Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  1882: First transAtlantic flight by Draka dirigible, from Apollonaris (Dakar, Senegal) to Recife, Brazil. Women's Auxiliary Corps made permanent part of Draka forces (in noncomba-tant roles). Free population of Dominion reaches 10,000,000. Bondservant Identification and Control Act requires fingerprinting and neck-tattooing of all serfs. Security Directorate founded as successor to General Constabulary. Karl von Shrakenberg born.

  1883: Revolt of serfs in textile mills of Alexandria (Alexandria, Egypt) suppressed; 150,000 dead. Cape Town-Alexandria railway completed.

  1890: Nomenclature Amendment Act makes popular term "serf" for debt-peons official.

  1891: Libyan and Algerian oil fields discovered. Submachine gun developed by Technical Section of Draka armed forces.

  1892-86: Regular airship lines established in several continents. Diesel engines come into general use for dirigible and other special uses. Autostreamer output in U.S. surpasses Dominion of Draka's for first time.

  1897: Diskarapur Institute team achieves heavier-than-air flight with steam-turbine aircraft. An internal-combustion model flies in France a year later.

  1898: Hawaii, Cuba, and Philippines become states of U.S. Guatemala and other Central American territories follow. William Jennings Bryan President.

  1899: Military reform in England produces general election. Chinese-Japanese war; Japan annexes Formosa, Hainan, Korea, several ports. Thermionic valve invented. Radio broadcasts.

  1900: Japanese-British naval alliance. Anglo-German naval 'dirigible armaments race begins. Germany, Austria, and Turkey sign Triple Alliance. France and Russia form Double Entente. Britain begins staff talks with France. Motion pictures with sound become common in U.S., shortly later, elsewhere.

  1905: Russo-Japanese war, catastrophic Russian defeat; first instance of battleships sunk by aerial bombardment. Japan annexes Manchuria, establishes quasi-protectorate over weak Taiping government of China; attempts at occupation bog down. Revolution in Russia produces limited constitutional monarchy, administrative chaos. Experimentation with internal combustion engine for ground transport, esp. for military purposes. Wars in Balkans, etc. Women declared liable for peacetime conscription for noncombatant and second-line tasks in Domination. Steam turbine used for railways.

  1914: Dominion of Draka has free population of 28,000,000; serfs, 210,000,000. Total population of U.S. reaches 140,000,000. GNP of both nearly identical, but with great differences in distribution, etc.

  1914-19: Great War between Triple Alliance and Entente powers (joined by U.S. in 1917, under President Theodore Roosevelt). Draka defeat Austrian and Turkish forces, occupy Middle East, Thrace, Bulgaria. Widespread use of dirigible bombers, firestorms and poison-gas bombardments. Biplane pursuit fighters developed as defense. Civilian casualties in the 500,000-3,000,000 range in all major combatants except the Draka and U.S. Revolution in Russia followed by Draka seizure of Central Asia, much of western China. Turbocompound engine developed; antibiotics, self-loading rifles, portable machine guns. Tank introduced on stalemated Western Front by both sides in 1916. John von Shrakenberg born.

  1918: Eric von Shrakenberg born. Draka Women's Auxiliary Corps abolished; women integrated into military. More noncombat and near-combat tasks opened to female personnel.

  1919: Unconditional surrender of Germany. Peace of Versailles. Draka refuse mediation of Powers, annex all conquests, enter period of economic and diplomatic isolation; last ties with Britian cut off, "Domination" becomes offirial title. U.S. also enters isolationist phase. Defeat of attempt at Prohibition in U.S. Marijuana becomes major social problem, Mexican gangsters prominent in many cities. "Jazz Age."

  1920-22: Second Russian Civil War between rivals to succeed Lenin. Stalin victorious. "Hermit Kingdom" established, forced-draft industrialization.

  1921: Mussolini takes power in Italy, seizes Dalmatian coast and Montenegro. Japanese dethrone last Taiping emperor and annex all of China not overrun by Draka.

  1925: Domination invades and annexes Afghanistan. Prolonged resistance results in death of 65 percent of population; wars of pacification in other areas of New Territories. Gradual abolition of remaining restrictions on female personnel in Draka armed forces, with complete unification in 1933. Fuel cell developed as power source; experimental use in submarines. Hormonal contraceptives. Advances in quantum theory.

