This is a continuation of the "A Young Woman's Political Record" fan fiction for the Cold War conflict. If you haven't read the AYWPR yet, I strongly recommend that you do so because this story picks up in the immediate aftermath of WW2 and thus a lot of spoilers will be used.

I have contacted jacobk on the Spacebattles website about basing our story on his fan fiction and he has given permission.

The maps I will be using is available on the Spacebattles website and they will be important to follow along in the upcoming battles, just type in the search terms to find the maps: "The Cold War" (Youjo Senki/Saga of Tanya the Evil)

I am unable to provide a direct link here as the FanFiction website keeps deleting the URLs.

Glossary:

OZEV: Organisation des Zentraleuropäischen Vertrags, aka Organization of the Central European Treaty

Kazakh: A western portion of Kazakhstan

Kieva: Ukraine

Caucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, part of Russia and other Caucasus regions

Belarusia: Belarus

Livonia: Estonia and Latvia

Suomi: Finland

Chinese Soviet Republic: China

Akitsushima Dominion: Japan

Joseon: Korea

Malagasy: Madagascar

Bharat: India

Ceylon: Sri Lanka


October 3rd, 1942, Berun

It turns out Elya's "unorthodox" operation was too successful. The Russy Federation was in such a chaos that we had to do the peace talks without any of their government representatives while their civil war was raging on, and those that wanted a seat at the table could only represent an unstable fraction of the Rus. Power grabbers were busy backstabbing each other to become the new General Secretary after the deaths of Jugashvili, the previous General Secretary, and Bronstein, the revolutionary that attempted to seize power until Elya's agents shot him in the head. Last time we heard anything from the Russy Federation, Moskva was a full blown war zone between multiple factions competing for power.

The one thing everyone could agree on was that there was no way we were going to let the Russy Federation remain in charge of the various ethnic minorities. Millicent Caldwell's report of the genocide in Kieva was still fresh on people's minds, and the representatives of the anti-Rus rebel groups made it very clear that they would not accept being re-integrated back into the Russy Federation.

Kazakh, Caucasia, Crimea, Kieva, Belarusia, Lithuania, Livonia, and Suomi were all created with the help of the local governments that we had initially established in the occupied areas during the war. There wasn't much the infighting factions within the Russy Federation could do about it with soldiers from the OZEV and Legadonia Entente being used to enforce the new borders. The Legadonia Entente was especially interested in Suomi and the Baltic states now that Daneland had fully joined OZEV. At least the Russy Federation won't have to worry about continuous war reparations compared to what happened to the Empire. It would be like trying to collect on the debt from a homeless person.

We could have gone farther and tried to occupy the entire Russy Federation, but that would make the Vietnam War look like a simple walk in the park and would guarantee undoing Elya's "start a civil war and watch them kill each other" plan.

And while it wasn't openly discussed, according to Elya, there's been a mad dash to "rescue" as many Russy scientists as possible, especially with those that were involved with military technology research. She said they found some promising individuals. Reminds me of the US and USSR taking in the Nazi scientists after WW2.

I would like to think that maybe we'll finally see world peace. But given how this world rhymes with the previous world, I know better than that.

If I want to retire, I would need to hand over the responsibilities to someone who won't let the peace become our doom. The Francois Republic thought the threat was over when they dismantled the Empire, and instead it was just a short armistice because of their incompetence. Then there's the Diet where although the Enabling Act was only supposed to last until the end of the war, the lazy idiots used the "legal technicalities" to argue that until the Russy Federation officially surrenders, they refused to hold new Presidential elections.

At this current rate, I don't think we'll be seeing new Presidential elections because all it takes is a new Russy Federation government to take a hardline stance of demanding all of the new republics to be reintegrated back into their glorious revolution. North Korea and South Korea in my previous world still hadn't gotten around to signing an official peace treaty so technically both still remained at war.

Elya's reports of Russy Federation started flowing in significantly, now that the NKVD was busy fighting itself instead of conducting aggressive counter-espionage, and Elya's agents could work their magic. And the reports are concerning.

While Europe was burning, Jiuzhou was officially renamed to Chinese Soviet Republic after Zhang Wentian took power as the "Chairman of the Central Executive Committee", and he launched a "Great Leap Forward" campaign to modernize the country. I'm not sure how successful it is, but apparently CSR agents and soldiers are starting to show up from the east, and they are also competing for "rescuing" the scientists.

