likely destabilize politics enough to the point that when he dies, China will fall into the same kind of warlord period. Even with Japanese support Sun would still not have overwhelming superiority over the other warlords, and with Yuan still around there is the likelihood that the Republic would only enable the warlords to prepare for the eventual showdowns.

Chiang Kai-shek would may well still join the military, but not get anywhere politically unless he improves his credentials later on, as a firm civil government has already been established.

We'll think about this.

Ironically, China and the Chinese would probably be less concerned with Japanese imperialism than IOTL, as most of the Japanese expansion seems to be directed at Manchuria and then Russia. You might even have Chinese Republican troops fighting alongside Japanese and Koreans against the USSR as a diplomatic gesture.

There is a bit of an issue with all the Chinese already living in Manchuria, as many Chinese nationalists in China itself will use that as grounds for claiming the area as rightfully Chinese. This sentiment would not get very far in any serious political sense, however, as long as the Manchu court still has legal sovereignty over the land. This does not, however, erase the millions of Han Chinese and deeply sinicized Manchus living in the area. Even with full-blast Korean and Japanese immiaration, those peopel will stil form a plurality, and you really have to be careful. If OTL 1931-45 is anything to go by, inter-ethnic relations can EASILY go bad. Depending on how you deal with these problems, which range from assimilation policy to demographic relocation/disenfranchment (how much will the "natives" be discriminated against?) to outright genocide (let's hope not, but these things happen), resistance from a) locals and b)"Manchuria lobbies" in the ROC can and will have a profound effect on future developments.

We'll see how it goes. Frankly I see Japan restricting immigration to the point that ethnic Han will be less than 40% of the Korai population by 1946.

Siberia is ruled by the Whites under Kolchak. I do have a problem with this, however. Once the USSR had firm control on European Russia, they would have full potential to conquer Siberia as well. This would likely force whatever surviving White government there is to end up in Transamur, and it would be a source of neverending Soviet-Japanese tension.

There will be more active participation on the part of Japan, Korea, and Legion, so I don't necessarily see Kolchak being pushed all the way into Transamur.

Fireminer

2013-11-17, 04:39

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 04:54

Most likely a fictional account of the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangxi-Fujian_Soviet).

LeoXiao

2013-11-17, 04:58

Just want to ask about this particular event (I couldn't find it on Google): I stumbled upon a note in a work of Lu Xun. It said that in November 1933, the 19th battalion of Nationalist Army contacted Communist to form a People Revolution Government in Fujian. So if anyone can, please tell me more detail about this.

Yes. A few generals of the 19th Route Army formed the "Fujian People's Government" in 1933. They were defeated in 1934 after failing to help the CCP.

Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_People's_Government)

Fireminer

2013-11-17, 05:08

Thanks! And I wonder whether could the American found out that Chiang had lotted their funding and then stopped giving him more money?

LeoXiao

2013-11-17, 05:17

I'm thinking a Manchukuo around Fengtian and the rest being under Chang Tso-lin as Governor. Basically, Japan would use the old divide and conquer.
You'd do better to have the Manchus at least nominally in control of the country (if not in actuality), because someone like Zhang Zuolin is going to promote Chinese identity which will not be to the liking of the Japanese.

One thing I'm not too sure of is if Sun would be able to keep a stable government. He was never really a good politician, being a pure revolutionary. I'm led to believe that he'll most likely destabilize politics enough to the point that when he dies, China will fall into the same kind of warlord period. Even with Japanese support Sun would still not have overwhelming superiority over the other warlords, and with Yuan still around there is the likelihood that the Republic would only enable the warlords to prepare for the eventual showdowns.
I'll have to read more, but my understanding is that the warlords were allowed to take power in the first place not because they were itching to throw the country into chaos from the start, but because the repeated inability of anyone to set up a lasting or legitimate civil government based on the stated ideal (looking at you, General Yuan) caused political power to be squeezed into military circles, starting with the Beiyang government.

Incidentally, my TL has the Beiyang and the southern civil governments develop along totally separate lines, instead of pretending to be the same ruling body.

One thing of note: As Frank Dikötter mentions in his book "The Age of Openess: China Before Mao", Chinese democracy was actually comparatively well-developed in 1928-37, with a fast-growing electorate, it's just that it was plagued by corruption and military violence, as well as disunity at the central level. Local administrations often proved to be rather stable. (I don't know much about India, but maybe they would be comparable?) I have the entire book (c. 110 pages) photographed and will be transcribing it, along with other books, over the next months and years.

We'll see how it goes. Frankly I see Japan restricting immigration to the point that ethnic Han will be less than 40% of the Korai population by 1946.Either way, race relations are gonna be an issue. 40% is no small number.

There will be more active participation on the part of Japan, Korea, and Legion, so I don't necessarily see Kolchak being pushed all the way into Transamur.
It's possible, but you might want to look at other ways for the Soviets to have the steam taken out of them. For example, you could have the battle for Poland go differently and involve higher attrition, allowing the Whites to consolidate their Siberian holding before the Reds finish whatever they're doing in the west. Otherwise the USSR is just gonna use its logistical advantage to overpower the east. Either way a second war for Siberia is probably inevitable, though you might well be able to delay it to the 30s or 40s.

Rokumonsen

2013-11-17, 05:26

And I wonder whether could the American found out that Chiang had lotted their funding and then stopped giving him more money?

IMO, even if they knew (which I'm absolutely sure they did), they'll still show some support to him, since he's an anti-communist leader. Maybe they'll just depose him once the communist threat in China is neutralized, which of course never happened in OTL.

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 10:35

You'd do better to have the Manchus at least nominally in control of the country (if not in actuality), because someone like Zhang Zuolin is going to promote Chinese identity which will not be to the liking of the Japanese.

Which is what I want. That's why I chose 1928 for the founding of Korai: it happens to be the perfect year for comparison to OTL, never mind the ATL importance of the year. Plus, it works for Japan since at first they did trust him enough to support him in the first place.

I'll have to read more, but my understanding is that the warlords were allowed to take power in the first place not because they were itching to throw the country into chaos from the start, but because the repeated inability of anyone to set up a lasting or legitimate civil government based on the stated ideal (looking at you, General Yuan) caused political power to be squeezed into military circles, starting with the Beiyang government.

The military forces were never truly unified in the Early Republic, which combined with Yuan crushing the Second Revolution, planted the seeds for the warlord era. In addition, most Revolutionary Armies from different provinces were disbanded after the establishment of the Republic of China, and many officers and soldiers felt that they were not compensated for toppling the Qing Dynasty, leading to much discontent against the new government among the military. In a ROC where Sun does have supreme power as President but without an overwhelming force to keep order, there is enough landmines which Sun would have to defuse, which I don't see happening even with a robust Chinese democracy. This ultimately means that if Sun is not able to establish complete power (which I don't see happening without Yuan completely coming under Sun, something I don't see happening unless we kill him off like in Superpower Empire), this will start blowing up with his death.

