Fatherland Falls

[Višeslav]

FATHERLAND FALLS
A Collaborative TL of the Interwar Years & Beyond​

Fatherland Falls is a closed collaborative timeline, so a few people are authoring it but we're not really looking for more contributors. The main guys on the project are @HeX @mikroraptor & myself, though I think Mikro & I are the MAIN MAIN contributors since Hex is taking a break from AH.com for a while (don't ask him about AMPU here please), & some other people have been contributing as well, all offsite

The POD is Germany collapsing into a civil war circa 1918, that is to say the German Revolution starting off way worse & spiraling into a massive internal conflict, with the allies actually occupying land & Germany being more firmly democratic as a result, no stab in the back theory & stuff, or at least it's weaker, I'm sure some far-right monarchist folks will still be saying that the SDP or someone were Jewish conspirators, but you'll see more of the mentality of the people as we post more. The general idea is German Civil War post WWI -> More stable Weimar Republic & many butterflies

Realism level is hard/soft on the sliding scale, so we try to be plausible, but may pick the second or third most likely outcome instead of the most likely one because of rule of cool. Posts will be in roughly chronological order, but we may skip around a bit depending on our inspiration & how developed each region is, so maybe Europe will be further ahead than Asia or something

Don't expect consistent posts, I will (not really) slap you if you do

I made a good chunk of the currently completed maps, so maybe expect some more posts from me initially, but Mikro is hard at work as well

Credit to Hex for the title card image above

Without further ado, let the thread begin

 

[Višeslav]

Chapter I | The Disintegration​

If the Great War was the war to end all wars, the German Civil War was the war to end the great war & along with the Russian & Chinese civil wars, was proof of just how unfitting that epithet was. With confidence in the Empire lost, the Social Democratic Party, a liberal party with socialist characteristics & a great deal of influence, declared a republic in the city of Weimar [like OTL]. Unfortunately, this declaration lacked the universal support the SPD had hoped for. While SPD-sympathies were quite widespread, Monarchists were still scattered throughout the country & Communists were not always completely friendly with the Social Democrats, & this emboldened the Kaiser & his supporters to continue fighting. Calls for Abdication were ignored & the monarchists in Prussia, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Wurttemberg, & Baden would continue to fight the Republicans, while the communists would, in regions they occupied, set up their own governments, while the allies advanced deeper & deeper into Germany.

The Pro-Peace Republicans did not hinder the allies & even received support from them, but without the Monarchists conceding, the Entente could not make peace with Germany in a formal sense, instead they occupied land & hoped for a swift republican victory. The war would drag on until 1922, with many interesting states cropping up in its wake. Between the "independent" Baltic duchies in personal union with Germany carved up by the Freikorps where local people were used as Serf labor & the loose confederation of Communist Workers' Republics throughout Germany which foreign observers have called "the most genuine expression of Marxist equality ever seen", there was a lot of variety. The disunity of the Sorbs (split between a Communist Workers' Republic, a pro-Polish Republic [in pinkish] pro-Czech & later pro-Republican People's/National Republic) even generated a whole new slang idiom, referring to people with unclear alignment (in politics or sports or anything really) as Ein Lausitzer, a Lusatian.


The Rhineland Crisis:

The French attempt at setting up an independent Rhenish Republic, although a catastrophic failure, nearly ended up breaking the Entente, with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George commenting

"If ever there was a greater threat to the preservation of the newly established peace in Europe than the French dabbling along the Rhine, I have not seen it"

though Georges Clemenceau replied

"If our allies want to complain about our actions in the Rhine, maybe they should stop lounging around on the beaches of Hanover & come muddy there boots where this war is still being fought".

The Rhenish Question would not be answered for a while, with all allied powers insisting the French leave the region & the French refusing until the area was retaken by the Germans in 1921, at which point the French Government had no real excuse for remaining in the region, but the loss of access to the Rhenish coal mines stifled France's initially very quick postwar recovery.


In the colonies:

The Allied occupation of German colonies was also complicated by this civil war, prompting the formation of the Allied Joint Commission on Africa & the Pacific to administer the [totally not annexed] occupied territories & get around the odd diplomatic situation




All in all, Germany's civil war made peace in Europe & the world a lot harder to attain but has left the republicans firmly in charge of the country. The Monarchist faction pushed further & further right politically, alienating most of its potential supporters, & to this day they remain a fringe faction called "Prussianists" by their enemies, advocating for all kinds of Anti-Slavic, Anti-Semitic, & expansionist policies & are seen as warmongers who want nothing but ruin for Germany by most of the population. Communism was hit less hard by its loss in the war with many far left parties remaining influential in German politics, most notable today being the German Worker's Party.

