Comintern Red Front (BA:IR)

**Dev. Status** | Original units and building In-game

*"As I was walking that ribbon of highway,*

*This land was made for you and me."*

- *"This land is your land" by Woody Gurthie*
The *Front of Proletarian States of the* *Third Communist International* or *Comintern or Red Front* for short is an international association of socialist states and revolutionary organisations. Comprised out of what had once been the separate Volkspakt and VOSCOM alliances formed by Germany and Italy on one side and America and Russia on the other, the Red Front was coalesced into a single unit by the threat of the Franco-British Union and its Imperial Entente under the megalomaniacal leadership of Edward the Eighth and JFC Fuller, and has formed into a global system of government convened in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and more recetly, Pyongyang.

*"The Internationale unites the world in song!"*

## At a Glance

 **Motives** | Global Communist Revolution, Advancement of Science and Prosperity, Destruction of Autocracy, Elitism, and Oligarchy

## Background

### World in Revolution

There are a few principal things that lead to the Blue Alert universe diverging the way it did. The first is that the predecessors of the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Party of America merged into a singular Socialist Labor Party of America in the 1890s while McKinley's Assassination was averted, preventing Roosevelt from turning the release valves of the progressive movement in the same way. With greater German interventionism in the Americas including cinching trade deals with Argentina and sticking its own oar into the first Mexican revolution to prop the central government up against the constitutionalist revolt, the United States was drawn into the renamed quadruple alliance of America, Britain, France, and Russia with the intent of containing German ambitions and their quadruple alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Ottoman Turkey.

War was not avoidable in largest part because far too many people wanted it, with Franz Ferdinand's demise at Sarajevo being merely the excuse many had waited a long time for. And while Italy would change sides, the war that would come would be one far more terrible than anyone had anticipated. It would in fact, be a horror too far for many of the participants as privation, rationing, blockade, and death drove the end of many an empire. The Russian Revolution would be the first, and sympathisers and opportunists would take action across the world. As the German Empire crumbled under the weight of the blockades imposed on it and Austria-Hungary ripped itself apart, the decision to commit American troops en masse to contain Ataturk's rebellion against the King-Crane commission treaty impositions would lead to America becoming embroiled in its own upswelling as the SLP; the only party that was against the war, had risen to the second power of American politics.

While compromises would be made with the SLP to calm things down; even as it renamed itself into the Worker's Communist Party of America in keeping with the Comintern's 21 conditions; the party would push for key labour and rights gains such as the end of segregation with the cooperation of America's millions of black veterans, female suffrage, the right to unionise, and diplomatic recognition of the USSR and Sun Yat Sen's Kuomintang Republic to open trade deals. They had gotten their foot in the door even as Fascism rose in Italy and German politics were precariously positioned by Ebert's deal with the devil of the German Volkische right to keep the Communists out. And when the great depression struck an unprepared world in 1930, they surged forwards in organisation and membership.

Winning the election of 1932 only to be met with an attempted putsch by Douglas MacArthur and Marshall, the brief but violent American civil war would be ended within the summer of 1933, with the outnumbered and outmatched reactionary remnants fleeing to the Protectorate of Cuba which they swore in as a state and declared the seat of the exiled American government. With an already industrialised country at their disposal, the American communists could go farther than their Soviet counterparts without having to kill their pride to spare their shame as the Soviets did in the quest for industrialisation capital, and the more radical wings of the WCPA that were more amenable to the arguments of the Worker's Opposition of the CPSU came to predominate against bureaucratisation to impose a synthesis of Amadeo Bordiga and Anton Pannekoek's theses on Communism with those of Daniel DeLeon and the martyred Karl Liebknecht on the new Union of American Socialist Republics.

This shook the whole world, not the least with the sympathetic revolutions that would spread into Latin America with Mexico, Nicaragua, Chile, and Peru coming to outright wave the red banner while others sought realist alignments with the hemisphere's traditional giant. The CPC-KMT coalition of the Wuhan government of China would find itself buoyed in its struggle with the Beiyang government in Beijing by American support, and the Soviet Union could now count on virtually free of charge industrial aid to meet its plan targets and more. Similarly, the reaction from Liberals, Reactionaries, and Fascists alike was one of virtual hysterics, even with the benefit of a chance to annul all debts owed to America.

