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| I'm writing my own AH novel | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 3 2008, 11:22 PM (451 Views) | |
| Mr Nelg | Sep 3 2008, 11:22 PM Post #1 |
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Lord of the Under Pants
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Hey guys. I've just gotten back from up north, and I've got some interesting news to share. My brother's wife is good friends with a publisher (I don't know the name of the company just yet,) and the guy's expressed interest in an AH story I'd been working on for a while now, but never got around to typing it out. So I'll be working on that, and since I have many good friends here, I thought I could get some ideas and feed back from you guys on it. This is the premises. The books called, "Over Blackened Ruins." It's 1953, and the Japanese are celebrating 10 years of occupation of Australia after conquering the country during the Second World War. However, not all is well, as people suspect that it will come to an end very soon. The reason is growing tensions between the empire of Japan, and the USSR, and the Japanese army is stretched too thin occupying the pacific AND Australia. The strategic importance of Manchuria and Korea takes precedence over Australia. However, the Japanese don’t want to withdraw from Australia for prestige reasons, mineral wealth, land, and they fear that it would signal the beginning of the end of the empire. The story centers around TWO characters. One Australian, and one Japanese. The Australian character is in his final year of University, and believes that the Japanese will leave, so he just wants to keep his head down and wait it out, but his best friend and girl friend (who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum,) both want him to join their respective resistance groups. The Japanese character is a young solider who’s just graduated from military school and his father was killed during the battle for Australia, so he requested a posting to Australia to satisfy his revenge. He is a subordinate to the military governor of the city of Brisbane. The general in charge of the city is less than enthusiastic about occupying Australia and his views constantly clash with the beliefs of the young solider. The major plot revolves around the battle ship Yamamoto coming to Australia for the celebrations, and the two resistance movements putting aside their differences to attempt to destroy it, while trying to find out who is betraying them. Phew. There’s a hell of a lot more, but these are the major points. I’ve also got a list of other minor little AH in the story, but I’ll answer them if you ask. What do you think so far? I AIN’T SPOILING THE END THOUGH!!! |
| Let's see you do that kung-fu crap after I disintergrate your legs... | |
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| Makkabee | Sep 3 2008, 11:41 PM Post #2 |
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Count
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You let Australia be conquered? Clearly you have an anti-Australian bias.
On a more serious note, best of luck with the novel. Hope it sees print, and keep us posted on your progress. |
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| SladeJack | Sep 4 2008, 12:34 AM Post #3 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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Yeah, all the best with it. I like the plot but I'd change the Aussie POV around a bit. He shouldn't be a student. It's out of character with WWII-era Japanese imperial policy to keep institutions of higher learning open, especially so soon after a conquest when the colleges would be educating people who have vivid, coherent memories of independence days. And even if the Japs left the colleges open, the typical Aussie household's existence would be so grim and desperate under Japanese overlords (all the more so if there's an active resistance, as you say) that hardly anyone would be able to think about higher education. I'm most interested in Korea (as you might imagine). You say it's of strategic value in a standoff with the USSR. Does that mean the Kremlin and the Korean resistance are working hand in hand? Are the Soviets, in the apparent absence of American rivals (do I read that right?), prepared to cooperate with DaeHanMinGuk provided they can get a socialist party into the government, or do they insist on the state they set up OTL? Come to think of it, why did the Allies lose in that war? Or did they? Did they achieve a stalemate and give up Australia for something else at the negotiating table, or did they just get their asses kicked? Either way surely Japan has much more than Korea, Manchuria, and Australia to concern itself with. While we're at it, what happened to the European war? The only way I could see Japan winning its half decisively would be if Hitler got the bit between his teeth some way or other and the US had to turn almost all its resources to Europe and Africa. That or maybe Japan never gets into a war with the US to begin with--but if it took Australia it was at war with the UK/Commonwealth, and I can't conceive of the US not getting involved then. Even if Japan came up with some insane idea that they could attack Singapore and Hong Kong on 12.7 but not Pearl Harbor or the Philippines, which they wouldn't, Roosevelt would find a way to get his Congress to let him at 'em. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Makkabee | Sep 4 2008, 12:39 AM Post #4 |
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Count