 

[Višeslav]

Chapter II | The New Order - Part 1 - Remnants:​

The German Right & The Legacy of The Freikorps & The Thule Society

The German political right has, since the end of the civil war, been an ever weaker force. The ideals of Monarchism, Militarist Expansionism, & Racialism have been largely replaced in mainstream society with Republican Egalitarianism, Democracy, & European Cooperation. Still, some hold on to these beliefs. As the civil war progressed, the monarchist faction slid further & further right. While early monarchists in Germany could be described as conservative, militaristic, & elitist, the rampant antisemitism & obsession with eastward expansion were not as widespread. They were present among some of the Kaiser’s advisors & supporters, they were not nearly a majority, many during the war were opposed to so much as the annexation of Russian Poland, let alone the ambitious plans proposed by the Imperial Army when they began to lose of a German empire from the netherlands & French Burgundy to Ukraine with Cossack & Baltic puppet states going as far as Turkestan, a state devoid of Jews in which Slavs would be slaves, serfs, & labourers in servitude to their German overlords. It was these ideas that would unfortunately carry on in a very small, select group of Germans.

The Freikorps, monarchist marauding paramilitaries in Republican & foreign territories, were disbanded & made illegal by the republic following the end of the civil war in 1922, but only a decade later, groups began to show up calling themselves Freikorps, with similar ideals to their predecessors, but radically different structures & methods. These new so-called Freikorps, often referred to as Volksfreikorps (people’s free corps) by apologists trying to differentiate them from the originals or “Kleinengrauen” (little greys, a derogatory term derived from their reduced power & common uniform colours). The Freikorps were originally gangs of young ultranationalists who would arm themselves with whatever could be found at home (hunting rifles, leftover guns from military service, crowbars, chains, hatchets, knives, etc.) & beat up Jews, Socialists, & Social democrats. Unlike their predecessors, with their formal government support, the Freikorps tend to be small & localized, meeting usually in bars & basements & sometimes renting public spaces or using open fields. Gradually, a dark grey military-style uniform became common among these groups, though at rallies regular grey shirts or even simply black armbands have been documented. Larger Freikorps events were usually rallies containing speeches about the restoration of imperial glory & sometimes German racial supremacy, after which music would play, beer would be served, & some form of mob violence against people or establishments would happen. Despite the initial illegality of these groups, they continue to exist into the modern day & the question of whether to tolerate them before they become violent is a hotly debated topic among Germans. Unlike the Freikorps, who are relatively disorganized & aggressive, another group in the German far right that has gained international notoriety is said to work in secret, a highly organized & hierarchical cabal known as the Thule Society.

The Thule Society, for many Germans has taken the place formerly held by the Jewish community, ironically enough. A shadowy group of elites working against the interests of the German people. The concept of the Thule as “the replacement for Jews in the conspiracy theories of modern German republicans” is so evident to the public that it has even been alluded to in the title of a book on their ideals which was named “the protocols of the children of Hyperborea” (a reference to the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion). However, there is one key difference between the Thule Society & the imagined Jewish cabals of earlier conspiracy theories: the Thule Society existed & was a visible influence on German politics. The Thule had their start as a racialist research society seeking to prove the superiority of the Teutonic Aryan race through proof of descent from Hyperboreans from Thule, a mythical land mentioned in Greek & Roman sources. They had some occult leanings as well, advocating a belief in the power of runes & practicing Germanic Pagan-inspired rituals. The organization sought to promote its goals of German dominance through both direct & covert action, but following the collapse of the empire, covert activities came to dominate their strategy. Many were disowned nobles & intellectuals, but there were the occasional working class members as well, especially men who “exhibited notably strong Aryan traits”. The only real requirement for membership was proof of pure Aryan ancestry completely devoid of Jewish genetic input. The group would meet in secret & form or infiltrate political parties to try to impose their will on wider German society. The organization was made illegal in 1939 & is widely believed by credible authorities on the topic to have been purged entirely, with any modern Thule organizations being successors established later. Still, this has not stopped many from claiming they still hold influence today. The Thule pervade popular culture as well, making easy antagonists for real world settings, especially for media set in the early postbellum period, with their first depiction being in the Yugoslav film & subsequent series “Shadows over the Balkans” [1], wherein a Belgrade detective is caught in the crossfires of a struggle between two secret societies, the Thule, & the Black Hand, which according to the show is an offshoot of & modern successor to the Order of the Dragon also referred to as the Lazarites (Lazarevci in the original Serbocroatian) which the show places as being founded before The Battle Of Kosovo by Lazar Hrebeljanović, & which shares a name with a Hungarian chivalric order. The next example of the Thule as villains would come in the form of the Polish film & book series Germania’s Resurgence (Odrodzenie Germanii), also a mystery series following the unravelling of a Thule plot to infiltrate & Germanize Poland from the inside.