However, the initial suspicion of Britain being the great enemy of global revolution was perhaps misplaced, as the Nazi regime in Germany, Brazil's Integralist state, and the Futurist government of Yasuhito in Japan would prove far greater and less predictable dangers. As Britain managed to steer the Reich Eastwards, World War 2 would begin in earnest in 1940 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, leading to six years of devastating warfare. More than a hundred million would die by the time that American, Soviet, Chinese, and Hispanic troops seized Tokyo after Berlin's final capitulation. More than half the world's Jews and 75% of its Roma had perished while other vulnerable communities had been decimated.

Ordinarily, this would lead to the cold war between the powers of western Europe and their empires shepherded by the Franco-British Union and the Communist Bloc that turned to America for guidance, but one man's research time refused to accept this. Albert Einstein, an Americanised German Jew and an out and proud communist himself, despaired at what had happened to his fellow Jews and the abyss his country had fallen into, and would commit himself to an unusual project made possible with an odd device retrieved from the wreckage of a stranger still ship that he had managed to make into something he had once believed impossible; a time machine.

He would go back in time and prevent the horrors of war in the first place, hoping to defuse the possibility of fascism in Italy and nazism in Germany before it could take root and instead birth proletarian governments that would offer a peaceful path to world socialism, without undoing the American revolution either. Consigning Hitler and Mussolini to obscurity and irrelevance, he got his wish, with Gramsci and Luxemburg birthing new revolutionary governments in the aftermath of world war one that would nevertheless, with a more doveish approach to revolution, hopefully alleviate reactionary fears and allow for a gentle transition to global socialism.

However, he had underestimated both the intensity of reaction this perceived greater Communist encirclement would produce and the desire of some to have a world war no matter what. And ultimately, he himself had not wagered on the possibility that the technology he brought into the world would not be a one off. He himself would be erased by Rupert Thornley following his appearance at a convention on theoretical physics in the Free Socialist Council Republic of Germany, but another time traveller; Yuri; would ensure that history would diverge further still to complete his revenge.

### Prelude

The American market crash and revolution would occur earlier, in the late 20s rather than the early 30s, with the Union of American Socialist Republics greeting the family of worker's states and signing the Vladivostok Compact with the Soviet Union that would give rise to a new, powerful military alliance just as Germany and Italy had signed their own "People's Pact" or Volkspakt. This it was hoped, would provide for mutual security and cooperation and dissuade any from challenging the revolutionary wave.

Even as Sun Yat Sen's dream was realised with a unified china allied to America and Russia under the KMT-CPC coalition government and the Spanish Civil War ended in the bloody demises of Sanjurjo and Mola, most dismissed the idea of a reactionary backlash. Such a move would be insane, suicidal even. The revolution had already won and the old world was dying. Once the revolutionary wave spread into the colonies of the remaining empires, it would be finished. But they had not reckoned with the manipulations of Kane, Ishtar, and Yuri or the time travelling supply-and-credit operations Thornley was using to evacuate remaining loyal assets from his prior timeline into this new one; who could not have a world without a use for war or a Capitalist bloc for their future plans.

The initial response to the formation of the UASR was to consolidate France and Britain into the Franco-British Union, though simple realities saw Britain predominate over France in nearly all aspects. Then came the Edwardian restoration following the assassination of Emperor George the Fifth shortly after his first ever Christmas radio address, leading to an insane, frantic descent into paranoia by the deeply vengeful Edward the Eighth; who gave acolytes like Anthony Ludovici and Marshal JFC Fuller in Britain and Marshal Petain and Admiral Francois Darlan in France full leave to restructure society along an incredibly reactionary line meant to turn back the clock on this godless world and push the world from the brink.

Even if it meant taking aid from odd sources such as the strange Romanian mystic Yuri, the odd but alluring femme fatale Ishtar, and another bald headed genius known as Kane who offered incredible advances in technology and the means to build an army able to wage war against the whole world. Using the Mobile Construction Vehicle and its refinery technology able to, through largely automated means, convert raw materials into finished industrial goods in real time as well as a large number of obscene biotechnologies and sinister chemical agents, they were able to amass an army far in excess of what they should have been able to. Trialed in Colonial conflicts to quash dissent against the so called Imperial Entente, this Blue Army would crush the last remnants of Norman democracy when peace protests and strike actions had blocked efforts to invade Spain and destroy the Republic.