Incidentally, my TL has the Beiyang and the southern civil governments develop along totally separate lines, instead of pretending to be the same ruling body.

I'll be looking into our TL later.

One thing of note: As Frank Dikötter mentions in his book "The Age of Openess: China Before Mao", Chinese democracy was actually comparatively well-developed in 1928-37, with a fast-growing electorate, it's just that it was plagued by corruption and military violence, as well as disunity at the central level. Local administrations often proved to be rather stable. (I don't know much about India, but maybe they would be comparable?) I have the entire book (c. 110 pages) photographed and will be transcribing it, along with other books, over the next months and years.

Corruption, military violence, disunity at the central level. All of those will happen even if Sun manages to retain power.

Either way, race relations are gonna be an issue. 40% is no small number.

I WANT it to be an issue. Korai is after all a hyper version of OTL Manchukuo.

It's possible, but you might want to look at other ways for the Soviets to have the steam taken out of them. For example, you could have the battle for Poland go differently and involve higher attrition, allowing the Whites to consolidate their Siberian holding before the Reds finish whatever they're doing in the west. Otherwise the USSR is just gonna use its logistical advantage to overpower the east. Either way a second war for Siberia is probably inevitable, though you might well be able to delay it to the 30s or 40s.

USSR will not be as large as it was in Europe in OTL, so no worries. Plus, I already plan to have a Siberian War in 1944, and then a final confrontation in 1946.

LeoXiao

2013-11-17, 15:41

Which is what I want. That's why I chose 1928 for the founding of Korai: it happens to be the perfect year for comparison to OTL, never mind the ATL importance of the year. Plus, it works for Japan since at first they did trust him enough to support him in the first place.
If you plan on having him still be assassinated, choose a different date and perhaps even year. Butterflies, butterflies.

The military forces were never truly unified in the Early Republic, which combined with Yuan crushing the Second Revolution, planted the seeds for the warlord era. In addition, most Revolutionary Armies from different provinces were disbanded after the establishment of the Republic of China, and many officers and soldiers felt that they were not compensated for toppling the Qing Dynasty, leading to much discontent against the new government among the military. In a ROC where Sun does have supreme power as President but without an overwhelming force to keep order, there is enough landmines which Sun would have to defuse, which I don't see happening even with a robust Chinese democracy. This ultimately means that if Sun is not able to establish complete power (which I don't see happening without Yuan completely coming under Sun, something I don't see happening unless we kill him off like in Superpower Empire), this will start blowing up with his death.

Corruption, military violence, disunity at the central level. All of those will happen even if Sun manages to retain power.
I agree, but it won't devolve to the extent to which central disunity existed IOTL. Yuan may be an opportunist warlord, but Sun is still going to outlive him by 9 years (assuming their illnesses go the same way and they die at the OTL times), and Yuan's power is undoubtedly lessened, which gives Sun more opportunities to form a more permanent political authority. This isn't to say that military factions won't exist and that everything will be clockwork, but it's a vast improvement over OTL.

The reason I brought up the OTL comparison is because frankly you tone down the worst aspects of the warlord era by diminishing the power of Yuan Shikai, the label of "anarchy" quickly stops being legitimate. when you look at the Warlord era, you see that political and economic development was progressing relatively well despite the fact that the country was divided between what were essentially large gangs. The term "Warlord era" tends to make one imagine that all of China was a battleground, which simply isn't true. The wars between warlord armies did not generally cause a great loss of life, nor did they result in much physical damage. If the central government is more solid in its foundation between TTL 1912 and 1925 (which it probably will be), it will mean significant political improvements down the road, as the mere fact that it is a stronger, more credible presence compared to its OTL version in Sun's lifetime will overshadow the TTL status of warlord ambition.

Corollary: More credible government also means more credible political factions. It won't only be Sun's KMT trying to run things. This is one of the results of more "politics, less warfare" as explained above.

I WANT it to be an issue. Korai is after all a hyper version of OTL Manchukuo.
Well, unfortunately, there's plenty of nasty stuff from OTL to work with...
Don't forget that abuses (whether perceived or actual) of the Han population will strengthen pan-Han identity in China proper, prompting would-be warlords to latch onto and work with this rhetoric in their political discourse. Again, a reason for further trust/legitimacy of the central govt. as compared with OTL.

Now of course, perhaps you are trying to find a way to have China proper split up as well, but not being clear about it. This is certainly doable. China of the period is quite malleable, as OTL has shown.

Fireminer

2013-11-17, 23:25

No, it's. The French invasion of An Nam was started due to their missionaries got executed. What if Emperor Tu Duc of us actually accept a limited influence of Cathaholic, as well as making reforms like the Japanese?

Sumeragi

2013-11-17, 23:34

Then say the damn POD at the same time as the damn article. We don't have time to be engaging in waste of time.

Fireminer

2013-11-18, 00:43

Here goes:

- Early 19th century: The reign of Emperor Quang Trung. A large number of elite were sent to France, Portugal and England. The tension between the brothers Nhac, Trung and Lu (Whom rules the Middle, North and South Vietnam respectively) raising up.

- Middle 19th Century: Emperor Quang Trung lives longer than IRL. The conflict to unite Vietnam. The remaining of Nguyen Dynasty once again try to return to power, but failed due to no forgein help - China failed, and Western countries now have quite good relationship with An Nam.

...

Don't know what will happen next?

Ithekro

2013-11-18, 01:18

Don't know what will happen next?

Universe implodes?

Rokumonsen

2013-11-18, 02:37

An early Vietnam War?

Ridwan

2013-11-18, 12:02

1) I agree, but it won't devolve to the extent to which central disunity existed IOTL. Yuan may be an opportunist warlord, but Sun is still going to outlive him by 9 years (assuming their illnesses go the same way and they die at the OTL times), and Yuan's power is undoubtedly lessened, which gives Sun more opportunities to form a more permanent political authority. This isn't to say that military factions won't exist and that everything will be clockwork, but it's a vast improvement over OTL.

The reason I brought up the OTL comparison is because frankly you tone down the worst aspects of the warlord era by diminishing the power of Yuan Shikai, the label of "anarchy" quickly stops being legitimate. when you look at the Warlord era, you see that political and economic development was progressing relatively well despite the fact that the country was divided between what were essentially large gangs. The term "Warlord era" tends to make one imagine that all of China was a battleground, which simply isn't true. The wars between warlord armies did not generally cause a great loss of life, nor did they result in much physical damage. If the central government is more solid in its foundation between TTL 1912 and 1925 (which it probably will be), it will mean significant political improvements down the road, as the mere fact that it is a stronger, more credible presence compared to its OTL version in Sun's lifetime will overshadow the TTL status of warlord ambition.

