Chapter 7: The Match Struck
“The early years of the Fascist government of the Italian Empire were marked by the widespread suppression and assassinations of leaders of the Italian left-wing, such as Giacomo Matteotti. Over the course of their dominance in the Italian parliament, the fascists forced out other parties and elected officials, replacing them with appointed positions subservient to Mussolini. By the 1930s Italy was a fully autocratized state, rife with militant nationalism and a fervent hatred of liberal democracy and communism alike.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise on September 2nd, 1933, when the Italian ‘Duce’ Benito Mussolini, met in Moscow with the General Secretary of the Communist Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, and between them signed the ‘Pact of Friendship, Neutrality, and Nonaggression between Italy and the Soviet Union’. Internally, the respective authoritarians were able to largely hand-wave the treaty under their own pretenses, be it the greater threat of the Bourgeois democracies or the socialist origins of the Fascist movement itself. However, from the outside, the two totalitarian powers of Europe signing an alliance was not only confusing but incredibly worrisome.
Mussolini had been espousing irridentist rhetoric since before his rise to power and continued to eye the much-desired Dalmatian coast. Stalin likewise expressed a desire to reclaim lost land from the civil war, especially in neighboring Poland, with whom it still had a score to settle. Together, the two could and would very easily dismantle the entire system that had kept Europe at peace for the last decade.
Britain and France especially feared the Communists who had been European pariahs since even well before their rise in the 1920s. However, it was still believed that the differences between Italy and the Soviets would eventually prove too great and the alliance would break apart over time. They would be proven terribly incorrect.”
- The Spectres, by Michelle Boyd
“Erich Ludendorff was once one of the most revered and respected figures in Germany. He had led the German army in numerous victories across the Western front. Though, as fate would have it, seeking the same credit as his partner, Hindenburg, he would instead receive the blame for Germany’s failures in the closing hours of the war. He was removed from his position, and suffering from a cantankerous attitude brought on by 5 years of battle fatigue, Ludendorff withdrew from public life.
Perhaps as a result of feeling wrongfully blamed for German failures, perhaps because he had no other scapegoat than the missing Kaiser, Ludendorff became a founding espouser of what the Germans called
‘Dolchstosslegende’, or ‘Stab-in-the-Back Myth’. The failures of the war that shattered Germany as they had known it was no longer the fault of an extremely erratic general, but instead of the Jews, the Communists, and the Republicans. Ludendorff very quickly became a figure for the German far-right and was openly supportive of numerous attempts to overthrow the Republic. From the Kapp Putsch in 1920, to the German Constitutional Crisis in 1930. Ironically after that last attempt at revolution, the German general would be forced to leave the country altogether, to never again return home.
However, unlike many of his compatriots, who sought refuge in Austria or Italy, Ludendorff and many of those loyal and associated with him, would flee to the unlikely nation of the Empire of Japan. There, the retired general would publish his most divisive and nationalistic work,
‘Der totale Krieg’. This book, which would be banned in Germany shortly after its publishing, became extremely popular in Japan, especially among the developing far-right cliques within the military and officer corps of the empire. Ludendorff, for the next seven years of his life, would travel across Japan, meeting with extremists in the Japanese military. Including Kanji Ishiwara, Seishirō Itagaki, and Tetsuzan Nagata, all of whom would become the ringleaders of the Mukden Incident, which would ignite the burning fire of militarism in Japan. A force that, given time, would eventually burn its own nation to the ground.”
- The Death of Japanese Democracy, by Katayama Goro
“The Italo-Soviet Axis, as it would eventually come to be known, got off to an extremely rocky start. The Italians and Soviets would repeatedly end up on opposite ends of conflicts. The Soviets would openly oppose the Italian conquest in the Horn of Africa, and when Spain exploded into civil war in 1936, the two supported opposite sides, with the Italians ‘Corpo Truppe Volontarie’ forming to support the Nationalists, and thousands of Soviet men joined the international brigades to fight for the Republicans. The civil war especially became a massive sore spot for the alliance, and during the course of the war, it seemed to the rest of Europe that the two came to the closest they ever were of breaking off their detente.
However, despite outward appearances, throughout the 1930s, Italo-Soviet cooperation only deepened further. The Italians sent hundreds of planes and bombs which the Soviets would weaponize against the Basmachi rebels in Central Asia and the population of Xinjiang. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, the Soviets publicly decried the move yet continued to trade secretly with the Italians and even supplied Soviet helmets to their army. Even during the height of tensions, the Soviets and Italians maintained a correspondence and the Italian volunteers outright tried to avoid battles with Soviet brigades. Soviet captains of the Red Fleet even met with Mussolini, who graciously received and treated the Soviets to a lunch in Naples.