The Russy Federation constructed many Trans-Sibyria railways to the far east to support their war machine against the Akitsushima Dominion in a previous war, and then to redeploy their entire military back west to start chewing on Europe. It would make sense that the CSR has an interest in the railways and intend on "bringing stability" to the Russy Federation. They had also occupied Joseon after the Russy Federation's collapse.

Not much I can do about that right now. Everyone just wants peace and to demobilize, especially the Unified States, and I can't blame them. Maintaining a big military is a drain on the economy. I myself would have advocated for full demobilization as it would allow resources and manpower to be productively used to raise the standard of living, if it wasn't for the Chinese Soviet Republic picking at the Russy corpse. I have a feeling that they're going to be the USSR of this world, and the Russy Federation is going to be like East Germany.

Instead, I pushed for the return to the "maintain a small army and continuously modernize its weapons" model again. I just have to strike a balance between keeping our economy strong so we can rapidly build up our military as needed, but also deal with any shenanigans that the commies might throw at us. I don't know which would be worse, dealing with a surprise invasion from the CSR and its soon-to-be puppet Russy Federation, or them continuously throwing shit at my doorstep with state-sponsored revolution, insurgency and terrorism, and maybe a coup, while hiding behind plausible deniability. The Russy Federation would be a perfect proxy tool for the CSR when it comes to really nasty business.

The Allied Kingdom, Francois Republic, Ispagna and Lothiern are the only ones that are maintaining or ramping up their military. Their colonies have turned into an expensive whack-a-uprising game ever since the Bharat's rebellion led the way and when the Francois Republic's cannon fodder colonial mages returned home. It would have been so much simpler for them to accept that their colonial empire days are over, but humans are irrational and will keep digging themselves deeper with sunk cost fallacy until they're bankrupted.

Wait, I haven't been keeping up with what has been happening in Jiuzhou for years. I pick up the phone and dial Elya.

"Yes Chancellor?"

"Could you provide me with a detailed history of what has been happening in Jiuzhou, or I guess now the Chinese Soviet Republic, since the mid-1800's? I know the Empire probably hasn't run many newspaper articles about Jiuzhou and their newspapers might be scarce, so Russy Federation and Akitsushima Dominion newspapers should work. Also, any information about the CSR's military activity, including their mages, would be great."

"I'll get on that!"


Somewhere in Sibyria:

"Do you smell that? This research facility smells like a butcher's place, except the meat has gone bad. And it's pretty cold here which means they've been handling a lot of something."

"Maybe this was where they were exterminating mages? But wouldn't that be done at their labor camps through overwork?"

Huang Jing was paying a suspected research site a visit after a Russy scientist informed an Chinese intelligence agent about the location and some of the projects there. All that Russy scientist wanted in return was safe haven for his family. All he knew was that the research site was looking into "improving the potential of mages". He had another team investigate the area to determine where the facility's staff had run off to. He couldn't blame them for leaving abruptly when the pay stopped flowing after the collapse of the Russy government and they had families to look after. They had already recruited several military officers by just promising food and safety for their families, or assisting with their efforts at "restoring order to the Russy Federation".

He knew what he saw when he walked into the surgery room. An abandoned corpse lying on the operating table with burn marks and all sorts of electrical and mage equipment scattered about. It looked like they were trying to directly wire a computational orb to the mage's spinal cord and brain. Given how the Russy Federation was purging mages even as the world kept finding new uses for mages, they had plenty of test subjects to work with. He tapped one of his men on the shoulder.

"Go back and retrieve some trucks. If they're doing mage augmentation research, there's bound to be a lot of documents and material lying around for us to retrieve. It's a good thing they didn't just burn the entire place down to destroy the classified information."

He took a closer look at the computational orb. It looked fairly advanced. He would need to send it to the mage research office for them to determine what it is.

There was a loud clash of someone stumbling over something. He went over to another room down the hallway and saw the other portion of the augmentation research. This room was full of drawings and prototype mockups strewn around. The researchers that were here had been working on attaching a pump and a tank of energy liquids and stimulates to an augmented mage, with the pumps directly delivering the liquids to the major arteries and the pumps being directly controlled by the mages. Mages with nearly unlimited mana as long as they replace the tanks. Integrating orbs directly into their nervous system. So many possibilites. What a shame that they simply ran out of time developing their weapons to contest or even outmatch Germania's famously excellent mages.

It was going to be a long day combing through the research facility. The scientists back home would be drooling all over this, especially with the Russy Federation having already done most of the messy trial-and-errors for them.


