The Ottomans went further into British India and the Indian Ocean as well, taking Peshawar and Karachi and thus established a new frontline on the river Indus in September 1941 and brought the crown jewel of the British Empire in peril. The Himalaya mountains, however, formed a formidable obstacle for the Ottoman army and an aide in Britain’s defence of the heartlands of the Indian subcontinent. Attempts by the Ottomans to force a number of strongly defended mountain passes ended in bloodbaths and the slow but steady Ottoman advance grinded to a halt, more so since the Hindu parts of India now saw themselves threatened too and joined the fight. This would sharpen the differences between Hindus and Muslims in India. In the meantime, the Ottomans attempted to break the stalemate by opening up a second front in India. The first phase in their plan was to invade the Maldives south of India which were Muslim anyway, further exemplifying the Sultan’s authority as caliph while also threatening India’s southern flank which made the Maldives strategically important too. The Ottoman navy had grown into a world class navy in its own right after the massive naval expansion of the 1920s and 30s funded by the oil revenue, giving it home built battleships, carriers and other modern warships. And so the Ottoman navy ended up as the number four navy of the world behind Britain, Germany and Japan of whom the former two were nearly the same size with Britain’s navy slightly bigger. An Ottoman taskforce of six battleships, four aircraft carriers, twelve heavy cruisers and a large destroyer escort landed a three division strong force on the island of Malé in January 1942 and overran the only two regiments strong garrison after one week of fierce combat compounded by a Muslim rebellion. From there the other Maldives would be taken within several weeks which would spread out the efforts of the British Empire further and weaken it relatively. In the effort to stop the Ottomans the power of aircraft carriers was also proven when battleship HMS Repulse was sunk by aerial bombs and torpedoes.
1942 would see some relief for the British from the Americans as an American gunboat was destroyed which was carrying US citizens from the embassy in Beijing to safety with battles being fought there. There was, however, vocal opposition from isolationists who didn’t want to go to war over a gunboat that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and certainly not to save Britain. The US had no interests there and it would lead to needless American loss of life, or so they said. Segments of the American populace felt so to and so the country was divided. Nonetheless, America declared war in June 1942 and it was necessary because Russia and Britain were both on the ropes and especially the former as Russia had lost most of the Ukraine and the Baltic states to joint Central Powers offensives. American industrial muscle was thought to be a saving grace for Britain, but The Germans had a secret project which they shared with their allies.
The Germans were working on the Thor Project ever since 1938 after the discovery of nuclear fission which made atomic bombs a very real possibility. Especially the then still reigning Wilhelm II had been enthused about a weapon that could wipe out the hated Royal Navy and make Germany a superpower and his son and Emperor since 1941 Wilhelm III felt the same way. A secret underground research facility had been built in southern Bavaria which housed the brilliant nuclear physicists and chemists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin which was obviously not a suitable location for this project. These scientists, who were among the best in the world, would spend much of the war underground, building a nuclear bomb for Germany. Centrifuges were built to separate the isotope U-235 needed for nuclear fission from the rather useless U-238 in a rather advanced way. The Germans spun their centrifuges in a vacuum on a needle bearing which enabled extraordinarily high speeds, leading to quick separation of the isotopes. The bottom of the centrifuge was heated which caused convection currents that carried up the purified uranium where it was collected by scoops. These centrifuges were of a remarkably advanced design, ahead of its time, and, as noted after the war by German scientists, more advanced than western centrifuge technology. The British had begun their own nuclear project in 1941, giving Germany’s arguably superior scientists a three year lead and America combining efforts with Britain couldn’t change that. The German team was also the first to discover plutonium or element 94 on the periodic table which could also be used as fissile material. They did so through their first small test reactor. The bomb was a necessary weapon because the war was becoming a stalemate with movement only in India which was not a war winner. Ottoman forces were hampered in Central Asia due to logistical problems although they did reach Tashkent where the Turkestan Khanate was proclaimed by the ‘Turkestan Liberation Front’. German and Austrian forces were on a line running from the Finnish Gulf to the Volga Bend, stretching their logistics to the limit, while Japan was not getting anywhere fast either and now had to contend with the US Navy. That’s why Germany expanded the project to include the efforts of Austria, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman wealth was enough to fund multiple ‘Thor Projects’, Bulgaria and Bohemia had uranium supplies and all four had their share of nuclear physicists although with Germany’s on top.
