Thanks everyone.
This update is the second installment of the "Fate of the Fifth Republic", the final series of updates for this AAR. The third and final installment (the final update of this AAR) will be posted early next week. I hope you enjoy these last few updates.
The Fate of the Fifth Republic – Part 2
Consolidation of Power
In late October, just weeks after Sanvea’s death, Marshall Gamelin told his generals that the advance on Moscow would have to be postponed until the following Spring. All hopes of victory by Christmas evaporated, and the French troops prepared themselves for the harsh winter ahead of them. Baverlande, not realising the delicate situation in Russia, initially pushed for a continuation of the campaign. He wanted a quick victory to boost his popularity. Gamelin, however, refused to accept Baverlande’s orders. France held its breath, expecting a show down between the military and new regime. In the early weeks of Baverlande’s presidency, rumours of an army coup were rife. Finally, as the tension became almost unbearable, Baverlande buckled under the pressure and accepted Gamelin’s decision to postpone the attack on the Red Capital.
According to Gamelin, Sanvea’s sudden death had “struck at the heart of the French soldiers…morale is at its lowest since the Berlin attack in May.” Gamelin did not want to risk sending demoralised troops into battle. “We are in an excellent position,” he noted, “but it is extremely fragile. One mistake and all our victories could be reversed.” Furthermore, there was very little time for action left. In mid November, the late autumn rains would turn the vast Russian steppe into a muddy wasteland. At the beginning of December, just as the rain subsides, the snow begins to fall. This atrocious weather proved to be the deathblow for invaders in the past. Gamelin did not want to risk pushing his demoralised soldiers under such intense pressure.
While the French soldiers in the East dug in for the long winter, Baverlande further consolidated his power in France. During November and December, the first of France’s work camps were established in Belgium. Thousands of Belgian and Dutch dissidents and resistors were rounded up in extensive police investigations and were sent en masse to the camps, were they toiled away producing armaments and winter clothing for the soldiers on the front. In the last two months of 1941, nearly thirty thousands Belgian and Dutch resistors were arrested. Thousands more were sent into exile, or simply disappeared into the night.
In France, the purge of the Fascist Party continued. Hundreds of moderate members of the party were forced out. Some were lucky and suffered no more than a life ban from the party. Others, mostly high ranking party officials associated with Bombardier, were sent to jail or killed. The police force also suffered under the so-called “purification” campaigns. Leading police officials, including the Paris Police Chief, Louis Challon, were charged with treason. A series of ludicrous l of show trials found forty-four senior police officers guilty of treason. The families of the accused were stripped of all property by the state.
Just before Christmas, as the purge of the Fascist Party was coming to and end, Baverlande selected his next target. During the week leading up to Christmas, the police carried out a systematic campaign to “flush out” Socialists and Communists. Thousands of people, from all walks of life were accused of either being a Communist. Baverlande quickly earned the reputation of being a bloodthirsty tyrant. The New York Times wrote, “the aura of benevolence and justice is fast evaporating in France under the iron fist of President Baverlande. The days of Sanvea's moderate regime are gone. France must now endure the oppressive rule of a cruel and heartless tyrant.”
Victory in Russia
In late February, the campaign in Russia was renewed. By mid March, a massive Axis army advanced on Moscow from the West, North and South. Stalin declared that he would remain in the city no matter what happened. As the Soviet bureaucracy evacuated to the Urals in a frantic flurry, Stalin, as defiant as ever, stood on the balcony of the Lenin Mausoleum and reviewed a parade of Central Asian soldiers on their way to the front. The great dictator, however, lost his nerve and secretly fled the city on the 14th of March. The following day, French tanks reached the Eastern outskirts of the city. After a short, yet violent battle for the Red Capital, Moscow officially fell on the 27th of March. Thousands of Parisians took the streets, and the whole of France celebrated joyfully. As a doctor in Paris wrote, “the fall of Moscow was the first time since Baverlande became President that we could celebrate. The enthusiasm displayed by the French people was more of an escape than anything else. For a solid week, we were able to ignore this dark cloud that has settled over our country. We drank and sang patriotic songs all night. The curfews were temporarily lifted. For just one week, we were able to enjoy ourselves.”
Stalin resurfaced in the Ural town of Omsk, which became the provisional capital of the Soviet Union. Over the next few months, the French forces advanced towards the Urals. On the 5th of May, Omsk was evacuated and the Soviet capital was moved to Novoborinsk in Siberia. Virtually nothing was left of the USSR. In the Far East, the Japanese were pushing towards Siberia, while the French advanced steadily from the West. It seemed likely that Siberia would become a battleground between France, master of Europe, and Japan, master of the Far East. Soviet propaganda predicted a conflict between the two powers, which would destroy them both, allowing the Soviet Union to rise up and crush them and attain final victory. This Soviet pipe dream evaporated on the 16th of May, when the French and Japanese foreign ministers signed a peace treaty in Tokyo. For weeks, French and Japanese diplomats had been negotiating in secret peace talks. Baverlande had pushed for the peace. He did not want to fight a war in Asia. His hold on power was precarious, and he was convinced that the Germans and Italians were ready to rise up against his regime. Furthermore, he firmly believed that the traitorous General Franco and the British government were conspiting against France. He needed his soldiers to return home as soon as possible. Peace with Japan came at a cost; France was forced to cede Indochina. Baverlande was willing to make that sacrifice in order to keep power.