Spoiler: NOTES

No map this time

postwar treaties map & post is coming & maybe a German Civil War wikibox, the currently finished maps are not all chronologically fitting for this part of the TL, so not them yet

Spoiler: [1)

Shadows Over The Balkans, (Senke Nad Balkanom in Serbian) is a real OTL TV show created by Dragan Bjelogrlić. & it's not bad if you like the interwar & mysteries, it is different from TTLs version in many ways, but I figured I'd throw in the name as an allusion to OTL since both do mention the Thule Society (that's not really a spoiler). The english title is "Black Sun" give it a watch if you can find a version with english subtitles, it has some good acting & is definitely interesting. A link to its Wikipedia page might be useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Shadows]

 

[mikroraptor]

Chapter II | The New Order - Part 2 - One Europe, Two Treaties

By November of 1918, the long, bloody conflict known as the Great War was over. The Central Powers were collapsing. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire had already surrendered, Germany was in civil war, and the Austrians were clinging to the last remnants of their empire. But, fighting did not stop. The civil war that was meant to be a short revolution to oust the Kaiser turned into a multifaceted quagmire, Poland, a German puppet with its strings cut, began to march into the lands of its neighbors to liberate their oppressed brethren with little resistance, and the many ethnic minorities in Austria-Hungary rose up against them.

The Entente Powers quickly grew concerned as their victory seemed increasingly pyrrhic and pointless in the public eye. Many blamed Germany and Austria for the war, and wanted them punished. When Emperor Karl attempted to surrender to the Entente, they accepted, providing that Austria-Hungary did so unconditionally. Despite protestations from the French, who mainly wanted vengeance against Germany, and had already declared Alsace-Lorraine to be reannexed to France, President Wilson believed that the guilt for the war lay with the Austrians, as their invasion of Serbia in 1914 had triggered 4 long years of death and destruction on the continent. The many ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary were supported in rising up and declaring independence, even as the Hapsburgs surrendered.

In January of 1919, representatives from the United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Romania, Armenia, the newly declared Turkish Republic, the British-backed Hashemite states of Iraq, Syria, and the Hejaz, Assyrian and Kurdish nationalists advocating for independence, Belgium, Denmark, observers from Canada, French Indochina, and each of the German factions, and representatives of the Austrian government, who were not allowed to propose terms for peace, only to accept or reject whatever the peace conference as a whole came up with.

The annexations of Alsace-Lorraine and the borders with Belgium and Denmark that had been de facto occupied since the outbreak of the civil war were recognized de jure, with tacit approval from the Republican Government observer. the Kiel Canal occupation by American and British forces since December of 1918 was also officially recognized as the Kiel Canal International Zone. Any further negotiations regarding the German borders were barred, which was an extremely controversial decision, and especially unpopular with France. Still requiring a scapegoat for the war, War Guilt was placed squarely upon the Austro-Hungarians, and they were required to pay reparations, as well as give up all territory east of the Tzisa*, Tyrol and Istria to Italy, and all their holdings in the Balkans to Yugoslavia, including Klagenfurt. They also officially lost Galicia to Poland, and recognized the Czechoslovak annexation of Slovakia and the Sudetenland. Germany's Colonies were placed under joint occupation by the League of Nations (which was also formed at the conference), their status to be formally determined when a unified German government could be negotiated with.

This settled the borders for Western and Southern Europe, and the Middle East. But what of Germany and Russia, which were still in the middle of civil war? And what of the breakaway states, like the Baltics and Poland? The League of Nations would attempt to bring about peace as quickly as possible, but it would still take until 1922** for an armistice between Germany's factions, Poland, and the USSR, which had triumphed over the White Army. A second conference at Versailles was held, and this time, Europe could finally have peace. the Soviets recognized Poland's claimed borders, in the east and the breakaway Baltic states, but retained Finland, the Ukraine, and most of the Caucasus. Germany was forced to give up the Saarland to France, as well as the entirety of Upper Silesia and the Poznan region, but managed to retain the Danzig corridor due to a free trade agreement between the Republican forces and Poland signed before the end of the civil war.

