Chapter 404: Shaping a New World
The world had entered a delicate state. On the one hand, fires continued to burn long after those who had initiated them were reduced to ashes. The Great War was over, but the wounds created during its chaos and destruction still bled deeply—vast as oceans of the sanguine substance spilled across multiple continents.
Imperialism had entered a difficult territory, as if the German Reich’s open declaration of seizing Anglo-French colonies in Mittelafrika—just to begin a long and stable process of decolonization—had been napalm added to already all-consuming flames.
Britain’s empire burned, and their army, now returned home from the likes of Ypres and Flanders, began being redeployed to put down local rebellions that spanned the entirety of their colonies. From Ireland to what remained of British Africa, and east toward the Raj and the lands still held in the Pacific, a time had come for the locals to overthrow their British masters. And it was a gruesome, bitter affair.
At the same time, France—still struggling to stabilize in the fallout of the war and mourning the millions of their own men who had been uselessly sent to their deaths—tried to save their remaining claims abroad.
But it was a doomed battle. The men who had survived the war against the Central Powers and returned home intact—rather than flee as deserters—had no desire to take up arms in another distant land under a tarnished and blighted banner, one that now represented defeat, betrayal, and incompetence.
No, these soldiers began to protest, then riot when force was applied against them, and ultimately rebel. Marxists, reactionaries, and opportunists of all kinds now fought in the streets of Paris and every major French city, as well as in the countryside, turning their anger, hatred, and grief against one another rather than the enemy to the east who had so dominantly shattered their arrogant worldview.
The colonies and the forces still remaining there? They were left to fend for themselves and similarly entered a state of violence and chaos on a scale of destruction few in history would care to record.
Italy was relatively stable, having lost only a few hundred thousand men compared to the millions of their allies. They surrendered almost immediately after realizing they could not withstand the tide of German steel that came crashing over the Alps.
Whereas Austro-Hungary was embroiled in a collapse of brutal proportions, one that was the making of their own decades-long failures. So then you might ask, what remained of the other two major world powers located within the Western world?
Germany prospered and flourished, having perfectly mitigated the dangers associated with a generation of young men returning from war with both psychological and substance-related problems. Preparations had been made long in advance for this inevitability, and the German merchant navy now dominated global trade. Not only this, but Germany began expanding its industry and wealth eastward toward their Russian allies.