The Communists however, largely paid little mind, pushing technology in their own strange ways and arguing over paths to the completion of world socialism. After all, this so called Entente was not able to keep a lid on Bose's Azad Hind movement or the Bharatiya Communist Labor Party, and the growing radicalism of a rising class consciousness in Africa was deemed to be an inevitable herald for the end of capitalism. More important then, to question how to proceed towards a post-revolutionary world, when the last bastions of reaction fell without firing a single shot.

How foolish.

### World War 2

*"There can be no question, this war must be fought by all the workers of the World for the future of all in the World!"*

-- Upton Sinclair
On the Halloween day of 1950, the seeming quiet of the post-American civil war 30s and 40s was shattered instantly as the Franco-British Union, convened as a virtual annexation of France by Britain in response to the crisis of the American revolutionary wave; launched what was to be the first wave of its conquests through an invasion of the Spanish Council Republic, overwhelming the smaller country and prompting a declaration of war by the Free Socialist Council Republic of Germany and its VOLKSPAKT. The Soviet Union and United Republics; once known as Russia and America, were certainly wary of this sudden escalation of aggression, and began to make preparations for a response. With entente forces in Southeast Asia crossing into the border with China and launching massive crackdowns on Subhas Chandra Bose's Azad Hind rebel government in Bengal, Premiers Elizabeth Nord of America and Lev Sedov of the Soviet Union would meet with counterparts from around the world to discuss the response as the Entente horde pushed into the Volkspakt, threatening even neutral Iraq and Sweden.

With the Ulaanbaatar declaration, they would prepare to mobilise, at least until the Entente pre-empted matters with an invasion of America and bombing raids on the USSR. The war had now come home to roost, and with Germany and Italy on the verge of falling it seemed that the blue griffin would overwhelm much of the world. Strange times made for strange bedfellows, and the vast domains of the Empire of the Rising Sun spread across the Pacific saw both concerning threat from Edward's dreams of world conquest and opportunity to wring concessions from the communists such as a reprieve from insurgents in its colonies and vassals and a claim to territories it could pry off of Edward's lackeys.

The Imperial Intervention would be joined by anti-colonial revolutions in Africa and Asia, both Communist or otherwise, and the formal unification of the Italo-German Volkspakt with the Russo-American Vladivostok Compact into a unified Red Front would smooth over coordination issues born of differing doctrines, equipment marks, and attitudes towards war. With Poland and Czechoslovakia's Zapadoslav line about to be tested and enemy forces rampaging in the Balkans, Finland, and even threatening karelia, the changing of fortunes could not be better timed.

The Red Front STAVKA had correctly guessed that the offensives in North America were largely holding operations rather than a serious effort at conquest, but resolved to catch the Entente by surprise with Oliver Law and Maurice Rose's Nantucket offensive while Harry Haywood would be dispatched to Europe with Dwight Eisenhower coordinate with Marshal Zhukov and Tukhachevsky while Edward Carter would work with Peng Dehuai to reverse the situation in Asia. Defying Edward's expectations to focus on MacArthur's government in exile on Cuba, the New World Socialists would take advantage of the new Chronosphere technology and the openness of the North Pacific sealanes to concentrate in Eurasia while the Entente Navy was dragged into a brutal war of attrition.

However, overeagerness and an underestimation of the remaining strength of the Entente lead to the debacle of operation Redbeard, allowing for the Entente to start to negotiate froms ome position of strength for an amicable end to the war even with Iberia still occupied and their empires mostly intact. Nevertheless, they had brought together the world in song, with a newer, stronger alliance had had seen the capabilities of a United International Revolutionary Red Army for the Red Front of the Communist International.

