AaronMk
Junior Member
Ernst Junger, Storm of Steel
Vladimir Lenin, The War and Russian Social Democracy
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Europe woke in 1920 from its delirium.Thrown into the dramatic fits of war over the course of six years. It had bled the flower of its youth. Gun smoke evaporating into the skies, they came out of their opium haze of violence. But bad dreams do not leave explosive seeds. Bad dreams do not leave an emptiness in the heart as does war. The men of Europe and the world had eaten the fruit of a more violent lotus than the crew of Ulysses'. Men, aged in generations by years in the trench stirred out from propaganda dreams to undertake the calamitous reality of postwar. Generations passed in a space of a year. Fresh boys turned into hard cynical men. Once proud nationalists turned into anarchs. Within trenches, misery created jealous and bitter classes of soldier who denounced the war of another as a simple fairy tale vs the war they had fought the last season. They turned against state and government where men in cloakrooms and boardrooms dictated orders to take a ounce of flesh there, a pound of grist there, a loan against futures and a mortgaging of a Belle Epoch. An entire romance turned to salt to spread across Europe.
In the year 1914 a Serbian of then no great reputation, and now of tremendous consequence killed a son of the House of Hapsburg launching a cascade of events that one after another dragged Europe into an inescapable coarse towards war. A German offensive meant to sweep Paris and end the war before summer was turned aside, only for the Germans again to parry the counter thrust. Some years afterwards, in terror or nostalgic admiration many would describe the German offensive into Normandy in autumn 1914 as“The greatest display of Cavalry since Napoleon and Murat”. Almost by accident the Germans entrapped and destroyed a combined French and British force gaining them access to the North of France,riding down from the north towards Paris. By December, the generals hoped the war would be over. But coming upon the Seine and Oise at the doorstep of Paris, with the government of France retreating to safer quarters, the Germans would be prevented from reenacting 1871.
And there on those banks, though the line would crawl about but never reach Paris: war would stand.Churning the countryside under the deliberate wail of artillery.Carving the landscape into something not seen since Virgil took Dante on a tour of Hell.
Under the stagnation of war, unscrupulous and shifty men wrote conspiracies in dark backrooms. The colonies, following suit had joined in the war would play a bigger front in the coming years. With the stagnation in France, provocateurs and spies conspired that would be exported; in Somalia to the Belgian Congo, Terra del Fuego to Barbados, and Tsingtao to Tehran agents of either powers would seek the end of the war from some back door. With the best of efforts possible, the hands fed mouths that would bite them.
Surprise would strike the gut of the Entente in May 1916. A feint at sea by the Germans drew in sequence elements of the British North Sea fleet into battle, where it was devoured in detail. Though the whole of the British navy would not be destroyed, in the North Sea the Germans gained a decisive advantage which they sought to greedily exploit against the British coast and the Channel. All the more better to reinforce the vulnerable underbelly of its army in Northern France. What better armor is provided by a screen of battleships and wolf packs. The sudden freight in Spring of that year and the violent turning of the war would strike inspirations elsewhere in Europe. As all war does. Considering its leverage as neutral, the schemes of the Spanish court drew to Spain the shipping of Europe, offering in a naval treaty agreed by everyone to defend the neutrality of all shipping into Spain. They, already manufacturing for both parties would soon cometo manage the export of supplies to the war through Cadiz and Galicia. Spanish masters, clever and taxing quietly taking a pound of ham for the pleasure.
For the Entente, a horrifying turn would occur further with the sudden departure of the Russians from the War. Total failure by the Russian army in an ill-fated offensive by Brusilov in 1916 ended in absolute failure. The scale of defeat forced the Tzarists to acknowledge their desperate position in the field and at home and by the end of the year signed a hasty and debilitating peace with the Germans. But such a peace also struck the twilight hour of the Russian Empire who, compounded with debilitating crises at home and a failure to cow the people into place began its dissolution. The Empire of Russia would not see the thirties as a going concern, carved between its marshals and revolutionary cells of all stripes. In the later decades, feisty Finns took Nicholas II straddling a new Emperor Alexei with the winter darkness of a thrashing Empire.