Russia was under siege and Britain was being bombed into oblivion by the Imperial German Air Force although the British retaliated in kind. The British Empire was also in peril with Ottoman forces landing on India’s southern tip in November 1942 after the Maldives Campaign had ended in Ottoman victory. British-Indian forces were therefore divided between two fronts and reinforcements weren’t coming since German, Austrian Ottoman and Italian fleets dominated the Mediterranean and terrorized shipping lanes around the Cape of Good Hope. Ottoman forces and Persian auxiliaries finally broke stubborn British defences on the Indus aided by a large scale Muslim rebellion against British and Hindu dominance, thus ending a year long stalemate. Anglo-American forces, however, prevented a full-fledged breakout into the Ganges plain and Ottoman forces were halted some 300 kilometres away from New Delhi. The six corps strong AEF was a relief for the British who could now focus on the Ottoman bastion on the south of the Indian subcontinent
.
The end result of 1942 was a stalemate that would continue for much of 1943 except for the Japanese islands in the Pacific that were seized by the Americans in a harsh war of attrition waged by Japan which also made the war less and less popular stateside with many wives and mothers clamouring to “bring their boys home”. Another exception was the moderately successful landing in Morocco by Entente forces which was met with German, Italian and Ottoman counteroffensives and trench lines in the Atlas Mountains. Russia was now safe simply because logistics did not allow for any further advances except around St. Petersburg which, due to the fear of being drawn into a street-to-street bloodbath, was put under siege by German forces while Tsar Vladimir III moved his capital to Omsk because the other alternative, Moscow, was too risky now too. Anywhere close to the Caspian Sea was also too risky with Ottoman forces and rebels operating in Central Asia and the former taking Astrakhan. The war against Britain grew worse as the Americans decided on a Japan-first strategy since that had been the casus belli although convoys to the British saw greater protection and more US Navy efforts in the Atlantic. German submarines and prowling German battlecruisers attacked convoys regularly which led to strict rationing in Britain and encouragement to recycle everything of any use. Bread, meat, potatoes, firewood, coal, electricity use and use of motor vehicles on petrol or diesel was rationed with severe punishment for overuse. This led to the well known scene of people queuing for food stamps and fuel stamps which went hand in hand with simmering civil unrest. 1944 would continue in much the same way with increasing civil unrest in Britain, caused by agitation by the Communist Party of Great Britain, despite it being outlawed since 1940. Spain saw similar unrest because it had been in the frontlines for years on end, and Russia because of its defeats and humiliations by the Central Powers. 1944 also saw the war grow more brutal as the RAF deployed mustard gas against German cities which led to retaliation against British cities with nerve agents and chlorine gas, adding to the death and destruction.
The war would end in 1945 with the completion of the Central Powers’ nuclear weapons project and the successful test of an atomic bomb in the Libyan desert in January 1945. From here on the Central Powers would produce some five to six atomic weapons a month with production facilities in Bavaria, Bohemia and Anatolia and the knowledge that Anglo-American nuclear weapons were six to twelve months away. They first created a sizeable stock of some twenty atomic bombs which they had ready by early May and then issued an ultimatum demanding an unconditional surrender within 48 hours. None of the Entente powers responded in any way, thinking these threats were bluff. Upon the Entente refusal, the Central Powers used two 20 kiloton devices against Portsmouth, which caught a portion of the Royal Navy ships stationed there, and Moscow. Still they refused to surrender, thinking that their enemies had only one or two such weapons which weren’t more destructive than a regular one thousand plane raid anyway except for the unknown element of radiation. They were proven wrong when Brighton and Kazan were devastated and the Germans dropped an additional bomb on the Isle of Wight where they landed a paratrooper division followed by amphibious forces with the strength of a corps. Germany knew they lacked the logistics to invade the whole of Britain, but this was done to intimidate the British. The result was an explosion of civil unrest in Britain and Russia. In Britain peaceful protests in Manchester went to small scale looting, resulting in the Home Guard arresting and executing seven offenders for treason. This was the spark for greater unrest as the Communist Party of Great Britain under charismatic leader Joseph V. Seward called for a general strike. Their siren call of peace, bread, land and work was heard and a strike paralyzed Britain and “People’s Committees” were founded in several cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool. The British government did not realize the gravity of the problem and simply ordered the Home Guard to arrest the traitors, but the latter was overwhelmed and many Home Guardsmen couldn’t pick up arms against fellow Brits who simply wanted peace. In the end, a band of armed revolutionaries took over London with assistance from the Home Guard and the neutrality of the London police. The Union of British Socialist Republics was declared while the government fled to Ulster which was under control of anti-communist Irish militias who declared the loyalty of Ulster to the legitimate government. Initially, the communists wanted to continue the struggle against “imperialism and capitalism”, but the destruction of Colchester in Britain and Samara in Russia made them realize the futility of going on. Russia was not much better off as the Socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Russia was declared there too with the imperial court fleeing right into the arms of the Germans. Both Britain and Russia requested an armistice, followed by Spain, the US and the French government-in-exile. The war had hereby ended.
