The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)

[shadow]

I have a couple of questions first would the Allies take part in the invasion of Turkey and would this lead to them taking part in and invasion of the Balkans. If not then what are the Allied troops in the middle east doing after driving the Axis out of Western Asia. Second having read through the timeline if feels like the Allied war effort is almost constanly mocked and derided almost to the point were one has to wonder what the Allies did do that was important and not a joke.

 

[tuxer]

Second having read through the timeline if feels like the Allied war effort is almost constanly mocked and derided almost to the point were one has to wonder what the Allies did do that was important and not a joke.

It's a reversal of OTL where the Soviet war effort is ignored because of the Cold War.

 

[Marisa Kiridifferent]

It's a reversal of OTL where the Soviet war effort is ignored because of the Cold War.

Yeah and that the TTL AH.com is unreliable narrator at times.

 

[Alexander the Average]

I was wondering, how is the Proletkult movement regarded in post-revolution America, and is there an attempt to revive it? I have a few ideas for the fanfic thread that touch on it, and I just wanted to know what the cannon situation is?

Also, on a related by separate note, how is Alexander Bogdanov regarded ITTL? Is his work more well known, or is he condemned to his historic fate of largely being forgotten except as that guy who argued with Lenin that one time?

 

[tuxer]

I was wondering, how is the Proletkult movement regarded in post-revolution America, and is there an attempt to revive it? I have a few ideas for the fanfic thread that touch on it, and I just wanted to know what the cannon situation is?

Also, on a related by separate note, how is Alexander Bogdanov regarded ITTL? Is his work more well known, or is he condemned to his historic fate of largely being forgotten except as that guy who argued with Lenin that one time?

I think that it would be praised, specially at the height of the Cultural Revolution. In many ways the Cultural Revolution is the American version of Proletkult.

 

[Aelita]

I revised and updated the Janey Got Her Gun short story. It's posted here

EDIT: Feedback would be nice

 

[Mr. C]

That's it, you've officially made me a Major Jane fanboy.

 

[Miss Teri]

Very good, and I'm looking forward to more later about Jane and her experiences, both in and out of war.

 

[Libertad]

It's great to see another update, though I think you need to tinker with the old updates and make them "newer" as well.

 

[Miss Teri]

I just realized: was the IBF announcer briefly heard in the story supposed to be Edward Murrow? Because that announcer signed off with "Good Night and Good Luck", which was Murrow's famed sign off.

 

[Archangel]

Good update, Jello!

 

[BlahBlahBlah]

There were differences in the use of "leader" vs. "officer", like the leaders are all referred to as "leaders", but at the same time there are abbreviations like "CO", "NCO" and "OCS". Is this still because the term is coming into more official adoption, and/or reflecting a political difference? Or perhaps will the terms just become ossified and loose their association with the actual word "officer"?

Also:

The instructors were all were all women NCOs, all of them as tough as shoe leather.

It was great story! I loved reading it, and it and the other short stories really flesh out the world and make it seem more real, you can drop in the bits and pieces that show us the differences from OTL and add a human element while doing so. They're really fun and a blast to read, I'll always look forward to them.

 

[BootOnFace]

In regards to Janey, I just want to say that the Nehru jacket was not even invented until the 40's. I imagine the WFRA would have mandarin-collared jackets, but they would not be Nehrus unless Nehru ended up wearing WFRA army jackets in the late 40s and she's using the colloquialism for the interviewer.

And modern IUDs were invented by famous gynecologist Ernst Gräfenberg in 1929. If adopted by the Army in the 30s, they would probably be using Grafenberg Rings and refer to them as such. Knowing a little bit how language works, if the use of IUDs is mandatory in the Army, then it would probably end up being the most common form of contraception in America. People wouldn't refer to them as IUDs any more than we refer to Birth Control Pills as BCP. They'd probably just call them G-Rings, even long after the Grafenberg Ring is obsolete and they use modern hormonal or copper rings.

I love how the update goes more into women's experience in the WFRA. Seeing the open sexism by commanding officers makes me believe this is real.

 

[Nevermore]

Hard for me to offer anything other than "That was good" but, well, it was good.

That said: I think my favorite bits are the scenes where it's shown that the UASR is still going through a lot of growing pains. Specifically, the instances of sexism that Schafer either deals with directly or the atmosphere that permeates the armed forces. We've been told a lot about how great the UASR seems to be on its surface (though there are hints of darker things such as PubSec's continued active role as secret police circa the present) so it's interesting to see how much of it remains at this time largely unchanged from our world.

That said, I would actually like to see something I don't think I've seen mentioned before: a narrative account of what life on the home front is for the average *American. Perhaps Jane's brother or mother could work as our POV character? I know I'd read it.