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And if the Axis won, how is there still a Soviet Union to threaten Japan? Did the Molotov-von Rippentrop Pact hold in your TL? Did the Japanese bypass US territory when they grabbed the Dutch East Indies and avoid war with the Americans so that Japan's wars never merged with WWII and Hitler went down to defeat more or less as OTL? Did a different revanchist leader take over in Germany in the 30s? You'll need to explain this pretty early on in your book, I think. |
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| SladeJack | Sep 4 2008, 01:25 AM Post #5 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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I've found that, with AH novels set after their POD, a prologue is magnificently valuable. Here might be a fun way to get where you want, though I've yet to think out the full European implications: In response to the Great Depression, Hoover, under the influence of progressive GOP freshman Senator Gerald Nye, decides to take a hands-on approach to economic recovery (I'd go with that over no Depression or a milder one because at first glance it seems the easiest way to minimize butterflies in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia.) The US recovers but decides not to use its wealth to help the rest of the world do the same. The Republicans remain top dogs and when Hoover retires in 1936 he's succeeded by Nye, the other great hero of the Panic of '29. Isolationism dominates US foreign policy in the late 1930s, and in Europe, where the Depression proceeded much more like OTL, thus bringing the Nazis to power and leaving the French and British too crapped out to do much about it till it was almost too late, that allows Hitler to wage war against the Western Allies and the Soviet Union much more aggressively. France falls but the Brits, Soviets, and whatever help they can get from minor European powers somehow manage to defeat the Germans in the end without US aid (thus allowing the USSR to become a superpower) but the effort took so much out of them that the Brits had to leave their Asian and Pacific colonies undefended. The US meanwhile made known it had no objection to Japanese expansionism in the western Pacific provided they left the Philippines alone, so Tojo's boys ran loose across the hemisphere. In 1953 the USSR and GEACPS stand as the big winners of what we probably couldn't properly refer to as WWII while the US is either still isolationist or has allowed history to pass it by and is unable to exert much of an influence geopolitically anymore. Thus, Australia goes down but the act of defeating it does not signal so great a Japanese victory that they become the unassailable colossus of the Eastern Hemisphere; the Americans are nowhere in sight but the Soviets are a potential rival to Tokyo's hegemony. That last sentence is the premise you need to reach for your story to work. Wow, did I just say that Hoover running economic reforms to get out of the Depression would in the long run leave the world worse off than it was OTL? I think I did. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Jake Featherston | Sep 4 2008, 01:28 AM Post #6 |
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Landowner
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Sweet. Good luck with your writing. I'm just managing to get back into the whole writing process. I've got an idea that I think I can work with, but because I'm so scared of failing to finish the book or something, I won't tell anyone about it until I'm at least halfway through the manuscript. |
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| Mr Nelg | Sep 4 2008, 01:35 AM Post #7 |
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Lord of the Under Pants
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Ahh, now that I think about it, you're right. Thanks for that. It's help like this that I'm REALLY interesed in.
The answer is yes, but because the POV rearlly shifts outside of Australia, the reader can only imagine.
Yep!
Most likely.
What happened is that the POD occurs sometime in the mid/late 1930's (I haven't decided when,) when the Japanese high command comes to the agreement that the main enemy is the United States, and that all war efforts must be moved to fighting them. Because of this, the Army pulls out of China. And they focus towards a massive push south. The end result has them occupying all of Australia, but New Zealand remains free. The Jap's also have Hawaii. There was also NO surprise attack at Pearl Harbor too. In this TL, I have the US LEARN of the impending attack, and declare war on Japan first. Their fleet sails out to fight the Japanese, and they are defeated. All major capital ships are destroyed, and the attack on Pearl Harbor is aborted because of this. Although, as the Japanese invade Australia, they also launch an invasion of Hawaii. (They end up paying a high price for this though it's a sucess.) The devastating losses, the fear of the Japanese invading the US mainland, and the success in Europe force the US to abandon the pacific. (I thought I'd have the Germans do far better in this time line. They take Leningrad, Stalingrad --Not Moscow -- and the Suez Canal.) As part of the peace deal, the Japanese get to keep what they've got, including Australia, and Hawaii. Now, for some good to come out of all this, because there is no second front in the pacific, the US is able to focus all it's energies on Germany, and as a result, they're able to beat the Russians to Warsaw. The USSR is never able to overrun eastern Europe. I thought I'd go for a change. Instead of having Germany win and Japan lose. Germany loses and Japan wins. PS -- I thought of having a character who's name is Jonathan "Jack" Slade, who works with a guy by the name of Billy Conndon -- Nicked named BC -- and accuses him of having an Anti-Australian Bais.