And while the victory in the East was a profound boost to the cause of the Germans, giving them the manpower to pour into the West, the war in the Channel, and the North Sea, the very extreme circumstances brought upon the war was coming for them. A nation can not long live with its men and boys pulled away from farm or factory in such great numbers, chewed beneath mud. Rendered blind or breathless by gas. No one could run the farm.Factories choked. Food scarcity became more and more an inescapable reality. The years of 1916-1918 were brutal for the Germans. The armies of Germany, as much as all of Europe were beaten leather, who marched through their trenches like Lazarus from the tomb, desperately shielding themselves from the winter snow and summer rains under thread bare blankets. Eating rats and spoiling rations. Turnip was the plats prinic paux of all meals, for civilian and army.
Revolution erupted finally in Germany on Christmas Day 1918 with a mutiny of sailors. The war had been long unpopular. The Kaiser's police had repressed the sentiment, sending the most unpatriotic advocates against the war to the front themselves. But this had become their own undoing. Now the conditions of life were unbearable. Soldiers and sailors ceased their habit of isolated and spontaneous mutiny and threw in with the workers in the streets. By the end of the year the Imperial government was deposed and the Kaiser sent into exile. A new government was formed around the SPD as a Republic. While preaching peace however, they sought to continue the war for an advantageous peace, looking to Russia as an example of a non-advantageous peace. Through spring and summer 1919 they could hold a strong hand against the still radicalized and mobilized Left, who brawled openly with state security and rightist groups by decamping the German Army under ceasefire to the Line of early November 1914. But by 1920 with no peace, the revolution kicked into a second phase and a formal peace was signed in summer 1920 among all parties.
It was a pitiable deal. No blame would be assigned, so it went to everyone. Territories changed, but always to the wrong person. The status quo was destitute. The financial instruments destroyed, banks in London were foreclosing and instead of any gains, there were only loses. Men awoke in 1920 from their delirium. But the echoes of their nightmare persisted for some years to come. From their bad dreams they awoke with only hate and paranoia in their hearts. Simmering wars between former belligerents continued in a last breath of action to fulfill unresolved goals. The organs of the Concert were fell silent. Revolutions across the continent, and across the world even broke out. For a generation Europe went to heal with the succor provided by Spanish Dons. Millions had died. Eastern Europe was a endless ocean of mud. Northern France was a bent burnt over moonscape. It would take a generation to recover, and more to heal the wounds of faith.
It is now 1955
Precipice of War is an alternative history RP, set some years after a longer and more disastrous World War 1. But opposed to any side claiming an assured victory, the attrition suffered from the conflict and the weakening of the political structure that upheld its participants forced them decades ago to simply quit the war. In the meantime, history as always continues and the world moves on. But the threat of another war to finish the job looms on. In that time, the Russian Empire collapsed into new polities ruled by marshals and self-proclaimed generalissimos and who engaged, and continue to engage in the long competition for political unity in Russia.
The concept of the roleplay dates back a little more that a decade and has been variously rebooted and retooled to fit the changing dispositions and growth of its core participants, as well to bring on new people. The RP follows a narrative format, there are no or minimal game play elements to moderate it. Merely that a convention of good faith is followed: what is written is fun, cool, not insanely improbable, and agreeable to the people directly involved. No action is taken instantly either. In this setting you will take up the mantle of a nation-state and its peoples and the component of its State and simply tell its story as it buffets and is buffeted by the interests of everyone else and finally break through the Precipice of War.
To that end, the following NationStates are on hold for traditional core of PoW players:
- China
- The United States
- Germany
- Poland
- Mexico
- Canada
These people will also serve as mods, as the story cops in effect.
Before continuing it may be sufficient to do a recap. To lay it out in bullet points:
- The Great War began is it did, July 28 1914
- The Germans invade France according to the Schlieffen Plan, but the advance of the German army was not held and in what would in our world the Race To The Sea, the German Army instead breaks out, outmaneuvering the Entente Armies in France to invade Northern France – Normandy – and to sweep south towards Paris, held back just north of the city. They would never enter Paris.
A decisive series of naval engagements off of Jutland between the British and German navies ends in German victory. While the Germans are not able to press the advantage, the British are defeated enough that the nature of the war at sea is dramatically altered. - The Madrid Naval Treaty, drafted and signed after Jutland is made with the intent of curtailing excess civilian casualties at sea to otherwise unrestrained Uboat commerce raiding. Ships from neutral nations, or even belligerent nations are invited to dock in Spain, ships bound for Spain are thus protected with the assumed threat that Spain would join any side of the war opposite to whomever attacked a Spanish bound ship. This gives the Spanish an upper hand geopolitical in Europe through an increased involvement in supply of both sides as a neutral party.