Although peace had arrived at last, the countries of Europe emerged from the Great War broken and unstable. This period would be known as the "Tumultuous Twenties" for good reason...

*despite Hungary's de facto independence from Austria since October 1918, they were treated with the same war guilt as Austria and punished severely, without a representative at the conference. They did not, however, cede Burgenland to Austria, due to a failed plebiscite, or have to pay any reparations.
**The end of the German Civil War and the Polish-Soviet war will likely be a topic for another update

 

[Višeslav]

For those of you interested in this thread, you're more than welcome to ask questions. I'll try to answer them about once a week for now

 

[Spamavalanche]

For those of you interested in this thread, you're allowed to ask questions. I'll try to answer them about once a week for now

sure why is armenia independent

 

[Višeslav]

sure why is armenia independent

A reasonable question. Part of it is just because it's cool but independent from turkey because the allies desire to punish someone if not Germany drove them to be harsher on the other defeated powers, the allies focused a good bit on carving up the middle east & independent from the Soviets because Armenia was part of their middle eastern policy, not their Russian involvement which ITTL was much reduced beyond Poland.

The Hashemite kingdoms might be misleading but they both have Iran-style British & French spheres of while the US insisted on Armenia & Assyria (which is home to both Assyrians & Kurds & the disproportionate power of the smaller Assyrian population is a major problem).

The allies were pretty present around there but put little effort into pushing further into Russia making Armenia both better protected as the British & French force in the area, though much smaller than the allied forces in Russia of our timeline is bigger than what was present in Armenia in the real world. But this also made the region seem less like a counterrevolutionary launching point & more like a peripheral breakaway to be dealt with later. The British & French, even after the American withdrawal are enough of a presence that the Soviets expand elsewhere to avoid an incident for the time being. It will have tensions with the Soviets & may see invasion in the future, kind of like the Lithuania, Estonia, & Latvia were otl but later than that. I can even see a pact with Turkey which also obviously has historical & demographic reasons to want its land to partition it once the allies withdraw fully but other factors might make this invasion hard, you'll see as we go.

Don't get me wrong, Armenian oil looks good to the Soviets but they have oil at home as well & most of its territory is historically Ottoman & not Russian so they have bigger fish to fry in the 20s. The USSR does fund communist movements in the country though & are 100% drawing up plans. Soviet aggression in Armenia is coming, it's just not there yet.

 

[Spamavalanche]

A reasonable question. Part of it is just because it's cool but independent from turkey because the allies desire to punish someone if not Germany drove them to be harsher on the other defeated powers, the allies focused a good bit on carving up the middle east & independent from the Soviets because Armenia was part of their middle eastern policy, not their Russian involvement which ITTL was much reduced beyond Poland.

The Hashemite kingdoms might be misleading but they both have Iran-style British & French spheres of while the US insisted on Armenia & Assyria (which is home to both Assyrians & Kurds & the disproportionate power of the smaller Assyrian population is a major problem).

The allies were pretty present around there but put little effort into pushing further into Russia making Armenia both better protected as the British & French force in the area, though much smaller than the allied forces in Russia of our timeline is bigger than what was present in Armenia in the real world. But this also made the region seem less like a counterrevolutionary launching point & more like a peripheral breakaway to be dealt with later. The British & French, even after the American withdrawal are enough of a presence that the Soviets expand elsewhere to avoid an incident for the time being. It will have tensions with the Soviets & may see invasion in the future, kind of like the Lithuania, Estonia, & Latvia were otl but later than that. I can even see a pact with Turkey which also obviously has historical & demographic reasons to want its land to partition it once the allies withdraw fully but other factors might make this invasion hard, you'll see as we go.

Don't get me wrong, Armenian oil looks good to the Soviets but they have oil at home as well & most of its territory is historically Ottoman & not Russian so they have bigger fish to fry in the 20s. The USSR does fund communist movements in the country though & are 100% drawing up plans. Soviet aggression in Armenia is coming, it's just not there yet.

thank you for the answer! oh and the awesome tl

 

[Višeslav]

thank you for the answer! oh and the awesome tl

Thanks man