German Socialist Republic

The German Socialist Republic is a Western European country and a member of INFOR. It is currently led by an SPD-SPAD coalition. It borders East Germany to the East, the International Mandates of Belgium and the Netherlands and France to the west, Cislenthia and Switzerland to the south, and the Kingdom of Denmark to the North.

## **History:**

### Lead up to war

At the open of 1939, Germany sat at the head of a burgeoning empire spanning Europe, Africa and Asia, with influence from Dunkirk to Tahiti, the ageing Wilhelm II as its Emperor and the well-liked leader of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Otto Wels, as its Reichskanzler. The SPD was elected with their promises of social reform and welfare programs, of support for labor in the face of the economic struggles in the aftermath of Black Monday. SPD-affiliated labor unions, the so-called “Free Unions”, were encouraged to negotiate with employers and even enjoyed some state sanction for their small scale strikes. At the same time, regional governments passed law after law restricting labor, leading to these movements looking ever more to the SPD. Otto Wels had learned from what he saw in the economic downturn of America, and seeing the United States tear itself apart limb from limb prompted him to lean harder on his party’s claimed support of the workers.

By 1939, however, something was becoming increasingly apparent. In essence, the increase in labor strikes was being taken advantage of by enemies of the state, seditious communists and left-leaning SPD members willing to work with them. In August of 1939, this rose to the forefront when a strike by a collection of Free Unions in the industrial Ruhr was taken over by Heinrich Brandler, a trade unionist with known affiliations with the Deutsche Organisation der International. Striking for better work hours and working conditions, what was originally a small-scale event ballooned into DOI-affiliated unions shutting down workplaces and working together with the Free Unions in rapid, radical action which forced the Chancellor’s hand. Otto Wels ordered the strike shut down, and militarized police were sent in, arresting all of the trade unionist leaders, both SPD allies and DOI operatives, including the so-called “prisoner of the Ruhr”, Heinrich Brandler himself, while killing dozens of striking workers in the chaos.

With the Ruhr under effective occupation by the police, the violent repression of the strike sent shockwaves through the German Empire, prompting protests across the country. One of the most notable was centered on Nanzig, captured from the French in the aftermath of the great war, where a mixture of French socialists, trade unionists, and nationalists marched in the streets against both the repression that they saw in the occupied Ruhr, and their continued German occupation. The demonstrations began on the 19th of August, and just as quickly as they began, they were violently put down, with the highly autonomous police chief of Nanzig, Ernst Damzog, arresting hundreds of demonstrators and ordering the extrajudicial murders of several of the most prominent, and most leftist, among them. Parisian newspapers reported on the four-day long incident, with the front pages of newspapers emblazoned with the faces of the “Martyrs of Nancy”, especially that of Eugène Dieudonné, an infamous French anarchist revolutionary, who was visiting his hometown in Nanzig when the demonstrations began. One week after the incident, Chairman Pierre Besnard issued what would later be known as the “Brandler-Dieudonné Ultimatum” in France and the "September Demands" in Germany. The very next day, the foreign ministry of Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected the ultimatum, prompting France to declare war on September 15th, 1939.

### 1939-1941

Reichskanzler Otto Wels and Kaiser Wilhelm II, along with the skillful propagandistic media of the Kaiserreich, rallied the German people around war with France, using the Communal Republic’s declaration of war to their advantage. Even some left-leaning social democrats and union leaders were in support of the war effort, and the front-lines seeming to inch in Germany's favor reassured the people in distant Berlin or Konigsberg that all would be well. Then, only two weeks into the war, Reichskanzler Otto Wels died, succumbing to stress-induced illness brought on by his years as Chancellor. With their leadership gone and the war looming large in the minds of the politicians, the SPD’s dominant plurality became unimportant, allowing Kaiser Wilhelm II to establish a nonpartisan war government under newly appointed Reichskanzler Franz von Papen.