- The Russians are defeated during the Brusilov Offensive so soundly, they are forced to leave the war earlier under a “peace for bread” arrangement, where the Central Powers alleviate the Empire's growing food scarcity because of the war to keep them out of the war
- The Russian peace sets up a sequence of events which ends in the breakup of the Russian Empire over time. Separatist movements first come to light in the Caucuses and labor and civil unrest strains the legitimacy of the imperial government and its too-late reforms of the Russian Empire. Instead of transforming into the Soviet Union, it entirely breaks down.
- Under their own strains of food shortages and massive discontent within their borders, the German people stage an uprising under the SDP and form the Weimar Republic. The otherwise conservative SDP regime attempts to continue the war for a better peace before itself is overthrown in a Communist uprising, entering into peace with the allies as it falls into civil war and national instability. All the same: it's the Communists who succeed where their Russian counterparts had failed.
- While the main thrust of the Great War is concluded, the following inconclusive war, tensions persist as world-war revolution and wars spun off in continuation in other parts of Europe and the world broadly, ending the Great War period broadly in the mid-20s.
- There was of course an economic crash roughly coinciding with our Great Depression, which given the scale of destruction and disruption the Great War Period brought on the world would have been variously as-bad or worse depending on where in the world you are; consult with how your nation got along during the depression as a reference point before you write about it.
Technical details
- Nuclear power and weapons are only theoretical. The general physics exists despite it being the 1950s, but the technology is far from any practical application
- Jet technology, while technically very old is very new as the industrial materials development would have by now caught up. But the ability for nations to construct jet-propelled aircraft is not universal for that reason. Only countries with a significant degree in industrial development are able to produce jets: France, Germany, the UK, US, Japan China. But this generation of aircraft are, like helicopters still experimental and not in their “first generation” phase are approaching it
- The over all technological aesthetic and weapons/commodities available are roughly within the scope of the 1940s; bolt-action/semi-automatic, submachine guns, early intermediary cartridges, light/medium/heavy tanks and half-tracks
- Doctrinally, many of the armies of the world are at a base assumption formed through their experience in World War 1; mass mobility, trenches, counter-trenching, massed artillery, chemical weapons attack/defensive doctrine, stockpiling of strategic resources
- Black and white television, personal radios, and early cathode-ray computers are a thing
- The dominant medium of exchange in Europe is still most likely gold, which the Spanish probably control a much larger share of than OTL. The massive Russian gold shares are indisputably in the hands of warlords, America probably still has roughly its same share if diminished
Rules and Guidelines
Before I set anyone on their way to the app, I think I should lay out some general guidelines and rules based on what I've seen on this board. This is not to say that anything ya'll are doing is bad. But perhaps the practice is different compared to what you often do. So:
Guidelines (Informal Rules)
- Precipice of War isn't a necessarily competitive setting or story. While the premise is that at some time “soon” there will be a Second Great War, and necessarily there'll be winners and losers, it is not written for anyone to “one up” someone else. In all instances you should give someone time to respond, or measure out the time it might take to do something with how many posts you will need to in essence tell a complete story on that process. If for no other reason then to keep things “lined up” actions shouldn't all be finished in one post. But not always. It's a “it depends” situation.
- Because it's not a competitive, game format; all interactions with players are on an at-will basis. Establish an end goal, and at least generally figure out how to get there and to finish what episode you are doing. While you're free to do this as a series of on-offs, for the sake of cleanliness I personally prefer that posts with direct interactions between players in a moment are done so in DMs or elsewhere, and compiled into a collaborative post one or the other releases with credit to their peer.
- Legible, ready-to-read posts, please. BBCode can be excited but I would rather not have every other post break a consistent formatting so keep a post as standard to the RPNation style-sheet as possible
- History has changed until from the fall of 1914 onward, all events before the fall of 1914 canon. Though between the 1914 Offensive and the 1916 Battle of Jutland may be thought of as the “period of divergence”. If needed however, you can make adjustments as early as 1912 but nothing too major
Rules (Formal)
- No images in posts larger than 200px tall
- Original artwork and writing only; unless quotations from historical texts that would exist in this timeline or “documentary” wikimedia images of a “time or place”
- The aforementioned “story cops”/assistants and I – the DM – have final say before site admin if a dispute arises.
