After a bit of a delay, here's Episode Two of the DocuFic known as The Great War.


The Great War


Fort Kaczka: Doomed Polish obstacle in Belkaland's path.

The fort's guardians, among the first of the war's millions of casualties.

In the opening months, a mold for a new kind of war was cast in the west. Industrialized nations locked in conflict. Over eleven million soldiers armed with the latest technology. Twenty million civilians under brutal occupation.


Episode Two

Under the Kaiser Eagle


"Jetzt muss das Schwert entscheiden. In der Mitte des Friedens haben wir angegriffen. Belkaland vereint nie erobert. Wir werden mit der Göttin Ceres an unserer Seite zu fördern, wie sie es mit unseren Vorfahren hat."

("Now the sword must decide. In the midst of peace we have been attacked. Belkaland united has never been conquered. We will advance with the goddess Ceres by our side, as she has with our forefathers.") - "Erleuchtet" Berin, Leader of the Belkan Black Sun Party addressing the people of Belkaland - April, nineteen thirteen

Belkaland, with eight and a half million men, faced a similar sized Roman army to her west, and with six million men, faced an equally sized Euro Asian army to her north. And if Birkaine is to enter the war, Belkaland would be facing nine million men in the east.

Belkaland's resources were split on two -possibly three- fronts. Even though Belkaland managed to break through a thin chain of forts along her western border with Rome and Genoa, she was unable to break through Euro Asia's thicker chain of forts as easily.

But Poland-Lithuania's defenses were weaker.

The idea of going into Poland-Lithuania, as a way of cutting both Euro Asia and Russo-Spain off from the rest of the Sotian continent, was General Artur Bader's. But General Bader was sacked by the Kaiser in nineteen o' five, and by nineteen twelve, his successors had no illusion that there was a swift victory to be had in a two, possibly three, front war.

Indeed, at the start of Belkaland's war, there was an air of pessimism, desperation, improvisation.

General Markus Rosenberg, knew the uncertainties.

"I will do what I can. Personally, I believe that we are not superior to the Romans nor the Euro Asians, though the Black Sun government says that we are."

The Belkans went to war, less with a master plan, but more of a recognition that they will have to take the war bit by bit. And the first bits, were Poland and Genoa.

The Belkans knew that both Britannia and Euro Asia guaranteed Polish neutrality. But reckoned that Britannia would come into the war sooner or later, which ever route the Belkans took into either Rome or Euro Asia.

The Poles put their faith in re-enforced concrete forts, armed with Belkan-made Krupp guns.

The Belkans brought their massive siege guns, the big Berthas, named after Krupp's daughter, to smash them.

"The monster advanced in two parts, pulled by thirty-six horses. The pavement trembled. The crows went mute with consternation with the appearance of this phenomenal apparatus. Then came the frightful explosion. The crowd was flung back, the earth shook like an earthquake, and all the windowpanes in the vicinity were shattered."- Polish Eyewitness

Colonel Marszalek was in Fort Kaczka, on the receiving end.

Once the thick metal shutters were forced down, the fort, and its fate, was sealed.

"The ventilation system has failed. The chimney for the generator has been blocked. The fort is also filling with concrete dust. The men's chests heave to get air...They're suffocating. They don't look like humans anymore. Their features distorted with agony and hate." - Colonel Marszalek, Fort Commander

A Belkan shell had hit the magazine, bringing down the six foot thick concrete roof, crushing two hundred-fifty soldiers to death. The survivors were horrifically burnt.

By the twenty-fourth of July, nineteen twelve, all the forts along the Przemysł Line had fallen.

But Poland-Lithuania's war was only beginning.

Belkans claimed that Polish civilian snipers, Wolne-strzelców(Free shooters), were firing at them from garret windows and rooftops. In fact all the shots came from either retreating Euro Asian, Russo-Spanish, Polish and Lithuanian soldiers, or from paranoid Belkan troops shooting at each other.

Nevertheless, General Markus Rosenberg issued a warning to the people of Poland,

"Anybody who in any form participates without authorization, will be regarded as Wolne-strzelców, and be shot on the spot."

Lurid stories filtered back to raw Belkan troops leaving for the Roman and Polish fronts, heightening their sense of paranoia.