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| Let's see you do that kung-fu crap after I disintergrate your legs... | |
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| Mr Nelg | Sep 4 2008, 01:48 AM Post #8 |
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Lord of the Under Pants
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A few little other tidbits. Dough MacArthur is president of the US, instead of Ike. The reason for this is that as in OTL MacArthur was portrayed as the only US commander fighting the Japanese steam roller to a stand still in The Philippines In this TL, he was also sent to Hawaii to fight the Japanese there. As a result, he gains massive hero status in the public eye. As a result, he's transferred to Europe to fight the Germans. He gains a reputation, and not Ike. The atomic bomb was never used by the US on Germany. The atomic bomb has been developed and the US has it, but no atomic bomb has been used. The US is the ONLY country on earth that has the bomb at the moment. Everybody believes that the USSR and Japan are all working on one. Yes, the USSR hasn't gotten the bomb yet. China is split in two. There's Southern China, ruled by Chang, and Northern China ruled by Mao. The USSR want's Northern China to help them in attacking Japan but are worried about an attack in their rear by Chang. Chang was forced to sign a peace deal with Northern China, and is looking for ANY excuse to attack them. There's a US movie showing in the Australian underground staring John Wayne. It's a world War 2 Movie about the American's last stand in the Hawaiian Islands called "The Sands of Hawaii." |
| Let's see you do that kung-fu crap after I disintergrate your legs... | |
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| SladeJack | Sep 4 2008, 09:03 AM Post #9 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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"Ahh, now that I think about it, you're right. Thanks for that. It's help like this that I'm REALLY interesed in." Glad to help. "The answer is yes, but because the POV rearlly shifts outside of Australia, the reader can only imagine." Fair enough, but establishing offstage developments like that adds great texture to the story. Your Japanese POV is a general's aide, it shouldn't be hard to work in a few scenes where he attends international briefings. "What happened is that the POD occurs sometime in the mid/late 1930's (I haven't decided when,) when the Japanese high command comes to the agreement that the main enemy is the United States, and that all war efforts must be moved to fighting them. Because of this, the Army pulls out of China. And they focus towards a massive push south. The end result has them occupying all of Australia, but New Zealand remains free. The Jap's also have Hawaii. There was also NO surprise attack at Pearl Harbor too. In this TL, I have the US LEARN of the impending attack, and declare war on Japan first. Their fleet sails out to fight the Japanese, and they are defeated. All major capital ships are destroyed, and the attack on Pearl Harbor is aborted because of this. Although, as the Japanese invade Australia, they also launch an invasion of Hawaii. (They end up paying a high price for this though it's a sucess.)" Crushing the US fleet should work well--when the war began, Japan had eight carriers in the Pacific, the US three with two more en route. With Yamamoto at the forefront of over-the-horizon naval warfare, he should be able to win a decisive victory over the US fleet if their carriers and other capital ships were concentrated, and then the US would start the Pacific War down a deep, deep hole. However, you'd need a reason that the Allies didn't reinforce the Pacific from the USN's Atlantic Fleet and/or the Royal Navy. Either a pressing naval threat in the Atlantic like the Germans pulling carriers out of their ass, or the Japanese using the strategic chokepoints to keep the Allies out of the Pacific. Having the Nazis take the Suez Canal is a good start; then if the Japanese could take the Panama Canal off the board, they'd be almost there. If they left China, wouldn't they need at least to return Manchuria as a condition for the very pissed-off Chinese (Zz's Happy Thoughts notwithstanding) letting them disengage? "The devastating losses, the fear of the Japanese invading the US mainland, and the success in Europe force the US to abandon the pacific. (I thought I'd have the Germans do far better in this time line. They take Leningrad, Stalingrad --Not Moscow -- and the Suez Canal.) As part of the peace deal, the Japanese get to keep what they've got, including Australia, and Hawaii." Fear of a Japanese invasion makes them abandon the Pacific? If the Japanese are seen as that much of a threat the War and Navy Departments would throw more resources at them, at the expense of the war against Germany. Unless their existing Pacific forces are so totally destroyed and their chances of reinforcement so completely shot that it becomes physically impossible to do so, in which case they keep their resources close at hand. For this reason I've heard Midway described as the critical battle on which the entire war hinged--had the US lost, it would