First article in the series is here.
The date is March 31, 1941. Nazism has failed to capture the imagination of any major nation except Mexico. The world is now a struggle between the forces of the decadent running dogs of Uruguayan capitalism, and the forces of revolution led by the glorious People’s Republic of Nihon (PRoN), — as ruled in his infinite wisdom by Comrade Emperor Hirohito. The crusade to liberate the world from slavery to capitalism and bring the enlightenment of Bolshevism to the world has begun….
31 March 1941
Most Secret
For the War Cabinet only
Distribution to unauthorized personnel will be met with the Comrade Emperor's displeasure.
Comrade President, it is our joy to present to you the Quarterly Summary World Status report. We realize that your burden of relieving the Emperor of the stress of managing the worldwide revolution is difficult, but we hope that the news you find within this report will lighten your heart, or perhaps give you peace of mind. Long live the Revolution!
GEOPOLITICAL SUMMARY TO DATE
Bolshevik Japan has been at war against several of its neighbors since 1937, beginning with the successful conquest of the large, but weak Persian nation to our west, and then turning to the Ethiopians to our south. Note that our neighbors Latvia, Haiti, and Hungary are Comintern faction members, while Ethiopia used to control from the southeastern edge of the Netherlands to the the Korean peninsula. They still hold about half of it with a lot of assistance. Our primary enemies are Albania, France, Bolivia, Yunnan, Italy and Ethiopia itself. Not all of them are members of the Allies; some tend towards the National Socialist agenda, but chose not to ally with Mexico in that failed philosophy. Several countries joined private alliances against Comintern members despite that. Luxembourg (our former ally) used to be south of Ethiopia/east of Albania, until the addition of that latter country to the forces against us. Other neighbors such as Costa Rica, USA, Netherlands, Bhutan, India, and Nationalist Spain are neutral.
Map 2: this is roughly the same area as Map 1 (see last night) three months earlier.
On map 2, Italy originally controlled the Philippines & Borneo. France, Yunnan and Syria (also defeated Comintern member) controlled southern China & SE Asia; Switzerland and Bolivia split the Malaysian Peninsula, and Indochina was to the south. Iceland and South Africa split the continent of Australia, and Greece controlled New Guinea and some outlying islands. Other than Syria and Switzerland, all of them were actively resisting the global revolution.
Map 3: Europe as we don't know it....
Map 3 shows the faction "leader" of Comintern, which is the UK. We continue to permit the British to think that they are in charge, as it would cause a significant loss of face if we informed them of their presumption. The Soviet Union, FRG, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, Panama, Nationalist China, and Republican Spain, are all still existing Comintern members, whereas Romania, Austria, and Australia were defeated in various parts of Europe. Likewise, Vichy France, located in NE Africa, came to a bad end at the hands of Ecuador . Argentina, Uruguay (Allied faction leader) and Ecuador are proving troublesome. Cuba is independently at war; Peru and Menguko were defeated Allies, as was Shanxi (west of Leningrad). Most of the rest of the nations in the world are leaning Allied, or adrift without a faction.
Mexico, located in southern Scandinavia, is the leader of the National Socialist faction, but the whole Nazi alliance has been stillborn as a military force. We suspect that Senor Hitler has a fondness for siestas that resulted in his sleeping through any diplomatic briefing. He has managed to destroy Comintern member Romania, but only with help from Slovakia. Slovakia also defeated Chile, another Comintern member.
The Western Hemisphere has been mostly irrelevant, except that New Zealand (Comintern) and Egypt (Allies) are on either side of the Panama Canal having a cold war. Poland and Lithuania are also leaning towards the Allies.
Map 4: North America. They gray area is New Zealand.
Tomorrow night: Geopolitical Update
It’s very strange to see all the nations mixed up like this.
That’s part of the fun, though it’s disconcerting to think of nations being in the wrong place and wrong size. Because the infrastructure is totally random, lots of fighting is possible in the Arctic, even though historically there wasn’t enough logistical support for heavy fighting there.
If I can ever isolate the scripts used well enough, I might pull out the country/pop/resource randomizer and just scramble the governments up on a historical map. What if Mexico were allied with Nazi Germany? What if Japan had attacked the USSR (again)? What if the Soviet Union had Spain as a puppet?
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It does make for some amusing situations. One game dastardly Mexico launched a sneak attack on me (I was Japan in that one, up in the rump of Norway). I managed to surround and destroy the bulk of the Mexican army outside Leningrad. Which is just an odd sentance any way you cut it.