Corollary: More credible government also means more credible political factions. It won't only be Sun's KMT trying to run things. This is one of the results of more "politics, less warfare" as explained above.

2) Well, unfortunately, there's plenty of nasty stuff from OTL to work with...
Don't forget that abuses (whether perceived or actual) of the Han population will strengthen pan-Han identity in China proper, prompting would-be warlords to latch onto and work with this rhetoric in their political discourse. Again, a reason for further trust/legitimacy of the central govt. as compared with OTL.

Now of course, perhaps you are trying to find a way to have China proper split up as well, but not being clear about it. This is certainly doable. China of the period is quite malleable, as OTL has shown.

1) I agree with this. Without Yuan's presidency it will be harder for China to descend into OTL level of military anarchy. It will still be quite decentralized and ineffectual, and Sun's political incompetence will likely fuel local commanders' defiance toward central government, but I would think China will land on no deeper then ramshackle state.

Though perhaps a Japanese invasion would put an end to that.

Also one more thing : Sumeragi, do you have any plan for Kang Youwei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Youwei) ? I've been rather fond of him ever since his featured role in Hendryk's "Superpower Empire: China" TL. He got ahead of himself with his visions and many of his ideas were pretty crude, but I'm inclined to think they can provide useful enema to both traditional Confucian values and Chinese modernism. Surely I would doubt he can restore the monarchy ITTL, let alone crowning himself emperor, but I can see that, without Yuan's regime and with a dependable ally in the politically savvy Liang Qichao, he'll might end up in a position to influence Chinese political and intellectual discourse reasonably. I think he can provide a lot of AH potentials to experiment upon.

2) I guess it's safe to assume then Korai Manchuria won't outlast WW2. What will become of it later ? I personally kinda fancy the idea of Manchuria becoming a multi-ethnic melting pot. I guess if the Soviets will get it in the end weirder elements can be poured into the mix, like deported Volga Germans and Tatars. IOTL the Jewish Autonomous Oblast is just up north. Maybe in this case a Jewish area will be set up within Manchuria.

Now I'm interested to know more about TTL's world after the war, though I guess I can't push Sumeragi to spoiler us much about it. I'm eager to find out how the twin empires will avoid American occupation ITTL.

Sumeragi

2013-11-18, 14:11

If you plan on having him still be assassinated, choose a different date and perhaps even year. Butterflies, butterflies.

Not assassination. Just noting the irony of the date.

I agree, but it won't devolve to the extent to which central disunity existed IOTL. Yuan may be an opportunist warlord, but Sun is still going to outlive him by 9 years (assuming their illnesses go the same way and they die at the OTL times), and Yuan's power is undoubtedly lessened, which gives Sun more opportunities to form a more permanent political authority. This isn't to say that military factions won't exist and that everything will be clockwork, but it's a vast improvement over OTL.

The reason I brought up the OTL comparison is because frankly you tone down the worst aspects of the warlord era by diminishing the power of Yuan Shikai, the label of "anarchy" quickly stops being legitimate. when you look at the Warlord era, you see that political and economic development was progressing relatively well despite the fact that the country was divided between what were essentially large gangs. The term "Warlord era" tends to make one imagine that all of China was a battleground, which simply isn't true. The wars between warlord armies did not generally cause a great loss of life, nor did they result in much physical damage. If the central government is more solid in its foundation between TTL 1912 and 1925 (which it probably will be), it will mean significant political improvements down the road, as the mere fact that it is a stronger, more credible presence compared to its OTL version in Sun's lifetime will overshadow the TTL status of warlord ambition.

Corollary: More credible government also means more credible political factions. It won't only be Sun's KMT trying to run things. This is one of the results of more "politics, less warfare" as explained above.
1) I agree with this. Without Yuan's presidency it will be harder for China to descend into OTL level of military anarchy. It will still be quite decentralized and ineffectual, and Sun's political incompetence will likely fuel local commanders' defiance toward central government, but I would think China will land on no deeper then ramshackle state.

Though perhaps a Japanese invasion would put an end to that.

Seems like we're on the same line of thoughts, but arriving at different conclusions. My belief is that despite any political advances, there will be lockdown along the road which can easily turn into the central government being hung up. I suppose we can figure this one out.

One thing which will affect China negatively is the lack of Sino-German cooperation in this world, due to several deaths during the Xinhua Revolution and Manchuria sucking up most of German investments. This will certainly have a negative effect on Chinese industrialization and military development.

Also one more thing : Sumeragi, do you have any plan for Kang Youwei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Youwei) ? I've been rather fond of him ever since his featured role in Hendryk's "Superpower Empire: China" TL. He got ahead of himself with his visions and many of his ideas were pretty crude, but I'm inclined to think they can provide useful enema to both traditional Confucian values and Chinese modernism. Surely I would doubt he can restore the monarchy ITTL, let alone crowning himself emperor, but I can see that, without Yuan's regime and with a dependable ally in the politically savvy Liang Qichao, he'll might end up in a position to influence Chinese political and intellectual discourse reasonably. I think he can provide a lot of AH potentials to experiment upon.

I'll think about it. As I said, Chinese politics isn't really my front.

Well, unfortunately, there's plenty of nasty stuff from OTL to work with...
Don't forget that abuses (whether perceived or actual) of the Han population will strengthen pan-Han identity in China proper, prompting would-be warlords to latch onto and work with this rhetoric in their political discourse. Again, a reason for further trust/legitimacy of the central govt. as compared with OTL.

Now of course, perhaps you are trying to find a way to have China proper split up as well, but not being clear about it. This is certainly doable. China of the period is quite malleable, as OTL has shown.

Not necessarily split up, but divided internally enough to avoid the wank that was Superpower Empire.

2) I guess it's safe to assume then Korai Manchuria won't outlast WW2. What will become of it later ? I personally kinda fancy the idea of Manchuria becoming a multi-ethnic melting pot. I guess if the Soviets will get it in the end weirder elements can be poured into the mix, like deported Volga Germans and Tatars. IOTL the Jewish Autonomous Oblast is just up north. Maybe in this case a Jewish area will be set up within Manchuria.

Now I'm interested to know more about TTL's world after the war, though I guess I can't push Sumeragi to spoiler us much about it. I'm eager to find out how the twin empires will avoid American occupation ITTL.

Lots and lots of fireworks.

LeoXiao

2013-11-18, 15:46

Seems like we're on the same line of thoughts, but arriving at different conclusions. My belief is that despite any political advances, there will be lockdown along the road which can easily turn into the central government being hung up. I suppose we can figure this one out.

One thing which will affect China negatively is the lack of Sino-German cooperation in this world, due to several deaths during the Xinhai Revolution and Manchuria sucking up most of German investments. This will certainly have a negative effect on Chinese industrialization and military development.

