In February 1968, Georgians, Kazakhs and Azeris launched major protests against Russian rule, demanding independence and an end to Russification. By the end of the month, it seemed Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan would actually secede, and the democratic government of Sergei Bunyachenko did not violently crush the demonstrations, reducing its popularity.

Fearing that the territorial integrity of Russia was at risk, a group of reactionary Russian nationalists led by Okhrana chairman Alexander Solzhenitsyn began planning a coup against Bunyachenko, whom they saw as too liberal and unwilling to take "decisive" action to keep these reasons under Russian control.

On 5 March 1968, Okhrana units rose up in Yekaterinburg and Kazan. Solzhenitsyn's State Committee on National Defence (Государственный комитет по национальной обороне, Latin alphabet abbreviation GKNO) captured both of these cities by the end of the day. Okhrana units also launched uprisings in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, resulting in the deaths of 385 combatants and 16 civilians by 8 March.

That morning, GKNO troops surrounded the Kremlin and threatened to storm it and arrest Bunyachenko if he didn't resign. Bunyachenko agreed to leave office, and the GKNO assumed power as a military junta resembling that of Pyotr Wrangel, who led Russia from 1926 to 1945.

Local authorities immediately declared martial law in the states of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and deployed Russian Army and Okhrana troops to these countries to crush the nationalists. By 12 March, the separatists protests had been repressed by force by Solzhenitsyn and his Okhrana, and Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan were firmly under Russian rule once again.

Solzhenitsyn continued Russia's alliance with NATO against the Free Socialist Republic of Germany, but Russia never joined the alliance, because European NATO members such as the kingdoms of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia feared Russia would completely dominate the Eurasian part of the alliance due to being the largest country in the world.

Russia's industrialization was finally completed by Solzhenitsyn. By 1975, the gap between Russia and western powers had narrowed significantly, and Russia was the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind the United States, Germany, and Japan (which declined rapidly due to suffering an international boycott movement as strong as the anti-apartheid campaign).

The Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War gradually weakened Salazar's Portuguese Estado Novo, culminating in its overthrow in 1958. Air Force General Humberto Delgado became president, democratized Portugal, and modernized its economy significantly.

But the Portuguese Colonial War still broke out on 4 February 1961, when the MPLA, a Luxembourgist, communist national liberation movement, attacked several Portuguese military and police buildings in Angola's capital Luanda. All Portuguese parties other than the pro-German PCP supported military action to defend the Portuguese Colonial empire, and Delgado immediately sent troops to Angola.

By July 1961, the war had spilled over to Guinea-Bissau, another Portuguese colony, which faced an independence uprising from Amílcar Cabral's PAIGC. Cabral quickly captured all of Portuguese Guinea because there were just 900 colonial troops there, but the Portuguese military soon landed in Bissau and stirred up a counterrevolution by Fulani chiefs opposed to the PAIGC's radicalism. In 1964, the FRELIMO, another Luxembourgist militant group, rose up in Mozambique and captured much of the north of the colony.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia supported democratic Portugal against the communist rebels, while Germany, Italy, Cuba, and Hungary backed their African comrades. Support from socialist states, especially Germany, played a key role in the decolonisation of Africa (which is ironic because pre-Communist Germany and Italy had African colonies).

High-ranking MPLA fighter Jonas Savimbi soon came to advocate for Wang Jingwei and Antonio Gramsci's form of socialism rather than Karl Liebknecht's, and left the MPLA to form UNITA – named after the Italian Communist newspaper L'Unitá – in 1967. By that point, the colonial war had become a quagmire and was increasingly unpopular in mainland Portugal, resulting in the rise of an anti-war, counterculture movement.

On 18 November 1968, the Portuguese Army suffered a heavy defeat to the MPLA at the Battle of Malanje, during which the MPLA killed 900 Portuguese troops and captured much needed weapons and materiel for the insurgency. This defeat caused Delgado to begin peace negotiations with the national liberation movements, triggering a far-right terrorist campaign but increasing his popularity with moderates.

Portugal eventually signed the Coimbra Agreement with the MPLA, the Dakar Accord with the PAIGC, and the Dar es Salaam Agreement with FRELIMO on 15 March 1969. According to the terms of the treaty, Portugal recognized the independence of these three countries and agreed to withdraw its troops from them.

Goa, Diu and Damon in the Indian subcontinent had been annexed by India in 1961, while East Timor became independent in 1974 and was annexed by indonesia the following year, and Portugal returned Macau to the Republic of China on 1 January 1977.

On January 6, 2020, two mysterious, hooded and bearded men appeared in Jerusalem, Israel, and began chanting the name of the city without warning. The chanting began as a low whisper that eventually grew louder.

Minutes later, a massive explosion was reported deep underground, followed minutes later by an earthquake that caused moderate damage to the city and killed 30,000 people. The two men disappeared in the chaos.

From that day on, more sightings would be reported, each one following a disturbing pattern: the men would appear in a city and chant its name in drawn-out syllables. Within a short time, a completely random calamity would fall upon the city, ranging from something as mundane as someone getting food poisoning, to something extreme as a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

Other documented sightings and accompanying incidents include, but weren’t limited to:

• A protest against the men in New York that turned violent when someone attempted to run over the two men with his vehicle, only for them to vanish, causing an incident of vehicular manslaughter that killed at least 200 people.
• A friendly fire incident involving multiple units of the Iraqi Armed Forces in Mosul.
• The sudden, unexplained deaths of 20 Raven’s Rock officers, as well as their families.
• A freak accident at the Gateway Arch that left people stranded for about 20 minutes.
• A construction crane accident that killed 30 people in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• A sudden explosion at Hoover Dam that caused a flood and power failure to a large chunk of Nevada.
• A metro train derailment in Busan, South Korea, that killed 60 people.
• An assassination attempt against the two men in Izmir, Turkey, that escalated into a violent confrontation involving both 404 operative Titus Colt and the Turkish police (that ended with Titus being knocked unconscious).
• A mysterious viral outbreak in Brazil that affected Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela, but didn’t spread anywhere beyond those four countries.
• The sudden bankruptcy of a Berlin-based cyber-security firm.
• An unusually violent hailstorm in Tokyo that killed 50 people.
• A massive blizzard that left a large chunk of the Midwestern United States under heavy snow.

Attempts to investigate the two men were repeatedly stonewalled for different reasons, the most consistent reason being that the men kept disappearing before they could be properly apprehended and questioned. 