If not them I think the story of an American exile in Canada, the UK, or Canada would be interesting. Or, since they're such a large part of the story but have been somewhat neglected until recently, Latin America and China.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Media about the South American theater (Co-written with Jello_Biafra)

While I’m sure that in most circles the South American theater is greatly eclipsed by the European, Asian, and African-Mediterranean theaters; I figured that some discussion about the media revolving around it could inspire people to seek out more information about it and stir some discussion for use in future timelines. If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend “Southern Storm: World War Two in South America”, it’s probably the most digestible documentary series that tries to be comprehensive and even features bonus episodes about the deployment of Latin American troops to the Pacific and Europe after the Monarchist coup in Brazil. It’s available for free on the internet and has been well dubbed into English and features some very stellar production values.

The movie “Backs to the Colorado” is also a pretty recent, albeit American flick if you’re interested in Haldeman and Cortes’ efforts to stop the Brazilian advance at the Colorado river at the climax of Operation Ten to One and prevent them from breaking into Patagonia. And if your tastes are more Russian you could go for the movie “Far away from Home” which touches on the experience of the Soviet units that were sent to Argentina as a symbol of cooperation only to get swept up in the conflict.

There’s also the Americuban movie “Fuel of War” released last year, though I’m less keen on its emphasis on a commando unit trying to hamper Venezuelan fuel shipments instead of a more sweeping narrative. It can also very often feel like more of an action movie than a war movie which I’m not too keen on, but maybe that’s just my general distaste for one liners outside of outright comedies.

In terms of video games, War Chronicle 1942 and the sequel 1943 both devote some attention to the South American front. The focus is more on entente forces; rather annoyingly, but there’s a few levels for the Comintern’s struggles to keep down Brazil. I noticed that the game didn’t go into too much detail about why the Integralists were bad; at times making them feel like just another generic horde of FPS enemies to mow down as surely as most enemies in other early 2000s and 90s FPS games (43 was a bit better about this), but apparently some of the developers felt that the Integralists; particularly towards the late war, would be difficult to believe as villains if they pulled no punches. Sounds like a bullshit excuse to me when Salgado was a living cartoon villain who strangled one of the members of his general staff to death when he found out he deliberately fed false information to one of Salgado’s favorites to make himself look better and had cities reduced to rubble in petulant fits, but sure whatever.

For American audiences, I think a lot of the best movies on the subject were made in the 70s. The war movie genre had gotten pretty stale by the mid 50s, and Hollywood gave it a much needed break.


The genre itself was revitalized by the 1974 classic Lacrimae Rerum directed by John Milius. Milius chose to focus the drama away from the well known set pieces of the steppes of Ukraine, the Pacific Islands, the drive on Berlin or the invasion of the Japanese home islands, putting the action in the less well known theater of Colombia. Shot on location in gorgeous 70mm film, Lacrimae Rerum focuses on a group of commandos in desperate straits in 1941. The main character, a half-Mexican half-Russian WFRA soldier leading a group of Colombian partisans in resisting the Brazilian invasion.


Most of the dialogue is in Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese, so expect subtitles. Basically, our hero Alexei fights desperately to keep his men alive amidst the brutalities of war. It includes a frank portrayal of the depravity of war that was highly controversial at the time. Alexei’s increasing moral flexibility is made visible by the accumulation of injuries and scars; his body and his moral sense are maimed. The biggest controversy surrounded Alexei’s group engaging in reprisals against collaborators, and the targeting of civilians by his and other partisan forces.

I did find the final level in the tactical shooter “Thunder of the South’ to be a rather hair raising experience as your single battalion has to hold against an entire corps of the Green Guard; based on the desperate defense of the 333rd Chilean battalion against the 4th Green Guard corps in 1944 at Paraguay. Of course, it is the late war green guard so the skill their fans often claim them to have had long eroded, but even when inexperienced; an enemy with a hundred to one numerical advantage is overwhelming for even the best soldiers. I rather liked the artistic touch of not allowing you to stay focused on any one thing in the level unless you wanted to do, feeling the stress of combat by being overwhelmed with near constant threats rushing at you in an attempt to drive you from your defensive position in the town and the constricting feeling of having to fight with a vision restricting gas mask due to the heavy deployment of poison by the enemy. The ammo supplies in the map are specifically designed to be exhausted towards the end and have to fight with nothing but your shovel and your bayonets against some of the last parts of the final wave to steal weapons from them before the cavalry finally arrives in the form of tanks to save your life and the ragged remains of your battalion; of whom only twenty percent have survived. I think that, more than anything else I’ve played gets across the terror of trying to survive that kind of battle.

Oh wow, I think I saw that film, SeriousSam. I couldn’t remember the title for the life of me til you brought it up.


I was maybe 15 and I was master of the house for a week that summer. So like any teenager I stayed up way too late watching cable, browsing through the premium channels for anything that might have been titilating because that’s what teens do the world over. It was on one of those art movie channels that loves to import Commiefilms, so I figured I had a decent chance of getting softcore.