"At all training sessions, we are told of the nastiness of both the Euro Asians and Romans, that the Romans have our wounded get their eyes gouged out, their noses and ears cut-off. Even worse in the case of the Euro Asians, in which we are told that Belkan prisoners are bayoneted, even disemboweled. We're given to understand that we are to act without mercy." - Diary of a Belkan Soldier

The pressure to maintain a speedy advance through hostile populations lead to atrocities. These were not just the impetuous actions of frightened troops. They became part of a systematic plan: To terrorize and demoralize the enemy.

"We've been ordered to kill everyone, and wipe off the map the entirety of southern Poland. It is a tremendously honorable task, and we'll be famous forever." - Kurt Rasch, Belkan Soldier - letter to his parents

The Polish town of Przemysł, on the thirtieth of July, nineteen twelve. Euro Asian troops kept up a storm of fire at the advancing Belkans from across the river San.

The Belkans rounded up civilians, including Samuel Szczepanski, for a special task.

"We are forced to advance, acting as a shield for the Belkans, who follow behind us, but they fall. Mowed down by Euro Asian bullets. One of them charges at us like a man possessed, and only stops when his bayonet had gone right through poor Hubert Gomolka, who leaves behind a widow and three orphans."

After the Euro Asians withdrew from the town, the Belkans were convinced that Polish and Lithuanian snipers were active. So they torched the town.

They held hostages like Wisław Żuraw, captive in the church overnight. Then escorted them down the road in the morning.

"The soldiers up on carts beat us brutally. The priests in particular were badly treated. Jokes, swearing, blows." - Wisław Żuraw

Nearly four hundred men, women, and children, among them, the priest, were herded into the main square by the riverbank. A Belkan firing squad was waiting for them. A whistle blew, and the shooting began.

"There was total chaos among the crowd. Some fell dead; others pushed blindly. I found myself on the ground, the tide moving above me... I was suffocating. I was hit by two bullets in the kidneys, I felt their holes drill into me."

"Aureliusz Kozlow fell on top of me; dead. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get out from under the pile of corpses. I was forced to cut the head off of one the townsfolk, who was already dead. I saw it. The head separated from the trunk." - Wisław Żuraw, Przemysł massacre survivor

"The ultimate cruelty was when the soldiers checked the bodies one-by-one. Any still alive, they bayoneted violently, then threw them into the San." - Olek Pasternack

Some of the accused townsfolk remarkably survived the Belkan bullets.

A total of six and a half thousand Polish civilians, including women and children, were killed in the first month of the war. Most notably in the Przemysł massacre.

A hundred-eighty thousand Polish and Lithuanian refugees crossed the borders to Euro Asia and northern Rome.

The stories of Belkan atrocities to Poland-Lithuania, provided ideal propaganda to rally public opinion behind the war.

The Barbaric Bosch was born...

But what drove this nation, who's soldiers massacred women and children, raised towns to the ground, and even shot priests?

The truth of the matter, lied with Belkaland's National Socialist Party: The Black Sun Party, lead by both a cult and the Belkan military. They viewed the Poles and Lithuanians, as well as other minorities like the Romans and the Darcsens, as racially inferior, and in so conditioned their soldiers to believe that way. This conditioning lead to the series of atrocities in Poland-Lithuania, Genoa, and Rome.

Polish, Lithuanian and Euro Asian forces in the Polish theatre of war, and the Romans in the Roman theatre, bore the brunt of the Belkan onslaught. The Romans were soon joined by Britannic and Ameri troops.

In all, a hundred thousand men of the Britannic Expeditionary Force alone arrived in Rome in the early weeks of their involvement in the war.

On the twelfth of August, nineteen twelve, Britannic and Ameri troops moved into position alongside the Roman Legions at the town of Lorenzi. And the Euro Asians, Poles and Lithuanians dug in to make their stand at the Vistula river, three hundred-fifty miles south of Poland's capital, Warsaw.

Two days later, at Lorenzi, the Britannians, with seventy thousand men, were hit by a Belkan force, four times their size.