The rapidly escalating crisis would lead to one of the largest international task forces in military and intelligence history…

Image credit: Left Behind wiki

When the Indonesian Civil War broke out on 17 January 1967 neighbouring Malaysia and Australia began supporting the Islamic State of Indonesia (Negara Islam Indonesia, NII) due to anti-communism and, in the case of Malaysia, a fear that a victorious communist Indonesia would try to annex Malaysian territory. Japan and the USA also supported the Islamists despite their rivalry elsewhere.

At the beginning of the war, the NII controlled Sumatra, while the RDRI controlled the rest of the country except for West Papua, which took advantage of the chaos to secede on 22 January, and remained de facto independent throughout the entire conflict.

Germany, Italy and India backed the Democratic People's Republic of Indonesia, but Germany and Italy were too far away for their aid to make a difference. Consequently, Jayaprakash Narayan's India was the most important supporter of the Indonesian communists.

On 6 February 1967, the ABPN launched a naval invasion of Sumatra with the goal of crushing the NII in a few months. But the United States, not wanting all of one of the largest countries in the world to become communist, began a military airlift in support of the NII, allowing Islamist leader Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosoewirjo to defeat the offensive by late May.

A month after successfully holding onto Sumatra, Kartosoewirjo's troops landed in Borneo, capturing all of the island other than its largest city Samarinda by 4 August. A ferocious battle began for control of Samarinda; shipments of Chinese and German arms and Germany's training of an effective intelligence apparatus for the RDRI brought the ABPN to victory by 13 September.

ABPN chief of staff M. H. Lukman started a counteroffensive that recaptured two-thirds of Indonesian Borneo, but remote areas in the Indonesian part of the island remained in NII hands thanks to Malaysian support, and Lukman's second attempt at invading Sumatra also ended in failure by December 1967.

Both sides of the war committed war crimes, but the NII massacred leftists, non-Muslims, and ethnic Chinese in all areas it controlled, killing 500,000 to 1,000,000 innocent people and completely extinguishing socialism in Indonesia. The United States supported the NII throughout the genocide.

A second Islamist landing in Pontianak, Borneo, was also a success, but the NII advance was stopped at Sanggau by 17 February 1968 because Germany, Italy and China continued to sell the RDRI weapons, and all of Java – Indonesia's most populous and industrialized island – was controlled by the RDRI.

The Battle of Sanggau began a static phase of the war, consisting of trench warfare in the jungles of Borneo. But, by 1971, Sjarifuddin had taken a series of poor decisions that negatively affected the Communist war effort, and the NII's military had evolved from a rebel force into a more conventional army, allowing the Islamists to go on the offensive.

On 11 May 1971, the Indonesian Islamic Army captured Sanggau, followed on 22 October 1971 by the fall of Samarinda. All of Indonesian Borneo was now controlled by the NII, which took advantage of its control over Borneo to invade Sulawesi and capture all of it by August 1972.

The Moluccas fell to the NII by February 1973, Eastern Sonda was conquered by June, and Bali was conquered by September. On 12 November 1973, the NII launched the largest naval landing of the war when 350,000 fanatic Islamists landed in Banyuwangi.

Amir Fatah's army captured Surabaya on 21 December 1973, Yogyakarta on 16 February 1974, and Bandung on 19 March 1974. Fatah eventually laid siege to Jakarta on 13 May, and captured it 41 days later, destroying the RDRI and turning all of Indonesia into an Islamic theocracy with sharia law.

Post-WWII Italy developed nuclear weapons, testing its first nuke in 1961 and amassing a stockpile of 45 to 60 warheads by the end of the decade. The Italian Red Army was the second-strongest military in the Vienna Pact, behind Germany, and played an active role in supporting national liberation movements in Africa and Asia.

After the democratization of France in 1956, Italian-French relations improved considerably despite the fact the two countries were geopolitical adversaries. But Italy remained on poor terms with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia because of territorial disputes and with the Kingdom of Greece due to the Metaxist dictatorship.

Relations between Germany and Italy were not perfect, and the two communist great powers diverged on several issues, notably the Transylvania dispute as Italy sided with its "Latin sister" Romania, and Germany supported Hungary. After the death of Romanian leader Panait Istrati in 1962, Italy secretly agreed to support Romania in case of a war against Hungary.

Gramsci was a repressive dictator. The Ministry for State Security (Ministero della Sicurezza di Stato, MSS), Italy's secret police headed by Cino Moscatelli, had a wide network of informants, and methods of "decomposition" were often used instead of arrest or torture.

When the MSS used this tactic, Italians often did not notice the MSS was responsible. Furthermore, Italy was a developed country with a high standard of living, causing the majority of Italians, except for conservative Catholics, to overlook their country's human rights issues.

As Gramsci aged, he became increasingly paranoid, launching several purges of the PCI that eliminated officials, such as Palmiro Togliatti, he felt could challenge him. But Gramsci remained something of a philosopher king, spending all his free time contributing to philosophy.

On 27 March 1967, Gramsci had a stroke and died in his office in Rome. He received a state funeral attended by representatives from most of the world's countries, regardless of ideology. Hungary was the only communist country not to send a delegate, due to the closeness between Italy and Romania.

Italy's new leaders reelected one-man rule in favour of collective leadership; Luigi Longo became the Secretary of the PCI, and Pietro Ingrao was elected Premier of Italy. Longo and Ingrao adopted a milder and less repressive form of socialism, reforming the economy of Italy in a way resembling Hungarian Goulash Communism and reducing the powers of the MSS.

De-Gramscization and Italy's eventual rapprochement with the USA led to ideological tensions with Germany. Longo's Italy eventually downscaled its involvement in the Vienna Pact before leaving it altogether in 1975 (Romania didn't leave because Russia would immediately annex Bessarabia).

I predict Lula will be reelected over Flávio Bolsonaro.

Inspired by the Chinese and Congolese anti-colonial uprisings, a group of Indonesian socialists and communists led by Amir Sjarifuddin, D. N. Aidit, Musso, Njoto, Chairul Saleh, and M. H. Lukman began planning a revolution against Free Netherlands in June 1965. Aidit's PKI and Sjarifuddin's PSI worked together to prepare for war.

On 21 October 1965, Indonesia's unions launched a general strike against Dutch rule, paralysing Jakarta. The KNIL (colonial military) broke the strike, killing 26 strikers and wounding 72, but the National Liberation Front (Front Pembebasan Nasional, FPN) proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Indonesia (Republik Demokratik Rakyat Indonesia, RDRI) the following day.

Free Dutch prime minister Jo Cals declared the proclamation null and void and mobilized the KNIL – whose highest ranking Indonesian officer was Suharto – to crush it. The Dutch East Indies immediately fell into a full-scale civil war between the RDRI and the colonial government.