By jove, I got more than i bargained for. Way too many mass graves for my enjoyment. I prefer to watch movies to escape, not to see the terrors of our violent history.


For something a bit more uplifting there’s an EBC special on the final battle of the Brazilian battleship Caxias, aptly titled “The Death of an Empire”. I rather prefer naval battles...there’s unlikely to be civilians involved to make things morally complicated.


It’s sort of an Operation Ten-Go style suicide mission, only much more farcical. You get both sides portrayed, including the captain who was basically given this mission because he was politically unreliable to the Integralists, yet he’s so determined to do his duty to his country, and then there’s the American captain who has orders to take the ship intact if possible because the Restoration is already in motion and they want to play nice and not cause any excess loss of life.

The outcome of the naval war was never really in doubt once America and Britain started sending ships to deal with Salgado’s aging fleet was it? The series...Jeanne 360 I think, about the Jeanne D’arc’s career throughout the war, covered her deployment to the southern atlantic. It struck me as a bit sensationalist with how they kept on trying to maintain dramatic tension even if it gets more than a bit hammy at many points. Like speaking of a wing of land based torpedo bombers and hurricanes approaching the fleet as if it were the end of the world even though I’m sure the fleet’s AA guns alone could have taken most of the bite out of the attack.


As for the Green Guard, most of those at that battle with the 333rd were probably recruited from integralist youth groups to find more fanatics to try and fight to the death for Salgado’s dreams of brazilian hegemony on the continent and driving back the communists. The actual experienced hardass warriors? They were mostly all dead by 1944 or kept to the first corps. The 333rd was essentially fighting a horde of kids fed lies for up to nine years.

I don’t cross paths with SeriousSam much, but I always love it when he posts. Such exuberance for cinema, and it always reminds me that I need to stop watching trashy soaps and see more good films.


Anyway, I mostly came here for recommendations. I don’t have much to contribute that hasn’t already been said; I’ve played enough War Chronicle 1943 that I could walk the Rio de Janeiro map blindfolded.

Um...Sam is a she Admiral. How did you miss the hullaballoo over her coming out as trans? Somehow it turned into yet another front of the fight to save traditional values the world over, and quite a few board members got purged over it. Something about trans* being counterrevolutionary or other such nonsense.


Anyway...I tend to prefer war movies with civilians as protagonists. This macho war stuff is a major turn off, and I can’t help but think that Truffaut was right: there are no anti-war movies. All war movies just feed nationalism and jingoism.


I liked Guillermo del Toro’s movie Magdalena, concerning the eponymous heroine’s plight in surviving the war in Argentina.


Most of the plot is concerned with her spiritual survival, not the physical. She’s has to learn to live again, and find joy in life after losing her family to bombings, and all of the degrading things she is forced to endure to survive physically.


The scene where, desperate and delirious from hunger, Magdalena sells her body for food and a roof over her head...and after the GI leaves her thinking she’s still asleep, she curls up into a ball and cries...argh I’ve not been moved to tears quite like that in a long time.

I think we’re a bit too focused on movies here and not enough on other artistic formats. Cinema is great, but so far I’ve seen only one person speak about games, and two about documentaries. Are you all sure there are no paintings, sculptures, games, books, or the like worth talking about here?

You should check out the game "True War: Guns of the Tropics" then, a first person shooter that tells the true story of the war and not this heavily propagandized nonsense. A game that dares to show the conflict from the Brazilian side.

Oh mãe de Deus that game.

You seem rather concerned.

Perhaps they haven't heard this in the far east but some years ago some Salgado apologists who had a game company decided to crap out games to show the "true side" of world war two. Which meant a series of six shitdiscs loaded with Axis apologia. You'll see it all, commie hordes and war crimes, civilian deaths were partisans, "beloved leader" Salgado, super elite army crunching badass Green Guardsmen, traditional Japan fetishism, and Hitler/Mussolini fellatio. As games they're competent for sure, not particularly revolutionary but god the stories of the campaigns are so terrible. Thankfully by the fifth game they decided to just start labeling it as alternate history so they could wank without historians smacking them.

It's particularly amusing how none of the women in that series have a cup size smaller than D and how many throw themselves at whatever variety of El Blandico Generico Shootyman protagonist they're using in the game for all they call the Communists rapists who make whores out of women.

*Raaaaaaaaises eyebrows*

Clearly you would not understand it, Pedro. How a man like you can claim to love the Empire and the Emperor and yet spurn the man who prevented Communism from bringing famine and despotism to our country is beyond me. I expected such an attitude from "artisticSpirit", you are so very much like the rest of your friends; drinking in the lies of the Socialist Union of Eurasian Communes even as it dissolves the cultures of western Asia, Siberia, and Eastern Europe into a dreadful homogenous blob. You refute even your very Russian identities! Terrible! A game that speaks of the values of nationalism and patriotic love of the fatherland would never appeal to such internationalists. Especially one who cannot understand the value of a good man's man instead of those...boys you are so fond of drawing..