have held onto all the materiel it donated to the Soviets during the Stalingrad campaign. "Now, for some good to come out of all this, because there is no second front in the pacific, the US is able to focus all it's energies on Germany, and as a result, they're able to beat the Russians to Warsaw. The USSR is never able to overrun eastern Europe." The US gets all the way to Warsaw and the Soviets sit around with their thumbs up their asses? I guess it's possible (not sure by how narrow a margin), but if it did happen the Soviets would be a third-rate local power, not up to becoming Japan's primary rival. And you can't say they decide to try to make up for lost prestige in Europe by seeking greater prestige in Asia because if they had the Germans on their turf for so long they probably wouldn't have enough in the tank to challenge Japan. By the way I apologize if it was presumptious of me to suggest so detailed a POD. As I got to thinking about how the conditions in your story could come about, a fully-formed scenario came together in my mind. But I should know better than to assume anyone would start out an AH novel without any ideas for a POD of their own. "I thought I'd go for a change. Instead of having Germany win and Japan lose. Germany loses and Japan wins." Novel idea, and the Australian market is the right place to play with it--I do hope I can somehow get my hands on a copy here, though. "PS -- I thought of having a character who's name is Jonathan 'Jack' Slade, who works with a guy by the name of Billy Conndon -- Nicked named BC -- and accuses him of having an Anti-Australian Bais." Wow--I'd be well and truly honored. "Dough MacArthur is president of the US, instead of Ike. The reason for this is that as in OTL MacArthur was portrayed as the only US commander fighting the Japanese steam roller to a stand still in The Philippines In this TL, he was also sent to Hawaii to fight the Japanese there. As a result, he gains massive hero status in the public eye. As a result, he's transferred to Europe to fight the Germans. He gains a reputation, and not Ike." But he LOST! Wait, he fought them to a standstill in the Philippines? If the Japs took Hawaii they'd damned well take the Philippines too, and then Mac has two disasters to his name. "The atomic bomb was never used by the US on Germany. The atomic bomb has been developed and the US has it, but no atomic bomb has been used. The US is the ONLY country on earth that has the bomb at the moment. Everybody believes that the USSR and Japan are all working on one. Yes, the USSR hasn't gotten the bomb yet." That should make the US powerful enough to get back into the Pacific if they want to. They might even be able to hit northern Japan flying out of the Aleutians, unless those fell too. "China is split in two. There's Southern China, ruled by Chang, and Northern China ruled by Mao. The USSR want's Northern China to help them in attacking Japan but are worried about an attack in their rear by Chang. Chang was forced to sign a peace deal with Northern China, and is looking for ANY excuse to attack them." Now Stalin had no use for Chiang and did in fact propose just such a division, but that was because the CCW was fast turning into a major client war with the US. If it's Soviet backed CCP against unassisted KMT (the US can't help Chiang and the Japanese won't) China will be unified under the Communists. If it's Soviet support to let the Communists get the upper hand but the decision is made that they don't want a counterbalance free CCP, the CCP could probably complete unification from that point unless you go with something absurd like the Soviets threatening to invade if the Reds try it. Even if the CCW is fought entirely without outside interference, the CCP should still win decisively. They get most of China and then maybe some warlord or someone in whatever regions Chiang holds onto topples him and finishes the job. Have you considered playing with a CCP ruled not by Mao but someone more amenable to Soviet dominance? I've always thought that would be an interesting AH, and for your purposes, a very pro-Soviet Chinese government would help Moscow overcome some of the difficulties it would have in becoming a great Asian power. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Makkabee | Sep 4 2008, 02:56 PM Post #10 |
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Count
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Sorry man, but your TL falls apart when you have Japan pull out of China to concentrate on fighting the US. They only wanted to fight the US in the first place BECAUSE the US didn't approve of Japan's moves on China. Everything they did was aimed at gaining control of China, all the other stuff was secondary to that. Furthermore, the US has such a huge preponderance of resources and population that the kind of decisive Japanese victory you talk about, and they would need to win decisively to chase the US all the way back to the west coast of North America and keep them there, requires a Harry Harrison-level stupidity imbalance, and we know from OTL that the US had plenty of gifted commanders and could survive an early period of defeat even if they go with incompetents like Lloyd Ferendal in