  1930: Stock market crisis leads to mild but chronic recession outside Domination. First chain reaction observed. Closed-circuit television. Eva and Asa von Shrakenberg born. Death of Mary von Shrakenberg.

  1932: Hitler elected with majority in Germany. F.D. Roosevelt elected President in U.S.; declares "New Deal" for lower classes, Hispanics, etc. Limited recovery.

  1936-37: Civil war in Spain; defeat of Nationalists by 1937. Soviet Republic of Spain established. Germany takes Austria. French and British abandon Czechoslovakia; Sudeten War follows. Clashes on Draka-Japanese and Draka-Soviet borders. Experiments with electrodetection (radar) in several countries. Domination begins long-term project to harness nuclear energy. Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi move to U.S.

  1939: France and Britain guarantee Poland. Eurasian War begins. Nazi-Japanese alliance. Transistor invented in Toronto, State of Ontario. First commerical tape recorder.

  1940: Fall of France. Battle of Britain ends in stalemate; Nazi submarines effectively close Atlantic. Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia produces severe tension with U.S., Australasian Federation.

  1941: Domination attacks Italy with tacit consent of Germany. Germany attacks and defeats Soviet Union. Moscow falls October 1; Germans reach Urals and Caucasus by first snow. Imperial Japan attacks U.S. on December 3rd, occupies eastern Siberia, destroys entire American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Hawaii, Philippines overrun, West Coast raided, landings made in Panama. U.S. declares war on Japan and Germany.

  1942: January - March: Hawaii overrun by Japanese; widespread atrocities. Philippines conquered; Japanese begin roundup of 900,000 'North Americans' (U.S. citizens from the mainland states); West Coast raided, Aca-pulco bombarded by battleships lead by Yamato, landings made in Panama.

  April: Draka airborne legions sieze passes over Caucasus mountains.

  German Sixth Army surrenders. Battle of the Kuban; massive armoured engagements. Leapfrogging pincer movements combined with offensive from northwest Kazakhstan shatter German Army Group South. Draka amphibious forces land in Crimea. In September, another front is opened in Balkans, with Draka attack out of the Domination's Bulgarian province. By October, all of the Ukraine is in Draka hands, and the Germans are forced to withdraw their Army Group Center to the eastern frontiers of Poland.

  November: Belgrade falls to Arch-Strategos Edgar Tulls 4th Army. Arch-Strategos Estetie Finbogasson's 7th Army reaches Hungarian frontier. Draka airborne forces sieze Trieste, reach Adriatic. Ten divisions of German troops cut off in Serbia; many escape to mountains, join partisan forces of Mihailovic.

  December: Dec. 15, Hitler dies—officially of heart attack, actually poisoned by agents of Admiral Canaris, head of German Military Intelligence. Coalition government of military, Nazi party, SS and anti-nazi conservatives takes power, with Herman Goering as Chancellor. ("Fuhrer" is declared a unique position which only the inspired Adolf Hitler could bear.) New regime promises increased autonomy for west Europeans (although persecution of Jews continues as quid pro quo for unreconstructed Nazi elements) and calls on all Europeans to rally to Germany for defense against the Draka, sends peace feelers to U.S. and Britain. Domination secretly threatens to ally with Japan if Western powers make a separate peace with Germany. America and U.K. remain technically at war with Third Reich. Indian National Congress takes power in India, declares independence and neutrality.

  Widespread support from France, Belgium, Scandinavia for new German government. Soviet Republic of Spain remains neutral.

  1942-43: Both sides in European war pause; the Draka have outrun their logistic train and are frantically building up supplies and repairing road-rai
l links in the territories behind their lines. Germany has lost 2,500,000, dead and prisoner, plus most of the heavy equipment stationed in the East and much productive capacity. Scores of new French, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Swiss divisions are raised. Minor ground action and intensive air action along front lines.

  Technological developements 1940-1943: milli-metric wave radar. Reaction-jet fighters in Domination, Germany, U.K., U.S. Helicopters deployed for observation, casualty evacuation by Draka, U.S., Germany. Draka test prototype tiltrotor VTOL transport, VTOLjet with plenum-chamber boost. Fuel-cell powered submarines by Germany, U.S. All-transistor programable digital computer (U.S., 1943); first nuclear power reactors, plutonium (Domination 1941, U.S. 1942). Long-range liquid fuel rockets, Germany. Television-guided glide bombs, radar-guided cruise missiles (U.S. Both crude, but useable.)