While the Indian civil war was still raging and proxy conflicts would erupt in Indochina, Africa, and Latin America, the greatest bulk of the conflict had been put on pause, especially with the sudden assassination of Edward by his aide Natalie and the deaths of Fuller and Darlan from being buried in a bombing raid on London. Rupert Thornley, as the new Executive of the Entente would ensure that Empress Theresa would be a largely pliable woman for his ambitions, not tolerating the same sort of deference Fuller and Darlan had to show to Edward and having in his mind; a detailed plan for how to achieve what Edward could not, the restoration of the Pax Britannica.

Even as the ink dried on the peace of Brussels and new stading committees of the Communist international and the All-Union Congress and Soviets of the major members of the communist bloc were sworn in, the mood in the Communist bloc was perhaps best exemplified by Chairwoman of the Comintern's Presiding Committee Katherine Oppenheimer's famous quip "We have an armistice, not a peace. Peace means the matter was settled, nothing here was settled at all besides that we need a break."

### War and Peace

Many would classify world war three as less of its own conflict and more of a retread of world war two, especially as only seven years would separate them and hostilities between the two power blocs would continue largely unabated. And it was hardly a seven years that felt much like peace. Tensions were too high, and Thornley made no real efforts towards an accord with the stalemated Red Front, while he restored many aspects of liberalism and disbanded much of the Normanist bloc that had instated extreme reactionary restrictions upon the Empire, he was making these tweaks because it was better for war. And after all, Parliament still held elections and convened even during the Edwardian Restoration; however much of a sham they were.

The Front however did not lessen its hostility towards the Entente. There was no effort to normalise things with the Entente beyond the fact that trade was allowed to continue under monitored supervision. Operations such as the open funding of Celtic resistance movements within the FBU itself; particularly in annexed Ireland couldn't be described as anything but a provocation. It was of course, seen to be only fair as the stay behind elements created by the retreating Entente left a mess of far right or liberal terrorists that had to be dealt with, while some countries that had opportunistically joined with the Entente and had their governments overthrown or neutral countries now drawn into communist orbit were now in the midst of extensive transformation, one that was sometimes painful.

However the technological revolution brought about by the technologies of the war returning home had radically transformed life, which along with the massive transformation of society brought about by the "cultural revolution" of those who had grown up knowing nothing but the proletarian state now agittating for more progress on not merely cultural issues but in the transition to communism and the abolition of the tyranny of the market. Returning soldiers who had battled reaction across the world and combatted the horrors of Imperialism and Colonialism wanted to see the vestiges of it abolished at home as well as abroad.

This sort of energy would propel people like Mao Zedong of China to the position of the overall Prime Commissar of the Comintern's central committee and would fuel the already explosive rise of the Militant Internationalist Tendency under James ford to challenge the Organic Maximalist orthodoxy within the party. In the Soviet Union Anatoly Cherdenko would rise to prominence on a similar policy of standing up to the Sapphire Griffin and crushing the bastions of imperialism wherever they stood and that this time, they would be more than ready to ensure that a future war would be on their terms and be waged to the completion of the revolutionary mission to send Capitalism to the same graveyard that Feudalism before it had fallen into.

The International Revolutionary Red Army would stand as a multinational symbol to the commitment of the revolutionaries to their ideals, above and beyond any one nation or state entity and beholden to none but the Comintern itself. Bearing the Red Star and gear of the global communist movement and synthesising a doctrine out of the best that dozens of armies had to offer, they were both the scarlet shield of the workers and the red menace to the owners. And with the transformations to the International Army pushed by the Von Esling-Gradenko doctrine they had an army capable of tremendous precision, unprecedented rapid mobilisation and deployment, and hitting very hard where it counted. However, their timetables had a miscalculatio; assuming that the Entente would wait at least ten years, perhaps even twenty or thirty, before making their move. After all, three decades separated the first and second world wars.

Furthermore, they dismissed the third positionist movements sponsored by the Empire as largely irrelevant and that even if the likes of the Garveyite African League, the Reactionary Guard, or the Empire of the Rising Sun got involved they would be relatively simple to deal with.