Not necessarily split up, but divided internally enough to avoid the wank that was Superpower Empire.
Then it seems like China ITTL would be more comparable to India - modest degree of central authority that can't really get an solid grip over competing interests within the country. All in all, probably better than OTL.

re: Germans in China, probably those roles would be augmented by experts from other Western nations, including the USA, which IOTL had set its economic sights on China at the end of the 19th century.

Maybe you could have it so that the drive to push for Mandarin standardization runs out of steam in the south, so places like Guangdong for instance would run local government in Cantonese, similar to how it is done in OTL HK. Probably in the long run economic and practical considerations would make knowledge of Mandarin virtually a necessity (similar to English in mainland Europe) for those speaking other dialects, but the process would be stretched out a great deal.

Sumeragi

2013-11-18, 18:09

Then it seems like China ITTL would be more comparable to India - modest degree of central authority that can't really get an solid grip over competing interests within the country. All in all, probably better than OTL.

More comparable, but certainly a lot looser. Your timeline is certainly giving me a lot to think about how far Sun can centralize power in the first years.

re: Germans in China, probably those roles would be augmented by experts from other Western nations, including the USA, which IOTL had set its economic sights on China at the end of the 19th century.

Not sure if augmented would be the word here. Foreign experts might fill in part of the gap, but I believe that the sale of Manchuria might send enough vibrations which might screw with things. Really have to think about balancing foreign interest.

Maybe you could have it so that the drive to push for Mandarin standardization runs out of steam in the south, so places like Guangdong for instance would run local government in Cantonese, similar to how it is done in OTL HK. Probably in the long run economic and practical considerations would make knowledge of Mandarin virtually a necessity (similar to English in mainland Europe) for those speaking other dialects, but the process would be stretched out a great deal.

That reminds me: Perhaps we can make Zhuyin fuhao become a full-blown phonetic alphabet? Might actually accelerate the division of China in a cultural sense.

Initial division of China: Got the following map from your threat at AH, and thinking I might expand Mongolia and Tibet a bit more.

http://i.imgur.com/ozILtZsl.jpg (http://imgur.com/ozILtZs.jpg)

What I'm not quite sure whether Tibet or Mongolia would have been able to exhort that much influence. I can see Mongolia being backed by Japan, but Tibet seems to be a wild card.

Ridwan

2013-11-18, 18:44

1912: With the Xinhai Revolution succeeding with Sun Yat-sen at the head with Japanese backing, Manchuria comes under Japanese protection with Mongolia being semi-independent of both China and Japan. Korea gains the formerly disputed region of Kando, which it had claimed against Qing.

I'm afraid I'm not quite following this. I know IOTL some Japanese did get involved with Xinhai revolution, but it wasn't exactly having Japanese backing. Is this pure butterfly effect, or a direct consequence of the PoD ? Also if Yuan didn't force Puyi's abdication then how exactly will he get overthrown and exiled to Manchuria ?

Sumeragi

2013-11-18, 19:12

Direct consequence of PoD. Ito was fairly neutral on Sun, while the Japanese government (which was now in the hands of Yamagata) was generally hostile to Sun. However, Ito surviving the assassination attempt and in the process being influenced by "A Discourse on Peace in East Asia" decides to throw his lot with Sun, and helps to support Sun. When Xinhai erupts, Sun is able to come on top with Japan "persuading" abdication without Yuan being a factor.

Ironically, by failing to kill Ito, Ahn manages to achieve his goal of Korean Independence and Pan-Asianism by converting his target to the cause.

Fireminer

2013-11-18, 19:42

What about the Colonies? Would the Rise of Sun and Korea Independence encouraged them? A number of Nationalist parties were based on Sun's Three Principles of the People.

Ridwan

2013-11-18, 20:00

TTL's Xinhai revolution won't likely be any different in its impact to colonies, and Korea is irrelevant in this regard.

LeoXiao

2013-11-18, 22:19

More comparable, but certainly a lot looser. Your timeline is certainly giving me a lot to think about how far Sun can centralize power in the first years.My timeline is also incredibly vague. I purposely avoided many details about the nature of the ATL Qing dynasty from 1900 to its end in 1907, and the exact unfolding of the ATL republican revolution. All that needs to be known is that Yuan Shikai unilaterally formed his own Republic of China while the rest under Sun decided on a federation. Wang Jingwei is then following this up after Sun's death with a gradual shift to communist rhetoric as it is proving a nice tool both in gaining the support of Japan and cleaning up warlords.

India is, IIRC, already quite loose. It first lost much of its Muslim sections, and even today they have trouble making Hindi the main language as only a couple hundred million people speak it. Linguistically, China is always going to be more unified than India on account of Hanzi, but the OTL profusion of a government-mandated semiformal vernacular is by no means the only way this fact can manifest.

What will probably never happen, barring major geopolitical disaster, is that Cantonese or Wu speakers see themselves as "not Chinese". They may bicker and fight with the ev0l Beijingers as much as they want, but it will always be an internal feud. IOTL most of the Chinese nationalists were in fact southerners who did not come from Mandarin-speaking backgrounds.

Not sure if augmented would be the word here. Foreign experts might fill in part of the gap, but I believe that the sale of Manchuria might send enough vibrations which might screw with things. Really have to think about balancing foreign interest.
IOTL, the Americans were concerned with Japan's taking over Manchuria for the precise reason that it would interfere with their Open China policy. Perhaps Japan wouldn't want to let just anyone into Manchuria, but if you can present it to Western companies as a more stable place to invest in, it could be quite profitable.

Also, what became of the Anglo-Japanese alliance ITTL?

That reminds me: Perhaps we can make Zhuyin fuhao become a full-blown phonetic alphabet? Might actually accelerate the division of China in a cultural sense.Zhuyin would be almost identical in practical function to Japanese kana. Trying to replace the whole written language with it would be unworkable— however, its implementation would benefit vernacular works and novels quite a bit, as you would be able to approximate slang vocabulary that has no Hanzi equivalent, kind of how some native Japanese phrases are written in katakana. Allowing regionalisms to enter written language to a greater degree would help foster a better-articulated sense of regional identity.

Initial division of China: Got the following map from your threat at AH, and thinking I might expand Mongolia and Tibet a bit more.

What I'm not quite sure whether Tibet or Mongolia would have been able to exhort that much influence. I can see Mongolia being backed by Japan, but Tibet seems to be a wild card.
Ah, yes, that MonAngel guy. He should be happy with the status I gave his people.

Tibet is probably not possible as some warlord will probably claim parts of it as "Chinese". You can make the process more difficult, however.

LeoXiao

2013-11-18, 22:42

This "zhuyin as kana" thing got me thinking.
Take the following Mandarin sentence, meaning "He got sick today, so he didn't go to school and didn't eat any food at all."