"I focused the telescope and saw a number of little gray figures; more and more were appearing. Women started to wail and rushed for home, along with the men, while children, torn by curiosity, lagged behind to see. In a few seconds, all these civilians were fleeing along the roads." - Memoirs of Philip Harper, Roman interpreter with the Britannians

The Allies in the Roman theatre started an epic retreat to the west, just ahead of the Belkan tidal wave.

The war in both Poland-Lithuania and Rome did not begin in the trenches. These early months were mobile; fast; dangerous. In the first four weeks, the Belkan Heer (Army) lost over half a million men killed, wounded, and missing, in both the Polish-Lithuanian and Roman fronts.

The Roman front was constantly shifting, giving men no time to dig in. There was no place to hide in fields swept by machine guns and rapid-firing artillery.

"Rome has just been the object of a violent and premeditated attack. She will be defended heroically by all her legions. Nothing will break their sacred union. Once again, she stands before the universe with liberty, justice, and reason on her side." - Tibertius Caesar, Emperor of Rome, nineteen thirteen

At the start of the war, the Roman Emperor appealed to all of Rome for national unity. By the fifteenth of October, the Belkans had occupied half country south of the Waldreich Mountains, including the whole of the Roman nation of Genoa, and occupied two tenths of eastern Amerique, and were only forty miles from the Roman capital city of Roma; the sacred union was starting to crack. Trenches were dug; sandbags filled; barricades erected.

The fate of the city, as well as the Roman Empire as a whole, would be decided at the river Enzo. Fought along a three hundred mile front, it was a battle that Rome had to win.

But although the Belkans had their enemy's capital almost in sight, their advance was outstripping supply lines. There were very few lorries in nineteen thirteen, horses pulled the guns and wagons. General Gunter Rosenberg, Markus' younger brother, grew alarmed.

"We barely have any horses left in the Heer which can take another step. We don't want to fool ourselves. We've had successes, but we're not victorious yet. Victory means the annihilation of enemy resistance. But where are all the Roman prisoners and guns that should've been captured? The Romans retreated in a disciplined manner according to a plan, at the most difficult time."

The Belkan left wing was sweeping down towards Roma. The Romans had detached reserve troops from the west by rail towards Roma to attack the Belkans on their left flank. The Allies now outnumbered the Belkans, and chose their moment to strike.

As the Belkans neared Roma, a dangerous gap opened up between their first and second armies. The Britannic Expeditionary Force would be driven in like a wedge.

"To the Romans, it is their own home and it makes them mad. We and the Ameri somehow fight on with no increased animosity. But the Romans really are giving everything, and it makes one wonder if people back home realized what the advance of an invading army in a country means." - Captain Carl Davison, Britannian Army - letter to his family

On the eve of battle, the Romans and Ameri commanders General Tibertius, and Marshal Patrick Maçon, addressed their officers together.

"When a battle in which the nation's salvation depends, we cannot look back! We must make every effort to attack and repel the enemy! Troops who can no longer advance must, at all costs, hold the captured ground, and die rather than retreat!" - General Tibertius

The Enzo would consign the set piece battle fought on a single field in a day to history. It was on the cusp between old warfare and new.

Around Roma, great armies wheeled and maneuvered as they had done for centuries. But to the east and north, the Romans and Ameri dug trenches to defend their positions, as the Euro Asians, Poles and Lithuanians have been doing two months prior in the Polish-Lithuanian theatre. Here, just like Poland-Lithuania, the battle lines would become static.

The Battle of the Enzo began on the twenty-fouth of July, nineteen twelve...

"The fighting has begun. Roman shells explode incessantly in front of us. We seek shelter in a sunken lane. Stomachs loudly remind us of our hunger. Constant shelling makes it impossible for us to reach our confection apple. Some block their ears so as to not lose their nerve with the incessant machine gun fire. Our ranks are decimated; we cannot hold this position much longer." - Diary of Siegward Hoover, Belkan officer

"Pieces of shrapnel whistle past me. I felt I've been hit. My knee was giving way as I walked. I wasn't sure what had happened. I stopped and pushed my finger through a hole in my trousers. My finger kept on going into my leg." - A Belkan soldier's letter

"We turn towards the gunfire that rattles out to our right, where the shrapnel still rains down. The houses are burning. I hear from both sides, 'Its our own guns shooting at us!'. I stick very close to the ground, face against the earth." - Diary of Gaëtan Belrose, Ameri Officer

For all its modernity, there were elements of the battle that the Nineteen Century Ameri emperor, Napoleon, would've recognized: Cavalry, armed with lances played an active role. No one walked in helmets. And some soldiers uniforms owed more to the parade ground, than to the needs of camouflage; they were easy targets in the early months of the war.