### Round Two, Part Three

Who started world war three was ultimately an irrelevant question as both sides wanted it to happen at some point, but it started sooner than the STAVKA of the Red Front had planned, much sooner. As Yuri and Ishtar weaved webs to blind the usually supremely reliable Main Intelligence Directorate, an aerial skirmish in the north sea would explode into a flurry of conflict. The "Blue Thunder" that would ensue would catch the STAVKA somewhat flat footed as the sheer scale of Entente force build up seemed to defy expectatios or even probability, with massed usage of cloned and vat grown soldiers in greater quantities than the Communists had countenanced allowing them to amass armies not on any publicly available registrar or census.

The short lived Spanish Free Territory which had been formed a few years before the war began in an anarchist revolution that toppled the Salazarist Spanish state and had been tolerated mostly because the Anarchists had publicly split with the Comintern would be ground to gristle in weeks while the Low countries would topple one after the other. Invading landing forces would pile into Scandinavia while the German and Italian Red armies found themselves faced with an onslaught that seemed to wash over them like the waves of the ocean themselves. Though they gave a spirited, even amazing fight, once the Spanish front had closed and the western army groups wheeled around, the attempts at the Sickle cut "Case Red" offensive were quickly rebuffed relatively soon after crossing into France through the Ardennes while space deployed troops were landed en masse to bypass the Alps.

To the further surprise of the STAVKA, the main thrust of the new world offensive was not against the UASR save for further distraction assaults, but rather against South America where troops from the Caribbean or the Seabases and Africa would pour into Brazil and Venezuela, devouring enormous quantities of distance while socialist African nations were subject to attack from all sides, replete with a push into the middle east to drive the communists away from the Suez that had prompted such a heavy focus on Space mobility in the first place.

Entente Doomsday Tanks would overrun Berlin and Rome, driving eastwards with relentless fury while the Zapadoslavic and Tito Lines would be met with the destructive hammer of Entente Ballistic Missiles to drive even deeper into Europe. With Europe seeming to be in a good position, greater pushes would be made in the other theatres, including the American and Asian battlefields where it was hoped that they could divide the Red Front further. The Soviet Union, whose own territory remained unmolested, as well as the vast strategic depth of Brazil, China, and America was being tapped for substantial counterattacks, particularly after the failure of the Entente lightning strike on Leningrad.

Things were however, about to get far stranger.

As entente forces celebrated their victories in Paris with soldiers in place to prepare to attack the USSR itself, word of major movements by unknown parties were being reported to the Main Intelligence Directorate, Moments later, contact with Paris would largely cut off while oddly coordinated uprisings struck near and far, all the while the Emperor of Japan made his proclamation that divine destiny was upon a world that would soon bear witness to the glorious rising of the Sun upon it. Even more oddly though, would be the emergence of strange figures through the mists of Space and Time, announcing in a metallic furor that the war for the salvation of posterity and the preservation of the future had begun.

This was now truly a world war, and all consuming anarchy would grip the nations of the world in the tumult. The uprisings were positively traced to the "Illuminate of Enlightenment", under the so called Epsilon Army which had clearly split with the Entente now that the Entente had outlived its usefulness to Yuri, and the Scavenger Temples lead by the lady of mystery herself; Ishtar, though some were the product of Axis supported Nationalists or Cyclonic endorsed Anarchists and the often surreal weapons being used and developed prompted an acceleration of the Paradox Project meant to overthrow the Entente once and for all.

## International Revolutionary Red Army

*"Drawn from several score nations, the International Revolutionary Red Army has twice repelled the Entente and serves as a beacon of hope and progress in countless brushfire wars. It can strike at the enemy from the skies, the land, and the sea with grace and precision and stand on their molars before they know they're in mortal danger. It is comprised out of millions of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the ideals of freedom and democracy from those who would turn back the clock. Fear it or love it, there is no getting away from the simple fact that the International's armed forces are respected the world over."*

- *Lieutenant Olivia Tsukolous of the Red Army*
### Structures

*"We have seized the means of construction, eh, eh, get it? No? Aw come on, that was funny."*

- *Anonymous MCV driver.*

### Specialist Structures

*"Now you see them, soon you don't."*

- *Superweapon Corps Motto MCV driver.*

### Infantry

*"Man that is a nice gun..."*

- *Entente Tommy on the receiving end of Red Front fire.*

### Light Aircraft

Red Front aircraft are always named for types of Gas.

===Heroes, Aces, a