Perhaps I should have been more clear with my instructions. Elya provided me with detailed summaries, and a cart full of books and copies of newspaper collections. While they had no problem with translating the Russy Federation newspapers, the Akitsushiman translations by her staff were atrocious so I'll just read the original copies.

So the Shun dynasty crushed the would-be Qing dynasty to rule Jiuzhou. Not that it mattered because the Shun dynasty didn't perform any better than my previous world's Qing dynasty when the foreigners started showing up. The interesting thing is that the Shun dynasty was so focused on preventing their governors and generals from being powerful enough to become autonomous warlords, the commies ran wild and eventually overthrew the dynasty in a mostly bloodless coup. The commies allowed some of the governors and generals to retain their positions if they swore loyalty to their cause. At least the Shun dynasty was smart enough to see the writing on the wall, extracted some concessions to avoid having their blood painted against the walls from gunshots, and then got the hell out of the country before the commies could change their mind.

Instead of Japan, sorry, Akitsushima Dominion, showing up to get themselves stuck into a grinding slug fest with Jiuzhou, the Rus steamroller flattened Akitsushima Dominion before that could happen. Which means Jiuzhou has been left alone for about the past… 30 years.

30 years to build up their economy instead of lurching from the violent collapse of the Qing dynasty, to the Warlord Era, to an attempted democracy that ended when someone declared themselves emperor only to back down when the country revolted en mass, to a civil war between the nationalists and commies with the warlords trying to maintain their power, to an invasion from Japan, and then a continuation of the civil war where the nationalists ran off to an island to spend the rest of the century in a staring contest with the commies across the water. 30 years to practice communism. 30 years while Europe burned.

There is that northeast territory where it was taken by the Akitsushima Dominion, and then it changed hands with the Russy Federation. But with the Rus out of the picture, the CSR commies had no problem just walking in to reclaim their land. And the Rus probably fixed up some of the infrastructure to help run their war machine against me. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why the CSR was so quick at taking the Trans-Sibyria railways was because the Rus had extended it into their newly conquered land.

There are many unknowns regarding the CSR's military, but they do field mages, and with their total population size along with not having any recent wars to waste the mages in, they could outdo the Francois Republic when they ran around with 1000 mages. The Russy Federation would have been downright terrifying if they had not purged their mages in large numbers, especially when they had gotten their hands on the Type 97 orbs.

And speaking of those Type 97 orbs, I would not be surprised if the CSR got their hands on one of those. All because I sold it to the Americans. Reminds me of the theory of the butterfly effect, where a small change in an initial condition eventually causes drastically different outcomes.

And instead of Mao running the Great Leap Forward program, if this new Chairman Zhang Wentian is competent, the Chinese Soviet Republic is going to be the new communist superpower on the block. The Russy Federation is rightfully going to be upset with the coalition that just carved up new republics out of them, so they're going to be using those extensive railways to support each other.

Wait. North Bharat is right next to Chinese Soviet Republic and it was established with the help of Rus agents. Why does this seem familiar? Right, the Korean War.

I hear a knock on the door.

"Come on in."

Elya stepped in with a report.

"Good afternoon Chancellor, I have an update report regarding the situation in the Caucasia and Kazakh Republics. It should be brought up in the next OZEV meeting unless there's another update."

I was still holding onto the Akitsushiman newspaper when Elya looked down.

"Oh, I didn't know you could read Akitsushiman."

Well this is going to be awkward.

"Ah, I've just been practicing how to read it. It's a good opportunity since I have the translated one right next to me…"

Okay, now this was going to be even more awkward. I had casually tossed the translated one aside and Elya clearly sees that I didn't bother to read the translations.

"Anyways, do we have any eyes on North Bharat?"

"No. Why's that?"

"I know it's an area that we haven't really operated in the past, but I have a feeling that their next door neighbor, the Chinese Soviet Republic, would be interested in helping North Bharat reunite with South Bharat. Under the same communist banner. Having eyes in the CSR would also be nice, but I'd imagine that might be even harder than the Russy Federation because of how few people in Germania can fluently speak their language and look like them."

I let Elya write in her notebook before continuing.

Also, could you get me statistics on the American oil production and usage, highway constructions, their car sales, and their president's and vice president's opinion of highways? And any information about the car, rubber, tire and oil companies in the Unified States buying up public transportation companies such as streetcar services?"

"That information gathering shouldn't be a problem, Chancellor. Eh, what is a highway?"

"Oh, that's just the American term for the autobahn."

"Thank you."