"My rifle went to my shoulder; two Romans fell. I fired again...Nothing! My magazine was empty. I reached for my bayonet, I expected to be killed by a bullet any second. But then, the rest of my men burst through the undergrowth and the enemy vanished." - Memoirs of Valentin Lafrentz, Belkan Officer

The Belkans were in a shade of field gray. But the Britannians were even more difficult to spot, as another Belkan enviously noted,

"The color of the Briton's clothing is much more suited to the terrain than ours. Its a sort of browny-green, a really dirty color. This really is an advantage. Although, we're still going to win."

With men dug in along so vast a front, aerial observation became vital. Balloons and planes gathered crucial information; they also begun to take on a more active role.

"A Roman plane suddenly appears. It turns and drops something; the air fills with a strange whistling followed by a violent explosion. It's dropped a bomb! Seven horses killed, three men lost. For us, this is something completely new. None of us know how to defend ourselves from this monster of the skies." - Diary of Erik Krauß, Belkan Officer

Belkan reconnaissance planes monitor the worsening situation at the Enzo. Pilots' reports went to Adalbert Stieber in the Second Army Headquarters. Hand-written reports revealed the Allies' steady advance into the lethal gap between his men, and the First Army.

On the twenty-fifth of October, nineteen twelve, Stieber ordered his forces to retreat.

"We continued to fall back, passing through Roman villages. In the faces of the inhabitants, we saw scorn and derringend. The women leaned out of their windows and thumbed their noses and sneered at us. To them, we were the defeated army." - A Belkan soldier's letter

The Romans referred to the battle as "Mars' Blessing on the Enzo". Rome had been saved but at the cost of a quarter of a million casualties; the same losses as the Belkans. No future battle in the Roman Front would average so many casualties per day.

Abel Patenaude, an Ameri ambulance driver, was in the thick of the battle.

"We're surrounded by dead bodies, thousands piled one on top of the other. We've gotten used to the shelling now; we don't even look up. The whole area has been devastated; the local people, gone."

Thirty-three Belkan generals were quietly sacked (and presumably shot). Gunter Rosenberg was replaced by General Christian Duerr after a tactful pause. The Belkan people were never told the truth about both the Battle of the Enzo, and the Battle of the Vistula. In a sense, the Belkans lost The Great War at those two battles, never again having the chance they had at the Vistula and the Enzo to win a resounding victory against the Allied Coalition.

Belkaland was now committed to a long war, and she didn't have the resources for it. On the twenty-ninth of October, nineteen twelve, Duerr ordered his troops to fall back to higher ground, and dig in.

Unable to break through, the Romans, Ameri, and Britannians in the Roman theatre; and the Euro Asians, Poles, Lithuanians and Russo-Spanish in the Polish theatre; had no choice but to dig in as well.

The pattern for the two fronts were now set; with its line of trenches stretching from the oceans to the Waldreich Mountains; a combined over one thousand mile front of mud and horror that would be home to the living and the dead, for the next five years.

Twenty-seven year old Britannic soldier, Hartley Hamm, wrote home to his mother,

"The situation has changed here. I have parapets with a dead man inside the trench. The Belkan trench is only several hundred yards away. The weather is perfectly vile and it's starting to get cold. Anything warm you can send to me and my boys would be greatly appreciated."

And beyond 'No-man's-land'; beyond the Belkan lines, over a eleven million Roman, Genoan, and Polish men, women, and children were learning to adapt to their changed lives; as civilians under Belkan occupation.

"Tuesday... Cruel Tuesday... The Belkan troops ride past my window, I then hear a guttural order, 'Plündern alles!'. Soon the town is filled with Bosch; the beasts; the swines. They confiscate all weapons and demand a quarter of a million Zloties in gold."

The extraordinary diary of a ten year old Polish schoolboy titled, Journal of the Polish-Bosch War. Manfred Salomon, was given a diary by his parents to keep him busy during the summer holidays. It became a unique record of the occupation.