1942 would see some relief for the British from the Americans as an American gunboat was destroyed which was carrying US citizens from the embassy in Beijing to safety with battles being fought there. There was, however, vocal opposition from isolationists who didn’t want to go to war over a gunboat that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and certainly not to save Britain. The US had no interests there and it would lead to needless American loss of life, or so they said. Segments of the American populace felt so to and so the country was divided. Nonetheless, America declared war in June 1942 and it was necessary because Russia and Britain were both on the ropes and especially the former as Russia had lost most of the Ukraine and the Baltic states to joint Central Powers offensives. American industrial muscle was thought to be a saving grace for Britain, but The Germans had a secret project which they shared with their allies.
The Germans were working on the Thor Project ever since 1938 after the discovery of nuclear fission which made atomic bombs a very real possibility. Especially the then still reigning Wilhelm II had been enthused about a weapon that could wipe out the hated Royal Navy and make Germany a superpower and his son and Emperor since 1941 Wilhelm III felt the same way. A secret underground research facility had been built in southern Bavaria which housed the brilliant nuclear physicists and chemists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin which was obviously not a suitable location for this project. These scientists, who were among the best in the world, would spend much of the war underground, building a nuclear bomb for Germany. Centrifuges were built to separate the isotope U-235 needed for nuclear fission from the rather useless U-238 in a rather advanced way. The Germans spun their centrifuges in a vacuum on a needle bearing which enabled extraordinarily high speeds, leading to quick separation of the isotopes. The bottom of the centrifuge was heated which caused convection currents that carried up the purified uranium where it was collected by scoops. These centrifuges were of a remarkably advanced design, ahead of its time, and, as noted after the war by German scientists, more advanced than western centrifuge technology. The British had begun their own nuclear project in 1941, giving Germany’s arguably superior scientists a three year lead and America combining efforts with Britain couldn’t change that. The German team was also the first to discover plutonium or element 94 on the periodic table which could also be used as fissile material. They did so through their first small test reactor. The bomb was a necessary weapon because the war was becoming a stalemate with movement only in India which was not a war winner. Ottoman forces were hampered in Central Asia due to logistical problems although they did reach Tashkent where the Turkestan Khanate was proclaimed by the ‘Turkestan Liberation Front’. German and Austrian forces were on a line running from the Finnish Gulf to the Volga Bend, stretching their logistics to the limit, while Japan was not getting anywhere fast either and now had to contend with the US Navy. That’s why Germany expanded the project to include the efforts of Austria, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman wealth was enough to fund multiple ‘Thor Projects’, Bulgaria and Bohemia had uranium supplies and all four had their share of nuclear physicists although with Germany’s on top.
Russia was under siege and Britain was being bombed into oblivion by the Imperial German Air Force although the British retaliated in kind. The British Empire was also in peril with Ottoman forces landing on India’s southern tip in November 1942 after the Maldives Campaign had ended in Ottoman victory. British-Indian forces were therefore divided between two fronts and reinforcements weren’t coming since German, Austrian Ottoman and Italian fleets dominated the Mediterranean and terrorized shipping lanes around the Cape of Good Hope. Ottoman forces and Persian auxiliaries finally broke stubborn British defences on the Indus aided by a large scale Muslim rebellion against British and Hindu dominance, thus ending a year long stalemate. Anglo-American forces, however, prevented a full-fledged breakout into the Ganges plain and Ottoman forces were halted some 300 kilometres away from New Delhi. The six corps strong AEF was a relief for the British who could now focus on the Ottoman bastion on the south of the Indian subcontinent
.