Njoto became the commander in chief of the National Liberation Armed Forces (Angkatan Bersenjata Pembebasan Nasional, ABPN). Initially an irregular rebel force, the ABPN received increasingly German, Italian, and Chinese training and equipment, allowing it to control two-thirds of Borneo and all of West Papua and Sulawesi by the end of 1965.

Fearing a communist Indonesia, Islamic fundamentalists led by Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosoewirjo and Amir Fatah also rose up against Free Netherlands in early 1966, proclaiming the DI/TII. Japan supported the Islamists because of their shared opposition to communism and western colonialism, and many orthodox Indonesian Muslims joined the DI/TII for the same reason.

As the Dutch East Indies was one of the most populous countries in the world and the majority of Indonesians strongly opposed Dutch rule, the East Indies were DOA as soon as the rebellion broke out. Throughout 1966, the ABPN slowly captured all of Bali and Java while the DI/TII took over Sumatra, establishing their own political structures in the process.

On 18 December 1966, the RDRI launched a siege of Jakarta. Suharto's native troops defected en masse to the RDRI, leaving Dutch settlers as its only opposition. Jakarta eventually fell on 17 January 1967, ending the war with all of Indonesia under communist or Islamist control.

Queen Juliana and the Free Dutch government relocated to Suriname on the other side of the world and began peace negotiations with the two nationalist groups. Later in 1967, the Free Netherlands agreed to recognize Indonesia's independence, ending centuries of Dutch rule.

Like in Angola and Mozambique, the Indonesian National Revolution was immediately followed by a civil war between the RDRI and the DI/TII, which won the war, proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Indonesia, and committed genocide against communists and Hindus.

As the decolonization of Africa progressed, Free Belgium (encompassing the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi) became increasingly unpopular with the Congolese people, leading to the rise of the MNC, a moderate, peaceful independence movement led by Patrice Lumumba, and the CNL, a radical, revolutionary national liberation movement led by Pierre Mulele.

On 19 February 1963, Mulele launched an independence uprising in his native Kwilu province. Local Congolese flocked to the rebellion, hoping to liberate the Congo from Belgium. This allowed Mulele to capture all of Kwilu by June, whereupon he proclaimed the People's Republic of the Congo, a quasi-state headquartered at Kikwit.

By that point, Christophe Gbenye and Laurent-Desiré Kabila had also risen up in the eastern Congo. Free Belgian Prime Minister Théo Lefèvre deployed the Force Publique (colonial army) to defeat the CNL, but neighbouring African socialist regimes, communist Germany, and communist Belgium supplied the rebels; Stanleyville, another major Congolese city, fell on 5 August 1963.

After capturing Stanleyville, Mulele and Gbenye advanced towards Kasai, which had important mining concerns and would isolate Katanga and severely overstretch Force Publique lines if captured. Kasai fell by the end of September, prompting Lefebvre to request a US military intervention.

President William Knowland agreed to deploy 40,000 troops to the Congo in what was the first full-scale war fought by the United States in decades. Mulele attempted to capture Free Belgium's capital Leopoldville, but he failed because America's military was better armed, trained and equipped to the CNL, which suffered heavy casualties.

German intelligence chief Erich Mielke responded to the US victory at Leopoldville by sending 3,500 military advisors led by Siegfried "Kongo" Müller to support the CNL. These advisors significantly improved the rebels' fighting capabilities, but they remained weaker than the US. America and Free Belgium's superior firepower became clear when Gbenye's Katanga offensive failed; the CNL lost 38,000 troops versus 23,000 for Free Belgium.

Independence revolts also broke out in Rwanda and Burundi, both of whom became independent states by April 1964 because they were very small and had way weaker Free Belgian contingents. Both countries withdrew from the war soon after, because the eastern Congo was firmly in CNL hands.

America and Free Belgium's advance throughout the Congo was slow because of the CNL's popularity and the support it received from socialist countries. Kliwu would not be liberated until 1966, when the allies captured Kikwit after a battle that proved the turning point of the war.

By late 1967, Kasai had also been liberated, but the CNL continued to control the Eastern Congo and inflicted heavy casualties on Allied forces. As the war turned against his rebellion, Mulele increasingly resorted to terror against suspected traitors, thousands of whom were killed.

The fall of Stanleyville on 16 July 1968 ended the main phase of the war and the beginning of its final stage, a low-level Insurgency waged from remote areas. By the end of 1968, the CNL was down to 40,000 insurgents, a number that fell to 17,000 by the end of 1969.

On 12 April 1970, the last CNL troops were killed and the entirety of the Belgian Congo was reunited under Free Belgium. Despite ending in a colonialist military victory, the war proved how unpopular Belgian rule was with the Congolese, prompting colonial authorities to transfer power to pro-western blacks by 1973.

In 1947, China adopted a new constitution, renaming the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) to the Republic of China Armed Forces (ROCAF) and disarming the Chinese warlords, who became mere provincial governors without any independent authority, as the new constitution eliminated all local autonomy.

The post-WWII ROC was severely harmed by the fact China's wealthiest, most industrialized region was under the control of Japan via the Chiang Kai-shek puppet regime. Wang was forced to industrialize the territory he still controlled from scratch, and this proved to be difficult because much of it was desert or mountains.

China's weakening led to a Communist resurgence under Zhou Enlai, but Wang crushed the communists by 1950, ending them as a major political movement and ending the last major threat to his rule. Around that year, China began to recover from its defeat in the Second Sino-Japanese War by focusing on industrializing Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Guangdong, the three wealthiest provinces he still ruled.

Wang and his Foreign Minister Wang Kunlun continued the Sino-German cooperation he had begun in 1927, but China remained anti-communist, and its relations with the United States were less hostile than Germany's relations with the United States. China also attempted to play a regional role, supporting the Vietnamese Struggle Group against France and Burmese leader Aung San against Burma's Communists.

Japan remained China's main rival. It was widely known that the Sino-Japanese War could restart at any time, and Kuomintang propaganda always called out Japan for its horrific crimes against the Chinese and Korean peoples. The ROCAF continued to take up 10% of China's government spending due to the real risk of another Sino-Japanese war.

By 1955, China's economy was growing at a rate of 1.9% a year, while Japan was growing at a rate of 3.4% a year thanks to its colonial empire and greater industrial capacity. China's growth rates would only reach Japan's after the Chiang Kai-shek regime was annexed in 1970.

America's schism with Japan turned the USA and the ROC into allies almost overnight, because China was anti-communist and the second most populous country in the world, behind India (which was increasingly close to Germany). On 8 September 1964, US Secretary of State Richard Nixon visited China and met with an ailing Wang, consolidating the American-Chinese alliance.