  1943: U.S. jet fighters and glide bombs inflict severe defeat on Japanese navy in Battle of the Sea of Cortez, defeat attempt to land in Baja California. Japanese evicted from Panama Canal Zone. South American powers sign first Treaty of Rio with U.S., declare war on Axis and co-ordinate economic, diplomatic policy. U.S. submarine fleet begins destruction of Japanese merchant marine on huge scale. U.S., Brazilian, Australasian forces totalling 2,000,000 defeat Japanese in New Guinea (a highly-developed area in Domination's timeline) and begin offensive into Indonesia. U.S. surface navy reappears in Pacific, together with British forces. Tension and skirmishes but no full-scale warfare between Domination and Japanese Empire on land frontiers in Asia. Vast economic mobilization in Western hemisphere, armament production ofU.S.-U.K.-S American-Australasian Alliance For Democracy outpaces Domination and Third Reich combined.

  April-September: German counter-offensive is allowed to penetrate central Rumania, then cut off by Draka. Draka attack on 1,000-mile front, intially mostly with Janissary forces. Armoured breakthrough into central Poland followed by attack to Baltic; German forces in East Prussia cut off. Some rocket-research project personnel (e.g. von Braun) and much equipment evacuated to Bordeaux, France. Others siezed by Draka, turned over to Technical Section. Bohemia, Hungary overrun; Janissaries enter outskirts of Budapest on June 1, Vienna on September 10. Both sides now using nerve-gas, jet and rocket-propelled fighters, long-distance rockets.

  September-December: main Draka offensive begins across north Poland. Vistula and Oder lines forced, Silesia overrun. Heavy casualties on both sides; offensive into Bavaria bogs down in difficult mountain country. Fortress Berlin encircled November 25; Warsaw falls November 29th. German and other European forces manage to contain Draka offensive along upper Danube, Elbe. Outskirts of Hamburg under Draka artillery fire by year's end; slow, grinding offensive continues. "Pan-European" emergency government under Edouard Dalaaier meets in Brussels, de Gaulle returns to continent, further purge of National Socialist elements from new pan-European military (now less than 1/2 German). Soviet Spain joins pan-Europe. Nazi concentration camps in East are liberated by Draka, who make adroit use of their propaganda value to keep U.S. hostile to Europeans.

  Alliance (basically Anglo-U.S.) aircraft carriers meet, defeat Japanese navy's main strike force west of Hawaii. Reconquest of Hawaii begins; well-armed Japanese garrison resists fanatically. Alliance forces also advancing in eastern Indonesia, again with heavy losses. Japanese begin to strip forces on Asian mainland to meet Alliance threat. U.S. submarines sink more than 40% of Japanese cargo tonnage, begin economic strangulation of Japanese heartland as food, raw materials and petroleum cut off.

  1944: Taos Project detonates first fission bomb (plutonium, shaped-charge implosion type, 40 kilotonnes) on February 1st, in New Mexico. First Draka test (uranium bomb, two subcritical masses) March 4, in central Sahara. Both countries begin work on series production, fusion weapons.

  April: Drakajet bombers deliver five-weapon nuclear strike against Ruhr valley, Brussels. Conventional offensive smashes through to Rhine; amphibious landings in southern Spain are contained in narrow beachheads. Last resistance in Berlin eliminated. Emergency pan-European fission project unsuccessful, due to uranium and heavy-water shortages. Mass flight of refugees from western Germany to France, Belgium. Famine in Central Europe. Covert Anglo-American aid to Europeans.

  Two nuclear-armed cruise missiles fired from Alliance submarines against main Japanese fleet in lagoon of Truk island, central Pacific. One malfunctions; the other destroys three of the seven remaining Japanese fleet carriers and much else besides. Alliance offensives continue across Pacific and north from Indonesia.

  May-July: Draka cross Rhine in three places; 2nd Airborne legion destroyed in attempted siezure of Strasbourg. Widespread casualties from fallout, little understood by either side. Demoralization among remaining European forces.

  August-October: Paris falls. Mass exodus of European refugees across Channel to England, also from Denmark (now cut off), Norway—totalling 5,000,000 before Draka forces reach Atlantic. France occupied; European forces fall back to Pyrenees.