What Manfred had seen when the Belkans marched into his hometown, was forced requisitioning.

At the outset, the Belkan Black Sun Party adopted a policy of state intervention for war production. In peacetime, Belkaland imported raw materials from their African colonies, but they knew that the Allied Coalition would impose a blockade. So the Belkan industrialists drew up plans to ensure the most effective use of what materials Belkaland had.

But by the beginning of nineteen-thirteen, Belkaland had most of Poland's, Genoa's, and Rome's industrial and mineral resources at her disposal. These were then taken back to Belkaland; millions of tons of raw materials, plant, and food stuffs.

But the asset stripping wasn't limited to government. The Belkan Heer was ordered to live off the occupied territories; what the soldiers wanted, they took.

"Moved on towards Lublin. The inhabitants were pensioners. Our boys found a stash of beer and eggs; we helped ourselves. In the meantime, the church was shot to bits; and not a single house was spared." - Diary of Sergeant Achim Lawrenz, Belkan Heer

"They have taken -rather stolen from us- straw, copper, oats, and the belongings of over eight million people. They have looted the cellars, the empty houses, the walnut trees, the telegraph poles, and the livestock." - Diary of Manfred Salomon

One doctor in Opoie, pleaded with the Belkans.

"My patient Mrs. Slaski is eighty-six years old. She is in a state of great weakness, and serious malnutrition; which makes it absolutely necessary for her to keep her mattress."

It wasn't just material loss. The Belkans rounded up thousands of teenage boys and girls, for forced labor.

"The last three weeks, we have spent in the most terrible anguish and moral torture for a mother's heart. At three in the morning, these Belkan heroes go out in a military band, their machine guns and bayonets fixed, to hunt down women and children to take them away. God know's where...Or why."- Letter from the wife of a Opoie merchant

Manfred's brother got a job at the railway station.

"Czcibor is unloading wagons of animal carcasses; already green and covered in pieces of rotten flesh; crawling with vermin. He has to touch these stinking dead animals with his bare hands."

Occupied Rome and Poland were run like a military state. Clocks were set to Belkan time; new identity papers issued.

"The Belkans generally made us parade at five in the morning. One night however, the whole commune was called out at one in the morning. An old man at ninety-three asked to be allowed to stay in bed. But the troops made fun of him, pushed him out of his home, and said that, 'Fresh air was good for the dying.'" - Roman doctor's account

Ordinary people had stark choices to make about how to deal with the occupation. There was some resistance against the Belkans; mostly passive.

The Belkans rounded up underground leaders, then posted notices of their execution.

And they used another method of civil obedience: They took hostages, including Manfred Salomon's father.

"The hour is near; the last meal together, the goodbyes, the hugs. I want to cry. Father walks to the station with just us boys. I bite my lip and feel my eyes tightening. Father says, 'I love you. Farewell, remember me.' And then he kissed us. Every night I say a prayer to my father and the other hostages." - Diary of Manfred Salomon

Civilian men, women, and children were packed into cattle wagons, sent to concentration camps as hostages and forced laborers; several thousand Romans, Genoans and Poles.

"The rounding up of civilians by the enemy has been tragic. The weaker, because they were the most harmless, were detained without the understanding of the reason for their arrest, without time to collect any belongings, suddenly considered as criminals; then taken to concentration camps to ensure security in the occupied areas. These civilians became nothing more than the simple pawns of their captors." - Red Cross Committee, General Report 1921

A doctor's daughter from Opoie learned what her father was suffering.

"Papa was locked up for five days for refusing to assist an operation carried out by a Bosch. All food packages are opened and classified; the prisoners come each day to collect their provisions; but there is only one container. Milk, fish, fruit; all tipped into one bucket, because the Belkans use the tins to make grenades."

Far from being broken by the Belkans during the occupation, Manfred Salomon was politicized by it.

"There's hardly any bread; the swines will leave us to die of hunger. Too bad. We are Poles, and if we have to die, we shall die; but the Allies will be victorious."


In the next episode of The Great War, global war rocks empires, as the Belkan and Beusuan navies beat the Britannic Royal Navy in the Adrianic Ocean, and maverick armies rampage through Africanus.


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