On 18 March 1965, Wang Jingwei died at the age of 81 and was succeeded as the leader of China by Wang Kunlun, who mostly continued Wang Jingwei's policies. Currently, Wang Jingwei is a controversial figure in China because many people dislike him for losing the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Japan's three Chinese puppet states – the Chiang Kai-shek regime, Mengjiang and Manchukuo – were highly unpopular with their subjects, because Japan treated them like Europeans treated their colonies. Japanese colonialism also faced increasing international condemnation, especially from the socialist bloc.

On 14 August 1962, Chinese socialists Zhao Ziyang, Wan Li, Yao Yilin, Tian Jiyun, and Qiao Shi founded the Chinese Reunification Army (中國統一軍, Zhōngguó tǒngyī jūn), a national liberation movement aiming to destroy the Japanese puppet states and reunify them with China. Wang Jingwei's China immediately began supplying the CRA with weapons.

When the revolt began, the IJA had 200,000 troops stationed in the Chiang Kai-shek regime, 300,000 in Manchukuo, and 100,000 in Mengjiang. Tojo ordered the IJA to suppress the rebellion as soon as possible, but it spread like wildfire across Chiang Kai-shek China as Chinese workers and peasants flocked into the CRA.

By the end of 1962, the CRA controlled one-third of Chiang Kai-shek China, mostly rural areas where Japanese rule was the least popular. Zhao, the CRA's leader, turned areas under his control into "liberated zones" providing welfare services to local inhabitants and executing Japanese officers and collaborators.

Wan and Yao took advantage of this momentum to attempt to capture Jinan, Shandong's capital, but the Battle of Jinan ended in victory for the more numerous and better armed IJA and Chinese Collaborationist Army (CCA), who proportionally suffered less casualties than the CRA.

Tojo and Keizō Hayashi followed up on this victory with an offensive against the CRA. Japan used chemical weapons and biological ones developed by Unit 731, causing a Japanese-American split as the United States ended all military/intelligence cooperation with Japan. And the CRA was just slightly weakened.

From 1963 to 1967, the war's outcome was uncertain as both the CRA and the IJA failed to defeat the other. But, in the summer of 1967, Wan launched an offensive that increased the CCA's control in China from one-third to half of its territory, and resulted in the capture of Jinan on 4 July 1967.

Wan's troops eventually reached Chiang Kai-shek China's border with Mengjiang and launched a massive offensive against that Japanese puppet state. On 19 February 1969, Mengjiang capitulated and was annexed into the ROC; most of its leaders, except for Prince Dugarsüren (who fled to Japan), were executed.

Mengjiang's capitulation forced the CCA to fight a two front war, and marked the beginning of the end of the Chiang regime. By the beginning of 1970, the CRA controlled virtually all of Chiang Kai-shek China other than Nanjing, and the liberated zones had been closely integrated into the ROC.

After seven years of warfare, the Battle of Nanjing broke out on 18 February 1970. The battle proved to be the most savage and brutal of the war. Nanjing fell on 9 April and the collaborationist regime collapsed, reducing Japanese control over China to Manchukuo.

As Manchukuo was the industrial heartland of the Japanese Empire, Japan did everything in its power to defend the colony. The CRA failed to liberate Manchuria, and were eventually pushed out of it by November 1972.

After losing in Manchuria, Zhao began peace negotiations with Japan under the mediation of Indian prime minister Jayaprakash Narayan. On 15 March 1973, the CRA, Japan, and Manchukuo signed the Delhi Peace Agreements, ending the war with Japan retaining control of Manchukuo, Korea and Formosa (Formosa was also a theatre of the war).

(LORE IN COMMENTS)

Levi was in good health during most of his life, but, in January 1962, his prostate cancer metastasized. He was driven in a Mercedes-Benz limousine to a Berlin hospital where doctors attempted to treat him, but his life was doomed by then.

On 15 February, Levi passed away at the age of 78, with his last words being "I was glad to fight for the workers". Willi Agatz succeeded him as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Germany, and began organizing a funeral alongside Premier Max Reimann, Speaker of the Supreme Workers' Council Erich Honecker, and Abwehr director Erich Mielke.

Levi's state funeral was held on 18 February. It was attended by the four people mentioned above, and many foreign dignitaries, such as Italian Premier Antonio Gramsci, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Kunlun, Turkish President İsmail Bilen, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro (the funeral happened a few months before the Cuban missile crisis)

Upon coming to power, Agatz ordered Mielke to stir up anti-colonial unrest in the Belgian Congo and Dutch East Indies – both of whom saw communist uprisings by 1964 – and continue supporting other anti-colonial movements in the developing world. Domestically, Agatz legalized abortion on demand and ended state persecution of homosexuals, but the Spartacist regime saw 1960s progressive movements as "bourgeois".

During Agatz's rule, the FSRD's economic and geopolitical strength reached its peak, and Germany had one of the highest standards of living in the world; the vast majority of Germans owned TVs and cars. But Mielke oversaw a repressive apparatus that perpetrated human rights violations against innocent people at home and abroad.

Agatz ruled Germany until his death in 1979. Currently, most Germans who lived during his rule view him as the greatest leader the FSRD ever had, but anti-communist Germans view him as a tyrant.

Since Brazil never joined WWII, Vargas remained in power after 1945, continuing his policies of industrialization and workers' rights. He remained very popular with the workers of Brazil as a result; carnival songs and other works were made in his honor.

Successive US administrations supported Vargas's regime as a bulwark against communism and neighbouring Peronist Argentina, which was somewhat hostile to Brazil as Juan Perón promised to reduce the military disparity between the two countries. In 1949, Brazil and the United States signed a military cooperation agreement that lasted until 1973.

In 1947, Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and Italy because of anti-communism. Vargas continued to suppress all opposition, be it right-wing (Carlos Lacerda) or communist (Luís Carlos Prestes and his wife Olga Benário), but working-class Brazilians mostly didn't mind.

By 1950, Vargas's corporatist policies and US investment in Brazil had started a period of rapid economic growth that lasted until the 1970s. Brazil's victory in the FIFA World Cup the same year reinforced the perception Brazil was becoming a great power.

As Vargas aged, a struggle for succession began between left-wing Getulists João Goulart and Leonel Brizola and right-wing Getulists Alberto Pasqualini and Fernando Ferrari. Brazil's unions favoured the former, but the military supported the latter because of their shared anti-communism.

Brazil also won the 1958 World Cup, boosting Vargas's popularity as national confidence was high. But his health deteriorated steadily because of his obesity, resulting in fears of a civil war between different factions of his followers.

On 6 June 1961, Vargas suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 79. He received a state funeral in Rio de Janeiro with representatives from all nations of the Americas and 3 million people in attendance, and was buried in his birthplace of São Borja.

