Kurskgunner's Alternate History Pt. One

Kurskgunner · **Kurskgunner**

This Alternate History is meant to open the possibilty of using whatever kind of fleet(s) a player has. The following scenarios, after part 2, will help generate some interesting situations to play out. This is the first of the "Never Was" histories I have made up for our group.
Special thanks to Lothar for his help refining these before I set them here.

Alternate History
By Kurskgunner

The Late Twentieth Century, After The Second Great Conflict
The second Great War’s little secret.
1. Introduction

History’s little surprises often come to light about a hundred years after great events. Assassinations, wars, hoaxes, economic upheavals, and other events large on the world stage, never seem to reveal all the real details until well after it is too late to do anything about those new revelations. So it is this time.
Most of the world was very much tired of war, by the end of what’s been called World War Two, or, the Second Great War. Many historians note that the second conflict just finished what the first war left undone. By the time of these new events, just uncovered, no-one wanted to hear of more war, in far away places. At the time, this was just fine with the participants. Europe, the Americas, and East Asia had their own problems, and some of these problems were what central Asia national factions exploited.

2. Buildup.

Even while the fighting was going on, all over the world, these central Asia factions were already maneuvering for economic positions. That this became a military build up as well, should surprise no-one. The military solution seemed the only solution considered by anyone, during those times.
It started innocently enough, with American soldiers.
An American company specialized in chocolate, and sensed an opportunity to expand its business many-fold. The company leaders made arrangements to have a box of their chocolate on every ship, in the headquarters of every Army company, and even in the “C” and “K” rations military personnel were issued for nearly every meal. Little wonder that American soldiers had their fill of chocolate. Nearly every soldier handed out chocolate to civilians, wherever American forces went. That innocent bit of generosity started the whole political, and ultimately military, mess.
Almost from the beginning of the war, the Americans began shipping military hardware to almost anyone that asked for it. Large amounts of military weapons disappeared into the political sink hole of China. The communists and Kuomintang governments received continuous shipments from the U.S.A. as well as material from the Soviets, to help the Chinese fight the Japanese. The largest part of these deliveries of war material disappeared. It all would be needed when the real fighting started to see who would rule China. That much of that hardware got diverted to rival factions around Asia did not come to light until the fighting had started.
Arrangements were made in back rooms to exploit the Soviet paranoia, and the American generosity, for economic control of the region’s oil, and control of the suddenly expanding plantations of sugar and chocolate.

3. The Lines are Drawn

The great conflict was nearing its end, and already, new divisions in the world order pointed toward more war.
The Soviet Union, as a nation, trusted no-one. Stalin, the leader at the time, found suspicious and treacherous motives in everyone, and everything. When Stalin learned of American soldiers bribing civilians, everywhere they went, Stalin saw a threat. Stalin was already aware of America’s atomic bombs, and how few there were. Not enough to use on thousands of tanks, and millions of soldiers. Stalin’s plans for the spread of communism were not threatened by American bombs. But Stalin saw a very real threat to communism, with the spreading of capitalism’s products, namely, chocolate.
Stalin believed that Americans were winning over the hearts and minds of “the masses”, one citizen at a time, with this simple act of generosity.
The “Cold War” was already started, before the “hot” war was even finished, because the communists feared America’s underhanded subversion of every nation it touched, with chocolate.
The government of the United States found increasing numbers of Soviet “operatives” appearing throughout the eastern Indian Ocean states, and moving into western Pacific Ocean territories hard on the heals of the departing warring forces. Japanese and/or American military forces had hardly more than stopped shooting each other, and “civilian” political, as well as business, interested parties moved in. The government of the United States found that a lot of those “interests” took orders from Moscow. U.S. distrust of Stalin’s USSR began to grow, and shortly distrust turned to manic obsession.
Even though Japan was clearly losing to the Americans, Japan also jumped into the political and economic can of worms these regions were fast becoming. Japan may be losing the war, but Japan laid a groundwork of political and economic allies in the western Pacific, to keep West Indies oil flowing to Japan. Japan would pay any price to have desperately needed oil, once the rebuilding of Japan started after the war. The Japanese were the first to “buy” oil, and later both sugar and chocolate futures, with military hardware.