The years of the Papen Government would be dominated by military affairs, with martial law declared across the whole region of Elsaß-Lothringen and surprisingly successful Franco-British offensives into Flanders-Wallonia fended off by sheer German force of arms, manned by reserves called up from the Reichspakt. The outskirts of Nanzig were the site of battle after battle as the French forces attempted to capture the city in their struggle for the Northern European plains, but little progress was made. In the capital, the average Berliner thought little of the war, glad to see every victory against the French menace reported in their newspapers.

The first crack in the German armor would come with the success of the British on the water. Hopelessly out-resourced by Germany, the fuel-starved Republican Navy made no attempt to “win” the naval war, and instead dedicated itself to the task of making things as difficult for the Kaiserliche Marine as possible, without wasting ships and fuel in direct combat and making use of the increasing potency of air power which Britain believed, quite rightfully, had evolved to the point of being able to be a powerful instrument of sea warfare, especially against a foe that still believed that airpower was secondary to the might of big gun battleships.

Then, after two years of German successes in Belgium and standoffs in Nanzig, Kaiser Wilhelm II died. On the 4th of June, 1941, the head of the German Empire was no more, succeeded by his far less popular and infamously tactless son Wilhelm III. The Kaiser’s death brought with it not just national mourning, but also protests and organizing on the part of opposition groups around the Empire when combined with the onset of rationing following the naval setbacks in the North Atlantic. Bavarian nationalists, fearful of a potential breakup of the Zentrum-dominated nonpartisan coalition, protested in Munich. Free unions in Prussia went on strike against the undoing of the SPD-era labor laws. Uncertainty dominated politics following the Kaiser’s death, and Wilhelm III was approached by just the man who could allay these uncertainties: Kurt von Schleicher, a famous marshal and staunch ally of the monarchy.

Yet another government, the third in the span of just as many years, was inaugurated in late June 1941. The new appointment saw the Reichstag sidelined, as a cabinet of zealous military men was convened. Martial law was declared across vast swathes of the Empire, with mass arrests and rushed kangaroo court convictions of political opponents hidden by the new national media apparatus of Alfred Hugenburg. The butcher of Nanzig, Ernst Damzog, was pardoned and released from jail by Kaiser Wilhelm III on the advice of Reichskanzler von Schleicher, to be sent to fight on the front with France. The entire state apparatus of the German Empire turned to war, and while the instability and demoralization prompted by the death of the beloved Kaiser Wilhelm II and allowed for some Socialist victories, the mass mobilization of the whole of the Reichspakt under Schleicher managed to beat back the French.

### 1941-1943

For the next two years, the front line continued shifting, never turning into the entrenchment that so defined the last war, primarily due to British and French bombing campaigns past the front and the new mobility afforded by motorization, however no side ever seemed to make any great gains. Some blamed this stagnation in part on the surprising strength of the Franco-British Air Forces, which combined were almost a match for the venerable Luftstreitkräfte, however others decided that a simply more aggressive strategy was needed.

A revitalized German push under the leadership of Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock and Hermann Hoth broke the French defense along near Nanzig, and managed to push all the way to Verdun, however this advance was stalled and repelled in a heroic defense of the city by French forces. After this failure, more bad news began to trickle from other fronts in this global war against socialism: the remainder of the loyalist forces in the former United States and Canada were all but eliminated, and a red America now posed the huge threat of replenishing dwindling International supplies, especially oil, the German favored Zhili clique was beginning to be worn down by the leftist Kuomintang, and Subhas Chandra Bose's Bharatiyan forces were increasingly clearly the inevitable victors of the wars in India. Perhaps even worse, all the Entente's efforts to open up a second front had proven to be failures; leading to German High Command to lament that they were forced to partner with a pack of "Nostalgist Failures and Daydreaming Good-For-Nothings".