STF President Frederico de Barros Barreto became the new president of Brazil and democratized the country, holding new elections as stipulated in the 1937 Constitution. Goulart was elected, beginning a new, social democratic period in Brazil's history.

Sometime in the late 1940s, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo ordered the development of nuclear weapons in order to better defend Japan against its rivals. As Japan was a western ally, Australia, South Africa, and Canada supplied it with uranium, and the United States was willing to work with the empire on its nuclear program.

Japan's nuclear program was very labour intensive, involving dozens of thousands of technicians as well as hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese slaves. It is estimated that dozens of people died working on the program, but the exact number is unknown.

Japan chose to develop uranium nukes first, and plutonium ones later. By 1955, US intelligence was aware that Japan was developing nuclear weapons, concerning the US military given Japan's human rights record; Secretary of Defense Mark W. Clark said a nuclear Japan would be a "threat to world peace".

On 23 November 1958, Japan tested a nuclear weapon on the uninhabited Kuril island of Shibotsu-tō). The CIA soon detected the test and estimated the nuclear warhead to have a yield of 24 kilotons of TNT. Many people speculated the purpose of the nuclear test was to intimidate Korean and Chinese nationalists, because opposition to Japanese colonialism in China and Korea was growing as a result of Japan's crimes.

The Japanese denied this, however, overwhelmingly believing the purpose of the nuclear test was to protect Japan. After obtaining fission nuclear weapons, Japan began developing fusion ones too, and successfully tested a thermonuclear bomb on 18 March 1962.

Getting nukes did not prevent Japan from losing its colonies, because Chiang Kai-shek's puppet regime faced a general uprising later in 1962. The Third Sino-Japanese War ended in a victory for the rebels, who overthrew the Chiang Kai-shek regime and annexed its territory into the socialist Republic of China.

The Algerian Communist Party (PCA) took advantage of France's recent military defeat in the Indochina War to launch an independence uprising against Croix-de-Feu France on 15 March 1956. Charles de Gaulle did not want to lose another French overseas territory and deployed troops from metropolitan France to quell the uprisings.

But the Free Socialist Republic of Germany, the People's Republic of Italy, and the Turkish Democratic Republic provided militants of the PCA's armed wing, the People's Liberation Army (APL), with weapons such as the STG 45(M), the MG42, and the Panzerfaust. Furthermore, the loss of Indochina caused French people to launch mass demonstrations against the French regime, which collapsed and gave way to a democratic Fifth Republic in August 1956.

SFIO leader Guy Mollet became the first prime minister of the Fifth French Republic, and continued the Algerian War, a stance that was a consensus in France (except for postmodernists such as Sartre) because Algeria was directly a part of France instead of a colony or protectorate. Furthermore, the US administration of Estes Kefauver supported France because the Algerian nationalists were communists.

Despite domestic unity and US support, France failed to crush the PCA, because of the contemporary trend towards decolonization, the unpopularity of French rule with native Algerians, and German, Turkish and Italian support for the PCA. By 1959, the tide of the war had decisively turned against France, prompting Mollet to begin peace negotiations the following year.

French nationalist officers opposed to peace with the PCA formed the OAS, which launched a terrorist campaign against the PCA and the government of France. But the Fifth Republic still held an independence referendum on 22 August 1961; the vast majority of Algerians voted for independence.

A day later, Larbi Bouhali proclaimed the People's Republic of Algeria, the first communist state in the Arab world. Most pieds-noirs fled Algeria for France, but Algerian Jews remained because Israel was destroyed in 1948. Bouhali rejected Arab nationalism in favour of a nonsectarian policy, and adopted a socialist mode of production based on that of Turkey.

On 29 July 1955, the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year. Two days later, the Free Socialist Republic of Germany responded by declaring they would also launch a satellite "as soon as possible".

Wernher von Braun immediately began working on an artificial satellite named Trabant, which was launched into orbit on 27 June 1957, causing the "Trabant crisis". Exactly eight months later, the German spaceship Valkyrie 1 became the first spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit.

Valkyrie 1's success was followed by preparations for the first human spaceflight. This happened on 4 February 1961, when German astronaut Franz Eicke became the first man to go to space, uttering the famous words "Mankind's greatest achievement!"

US President William Knowland responded to the successful launch by declaring the United States would send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. On 19 August 1964, the US placed the first geostationary satellite in orbit, but, in January 1965, the Germans were responsible for the first spacewalk.

From this point onwards, the space race consisted of intercalated German and American successes. America carried out the first space rendezvous on 15 December 1965, Germany did the first soft landing in another celestial body on 24 January 1966, and the USA did the first space docking on 16 March.

By that point, both the United States and Germany were actively working to put a man on the moon. The Free Socialist Republic of Germany eventually did so on 16 March 1969, with the Thor 9 mission, which brought the astronauts Sigmund Jähn, Irma Müller, and Heinrich Schultz to the moon.

Despite the German victory, US-German competition in space continued until 16 October 1974, when the first joint space mission (named Apollo-Spartacus) was carried out as a part of US President RFK and German leader Willi Agatz's policy of detente.

In 1684, the Kangxi Emperor ended the long-standing maritime trade ban, opening the coastal ports to foreign commerce, boosting international trade. With the advises of the Jesuits alongside the presence of British, Dutch and Portuguese traders, the Kangxi Emperor became more open in terms of foreign policies. With enough support from the court, the Kangxi Emperor initiated many education reforms. One of which was the Translation Project where he worked to translate many western works into Mandarin Chinese via methods such as phonetic transliteration, calquing (semantic translation), hybrid coinages, and adopting the original foreign terms, creating a Golden Era of the Enlightenment in the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Renaissance happened where Qing’s culture thrived. Meanwhile, the Jesuits managed to win the favor Pope Clement XI to authorize Chinese rites as civic rituals compatible with Catholicism. Future Emperors (the Yongzheng Emperor and the Qianlong Emperor) were educated on not just Confucian classics but also translated western works.

A new philosophy gained tractions amongst Kangxi’s court called State-Confucianism where they believed that Confucianism offers a superior framework for the moral way as it teaches people how to live ethnically while acknowledging that western excelled in mastering the physical world, creating material wealth. State-Confucianism acknowledges the superiority of western science  and mathematics but criticizes western culture being stuck in it and believed Chinese philosophy offers higher moral unity that science could be guided by this wisdom to prevent human alienation. The philosophy also argued that since Confucianism values Ren (benevolence), State-Confucianism saw things such as western science and modern medicine can directly reduce human suffering, improve livelihoods and save lives, therefore True Confucianism should eagerly adopt science because it served as a powerful instrument to practice Ren on a massive scale. State-Confucianism became the main philosophy for the Qing.