the opening rounds. Your best bet is probably to have FDR retire after 2 terms and bring in an isolationist successor who won't go to war over a Japanese attack on a third party. Japan can then attack the Dutch East Indies safely in 1941, roll over Australia and other white-ruled areas while the US does nothing, and bide their time until 1944 when the Americans withdraw from a now hopelessly exposed Phillipines before grabbing that too. A pacifist successor works well for this too, though that's less likely. Or you could have the US never get FDR as president, or assassinate him early, and have the country tear itself apart in rioting and continued economic turmoil so that they're not in any condition to challenge Japan in the first place. Or have fascist leaders take over in a good chunk of Latin America and have the US too tied down in fighting in its own back yard to dare open up a three front war by actively confronting Japan and Germany. But I can't buy a nation with a much bigger economy and population and several allies losing a basically defensive conventional war to a smaller one fighting essentially on its own. It's happened in real life a few times, but always reads as too improbable to work as fiction. You need to give Japan allies, creates some major internal weakness in the US that didn't exist OTL, or (and this is easiest) avoid the US-Japanese war entirely. Besides, with your two ideologically opposite resistance groups in Australia, one's likely to be covertly funded by the USSR and the other needs an ideologically opposed backer -- that's got to be Britain or the US. A Britain that held on to India because Indian fear of Japanese expansion is stronger than their dislike of the Raj is probably the more interesting of those options, but also the less likely one. With outright total defeat in the Pacific the Raj's prestige takes such a hammering that they'll be hard pressed to hold what's left of their empire, let alone be taken seriously in moves to recover any of it. |
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| SladeJack | Sep 4 2008, 04:00 PM Post #11 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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What you need is Japan either winning a total victory in the Pacific or at least reaching a point where it could get a negotiated peace from a position of enough strength to get a major territorial concession from one of its most powerful enemies. However, the victory it's one cannot be so total that it becomes an unassailable colossus. That would have to mean it didn't defeat the US head to head because if it pulled that off everyone would shit their pants at the thought of fighting them. But the US needs to be kept out of a position in which they would try to liberate Australia, without having decisively lost a war against Japan. And since you want the Soviets and the Chinese Communists involved you can't go with a simple Axis Wins timeline, at least not across the board. So what you need is: -A WWII split decision with Allied victory in Europe and Africa and Axis victory in Asia and the Pacific; or, Soviet neutrality in WWII -The British as a combatant in the Pacific -The US and USSR as non-combatants, or at the very most secondary allies of combatants, in same -An erosion of US influence in the Pacific that did not come from having been directly defeated in a protracted war against Japan The easiest way I see to do this is get isolationism into the US. The Hoover-Nye economic recovery package I suggested last night is the best way I can come up with to make the necessary fundamental political changes in the US while minimizing butterfly effects elsewhere. All you have to do then is come up with a way for the UK, USSR, and whomever else they can find to defeat the Reich without a drop of Lend-Lease aid. And since that's not the focus of your story, if you can't come up with a plausible explanation you might be able to gloss over it instead. Another way to go would be to have the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact hold through the duration of the war and no Tripartite Pact signed. Germany, feeling confident that its European enemies are all on their last legs, provokes FDR's hair trigger and draws the US into the war. In OTL, of course, Japan drew us in and the Tripartite Pact led Germany to join. Had it not been for that Roosevelt might have tried to find a way to provoke a war with Germany even while fighting Japan, to the fury of the Japan First crowd. But as disgusting as he found Tokyo, he didn't hate them nearly so much as he did Berlin, so one could believably not have the reverse happen. The US and UK/Commonwealth throw everything they've got at Germany; they can't afford to dither around in the Med while the Soviets take all the damage, so they've got to dig much deeper even than they did in OTL. Japan assumes the Anglophones won't care if it grabs Indonesia. Now we've got a problem: We need the Brits to get drawn into the conflict while the US stays out. Britain was the smaller less wealthy of the two and would thus have even less to spare for a second front than the US did, and also had less interest in the Pacific than the US and would be less likely