The end result of 1942 was a stalemate that would continue for much of 1943 except for the Japanese islands in the Pacific that were seized by the Americans in a harsh war of attrition waged by Japan which also made the war less and less popular stateside with many wives and mothers clamouring to “bring their boys home”. Another exception was the moderately successful landing in Morocco by Entente forces which was met with German, Italian and Ottoman counteroffensives and trench lines in the Atlas Mountains. Russia was now safe simply because logistics did not allow for any further advances except around St. Petersburg which, due to the fear of being drawn into a street-to-street bloodbath, was put under siege by German forces while Tsar Vladimir III moved his capital to Omsk because the other alternative, Moscow, was too risky now too. Anywhere close to the Caspian Sea was also too risky with Ottoman forces and rebels operating in Central Asia and the former taking Astrakhan. The war against Britain grew worse as the Americans decided on a Japan-first strategy since that had been the casus belli although convoys to the British saw greater protection and more US Navy efforts in the Atlantic. German submarines and prowling German battlecruisers attacked convoys regularly which led to strict rationing in Britain and encouragement to recycle everything of any use. Bread, meat, potatoes, firewood, coal, electricity use and use of motor vehicles on petrol or diesel was rationed with severe punishment for overuse. This led to the well known scene of people queuing for food stamps and fuel stamps which went hand in hand with simmering civil unrest. 1944 would continue in much the same way with increasing civil unrest in Britain, caused by agitation by the Communist Party of Great Britain, despite it being outlawed since 1940. Spain saw similar unrest because it had been in the frontlines for years on end, and Russia because of its defeats and humiliations by the Central Powers. 1944 also saw the war grow more brutal as the RAF deployed mustard gas against German cities which led to retaliation against British cities with nerve agents and chlorine gas, adding to the death and destruction.
The war would end in 1945 with the completion of the Central Powers’ nuclear weapons project and the successful test of an atomic bomb in the Libyan desert in January 1945. From here on the Central Powers would produce some five to six atomic weapons a month with production facilities in Bavaria, Bohemia and Anatolia and the knowledge that Anglo-American nuclear weapons were six to twelve months away. They first created a sizeable stock of some twenty atomic bombs which they had ready by early May and then issued an ultimatum demanding an unconditional surrender within 48 hours. None of the Entente powers responded in any way, thinking these threats were bluff. Upon the Entente refusal, the Central Powers used two 20 kiloton devices against Portsmouth, which caught a portion of the Royal Navy ships stationed there, and Moscow. Still they refused to surrender, thinking that their enemies had only one or two such weapons which weren’t more destructive than a regular one thousand plane raid anyway except for the unknown element of radiation. They were proven wrong when Brighton and Kazan were devastated and the Germans dropped an additional bomb on the Isle of Wight where they landed a paratrooper division followed by amphibious forces with the strength of a corps. Germany knew they lacked the logistics to invade the whole of Britain, but this was done to intimidate the British. The result was an explosion of civil unrest in Britain and Russia. In Britain peaceful protests in Manchester went to small scale looting, resulting in the Home Guard arresting and executing seven offenders for treason. This was the spark for greater unrest as the Communist Party of Great Britain under charismatic leader Joseph V. Seward called for a general strike. Their siren call of peace, bread, land and work was heard and a strike paralyzed Britain and “People’s Committees” were founded in several cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool. The British government did not realize the gravity of the problem and simply ordered the Home Guard to arrest the traitors, but the latter was overwhelmed and many Home Guardsmen couldn’t pick up arms against fellow Brits who simply wanted peace. In the end, a band of armed revolutionaries took over London with assistance from the Home Guard and the neutrality of the London police. The Union of British Socialist Republics was declared while the government fled to Ulster which was under control of anti-communist Irish militias who declared the loyalty of Ulster to the legitimate government. Initially, the communists wanted to continue the struggle against “imperialism and capitalism”, but the destruction of Colchester in Britain and Samara in Russia made them realize the futility of going on. Russia was not much better off as the Socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Russia was declared there too with the imperial court fleeing right into the arms of the Germans. Both Britain and Russia requested an armistice, followed by Spain, the US and the French government-in-exile. The war had hereby ended.
.