Fully Hanzi: 他今天生病了，所以沒有上學，而且一點兒飯也沒吃。

Zhuyin applied conservatively: 他今天生病ㄌㄜ`，ㄙㄨㄛˇㄧˇ沒有上學，ㄦ´ㄑㄧㄝˇ一點ㄦ飯ㄧㄝˇ沒吃。

Zhuyin applied liberally: ㄊㄚ今天ㄕㄥ病ㄌㄜ`，ㄙㄨㄛˇㄧˇ ㄇㄟ´ㄧㄡˇ 上學，ㄦ´ㄑㄧㄝˇ一點ㄦ飯ㄧㄝˇㄇㄟ´吃。

Fully Zhuyin: ㄊㄚㄐㄧㄣㄊㄧㄢㄕㄥㄅㄧㄥ`ㄌㄜ`，ㄙㄨㄛˇㄧˇ ㄇㄟ´ㄧㄡˇ ㄕㄤ`ㄒㄩㄝ´，ㄦ´ㄑㄧㄝˇ ㄧㄉㄧㄢˇㄦㄈㄢ`ㄧㄝˇ ㄇㄟ´ ㄐㄧ。

Really, at the end of this test, I just can't get over how redundant this all seems. Kana for Japanese makes sense because the particles don't have relevant kanji for them, but there are proper hanzi for like 95% of anything you'd ever want written in vernacular Chinese. It doesn't help that some Mandarin sounds look awkward. Maybe that just means the zhuyin system is imperfect and could benefit from some simplifications, such as using "ㄝˇ" instead of "ㄧㄝˇ" to convey the sound made by "也".

Ithekro

2013-11-19, 00:09

And what of the European colonies in Asia and the Pacific and the spheres of influence in China. Not to mention the Americans in the Philippines. Their goal would be to keep an Asian power from growing to rival them. Before 1905 and the defeat of the Russian Navy and end of the Russo-Japanese War, the Europeans didn't seriously consider any Asian country to be a rival, much less an equal in world matters.

With all this going on in China, what are the Imperial powers doing to keep the balance of power in check...and that is what they usually did. Especially the British.

Sumeragi

2013-11-19, 00:10

India is, IIRC, already quite loose. It first lost much of its Muslim sections, and even today they have trouble making Hindi the main language as only a couple hundred million people speak it. Linguistically, China is always going to be more unified than India on account of Hanzi, but the OTL profusion of a government-mandated semiformal vernacular is by no means the only way this fact can manifest.

What will probably never happen, barring major geopolitical disaster, is that Cantonese or Wu speakers see themselves as "not Chinese". They may bicker and fight with the ev0l Beijingers as much as they want, but it will always be an internal feud. IOTL most of the Chinese nationalists were in fact southerners who did not come from Mandarin-speaking backgrounds.

Depends. There is always the possibility that an anti-Sun, whose ideology speaks against the concept of Zhonghua minzu or united Han ethnic group. Need to find the suitable person, though, and frankly I see more of a political split than an ethnic one.

IOTL, the Americans were concerned with Japan's taking over Manchuria for the precise reason that it would interfere with their Open China policy. Perhaps Japan wouldn't want to let just anyone into Manchuria, but if you can present it to Western companies as a more stable place to invest in, it could be quite profitable.

Moving towards Open Door policy, at least for the Anglo-Americans.

Also, what became of the Anglo-Japanese alliance ITTL?

Trying to see if I can keep it going for a decade. The Great Depression will kill it after that.

Ah, yes, that MonAngel guy. He should be happy with the status I gave his people.

I'll have to read further later.

Tibet is probably not possible as some warlord will probably claim parts of it as "Chinese". You can make the process more difficult, however.

Probably. Only with British support can Tibet even try to keep Qinghai.

Ridwan

2013-11-19, 07:31

I've said that I'm partial to Leo's take on what will become of TTL's China. As I understand it, eventhough Chinese military was already fragmented to begin with, Yuan really was the one who sew the seeds for perennial inter-clique warfare. Here he won't be able to apply it from the top, however I can see that Nanjing will have little means to subdue the Beiyang Clique for quite a while. What will it do ? Can Nanjing government use them as the bogeyman to unite everyone else ? Will Japanese find a potential ally in them later ?

Sumeragi

2013-11-19, 18:20

One thing that bothers me: In raising funds, Sun promised a lot of concessions and also sold 1000% return bonds. These various kind of fund sources will place an enormous debt on the new Republic if Sun is going to go the integrity path and attempt to pay them. With Japan Ito can easily arrange repayment using Manchuria, and Korea can regain Gando, but what of the others? This will be a rough start for Sun, since in OTL he didn't have to deal with this with Yuan gaining power, but in our TL, Sun will face major problems.

Ridwan

2013-11-20, 12:23

IOTL at the time of abdication the Republicans were nowhere close to taking Beijing, I would assume they won't perform much better here. Beiyang Army was perhaps strong enough to actually try taking over the country, a.ka. a destructive force, without them being tied into Republican establishment. But perhaps that will be the scapegoat employed by the Republic to rally the southern armies.

At any rate, central control over the north will likely be particularly weak.

Anyway, a little AH question : what would it take to make Japan a country with large polyglot immigrant population the way the better European countries are by present day ?

LeoXiao

2013-11-20, 13:21

Depends. There is always the possibility that an anti-Sun, whose ideology speaks against the concept of Zhonghua minzu or united Han ethnic group. Need to find the suitable person, though, and frankly I see more of a political split than an ethnic one.
Like I said earlier, Sun's KMT doesn't have to be the only major party. You could have the "Progressives" under Liang Qichao (he supported constitutional monarchy but with the monarchy gone he would have to modify his position) and others, maybe including Kang Youwei, present a more...liberal opposition to Sun's nationalist platform. This party could also suck up a lot of the people who IOTL would become Communists.

One thing that bothers me: In raising funds, Sun promised a lot of concessions and also sold 1000% return bonds. These various kind of fund sources will place an enormous debt on the new Republic if Sun is going to go the integrity path and attempt to pay them. With Japan Ito can easily arrange repayment using Manchuria, and Korea can regain Gando, but what of the others? This will be a rough start for Sun, since in OTL he didn't have to deal with this with Yuan gaining power, but in our TL, Sun will face major problems.
Indeed. My knowledge of economic principles is laughably pathetic, so I can't say much more about this. It could help lead to distrust in his KMT and the rise of the aforementioned "Progressives" in the 1920s and 30s, especially as the Depression sets in.

IOTL at the time of abdication the Republicans were nowhere close to taking Beijing, I would assume they won't perform much better here. Beiyang Army was perhaps strong enough to actually try taking over the country, a.ka. a destructive force, without them being tied into Republican establishment. But perhaps that will be the scapegoat employed by the Republic to rally the southern armies.