to spend precious resources there. Maybe we could have the US and UK condemn the attack, Japan blitz their Pacific holdings, the defenses of which are down to bare bones because everyone's been transferred to Europe. Shocked and appalled by the aggressiveness of these attacks the US and UK realize they can't afford to provoke Japanese ire when they're so strapped in Europe and are forced to cede the colonies without contest. Japan then shores up its new SE Asian empire while the US and UK are occupied in finishing off the Hun. "Besides, with your two ideologically opposite resistance groups in Australia, one's likely to be covertly funded by the USSR and the other needs an ideologically opposed backer -- that's got to be Britain or the US." Not necessarily. Maybe they're in a popular front for as long as they're occupied, the way the CCP and KMT theoretically were. The US and UK supported both groups in China. They also supported the socialist elements of the French resistance along with the rest. That could cut the other way. Nelg's already said the Soviets are working with the broad-based coalition government-in-exile of the Republic of Korea to frustrate Japanese interests on that peninsula, as opposed to supporting the Korean Workers' Party exclusively. The same could be true in Australia. With the US, UK, France, and the Netherlands chased out of the western Pacific, the Soviets can't afford to be very picky when they meet anyone willing to help them oppose Japan, unless they want to fight Japan and Japan alone. Actually they could more easily and to better effect support resistance movements farther north. Unless--and this could be fun--the Japanese pursued a more enlightened colonial policy in countries where the predominant ethnicity was non-white but the government was white. Indonesians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Khmers, Malays, Burmese, Singaporeans of the non-white ethnicities, possibly Hong Kongers, and maybe even Indians (Polynesians, too, if you still want Hawaii) all support Japan, thus securing the interior of the GEACPS, and are not interested in white men's lies when the NKVD show up selling promises of greater "freedom." For Koreans, Taiwanese, many Manchus, and most importantly mainland Han Chinese, though, that ship has sailed; they've seen too much Japanese nastiness to put any stock in a promise of aristocracy of tan skin. I guess the other question is what kind of resistance serves Nelg's story. If he wants a resistance strong enough to have a fair chance of liberating Australia, he'd need outside support. But if he wants a much smaller, plucky resistance that doesn't have a chance but wants to go on yanking the occupiers' tails anyway, they could do that unassisted. Koreans did it until WWII started (when Allied aid suddenly put victory within their reach), Irish did it all the time, many Amerind tribes did it in a slightly different way during US westward expansion in the nineteenth century, and there are any number of other examples that I can't think of off the top of my head at the moment. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Mr Nelg | Sep 8 2008, 08:02 PM Post #12 |
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Lord of the Under Pants
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Sorry for the late reply. Work you know. I've been really busy. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. First off, thank U’s to both Makk and SJ for their help. Thanks guys, this is exactly what I need. I don't care if you have to tear into the damn thing like a wolverine in heat, I NEED THIS!!! If I have to completely change things, then so be it. I don't want to have to pull a Turtledove and just ignore things that interfere with what I want to do, and I really DON'T want this ending up like something Robert Conway or Harry Harrison dreamt up. I'm still going over some of the idea's both SJ and Makk came up with, and their great. By the way guys, you both have earned cameos in my story. PS, SJ I'm going to need some help with the Korean aspect of the story. |
| Let's see you do that kung-fu crap after I disintergrate your legs... | |
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| SladeJack | Sep 8 2008, 09:29 PM Post #13 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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Edit: Shit, sorry I went on so long! You only really need Paragraphs 2, 3, and 6; but I'm leaving the rest up for the edification of any GotB who are not familiar with these events, or else as a way for me to show off. Well Korea, all of it, was a client state of China until 1893, when Japan's defeat of the Middle Kingdom weakened it to the point that Korean nationalists were able to tell it to fuck off when it demanded the usual tribute. However it soon learned that Japan had not intended to set up a fully independent Korea and began taking ever-increasing liberties with it, far more than China had. Russia provided a counterbalance for a while, going so far as to guarantee the safety of the king within the Russian embassy compound after Japanese assassins infiltrated his palace, so you had the king spend over a year essentially in protective custody in a foreign