Later that month, the Japanese High Command abandoned the futile war in Russia and withdrew to secure line near Manchuria. This left large expanses of Far East Russia with no central authority. The Red Army was in no position to reoccupy all of the former Japanese held lands, and so local warlords took control. In early June, as French forces advanced across the vast Siberian steppe, Baverlande issued orders for a withdrawal to European Russia (west of the Urals). The dictator was becoming increasingly paranoid, and he wanted the French troops, so far from home (and thus unable to protect is regime) to return as soon as possible. On the 22nd of June, General Vlasov, Sanvea’s choice of leader for Russia, was sworn in as President of the Russian Republic. The following week, Baverlande withdrew a bulk of the Axis force in Russia and proclaimed that the war against Communism had ended, although Stalin and the remnants of his once powerful Red Army still controlled much of Central Asia and Siberia. The task of crushing the decaying Soviet forces was handed over Vlasov’s fledgling Russian state.
France and the New European Order
As France’s triumphant soldiers returned to their homeland, Baverlande felt secure enough to shape the New European Order. Sanvea’s original blueprints of a new Europe were pushed aside, and Baverlande instituted his own vision of Europe under French hegemony. Hungary and Slovakia, which had been under French military control, were given self-rule, like Sanvea had planned. Sanvea’s choice of moderate leaders, however, was disregarded and extremist Fascist parties were given control in Budapest and Bratislava (in Hungary, the Arrow Cross, which the French army had overthrown during the war against the Axis, were returned to power). The former leader of Hungary, Admiral Miklos Horthy, who had been living in Budapest under French protection was forced into exile.
Sanvea's plans for the resurrection of Poland, the reunification of Czechoslovakia and the liberation of the Baltic States were discarded. Germany was permitted to hold onto her possessions in Poland and Bohemia, while the new Russian Republic was granted control over Eastern Poland and the Baltic States. Sanvea’s vision of Napoleonic Europe (a Europe of small independent nations allied to France) was discarded in favour of a Europe made up of several domineering nations where suppression of freedom and minorities was encouraged. Baverlande’s reasoning was unclear. However, it was evident that he had no interest in nation building and the complexities of resurrecting and creating nations bored him. Furthermore, the British Press made it clear that Baverlande, by allowing Germany to keep Poland and Bohemia, was simply trying to appease the Germans. “The President is convinced,” a secret source in France told the Times of London, “that Germany is planning to rise up against France and he will do everything in his power to keep Berlin happy.”
Much of Baverlande’s paranoia stemmed from his deep mistrust of President von Runstedt, a key ally of Sanvea. The ageing Runstedt made his animosity towards Baverlande’s regime clear, and he publicly referred to Baverlande as "the little Hitler." After appeasing the rebellious Runstedt by granting Germany sovereignty over Bohemia and Poland (which had been under French military occupation since the fall of Hitler), Baverlande still regarded Runstedt as a potential enemy. In early September, Baverlande made his first moves against the incumbent German President. After Runstedt mysteriously fell ill, he was forced to resign and Baverlande ensured that the comparatively weak Field Marshall List attained the office of President. Baverlande thought that he had an ally in the German Chancellor, Johann Gorg Bosch, but he quickly discovered that the moderate Prussian Nationalist was just as hostile to him as Runstedt. The French dictator deliberatly undermined the Chancellor's authority and engineered his downfall.
Through a mixture of coercion and bribery, Baverlande was able to force influential members of Bosch’s party (the German People’s Nationalist Front) to stand up against the Chancellor and demand the abolishment of the Potsdam Laws of 1941 (which banned former high-ranking Nazi officials from engaging in politics or holding government positions). Facing a revolt, Bosch caved in and revoked the Potsdam Laws. His once moderate party quickly became inundated with former Nazis and by the end of the year, the former Deputy Fuhrer of the National Socialist Party, Rudolf Hess, had became Bosch’s official second-in-command.
Hess oversaw a complete reformation of the German People’s Nationalist Front, transforming it into “The Fatherland Front”. The party became the successor to Hitler’s Nazi Party, and former Nazis soon dominated the party apparatus and rapidly infiltrated the government. By January 1943, Bosch’s authority was paralysed and Hess ruled in all but name. President List lacked the political will to stop the rise of the former Deputy Fuhrer, and Bosch’s key allies in the party were pushed aside. On the 3rd of February, Bosch resigned as Chancellor. The Reichstag, now dominated by former Nazis, nominated Rudolf Hess as Chancellor. President List ratified the appointment, and Hess was sworn in as Chancellor on the 5th. The following day, Bosch also stood down as Chairman of the party. Hess forced him out of the party’s inner circle and transferred him to the Sudetenland, where he became mayor of Reichsburg. On the 22nd of February, the former tyrant, Adolf Hitler, received a lavish state funeral in Berlin, which was attended by Baverlande and several of his ministers. Overnight, statues and portraits of the former dictator appeared all over Germany.
In June 1943, Baverlande announced the formation of the “Pan-European League,” a customs and trade union loosely based on Sanvea’s idyllic vision of a European union, whereby the nations of Europe were bound together in a cooperative mlitary and economic alliance. Baverlande's interpretation of the union was put into place on the 1st of June, when France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and Russia ratified and signed the Pan-European League Charter in Paris. Although the French government portrayed the League as a “an economic union that will bind the nations of Europe together in the common goal of growth, peace and prosperity,” it was merely a tool designed to bind Europe even closer to Paris. Furthermore, it was put in place to serve and strengthen France’s economy at the expense of Europe. German and Italian companies were forced to purchase French finished goods at highly inflated prices, and the nations of Eastern Europe were forced to hand over their natural resources for next a pittance. A Spanish newspaper harshly judged the Pan-European League. "The genguine vision of a united, peaceful and cooperative Europe, the great European ideal that has existed for many generations, has been corrupted by President Baverlande and his cronies...Europe has been enslaved."