  December: Tokyo destroyed by cruise missile from Alliance submarine; Imperial family and most high government officials killed, casualties exceed 150,000. New government of fanatical younger officers takes power, vows revenge. Widespread starvation in Japan as imports cut off; 80% of merchant tonnage sunk. Most remaining naval units destroyed in Battle of Philippines. Japanese control now limited to Siberia, eastern China, Korea and the home islands.

  1946: January-March: Sweden surrenders, Norway, Netherlands occupied by Draka; Finland and Switzerland isolated for future attention. Pyrenees forced after blitz with remaining stockpile (12) of fission weapons wipes out major concentrations of Euro-Spanish forces, communication centers etc. Spain overrun. Massive shift of Draka forces to Far East begins by rail and airship. Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic, from North Cape to Gibraltar, is under Draka occupation—also devastated and starving. The Draka forces are thinly stretched, concentrating on the main cities and lines of communication. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, armed fragments of European armies and followers of dozens of political and nationalistic movements are drifting, regrouping and beginning active resistance, only momentarily cowed by the psychological impact of nuclear weapons.

  Alliance forces occupy Taiwan and Hainan. Widespread revolt in areas of China occupied by Japanese; Peking largely destroyed in reprisals. Kyushu invaded, occupied at cost of 250,000 Alliance dead. Osaka destroyed by Alliance fission bomb.

  June: Draka launch Far Eastern offensive with 4,000,000 troops, from the Amur river in the north to Wuhan in the south. The Japanese forces are cut into pockets and isolated as the Domination's heavy armour, mechanized infantry and airmobile forces (including several helicopter-born chiliarchies) sweep through to the Pacific, overrunning all of China and Korea. The "pockets" of Japanese later prove expensive to mop up, in one case requiring a nuclear weapon. Archon Palme declares annexation of all territories occupied during the course of the war. Southern border of Domination now rests on Pacific, from there across northern Vietnam, Burma, India and south to Indian Ocean. All the rest of continental Eurasia is "under the yoke."

  July: Japanese surrender unconditionally to Alliance when faced with the prospect of a Draka invasion and further nuclear bombardment.

  EURASIAN WAR ENDS. "COVERT STRUGGLE" BETWEEN ALLIANCE AND DOMINATION BEGINS.

  2nd Treaty of Rio continues Alliance For Democracy on permanent basis. Grand Council of U.S., U.K., Brazil to set policy. Assembly of member states includes all S. America, Southeast Asian Federation (Indochina, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia), India (includes our Pakistan and Burma), Australasian Federation. Free trade, joint military forces, joint currency, local autonomy.

  1945: Strategos Eric von Shrakenberg married to Sofie Nixon, Nova Cartago (Bizerte, Tunisia). Civil ceremony, Johanna and Karl von Shrakenberg witnesses.

  1946: Senior Decurion McWhirter killed by terrorist time-bomb while on antipartisan duty near Bratislava, Carpathian Province. Italy declared open for settlement; Johann
a von Shrakenberg married to Centurion Thomas Ingolfsson at Claestum Plantation, their Tuscan estate. Eric and Sofie von Shrakenberg witnesses; Karl von Shrakenberg, Dominarch John Teesdale also present.

  1946-50's: Guerilla and terrorist warfare in newly occupied portions of Domination. Deportations, executions, etc. All schools in Europe closed, printed material confiscated. Death penalty for unauthorized education, possession of radio receiver. Partial demobilization of Draka armed forces; conversion to airmobile light-infantry units widespread, Janissaries kept at strength and new units recruited from Europe, Asia. Plantations set up in more secure zones of new territories, compound-factory system extended. Massive economic reconstruction, "megaprojects": damming of Mediterranean Sea at Gibraltar, redirection of Arctic rivers to Central Asia, etc.

  Reconstruction in Japan, self-government and membership of Alliance by 1952. Broadcast television, first widespread use of computers in process industry, large-scale data management. Rapid economic growth througout Alliance; "consumer society," Keynsian economics. Naval, air forces emphasised. Anti-Draka sentiment increases steadily.

  First fusion bomb exploded Bikini atol, February 1947 by Alliance project headed by Oppenheimer. Refugee German scientists working under direction of Alliance project headed by Dr. Clarke begin development of ramjet (later scramjet) suborbital missile to deliver "sun-bomb."