But the Great Powers of Britain and France, continued to anticipate a looming breakup between the Italo-Soviet pact. Chief among them was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, who in popular history is often regarded as approaching the entire situation without any sort of prudence, ignoring the rising tensions until they finally could not be ignored. Many forget, however, that Chamberlain consistently tried to break up the alliance in a number of ways, attempting to play into Mussolini's anti-communism and appealing to his virulent irridentism with offers of land. In other ways too, the British and French did make real and tangible efforts to defang the Axis before it rose to prominence and enforce their ‘peace in Europe’. All efforts that we know with hindsight failed. And there was no more spectacular of a failure of this peace than on April 26th, 1939, during the events that would eventually become known as the Little War.”
- The Spectres, by Michelle Boyd
“The aftermath of the Mukden Incident of 1931, and Japan's subsequent invasion and occupation of Manchuria were marked by a massive rise of Japanese militarism. The 10,000-strong occupational force directly disobeyed the Japanese government and even the orders of the Emperor himself, refusing to stand down. Despite the Japanese government complying as best they could with the League of Nations and the Chinese government led by the
‘Guómíndǎng’ (KMT), the ministers of government were faced with the difficult truth that they had lost credibility and control of their military force. Quickly, the public fell into hysteria and war fever, which was exacerbated and exploited by reactionaries across Japan. Prolific speakers, sometimes non-Japanese, such as Erich Ludendorff or Werner von Blomberg, voiced their complaints of the complacency and pacifism of weak constitutional governments and their belief that Japan was destined to overthrow these shambling governments and establish a pure military government.
The situation deteriorated quickly, and on the night of the 15th of May in 1932, a group of officers stormed the residence of the Japanese prime minister and murdered him. It would be the first of many politically-motivated assassinations. The trial meant to shun and condemn the murderers became a soap box upon which they were able to stand and voice their criticisms to all of Japan. In the years following a series of more political murders and attempts at intimidation would arise. The nationalist groups at play in Japan, most importantly the radical
‘Kōdōha’ and the more moderate but still extremist
‘Tōseiha’, fought not only against the constitutional government but with one another as well. The
‘Kōdōha’ despised modernity and wished to wage a national war against the corrupting ideologies of Bolshevism and the West. Meanwhile, the
‘Tōseiha’ wished to make use of Western modernization as a weapon to improve Japan under the plans of ‘Total Mobilization’ to claim dominance over all of Asia. These two groups grew in size and strength throughout their campaign of terror in Japan and made use of what common ground united their movement to, in turn, divide Japan against itself and force the change they wished to see. Despite this, the 1936 general elections were a major defeat for them, with the pacifistic and constitutional government being upheld by the democratic process, and yet all that was about to change.
On the 26th of February, 1936. Young officers of the
Kōdōha faction again tried to commit to a violent overthrow of the government. Calling themselves; ‘The Righteous Army’ led by Jinzaburō Mazaki, occupied key government areas and murdered multiple government ministers, demanding the formation of a military cabinet centered around Mazaki. The ‘Supreme Military Council’ (SMC) issued an official response, one heavily influenced by the
Kōdōha minister of war; Sadao Araki. The public recognition of the movement led to another uproar of support for the nationalists among pro-
Kōdōha units, especially in the Japanese client states and occupied nations like Korea and Manchuria, whose garrisons mutinied in support of the rebels. Meanwhile, the emperor and his cabinet sat on the verge of a war. The court ministers and the Emperor himself were in agreement that they could absolutely not tolerate the actions of the
Kōdōha any longer but were in no position to shut them down. A stalemate settled in over that afternoon, with an air of tension settling like smog over Tokyo. As evening settled, the tension would finally snap with the sound of gunshots in the street. In response to the rebels' actions, those loyal to the
Tōseiha attempted to shut down any neutral or non-acting parties of the
Kōdōha that were on the fence, the ruthless Kempeitai, under the orders of Hideki Tojo, a prominent Tōseiha supporter, they arrested and executed hundreds of officers. In response, and as all negotiations broke down, fighting exploded in the streets, ignoring calls from the government to cease; the military moved in and occupied the city. With the
Tōseiha largely seizing control of the parliament and court cabinet. As night fell, ferocious fires rose like pillars over cities all across the Japanese Empire. The Japanese Civil War had officially begun.”
- Fires in the East: East Asias Civil Wars 1936-1954, by Allen Burnes
I HAVE RETURNED! Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I've been in crunch time for my tests in school, so I haven't been able to write much. Updates will still be slow, and I'm also working a lot on my other TL, "Kingdom of Kowloon," so this has taken a bit of a backseat lately. Worry not; I'm still working on it, and Chapter 8 is already in the works! Thank you all so so much for your support for this TL so far! I hope to deliver more chapters soon!