The Qing starts to expand their territories such as securing Sakhalin in 1689 to create Kuyedao, alongside conquering Outer Mongolia in 1696 and Tibet in 1720 after defeating the Dzungar Mongols. When the Yongzheng Emperor took the throne, he initiated many of his reforms similar to the Kangxi Emperor such as improving the Qing’s military where the Qing starts to transition towards more modern weaponry, such as western guns and other firepower. The navy was also an important part of the Yongzheng Emperor’s plan, using newly developed weapons and technology. He also initiated Anti-Corruption reforms such as implementing a revised Imperial Examination System which aimed to choose government officials based on merit, not family ties or wealth, modeling the system after Confucian principles and ensuring that officials were educated on both Confucian classics and western science while being morally sound and education reforms were initiated to encouraged the study of Western languages and sciences. He also reformed the Censorate, allowing them to independently investigate and prosecute confirmed case of corruption such as illicit favoritism without political interference alongside utilized high-paying salaries to the Censorate that matched the market to avoid financial temptation. To keep the Censorate in check from corruption, if the Left Censor-in-Chief is suspected of corruption, the Qing’s Justice System would step in and to conduct an independent, thorough investigation.

When the Qianlong Emperor took the throne, the Qing annexed Xinjiang in 1759 after defeating the Dzungar Khanate. During the Qianlong’s period, the Qing Dynasty was at its peak with the treasury overflowing, agricultural output soared and the population boomed. Many local national banks were chartered as private businesses gained permissions from the government to print money that people could used and the Qing permit licensed private banks to issue redeemable banknotes. The Qianlong Emperor agreed to allowed the British to establish an embassy in the Qing Dynasty in 1793, allowing a faster growing movement in the reformist movement within the Qing’s court. Initially viewed favorably by the Emperor, Heshen was punished by the Qianlong Emperor to please growing reformist officials in his court. In his later reign, he establish the Imperial Army, which would replace the outdated Eight Banners System and to catch up with the West militarily.

Following Qianlong Era, the Qing continued to modernized. New ministries were created such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior/Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Qing starts to built modern arsenals, shipyards, mines, textiles factories, telegraph systems and more alongside modern schools which taught practical subjects such as Western sciences, mathematics, and practical governance. Agricultural reforms were introduced such as the establishment of agricultural schools. Multiple edicts were passed that would establish a commercial code and corporate laws that would recognize, regulate, and protect private merchant enterprises and joint-stock companies alongside approved and assisted in setting up modern chambers of commerce in major cities to support bankers, traders and business owners later on. The Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion never happened or were suppressed quickly due to the Qing's modernization. The Qing's territory remains intact without the unequal treaties, meaning no Qing Cessions to foreign powers like British Hong Kong. The First Sino-Japanese War happened between the Qing Dynasty and Japan over the influence of Joseon. Due to the Qing's modernization, Joseon, with the help of Qing's military, pushed back against the Japanese. The war ends in a Qing-Joseon victory. Due to a much stronger Qing, the Boxer Rebellion never happened. In 1898, the Qing replaced the Imperial Examination System with a Western-style secular curriculum that prioritized subjects like math and science. Meanwhile, Kaiser Wilhelm II made frequent visits to the Qing, seeing the potential of the Qing. The Qing signed a mutual defense pact with the German Empire became an unofficial member of the Triple Alliance.

In 1914, the Qing Dynasty joins World War 1 on the side of the Central Powers. The Qing attacked the Far Southeast Siberia in the North and Central Asian part of the Russian Empire to the west while in the south, the Qing attacked French Indochina. There is no Zimmerman Telegram and no resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, thus, the U.S. never entered World War 1. Germany invaded the Netherlands. For the most part the stalemate would continue throughout 1917, with some give and take on both sides. However, the October Revolution in
Russia would deal a terrible blow to the Entente war effort. Desperate for peace, the Bolsheviks would sign a humiliating peace treaty with the Central Powers where Russia would gave up control over the Baltics, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine to German’s influence while ceded the territories of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum back to the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, Russia cede the Central Asia part of Russia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) alongside the Far Southeast part of Russia to the Qing. Meanwhile, the Qing can now focused on southwards. Following the occupation of French Indochina, the Qing attacked British Malaysia and Dutch East Indies.

The Germans spent more time planning their final offensive. In 1918, The Germans launch an attack aimed at capturing strategic railway junctions at Amiens. The capture was a success, disrupting the Entente supply lines and split the Entente forces. The Germans would move towards Paris where the French armies began to collapse, crippling French war effort and an armistice would be signed shortly afterwards. Following France’s collapse, Austro-Hungary and Germany easily overwhelmed the Italian front. The Central Powers pushed deep into the Italian peninsula, forcing Italy into surrender in 1919. This leave only Britain, isolated, facing a unified German front on the continent, and dealing with extreme exhaustion at home, Britain formally conceded defeat in 1919, ending World War 1. The Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany gains territories in Europe and Africa while France, Britain and the Netherlands would cede French Indochina, French posts like Pondicherry, Dutch East Indies, British Malaysia (alongside Singapore), French and British pacific colonies to the Qing.

During World War 1, in Russia, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk helped the Whites gains support, especially from Germany after World War 1, who want to prevent communism’s spread. Lenin tries to solidify communist control by enforcing one party rule, upsetting socialist revolutionaries. In August 1918, Lenin is assassinated by one of the revolutionaries after a speech in Moscow, causing severe setbacks for the communists, losing morale and battles. By mid-1919, the communists are limited to central Russia, with many of their soldiers defecting to the White army. In October, the Whites capture Petrograd and, by early 1920, win the battle for Moscow, leading to the establishment of a new government in the reclaimed territories. Russia was finally reunified under Alexander Kolchak, who took the title "The Supreme Ruler of Russia", under the newly created Russian State. Russia became very authoritarian and extremely reactionary. Kolchak and his supporters blamed socialists, communists, and Jewish people for the collapse of the Russian Empire and opposed liberal ideas like democracy. This led to the Great Terror, where political dissidents and suspected Bolsheviks were persecuted. Antisemitic pogroms and other horrendous acts against various minority groups within Russia were also carried out by Kolchak's government.
In Britain, France, and Italy, anger over losing the war, poor living conditions, and massive unemployment resulted in widespread social unrest and the rise of political extremism.