At any rate, central control over the north will likely be particularly weak.
The Beiyang would be foolish to try to conquer the entire country through military force, at least not at the onset. I believe Yuan would recognize this and try to negotiate his way into better positions of power, like he did IOTL. When he dies in the 1910s, we may or may not see him be succeeded by a worthy general to continue his ambitions.

Anyway, a little AH question : what would it take to make Japan a country with large polyglot immigrant population the way the better European countries are by present day ?
Kill off more Japanese in the war, but still have the economic boom of the postwar. A higher demand for labor encourages immigrants from, say, Vietnam or something.

Ridwan

2013-11-20, 14:14

1) The Beiyang would be foolish to try to conquer the entire country through military force, at least not at the onset. I believe Yuan would recognize this and try to negotiate his way into better positions of power, like he did IOTL. When he dies in the 1910s, we may or may not see him be succeeded by a worthy general to continue his ambitions.

2) Kill off more Japanese in the war, but still have the economic boom of the postwar. A higher demand for labor encourages immigrants from, say, Vietnam or something.

1) Yeah, I won't count such wisdom pass Yuan. But if his force won't be enough to take over the country then he can't take the entire China hostage. If so, then the best he can get would be, at first, comfortable autonomy and a stretch of fiefdom in the north. The Beiyang Clique can perhaps, improve their fortune by occasionally offering assistance to deal with unrests if it will come to that.

2) I guess it will require retaining Taiwan. Chinese labor during Korean War boom can set a nice precedent to be later followed by Koreans, Indonesians and Filipinos.

Sumeragi

2013-11-20, 14:27

Does anyone know how Yuan actually persuaded the Qing Court? Trying to not base things on the dramatized 1911 Jackie Chan movie (although taking a feather from that scene is appealing).

Fireminer

2013-11-20, 17:43

Well, I once read in a Vietnamese document that Yuan used himself to promise personal protection to Puyi. Doubtful, since we know what kind of person is Yuan.

Ridwan

2013-11-20, 20:18

Does anyone know how Yuan actually persuaded the Qing Court? Trying to not base things on the dramatized 1911 Jackie Chan movie (although taking a feather from that scene is appealing).

I haven't even watched it yet :heh:

Well, if Yuan won't accept the revolution and instead choose to march to Nanjing, what will that exactly do ?

Fireminer

2013-11-20, 20:31

Bloddy warfare.

Hey, could anyone tell me how much influenced the Revolution to Chinese rural areas? For everything I've read, not so much. So if Ridwan's above idea really happened, would the shooting occurs mostly in the cities?

Sumeragi

2013-11-20, 21:39

tXBCrQ9_pOc

Ridwan

2013-11-20, 21:49

I'm asking about what will it do to China as whole. Estranged Beiyang Army would, I think, be a uniting influence for revolutionary armies. Or perhaps, Beiyang Army will crush the Republicans or at least damage it so much, that it puts them into position to unite China piece meal from there.

Sumeragi

2013-11-20, 23:32

"An exceedingly unreasonable claim made by the Chinese government regarding border disputes between China and the Soviet Union prompted Soviet Premier Khrushchev to snap, "Chinese national strength does not reach beyond the Great Wall. The Chinese border has never gone beyond the Great Wall. If the Chinese continue to make such absurd claims and refer to their ancient myths, we will certainly consider such a stance as nothing short of a declaration of war." Khrushchev gave the Chinese quite a tongue-lashing, which we can interpret as the Soviet Communist Party's displeasure at its Chinese counterpart's attempt to distort history."

Interesting to say the least.

LeoXiao

2013-11-21, 01:06

When did Khrushchev say that? At some point in the late 50s both sides really hated each other. From my readings Mao did seemingly all he could to insult the man.

Sumeragi

2013-11-21, 02:45

I found a way to reduce the population of Manchuria..... without deliberate plans.

*Evil smile*

Ridwan

2013-11-21, 02:50

Give me my Manchurian melting pot ! :p

Sumeragi

2013-11-21, 02:58

A melting pot requires sacrifice.

Ithekro

2013-11-21, 03:08

Does that require nuclear testing to take place there?

Sumeragi

2013-11-21, 03:17

No no, nothing of the sort.

LeoXiao

2013-11-21, 03:17

I'm thinking starvation or emigration to Siberia.

Sumeragi

2013-11-21, 04:41

Union of Asian Socialist Republics

The slatemate of the Battle of Mukden, where most of the Japanese land forces were decimated and the Russians too bloodied to fight further, led to the end of the war in Japan's favor after the battle of Tsushima. However, the large death count led many to question the motives of the Japanese government, leading to the birth of a socialist movement. In addition, the imperialist actions of the Empire alienated many more people, towards the path to Pan-Asianism.

Sun Yat-sen's conversion to socialism was another spark leading to the formation of the Union of Asian Socialist Republics. While Sun did not abandon his Three Principles of the People, he place a great focus on the socialist aspect of Minsheng, bringing the support of the Chinese Communist Parties into the fold. The threatening left/right-wing conflict of the Nationalists was concluded with left-wing supremacy during the life of Sun, which Chiang Kai-shek fought bitterly when he came to power. This socialist aspect of the Three Principles survived the annex which Chiang supplied to the Principle of Minsheng, becoming the bonding force between the Communists and the left-wing Nationalists.

The imperialist participation of Japan in the Great War heightened the socialist support in Japan, and when the Siberian Intervention continued to drain blood and riches, the people had had enough. Riots throughout the country turned into a revolution, in which the Japanese Communist Party was able to gain the reins of government. The Emperor was spared into quiet retirement, for he was still considered the symbol of the nation and an unfortunate man who was manipulated by the evil imperialists who had surrounded him. The murder of the Tsar and his family shocked many in Japan, making the nation distance itself from the Bolsheviks. At the same time, the Far Eastern Republic was overturned, where a Menshevik government was installed, who joined the Japanese in establishing the Union of Asian Socialist Republics, comprised of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and FER.

The 1920's was an age of development for the UASR. Becoming the light for the oppressed colonies of Asia, the Union preached Pan-Asianism, anti-Bolshevik, anti-colonialism, and anti-fascism. The member republics developed industries, of which the FER provided resources, Japan the capital and labor, and Korea the energy and chemicals. In 1931, the Manchurian Incident allowed the UASR to establish the Manchurian Socialist Republic. While becoming a major power, the Union was forced into war with Chiang's China when a shootout in Beijing started after some Nationalist forces lynched a Chinese Communist Party member at Lugou Bridge, resulting in the unauthorized invasion of of UASR-held Beijing. The Union declared total war on the "Fascist Regime of the Reactionary Chiang Kai-Shek", starting the Great Asian Liberation War. The USSR used the war as an opening to harass the FER.