embassy because it was the only place in his own country where he could feel safe. You may imagine that during this period he suddenly realized just how compatible Russian and Korean foreign policy goals really were, and the rest of the world thought the wacky Hermit Kingdom, which did weird things like execute missionaries en masse to piss off outsiders, wasn't worth shit, and thus wasn't worthy of its own sovereignty. So after Japan defeated Russia, no one said boo when they forced Korea to sign a treaty of "friendship" in 1905 or annexed it outright in 1910. The part you need to know begins in 1919. A large contingent representing the more illustrious rungs of the Korean social ladder gathered in Tapgol Park and issued a number of indictments against the Japanese. They were promptly arrested, and mass demonstrations demanding their release spread throughout the peninsula. The Japanese governor-general responded by saying something like "Joseon has two choices: Accept Japanese rule or perish." Koreans seemed to prefer death to colonization. Independence was declared in the same park on March 1, which is now a holiday known as Samil ("sam"=three, "il"=one). A democratic government was proclaimed, calling itself Daehanminguk (commonly translated as "Republic of Korea," literally translated as--get this--"great, great, great country.") The Japanese, seeing that the situation had gotten rather out of hand, sacked the governor-general and replaced him with a moderate who had orders to address the original grievances, but it was too late. Nationalism had been stirred up and the Koreans were no longer content with a benevolent despotism. They wanted their own country. Daehanminguk formed a government-in-exile with representatives from a good dozen parties, ranging from socialists to theocrats, from anarchists to nationalists--not too unlike the crowd that was fighting the Black and Tan War against another imperialistic kingdom based in a large island off the coast of the Eurasian land mass and across a narrow eastern sea, actually. They fled to Shanghai (when the Japanese invaded mainland China in 1937 they would follow the KMT government to Chongqing), declared war against Japan and coordinated armed resistance activities. They also petitioned European and American governments for recognition and aid. This continued for 22 years. Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Allied countries lined up to declare war against them and draw the growing Asian and Pacific conflicts into WWII. The government-in-exile declared war on Germany (a meaningless piece of paper, of course) and joined the Allied Forces on December 9, 1941. Not without controversy, they pulled resistance fighters off the peninsula and formed an army which participated in a number of Allied operations in the China-India-Burma theater. The socialist Kim Il-Sung of the Korean Workers' Party was a general in these operations--when he broke with the ROK I'm not sure. Syngman Rhee, who had been the first President-in-Exile of the ROK, was in America, where, along with a number of others, he petitioned the War Department to support a Korean-led campaign to liberate the peninsula. The OSS began training Koreans for such a campaign but then the USSR entered the Pacific War and marched down the Korean Peninsula from the north. The Western Allies, not wanting the whole peninsula to go Red, had previously formed an arrangement that the Soviets would stop at 38 degrees north and let the Western Allies take the rest. They landed, and Syngman Rhee rode along with the first American wave to make sure he would be the first ROK government official to make contact with the people and the remaining local resistance in some time. All Japanese forces on the Peninsula surrendered on August 15, 1945, which is celebrated as Liberation Day or Independence Day in both Koreas (though not in the school where I worked--we were open for it last year, much to the fury of our students. Me, I didn't realize it was a holiday till after I got home, but I did find it odd that such an important day would not be observed.) The division had been meant only as an administrative arrangement, but in 1948 (I want to say July 17?) the Western Allies left their half of the Peninsula and turned it over to Dae Han Min Guk, with, of course, Syngman Rhee (I hate to transliterate it so inaccurately and screw up the naming order but it's how he himself wanted it when he lived in Princeton, so what can I do? When I'm in Korea people are very quick to point out that my own local name, which I changed to Jol Yo-Han to force into Korean patterns [Yo-Han is also how the first missionaries translated the various Saints John and continues to be used by Korean Christians] is an inaccurate representation of a Western name.) as President. Rather than turn their half of the Peninsula over as well, the Soviets set up a seperate government, with an ungodly long Korean name which we all know and loathe as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. (Interestingly, they use the name "Joseon," which was the name of the last ruling dynasty of Korean kings who were ousted when the Japanese took over, as their name for Korea. why something so un-socialistic? Their