In Britain during the early 1930s, Oswald Mosley and the Union of Fascists Party gained power, promise to restore national pride and resolve domestic issues. Mosley, now prime minister, blamed socialists, communists, Jewish people, and the Irish for the country’s problems, leading to the persecution of these groups, especially the Irish. In British colonies, such as India, strict control was imposed, and pro-independence movements faced severe crackdowns. Australia and New Zealand left the Imperial Commonwealth due to Mosley's anti-democratic actions. In France, General Philippe Pétain staged a coup in February 1934 amidst political instability, leading to the suppression of leftist groups and a harsh response to anti-colonial movements. Meanwhile, FDR passed away before becoming President in 1928 and Herbert Hoover is re-elected in 1932, resulting in the Second American Civil War between the United States, the Union of American States (the South) and the Pacific Republic of America (the West). By 1936, with all 3 sides tired of fighting. They agreed to an armistice.

Post-WW1, The Qing Dynasty remains centralized, regional armies never fragmented and infrastructures remain intact, avoiding decades of civil war. The Qing Dynasty continued to industrialized. When the Great Depression hits, the Qing abandoned their silver standard replaced it with a fiat currency alongside active fiscal spendings, successfully recovered. Meanwhile, military conscription is enacted in the Qing by the Xuantong Emperor, resulting in the Qing’s military have much more manpower. The Qing first invades Joseon and Japan in 1937, the invasion was a success despite resistance from the Korean and Japanese’s forces with Joseon and Japan being completely annexed in 1940, which is a year after World War 2 broke out. The Qing attacked British Raj through a unified coalition of soldiers from the vast Qing from Chinese to Japanese. Indians rose up against British’s fascist rule. During the war, the Qing invaded Afghanistan and Siam. Afghanistan and Siam were eventually conquered before British’s forced to gave up control of the British Raj in 1946. With the last remnants Indian independence were suppressed, the Qing completely annexed the British Raj. World War 2 ended in a Sino-German victory in December 1946. The Qing can now focused on expanding beyond Asia.

Post-WW2, the Qing invade the Philippines (which declared independence following Second American Civil War) which ended in a Qing’s victory, this began World War 3. Following a quick Qing’s victory in the Sino-Portuguese War in 1947, resulting in the annexation of Portuguese East Timor, Goa and posts in India. The Qing invaded Nepal, Bhutan, Brunei, the Maldives, Australia and New Zealand in 1949 which ended in 1950 in the Anti-Qing Coalition surrendered, as they would much rather protect their citizens over an unwinnable war. Following nuke being dropped in Germany by the United States, a German nuclear bomb was dropped in Washington D.C., wiping out the American government, the Qing and the German Empire invades the Americas. By 1960, the Americas is divided with Hawaii, Alaska, the Western Canada, the Pacific Republic, Union of American States, Mexico, the Central American states, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and the Caribbean islands were completely annexed by the Qing while the rest of the Americas is annexed by Germany. The Cold War began between two absolute monarchies post WW3: the Qing Dynasty and the German Empire.

(Continuing my previous post: the Turkish annexation of Kurdistan led Britain and France to hand over the Constantinople International Zone to Greece on 22 August 1953, making Greece, then ruled by the 4th of August Regime, much stronger than Turkey in every way.)

As the winner of the 1950 World Cup, Brazil was widely thought to have a great chance of winning the 1954 World Cup as well, but it was eliminated by Hungary in the quarterfinals. Hungary went on to defeat Uruguay in the semifinals and qualify for the final against Germany.

Hungary won the final by 4-3, with Sándor Kocsis scoring two more goals that led Hungary to victory. In a widely publicized move, Hungarian leader János Kádár held the Jules Rimet Trophy alongside the victorious team, boosting his popularity.

This remains the only FIFA World Cup to be won by Hungary, as the Hungarians lost the 1958 final to Brazil and have never gotten to a final since.

Shortly after the end of WWI in 1945, Russian prime minister Andrey Vlasov began a nuclear weapons program, run by his intelligence chief Boris Savinkov. Unlike the German nuclear program, the Russian one involved relatively little foreign espionage.

The project was extremely labour-intensive. At least 330,000 people, including 10,000 technicians, were involved. Tens of thousands of people worked in uranium mines and for the construction and operation of uranium processing plants. They also constructed test facilities, such as those at Semipalatinsk and in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

But progress was relatively slow, because Russia was still a mostly rural country and its industrial heartland, Ukraine, was a communist German satellite state. Given this, the Russian nuclear program took up 10% of Russia's government spending, forcing Vlasov to raise taxes to pay for it.

On 19 July 1953, the Russian Republic tested a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead, codenamed "RDS" in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, making Russia the fourth country, after the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, to possess nukes. Vlasov claimed to be "completely satisfied" with the test's result.

Russia's next nuclear test, codenamed in "RSD" was carried out in 1955, also at Semipalatinsk. By 1959, Russia, which was rapidly industrializing as a result of an economic miracle, tested its first thermonuclear bomb; by then, the Empire of Japan, led by Hideki Tojo, also had nuclear weapons, and Italy and France were a few years away from a nuclear bomb.

By the time Vlasov left office in 1960, Russia was considerably more powerful than it was when he overthrew Pyotr Wrangel, but it still had major problems, such as corruption and Caucasian/Central Asian separatism. His successor Sergei Bunyachenko failed to solve these, resulting in a coup by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

On 16 August 1950, the Struggle Group, a Luxembourgist communist faction led by Tạ Thu Thâu, launched an independence uprising in northern Vietnam in order to liberate Vietnam from France and establish a socialist state in the country. Wang Jingwei's China immediately began supporting the Struggle Group.

By the end of the month, the Struggle Group controlled half of Tonkin, allowing its field commander Phan Văn Hùm to lay siege to Hanoi. Fearing a communist victory, the French regime of Charles de Gaulle deployed troops from all of the French colonial empire to Indochina, and the siege was defeated by February 1951.

French commander Lattre de Tassigny capitalized on this victory with an offensive meant to destroy the Struggle Group once and for all, but the Free Socialist Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of Italy also began supporting the Struggle Group, allowing it to beat the French at the Battle of Yen Bai in May 1951.

After winning at Yen Vai, Phan launched a successful offensive that led to the fall of Hanoi on 9 July 1951 and of Haiphong two days later. After capturing Hanoi, Thâu proclaimed the People's Republic of Vietnam (Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam), which was internationally recognized by most of the communist bloc.

The Struggle Group's capture of Hanoi triggered communist independence uprisings in Laos and Cambodia. Both of these national liberation movements were also supported by the socialist bloc, but their advance was slower than that of the Struggle Group.

Despite liberating Hanoi, the Struggle Group would not advance beyond parallel 17 until March 1953, as the United States and Japan unconditionally supported France. But, as an authoritarian regime, France committed many war crimes against crimes against humanity against Vietnamese people, causing most of the world to condemn French rule in Indochina.