1941 was the year that the entire world became engulfed in hell. Germany launched in invasion of the Soviet Union, which the UASR used to their advantage in occupying eastern Siberia after war was declared. In addition, the embargo set by Pro-Chiang USA also led to an attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing the entire world into conflict. Now the is split into three sides: The Allies, the Axis, and the Asian Socialists. With support from the oppressed colonial people of Asia, the Union has started its march to liberate their comrades of the continent, and to bring down the Stalinists, the fascists, and the imperialists.

http://i.imgur.com/6o6tFAvl.png (http://imgur.com/6o6tFAv.png)

Ridwan

2013-11-21, 08:16

Sometimes I wonder whether you're a fascist or a stasserist, A-san ;p

Sumeragi

2013-11-22, 00:35

Hmmmm..... Perhaps Enver Pasha can be a bigger force.....

Ridwan

2013-11-22, 03:13

He was one flamboyant mofo with extraordinary ability to rise back after each time he falls. At least until he has successfully alienated everyone with his massive arrogance. He could've received more support had he not styled himself Emir of Turkestan, which led to fall out with the actual emirs and them pulling out their support for his adventure. He could've been savvier though, I wouldn't count that pass him. That would at least give him some extra years, enough to establish his dreamed country, before his personal weaknesses get the better of him and anger someone.

Sumeragi

2013-11-22, 11:28

Japanese Involvement in Manchurian Oil

New York Times reporter Hugh Byas estimated Japan’s Manchurian assets at $900 million in 1932, including an experimental plan for developing 5.8 billion tons of oil-shale deposits. In 1930, workers extracted 30,000 tons of heavy oil from crushed rock. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/japan-s-chinese-puppet-state.html)

Shale oil production was estimated for 1941 at 1,000,000 tons. What is happening in Manchukuo oil shale industry is not known with certainty. The original plan was to relieve Japan's oil problem by intensive exploitation of Manchurian shale. Conquest of the Dutch Indies may have altered these plans materially. Oil from shale has been produced at Fushun in Manchukuo since 1930. Output had reached approximately 123,000 tons in 1936, and 350,000 tons in 1939. Estimated capacity according to blue print plans for 1941 was to be 500,000 tons. (http://thetwentiethcentury.blogspot.ca/2013/06/1942-manchukuo-manchuria.html)

The oil was described by a Russian naturalist and anthropologist who traveled in the area duing 1907-8 and had a book about the cultures released in 1912 (Russian only) the locals used the oil which was found in puddles on the surface as both heating but more importantly (for them) as a protection vs the enormous mosquito swarms that lived(s) in the area during the summer time.(they coated furs as well as the livestock in the oil when the swarms was most prevalent) The main problem was two fold 1) an almost complete lack of any infrastructure in the area and 2) the oil is very heavy and sulfur rich which means it has to be refine before it is usable for industry in anyway. Then of course there is the fact the area has a very harsh climate and a topography that is really bad too. In short the Japanese could in theory begin building the underlying supporting infrastructure in OTL from 1931 when they took over Manchuria, but it WILL take years before they get any meaningful extraction begun. Refineries being build and pipelines for the thick crude as well as water being build (thick crude demands an enormous amount of water to being refined, around 30 to 40 times the amount of oil being refined). (http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/japan-finds-vast-oil-field-in-manchuria-in-1936.246384/page-2#post-9621198)

Oil shale started production in 1929 in China (Manchuria Fushun) by the Japanese. 1 t of oil was extracted out of 25 t of rocks. In 1961 China was producing one third of its total oil from shale oil, but it is very difficult to find any reliable data on production on a long period. Ken Chew IHS (OAPEC-IFP 2005 seminar) provides this graph, where China is the largest producer of shale for oil/chemicals! (http://www.hubbertpeak.com/laherrere/OilShaleReview200509.pdf)

Oil produced in manchuria and korea during ww2 came entirely from synthetic oil production. The largest plant was the Manshu synthetic oil plant at fushin - using oil shale as a raw material - max production attained 2800 barrels a day or around 1 million barrel a year. Small synthetic plants under construction at kirin and chinchow in manchuria never produced any oil. In korea there were 2 more small synthetic plants at agochi and eian with a combined capacity of less than 0.1 million barrels a year. Note 1 ton oil equals 7.3 barrels. By comparison in japan proper around 2 million barrels of natural crude were produced annually during the war with another say 1.5 million max of synthetic product. The usa production in 1941 was 1400 million barrels - 700 times that of japan for natural product ! The dutch east indies produced around 65 million barrels in 1940 and max japanese production in 1943 for that region was 50 million barrels. At the start of war japan had built up a stockpile of 45 million barrels of oil related products. Witp data seems to overestimate production in japan,korea and manchuria. Mind you japan did have big plans to build up the synthetic oil industry at home - plants were never built because they required vast amounts of steel etc which were just not available. (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=992645)

One of the things I found out about Japan is that they had a domestic oil industry that started in the 1890's, Nippon Oil and Hoden Oil were the two domestic firms. Standard Oil entered Japan's oil exploration field through a subsidiary called International oil but they sold out to Nippon oil in 1907. The Japanese wells / fields had a habit of drying up and needing new wells to drilled to keep up production. This lack of production stability and lack of long term over all growth is why Standard pulled out. By 1970 Japan had produced 176 million barrels of oil, production between 1920 and 1945 ranged between 1.3 and 2.6 million barrels year with 2 million barrels a normal year. Most of the production came from fields on Honshu with exploration on Hokkaido and Sakhalin; only Sakhalin got any type of real production going outside of Honshu it seems. It looks like 1916 was the all time high production year with 2,963,000 barrels. (Trek of the oil finders: A history of exploration for petroleum by Edgar Wesley Owen 1975 pgs 427-28 pgs 1516-17) (http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/reply/50632/Japan-discovers-oil-in-Manchuria-in-the-1930s#reply-50632)

The only reason I spoke of Japans total production till 1970 was to demonstrate that the while low there was sustained production. Also the Japanese had exploration and drilling experience; recall that the Japanese fields required constant drilling of new wells to maintain production. The Daqing Oil Field had an initial find depth of between 500 and 1,000 meters with some of the wells under 250 meters with some surface seepage occurring; later wells pushed mile plus depths. Nothing about the field to what I have read would be challenging in an exploration sense for the time period. The only reason it was not exploited sooner near as I can figure is that the area was in some form of chaos for most of the first half of the 20th century. Japan did put effort into Manchuria's coal and iron industry; they did open one oil field in Manchuria but that was done in the 40's (I believe) and not much effort was available to put into it. By the 1930's Japan had 40 years of oil exploration experience to draw upon and had been using sub surface geological mapping and exploration techniques as developed in the west. It would have been within there capability to map out and determine the rough size of the initial strike at least. Once this info was know it would be sure to bring more interest and resources from Japan to exploit the find. (http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/reply/50660/Japan-discovers-oil-in-Manchuria-in-the-1930s#reply-50660)