It's called Bishonen. And so what if I like softer men and don't find square jaws, mustaches, and biceps like tree-trunks appealing? It's hardly your business. I don't see how the anti-nationalist values of the SEUC concern this thread either. And I'm sorry but the game's dialogue is just laughable and the shootyman gameplay isn't quite good enough to pave that over. It's like watching an old man yell at kids about how they don't "know what it was really like" for ten hours. But a quick search tells me no one in the company is over forty. But as for Pedro not liking Salgado, have you in your heart of hearts ever considered the possibility that a man who snaps the neck of a general in front of his peers for trying to screw one of his favourites over is not a particularly good leader? But I dunno. In the words of otakitten "*shruggu*"

Alright Patriot I'm going to warn you about ranting about internationalists again before you spray shit all over this thread like you did with the Uruguayan war thread and gave us a lengthy rant about how the UASR was destroying hispanic nationalism. You're starting to sound like a broken record and you know what I do with broken records? I throw them out. Keep your personal bugbears in your trousers where they belong unless it's a thread where that's explicitly okayed. Now be a good boy and play nice before I make an opening in the salt mines for you.

Now, how can we have gone on so long through this thread without mentioning Haldeman's American Expeditionary Force. More specifically, the glory that is General Haldeman's Walrus mustache.

Ah yes, the legendary Memestache. I know it well.

In light of spirit's request that we speak less of movies, there is an animated series about the American Soldiers sent to the Southern Cone. Marines, Armymen, Army-air force men. "Home is where you make it" I believe it's called. Twenty four episodes long and quite well animated. Haldeman in particular carries a quite charismatic presence whenever he appears; but I suppose any character voiced by Peter Culling would be charismatic.

The choice to render the Green Guard as CGI in contrast to everyone else; rendered in traditional animation, was a quite amazing choice in my opinion. It really emphasized how alien of a force they were with their own private internal language, the intentional monotone meant to be devoid of emotion or inflection, dehumanizing face concealing masks and gloves and their steel bibs worn to make them seem more threatening and menacing to Comintern forces.

The scene where the American marines find the Green Guard calmly lining up the population of a history class and the sergeant shooting them one by one in the most menacing of silences in particular is what will always haunt me. That cold...unfeeling menace of the pre-decay Green Guard when they actually lived up to their reputation as the Elite of the Brazilian army and the almost robotic way they carried themselves. This is also shown in an excellent recent adaptation of the Waververse story "Conquest and Hate at La Plata" which I also recommend.

I don't recommend bringing your kids to see it though. The "desolation" scene where the Green Guard sprays people with their first ever deployment of "Desolator Defoliant" is nightmarish and based on actual accounts the effects the chemicals that fell under that designation had on human flesh. The reference to the "Pesticides" meme made me laugh though, I'll admit I was caught off guard by that. Yeah buddy I really wanna know what kind of bugs need direct application of Flesh melting chemicals to the face to kill.

Oh shit a world war two animated series?

And with that pedigree of the animators behind it?

Yeah I know what I'm bingewatching on Saturday now!

 

[Marisa Kiridifferent]

Anyway,what's the source used for the commanders in the Latin American front,considering the dearth of military literature pertaining to it(with the exception of the Chaco War,of course)?
Axis of Andes has a Ecuadorian colonel as a major character of the story,i forgot the name.

Also,is Gen.Haldeman fictional?

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Anyway,what's the source used for the commanders in the Latin American front,considering the dearth of military literature pertaining to it(with the exception of the Chaco War,of course)?
Axis of Andes has a Ecuadorian colonel as a major character of the story,i forgot the name.

Also,is Gen.Haldeman fictional?

Haldeman is just some guy I found listed as a Combined Syndicates of America general in Kaiserreich with an amazing mustache.

That is literally the sole reason why he is in reds.

His 'stache.

As for the others, generally I just try to grab names off of Hearts of Iron, or make up fictional people if need be.

 

[Marisa Kiridifferent]

Haldeman is just some guy I found listed as a Combined Syndicates of America general in Kaiserreich with an amazing mustache.

Ooh okay,might be an Abraham Lincoln Brigade member i didn't knew(At least Oliver Law was pretty well-known...) or an union organizer IOTL

That is literally the sole reason why he is in reds.

His 'stache.

pic

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

My computer with KR is in the shop so I can't get the picture but he looked rather French due to his cap and had a Jamie Hyneman esque mustache if memory served. Looked a little bit like Willford Brimley.

 

[Alexander the Average]

I just looked up the picture (it's actually in the vanilla Darkest Hour files). Tis a glorious moustache.