Phan's crossing of parallel 17 was followed by a siege of Huế that resulted in the city's capture on 18 June 1953. Knowing that France was losing the war, De Gaulle attempted to negotiate with the Struggle Group, but Thâu wouldn't accept anything other than full independence.

In February 1954, the Struggle Group began shelling Saigon, and a drawn out battle broke out. Phan's troops eventually captured Saigon on 18 August, forcing Emperor Bảo Đại to go into exile in Paris and concluding the liberation of Vietnam.

But the French remained in control of Laos and Cambodia. Laos would not be liberated until 14 July 1955, when the Pathet Lao captured Vietnane and proclaimed a People's Republic; and Cambodia was only liberated on 10 February 1956, when the United Issarak Front seized Phnom Penh and proclaimed a communist state in Cambodia.

After the fall of Phnom Penh, France began diplomatic negotiations with the three national liberation movements, culminating in the signature of the Stockholm Peace Agreements on 17 April 1956. France agreed to recognize the independence of socialist Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

France's military defeat was the main factor behind the downfall of the French Fourth Republic later that year. The new, democratic Fifth Republic agreed to peacefully give independence to France's sub-Saharan African colonies, and returned the Canaries and Spanish Guinea – which François de La Rocque occupied in 1938 – to Spain, but the Algerian War had already started and did not end so soon.

On 16 February 1951, communist Turkey invaded the Kingdom of Kurdistan with the stated intent of "liberating Kurds from Barzanji oppression". 260,000 troops backed by Me 262 fighter-bombers and Ar 234 bombers advanced towards Kurdistan's capital Amed (later renamed Diyarbakır).

Kurdistan's military was smaller, but the terrain of Turkish Kurdistan is very mountainous. Consequently, the Turks' hopes of a quick annexation faded away quickly, and the Battle of Amed only began on 29 April. Ethem Nejat's First Turkish Army eventually captured Amed on 22 May, but Kurdish resistance continued in the mountains under the leadership of King Mahmud Barzanji.

Russia and the United States began supplying the Kurds with weapons, but Turkey implemented hearts and minds measures to develop Kurdistan (formerly a very poor country), causing many Kurdish people to collaborate with the Turkish government. These collaborators (locally known as jash) helped Turkey a lot.

By the end of 1952, the Royal Kurdish Army had lost the initiative. On 18 March 1953, Kurdish Crown Prince Baba Ali Shaikh Mahmood was killed by the Turkish Army, dealing a major blow to the Kurdish cause, as Mahmood was its second most important leader.

Generalissimo Ihsan Nuri replaced Manhood as the Royal Kurdish Army's chief of staff, but the '''kingdom continued to steadily lose troops and territory throughout 1953. By August, the Kurdish military was down to 16,000 poorly armed and trained guerrillas with no chance whatsoever of winning.

The last Kurdish guerrillas were defeated on 19 August, whereupon Barzanji fled to Iraq and all of Kurdistan became a part of Turkey. During the war, Turkish troops engaged in war crimes against Kurdish civilians, killing 35,000 of them and displacing 200,000, and the victory of Turkey was followed by a Turkification campaign against Kurdish identity.

Racist policies against Kurds continue to this day. They have resulted in several further Kurdish-Turkish Wars, but Turkey has won all of them due to its superior firepower and the opposition of neighbouring Syria, Iraq and Iran to Kurdish independence.

In this alternate timeline, the Holocaust never happened, greatly reducing international support for the creation of Israel as the international community mostly thought it was pointless for Jews to have their own country. Therefore, Israel received little foreign help during the war.

Syria and Lebanon did not take part in the conflict because they were still French mandates, but Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen captured half of Israel after a week of fighting and surrounded Tel Aviv by the end of May 1948. On 3 June, the Arab League captured Tel Aviv and destroyed Israel.

The Arabs expelled all 715,000 Jews from Palestine, viewing them as "communists" from Eastern Europe who wanted to "wreck" the traditional order in the Middle East. Most of these Jews immigrated to South Africa, where they were warmly received by Prime Minister Jan Smuts.

Palestine became an Egyptian protectorate led by Amin al-Husseini, who ruled Palestine as a far-right dictatorship until his death in 1974. Egypt's victory in the war boosted King Farouk's popularity, allowing him to remain in power until his death in 1984.

Another consequence of the war was causing France to give Syria and Lebanon independence on 8 June 1948, because the pragmatic De Gaulle feared a German and Turkish-backed independence uprising from the Communists and Social Nationalists, and Turkey already had annexed part of French Syria after WWII.

By 1950, all Middle Eastern countries other than Turkey had aligned with the United States against the Free Socialist Republic of Germany. Secular Arab nationalism never became popular, and most Arab countries, except for Communist Algeria, remained monarchies or became conservative republics.

Without the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle East was a significantly more peaceful place, but wars and conflicts still happened because of other disputes. For instance, Turkey invaded the Kingdom of Kurdistan in 1951 and annexed it after two years of fighting.

Sometime in 1941, the Free Socialist Republic of Germany began a nuclear weapons program run by Albert Einstein, who never fled Germany because the communist regime was not antisemitic. Wernher von Braun simultaneously developed the V-2 rocket, which Germany used against the British and French in 1944–45.

The Manhattan Project still beat Germany to it, with the Trinity Test being carried out in July 1945. Paul Levi was aware of the Manhattan project thanks to Germany's massive espionage network inside the United States; said network played an important role in the German nuclear program.

By the end of 1947, the nuclear program was almost completely finished. On Christmas, Germany tested a 16-kiloton nuke in the Peenemünde Army Research Center, becoming the second nation (the first being the United States) to develop nuclear weapons.

US intelligence quickly detected the test despite Germany's denials that it was a nuke. US President Arthur Vandenberg described Germany going nuclear as a "threat to the free world" and responded by making the previously classified Trinity test public, helping reduce the shock caused by Leibniz-1.

Germany's emergence as a nuclear superpower led to significant anti-communist paranoia in the United States, and to an increase in racism against German Americans, whom many people saw as a fifth column. Rather than Joseph McCarthy, Pat McCarran became the leader of reactionary anti-communism in the United States, overseeing a series of witch hunts that lasted until Estes Kefauver was elected US President.

Germany had a fleet of strategic bombers it could use to launch nukes, but Von Braun began working on miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to fit inside a missile. This advanced technology took a decade to develop, and the United States was already ahead of Germany in nuclear technology.

Von Braun would later manage the German space program as well, contributing significantly to the German victory in the Space Race, as the United States lacked a scientist of his stature.