Japan hunted oil in Manchuria before World War II. In 1927 Japanese geologist found scattered asphalt in vugs of basalt and quaternary gravel deposits on the north western shore of Hulun Nur (lake), NW Manchuria. Geological Survey of China made a check survey of the area, and found the same asphalt in 1931. After establishment of Manchukuo, geological survey, tortion balance and refraction seismograph survey, and drilling were conducted during 1932-1941. One deep well (1,114m TD) and 21 core holes were drilled on the northern shore of the lake, but no potential oil were found. That the core hole drilled in Fuxin coal mine hit oil shows in 1938, led to extensive oil exploration program. Geological field party mapped a broad anticline located on east of Fuxin, and the core hole drilled on the anticline recovered some 30m thick sandstones (100-200m in depth) impregnating with oil. To explore this oil called on massive drilling campaign, and 47 or more wells were drilled on this anticline, but the reservoir quality was not good enough to establish commercial production. It is noteworthy to point out that the geologists engaged in Fuxin oil exploration thought that the oil came from Jurassic shales deposited in fresh water lake. In 1940 oil shows were found in the water wells near Chengde, and a one-month field check survey was conducted, and mapped a small anticline in Jurassic shales, but no further exploration was conducted. (http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/reply/50651/Japan-discovers-oil-in-Manchuria-in-the-1930s#reply-50651)

The Manchukuo Oil Monopoly (http://www.jstor.org/stable/25639401)

General conclusion: Accelerated firm occupation about two decades earlier, maintain a relatively "Open Door" policy, and you'll likely start swimming in oil by the late 1930's. Not enough to prevent wars, but enough to change the strategic viewpoint.

LeoXiao

2013-11-22, 15:08

I'll have to give it a deeper look later, but that is really interesting. There have been several threads on the subject of Manchuria oil on AH.com but the conclusion has always been that the tech of the time was not good enough to find it. This may change things.

Sumeragi

2013-11-22, 15:54

Daqing is significantly deeper (at around 850 meters) than most Japanese wells of that period from the Niigata and Akita regions. However, it is not very deep by the standards of the 1930s. The Japanese visited and imported oil from the Ellwood field of California where oil was struck at a depth of 3,208 feet (978 m) in 1928. During WW2, the Japanese drilled the discovery well of the giant Minas oil field in Sumatra which is at 2600 ft. The problem with finding oil at Daqing seems to have been that American (and Japanese?) geologists in the 1930s believed that oil developed only in shallow seas. Daqing had never been a sea and Li Siguang (T.S. Lee), who predicted oil at Daqing, was unusual in believing that oil could develop in lakes (http://www.jstor.org/stable/214371).

Basically, it's a matter of if Japan/Korai would bother looking for the oil, rather than whether there was the technology for it.

Ridwan

2013-11-23, 12:07

Since in my TL there will be a friendly oil supplier in Ottoman Empire and Korea won't be annexed, then I guess oil will be even less of an issue. The question is of course, still about China. And Europe. I'm beginning to think that the second great war won't be much of a world war.

Sumeragi

2013-11-24, 11:16

Some people have been discussing the Cyrillicization of Japanese for TTL. This is impossible given the nature of the Japanese language, which contains a huge degree of homophones (i.e. words that sound alike or identical). IOTL there were plans to get rid of kanji (Chinese characters) entirely but this idea was predictably shot down.

Not impossible. You can ask the Koreans why.

Ridwan

2013-11-24, 11:23

Sometimes I entertain the idea of replacing Kana with Hangeul or Hangeul-derived writing system.

LeoXiao

2013-11-24, 14:33

Not impossible. You can ask the Koreans why.

Eh, Korean's got like three times more vowels and consonant types to work with. Adds variation to the words.

I should amend to this: Not technically impossible, but very stupid.

Sumeragi

2013-11-24, 14:43

Japan already tried going full Romanization during the 1940's. Turns out that if Kun'yomi was used more, Kanji was not as needed.

Essentially, what would result from full Cyrillicization of Japanese would be most Sino-Japanese being exchanged for "pure" Japanese.

LeoXiao

2013-11-24, 14:59

Yeah, but how much onyomi could you feasibly replace? It would be like taking all the Latin and Greek out of English. The entire technical vocabulary would have to be redone (I suppose they might have Russian for that, though...).

Sumeragi

2013-11-25, 01:14

Quite a bit. Much of Japanese read in On'yomi is done out of convention. I actually found it relatively easy to try and read things in Kun'yomi than trying to read Korean in "pure" Korean.

LeoXiao

2013-11-25, 01:56

Could you take a technical manual or scientific paper (assuming no western loanwords), kunyomi-fy it, and have it still be easily readable? I find that difficult to imagine, limited as my knowledge of Japanese is. Of course, we are talking about a socialist regime here, so it might well happen.

Sumeragi

2013-11-25, 02:09

Given that most technical manuals and scientific papers use loanwords anyway, not seeing the point.

LeoXiao

2013-11-25, 02:14

Given that most technical manuals and scientific papers use loanwords anyway, not seeing the point.

Not seeing all that much katakana in here (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%82%AD%E7%B4%A0). Is there usable kunyomi for all that kanji?

Ridwan

2013-11-26, 23:50

Being English does not magically makes you stable and rich.

Sure it does, if and only if we're talking about lands that are in the temperate zone (amenable to those from the British Isles) and that don't have heavy indigenous populations to begin with. In such a setting, like in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and an ATL British Argentina, it would be easy for British settlers to move there and for British institutions and laws (which are generally superior to their Continental European counterparts) to take full effect. (A partial exception might be the plantation-based economy of the US South until relatively recently.) Other areas that the British colonized in, like India and much of Africa, are in the tropics and already have had large (and relatively advanced) indigenous populations, and British colonization there takes a very different form which is not amenable to early industrialization. The Anglophone Caribbean is an interesting case, because while it's a) not as developed as North America, W. Europe, Australia/NZ, etc., b) there were plantation economies, c) most of the people there are descended from African slaves, d) in the tropics, the folks there are much more devoted to the British ideal than the rank-and-file in India or ex-British Africa and are generally much better educated.

There are a number of ways white Anglophone countries could've become worse, especially Australia, with its rather lousy track record in political stability for a first world country. It could use a little bit more push towards actually sliding down from first world scale, especially had they gone for republicanism. The whole white socialism thing could've really gotten out of hand.

Sumeragi

2013-11-29, 07:34

Can someone ask about the situation in Korea for this TL (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=296250)? I have a few nuggets concerning OSS plans to use Korean paratroopers in Seoul for August 16th, 1945.

LeoXiao

2013-11-29, 17:46

I believe most or all of Korea is under Soviet occupation.

Sumeragi

2013-11-29, 21:11

I suppose I'll have to tear apart The Red's ignorance of Korean politics of the time. Kim will never come to power if the Soviets occupy most of Korea, and this isn't even considering the Korean Provisional Government.