And in an unsung but crucial factor, Germany's cult of the Fighter Ace, instilled by the legendary Manfred von Richthofen, was proving to be an Achilles’ heel for its air force. Ace pilots were rarely rotated out to pass their skills onto their comrades and each one that fell took nearly all their skills with them to the grave. Graves that they all too often helped themselves into through a dangerous obsession with inflating their scores as much as possible. All so that they could bask in fame and glory as Germany's propaganda machine made its aces into virtual gods before the eyes of the German public. Meanwhile, the most successful of INFOR pilots would be pulled back to teach what they learned to the next generation. As the skill of Germany's pilots slowly but surely whittled, the INFOR's pilots only became better and better. Though Germany kept pace in terms of numbers of airplanes and the quality of its aircraft, the men behind the machines were falling ever further behind their enemies and the German air force found itself losing control of the skies.

1943 is widely considered the turning point in the war, where Germany truly began to lose. Between 1939 and 1943, for four years, the front was relatively stagnant, seesawing continually without much in the way of permanent gain and Germany had reason to be confident in its superior manpower and greater available industry even if cracks were showing.

### 1943-1945

With the Russian entry into the war, the entire German war machine had to be restructured, as it was plagued by the increasing dissatisfaction of both the German people and more importantly; the allies of the Empire. After four years of war, people were growing tired of the bloody struggle, and disobedience was steadily mounting within Germany's allies who loathed to send their sons to die for the Reich. Strikes, acts of disobedience, and even sabotage were increasingly commonplace and had grown to virtually epidemic proportions in the client states of the east, where partisan warfare was being waged more and more openly every day.

The initial Russian invasion sparked an even further intensification of these acts of resistance as for the first time, it seemed like Germany was weak. Leftist dissidents were now being joined by right wing Pan-Slavists and Nationalists who hoped that National Republican Russia would liberate them from the German yoke that demanded more and more for a distant war. The Russian Great White Army had prepared itself quite well, and timed the cutting of valuable exports to Germany's coffers at just the right moment before launching Operation Varangian.

To the south, Egypt and its Cairo Pact allies had spent years making preparations in secret with the International and the Russian State to modernize, industrialize, and exploit the available resources of the region, which were offered without restriction, in return for the assistance of the anti-German blocs. The Ottoman Turks, Germany’s chief client state in the region - and an absolutely vital source of oil for the Reich - were seen as the great oppressor of the Arab people, and the Germans their great enablers. Thus the Cairo Pact was only too glad to strike at both, assailing the hopelessly outnumbered Suez Garrison and striking into the Ottoman Empire in tandem with Russia’s Caucasian offensive.

The Great White Army crashed into the eastern territories of the Reichspakt, and threatened to cause catastrophe as overwhelmed divisions tried their best to pull back to prepared defensive lines. The loss of the Suez Canal was also catastrophic, all but cutting off Germany from its colonial resources; almost overnight, Germany found its lifeline to Ottoman, Persian, and Azeri oil under threat. Germany would now have to learn to rely almost entirely on its strategic reserve, and what could be synthesized, and thus was now running on a timer.

By the Summer of 1945, the Netherlands, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and a portion of the Rhineland had been captured by International forces that were now flush with American and Arabian oil, and awash with American trucks and artillery, while Germany’s allies in the east were felled one by one by Savinkov and his allies. Despite the massive militarization of the state under Reichskanzler von Schleicher and the tens of thousands being executed by Ferdinand’s discipline squads every month to enforce Prussian courage, Germany was already in a downward spiral. The strategic reserve of oil had run out and production could never hope to meet demand, the Siegfried line was breaking in the face of Operation Enchante, as fortifications were obliterated by precision bombing and ample self-propelled artillery. Socialist and Rightist partisans began to rise up in areas where military control was weak enough to be thrown off. Poland fell to Savinkov and his Polish Nationalist allies in early 1946, following the defeat of the Warsaw Commune, while French forces, bolstered by German partisans joining their ranks, pushed ever eastwards. Hungary's attacks on the former Habsburg Empire, and the efforts of Serbia and Romania served to make the formation of any coherent defensive line in the east fruitless, and Manstein advised High Command of the impossibility of victory. The Ottoman Empire was already dead and all the efforts of Germany to save it had come to nothing. Already, the colonies were crumbling as the Indochinese cast off their masters, all remnants of the Pro-German order in China were destroyed, and Goring’s attempts to hold the African Jewel together by brute force that would claim millions of lives instead shredded the pride and joy of the German empire to pieces, with only the longest established and most heavily Germanized colonies destined to remain loyal in the collapse that was to come.