The Arming of the East

Japan was the first to trade hardware for political and economic influence in the region. Tanks, warships, planes, artillery, and tons of ammunition and small arms flowed into the hands of the factions around the Western Pacific. Ships were “sunk” in combat, only to turn up soon after the Second Great War ended, in the middle of the new war.
Soviet and American arms and equipment became a flood as the war ended. American accounts in the news of vast stores of equipment being dumped in the sea, or piled and burned, gave closure in the minds of American politicians and the common people. That America actually got paid for all that equipment was kept secret from all but a very few. That all that extra money did not have to be accounted for, to congress, gave the military a free hand in some very expensive research projects.
The Soviets already kept everything a secret from everybody, including other party officials, so that a lot of heavy equipment that was “parked” in large military depots, never had to be accounted for. As with the Americans, the Soviets found lots of uses for the money, oil, and chocolate, it received in payments. Soviet soldiers began to get chocolate. But Stalin needed more.
Even Britain, France, Italy, and somehow Germany, got into the political maneuvering, as they tried to position themselves as recipients of oil, sugar, and chocolate. All of them had military hardware that was no longer wanted, and the citizens would not care if it all was sunk, or sold.
All though America, Britain, China, Japan, and the Soviets, maneuvered for greater influence in the regions surrounding the Indian Ocean, none of them wanted anything to do with any fighting in the region. But. Those nations had one more resource that was needed by the factions bartering for military hardware. Manpower.
At first, soldiers from all the warring nations were glad to go home. But quickly, many found that home was no longer where, and what, they thought. Too soon, many soldiers were as flotsam upon the sea. Lost. Drifting. Nothing to anchor to back home.
Somehow, word spread of little nations with big bank accounts looking for experienced warriors of the industrial age. A new business blossomed. Mercenaries. Just what the factions around the Indian Ocean needed. Trained personnel to show others how to use the weapons flooding into these somewhat backward, industrially speaking, regions. No newspapers said a word about how recently enemy soldiers now worked side by side as instructors of yet more new armies.
Large numbers of citizens were “recruited” to populate the machines of war. Regions that had escaped nearly untouched from the second Great War, now funneled huge numbers of people into the scramble to control large amounts of oil, sugar, and chocolate. While fighting had not yet broken out, all the factions used the large numbers of people in their new military forces, to expand plantations of sugar and chocolate, and find and develop new oil fields. Money and material poured into these regions. Fighting might never have broken out, however, because everyone was so busy with their little part of the economic pie. But. Because of one regional oversight, the stable growth of all the factions was threatened, and so led inexorably to fighting.

A Foundation of Sugar, Breaks the Eastern Factions

Despite everyone’s desire to profit from the various manias of the Europeans, and Americans, it happened that certain regions were far better at growing some things, than other regions. Sugar it seems, was growing far better throughout the island chains that separate the Indian Ocean from the Pacific. And Chocolate producing trees grew like weeds in some regions, but not others.
Just as the economic growth of those regions began to look secure, the old royalty of several Islands, ( such as Java and Borneo. ) began to fight, politically, over royal succession. Only weeks later, civil war shattered the faction that just happened to control the vast majority of the sugar everyone needed for their chocolate. Nothing like enough sugar could be had from South America, to feed the needs of the two rival factions controlling the vast majority of the chocolate production. Political maneuvering failed to get the two rival chocolate factions their sugar quotas. So each brought their armies into securing the much needed sugar producing regions. Each of the two factions feared that they would be squeezed out, if their rival got control of most of the sugar producing regions. It follows, naturally, that the two chocolate factions soon tried to move on a rival’s holdings, and a shooting war began.
The astonishing number of land and sea battles that occurred, is all the more startling when put in the light of how ignorant most of the world was of so large a conflict.
Only now, a hundred years after the fighting ended, is the depth of the dirty secrets of the world’s governments revealed.
How many governments would have survived, if the populations of those countries found out that giant frauds had been perpetrated? Even before the first shots were fired in the Second Great War, many governments had sold military hardware to those same developing factions, in the east. Why build one battleship, or cruiser, when two can be built cheaper than just one? And if someone is willing to pay enough for that second vessel, that cost of the first is also covered, well where is the harm?
As will be covered later, the shear destructive power unleashed, can be laid at the feet of those Western and European governments that have unquenchable appetites for oil, and chocolate.

The next part of this series will look at the more notorious, and ultimately politically significant, land and sea actions. Historians of military conflict have found new depths to explore, as each of these forgotten and ignored “little wars” are brought into the light of world history.

By: Kurskgunner