other option is "Hanguk," again, "great nation," but this time in reference to the "Great River," the Han, which runs through Seoul and at no point enters DPRK territory. "Korea," by the way, is a bastardized romanization of Koryo, the dynasty which preceded the Joseon.) Kim Il-Sung, head of the Korean Workers' Party, was allowed to form a government and exclude all other parties, though he kept a few around for appearance's sake, as dictators often will. Both Kim and Rhee immediately started screaming that the presence of the other's government on a peninsula that should be united was wholly unacceptable. The State Department in Washington told him he was a crazy little man and they were not going to give him carte blanche to start a war that could easily put them in direct conflict with the USSR. In fact they drastically cut the military allotment to the ROK from what they had intended for fear Rhee would try to go to war without telling them if he had enough military hardware to do so unassisted. That's why his army melted away so quickly when the war began. The Foreign Commissariat in Moscow started to tell Kim the same thing but on October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was formed and Kim told Stalin he could look elsewhere for satisfaction if he didn't get Soviet aid. Neither Stalin nor Mao were particularly fond of Kim but neither wanted to see him become the other's cat's paw. After all, both communists knew that just a few decades earier the respective imperial governments which had preceded their own had taken terrible ass-kickings when hostile forces were able to establish a presence there. Thus Kim Il-Sung got military supplies and on June 25, 1950, he used them. The US said "Oh shit!" put the UN to work to drive the invaders out of the south, then helped the ROK counterattack deep into northern territory. At that point Beijing told Pyongyang "See, we knew this would be a bad idea!" and saved the DPRK from tottering and themselves from having a government very, very friendly to Chiang's American pals hard up against their border. A stalemate was reached by the end of 1951, the war dragged on for eighteen more months (in large part because Rhee kept rejecting ceasefire agreements that didn't give him any territorial concessions despite UN pressure to give it a bloody rest). In 1953 a ceasefire was signed and the border was redrawn along the contours of the front lines at the moment of the ceasefire. A fact which unfortunately led to soldiers having to fight hard for any advantage right up until the last minute. The border was heavily patrolled by both Koreas. The US maintained a strong military presence on the peninsula to prop up the ROK army (long after said army stopped needing their help). The Chinese went home and crowed about how they'd defeated the United States. Many of them also got purged in the Cultural Revolution, including the general who had commanded all Chinese forces there. The ROK's economy crashed and social unrest welled in protest of Rhee's corruption. A military coup forced him out. The US gave him asylum but also formed good relations with the generals who'd taken over. The military cabal suppressed dissent but also set off rapid economic development. In 1983, a new general took over and released a prominent intellectual dissenter the government had been holding. This was the beginning of the country's political liberalization, and today it's a politically free, economically strong, magnificent country full of wonderful people. In the north, things post-war got off to a decent start but by the 1970s it was clear First World status wasn't on the horizon. The KWP enforced its rule evermore harshly and gulags sprang up all over the place. Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 (and was posthumously declared "President For All Eternity" in 1998). The son took over, an idiot dictator who's driving those poor people into the Stone Age and has put one percent of the population in concentration camps. It is my strongest and sincerest hope that some day soon his dipshit tinpot tyranny falls and the peninsula is united under the government of Great, Great, Great Country. Anyway, your options seem to be: have the Soviets and the Red Chinese support Daehanminguk's government in exile in Shanghai, a coalition government which might even include the KWP, perhaps even as government party, in resistance operations against the Japanese garrison in Korea; have the Soviets and Red Chinese chuck Daehanminguk and support only the KWP's efforts (foolish of them), perhaps with Daehanminguk moving somewhere down in Guangdong and receiving White Chinese support; have the leadership of the Korean resistance become a political football between the Soviets and the Chinese, with one (Mao, probably) saying "KWP only!" and the other saying "Daehanminguk with strong socialist representation!"; have Japan's rivals be exceedingly stupid and not support any Korean resistance; or maybe have Daehanminguk get crushed when the Allies lose and the face of Korean resistance be something else altogether--maybe only the KWP survives, maybe it's someone entirely new. |
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9:13 AM Jul 11