### Collapse and occupation

Fearful of the rapidly impending collapse of the German military and empire, with mutinies and surrenders increasingly commonplace, Kaiser Wilhelm III and his Chancellor began preparations to flee the country. Königsberg fell to the Russian onslaught shortly after the liberation of Poland, while Magdeburg was captured by French, British, and socialist German forces in early 1946. June of 1946 would essentially mark the end of German resistance as the Kaiser fled for Sweden under cover of night, putting on a disguise in order to board a neutral Swedish vessel and make good his escape to Sudwestafrika, where colonial general and administrator Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck had established a loyalist regime of soldiers and colonists in the aftermath of the implosion of Mittelafrika. Breslau and Prussia itself would fall to the rapidly advancing Slavic armies, while INFOR’s siege of Berlin would begin only a few weeks after. By August 15th, 1946, the German Empire was no more, with the fall of Berlin, and the capitulation of the scattered and disorganized German military to International and Russian forces, being the final end of the old regime. A weary and dispirited Manstein emerging from his bunker in Berlin would sign the final order of surrender in the sight of the victorious powers and give the address asking those who still fought for the Emperor to stand down. The war was over, and even to many Germans this was a tremendous relief after years of incalculable suffering inflicted in part by their own rulers.

As the International Workers’ Armed Forces made their offensives through Germany, they were supported by myriad German socialist partisans that established workers’ councils and made multiple distinct declarations of local socialist governments, which were quickly co-opted into INFOR’s Council for the Reconstruction of Germany. It was, however, ultimately the flight of the Kaiser to Sudwestafrika that allowed the International Reconstruction Mandate for Germany to be established, and the Council had to be formed into an approximate government. The freedom-fighting partisans and resisting parties were an excellent source of administrative officials, but the real base of socialist rule in Germany ultimately came down to the collaboration of the two largest political parties in the former German Empire: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany-) and the newly established Spartakische Arbeiterspartei Deutschlands (Spartacist Workers' Party of Germany).

However, this situation was to be short-lived, as the Russians had formed their own German state on the border, and INFOR desperately needed a sovereign counterbalance. Guided by the diplomatic efforts of the French, the United Front of the SAPD and SPD formed the establishment of the new government of the new German Socialist Republic with its new President Otto Grotewohl as a compromise candidate, himself a member of the leftist faction of the SPD.

## Modern Germany:

With its government barely four years old, the German Socialist Republic enters 1950 headed a young and unestablished coalition of former enemies. The SPD, when it held the position of Chancellor of the German Empire, suppressed the actions of now SAPD members and violently attacked DOI-affiliated strikers, only to be suppressed itself under the brutal military regime in the Kaiserreich, but now, to better the position of the socialist revolution in Germany, the SAPD must cooperate with them. Will the alliance stand firm, or will it falter? What will Germany's place be within INFOR, as its mighty industries and teeming population recover and begin to eclipse France's once more? What shape will the rearming German military take as the German Red Army coalesces into an organized sword and shield for socialism? And surely, the fate of the ships of the Kaiser’s navy that did not flee to what remained of the colonies must be discussed? And what of the reeking remnants of the old reactionary order in the country… not to mention the gaunt ghoul that stares back at the GSR’s forces stationed across from Dresden and the Oder - the German People’s State.