Elya started thinking as she stepped out of the room. If there was one country that did have intelligence gathering in Bharat, it would likely be the Allied Kingdom. She could ask nicely for information through the official channel, or… well, it wouldn't be the first time she dug her nails into the Albion and pulled on the puppet strings.

And maybe she should let Vishia know about Tanya picking up on new foriegn languages.


October 21, 1942, Berun

The old gang from when we were planning on which countries to knock out was back again. It's kinda hard to lose reelections when you're part of the decisive victory over a deeply hated enemy. Especially when some of them were involved with partitioning Yugoslavia and helping themselves to some land. Unfortunately for Luigi Falasca, Carinthia had voted to remain independent. But that shouldn't be a major problem in the long run with future OZEV economic integrations, and Luigi should be happy to not be directly holding onto a hot Balkan coal piece.

- Istvan Ronai, the leader of Hungary

- Boris Marinko, the prime minister of Carinthia

- Maciej Moscicki, the president of Pullska

- Luigi Falasca, the Prime Minister of Ildoa

- Constantin Groza, the prime minister of Dacia

- Jan Benes, the president of Czechoslovakia

- Thorvald Buhl, the prime minister of Daneland

- Karlo Nazor, the president of Croatia, sat on my right.

"The border situations with the new republics and the Russy Federation are starting to quiet down." Maciej Moscicki said. "We could start considering withdrawing some of the forces still stationed in those republics once they start establishing their own professional military forces."

"Except for the Caucasia and Kazakh Republics, they're going to be the new hot spot." I pointed out.

"What's going on with them?"

"We have reports of Rus agents recruiting people for "self-determination, anti-foreigner" groups, pro-communist groups and ethnic supremacists groups. Which would only make sense as the two republics are sitting on a large amount of oil reserves, and the Rus knows that we need it. The problem is, the Russy Federation is still in turmoil, so that brings up the question of who is really backing the agents to support the groups? It's unlikely to be one of the many competing Rus factions as there still isn't a clear dominant faction yet."

There was an awkward pause. I leaned forward.

"I think it's the Chinese Soviet Republic. They had 30 years of relative peace to build their economy, and that requires fuel to maintain. They could get their oil and natural gas from Sibyria, but a prosperous Rus and CSR is going to need more than that, and even more if they go to war. What better way than to secure the Caucasia and the land around the Caspian Sea while also denying that same oil to us, the ones who dismantled the Russy Federation?"

Constantin Groza cleared his throat. "Dacia has no issue with continuing to supply oil to OZEV."

"Right now for peacetime usage? Yes. But we all saw how close we came to running out of oil in our war against the Rus. And what about in the future when our economy grows? There are diminishing returns with trying to extract more oil. There's no point in spending 50 marks to extract 40 marks worth of oil. We will need new technologies and methods that allow previously unprofitable or unreachable oil and natural gas deposits to be tapped into, such as hydraulic fracking throughout Europe or offshore drilling in the Caspian Sea and North Sea."

Constantin Groza raised an eyebrow at the last sentence, and nudged Thorvald Buhl.

Boris Marinko spoke up, "The Americans have been a reliable source of oil."

"That's the other thing that has been bothering me. I've been looking at the American economic statistics and their social trends."

I pulled out my orb to render graphic animations on the projector.

"The American oil consumption has been rising faster than their oil production, and that trend has greatly accelerated after their economy has begun to recover. The new craze over there now is a house with a lawn and full of appliances, and a car for each family. I think there's one American car company called Forde that is running an advertising campaign that claims every family should have TWO cars, and that they were offering a 50% discount on the second car purchase. We're seeing record car sales, which will continue to accelerate their oil consumption. Their automotive industry and other industries that would benefit from more cars have been buying up and then shutting down public transportation companies to further encourage people to buy cars."

I showed the next slide about President Frederick Rosenvelt:

- Appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee to study the need for a limited system of national inter-state highways. The committee recommended 40,000 miles of highway construction:

- Congress is currently in the process of working out the details of funding the construction of an autobahn network

And a slide about Vice President Trumen's background:

- Owned a high speed 1911 Stafford car as a young adult

- 1922's Jackson County Judge campaign where he argued for improved roads

- Involvement with car and road building associations that continued even as President

- 1926's Presiding Judge campaign where he again argued for good roads

- 1934's US Senate campaign where he campaigned by car

- 10,000 miles of car travel between US military installations across the country as Vice President.

"It's only a matter of time before President Rosenvelt gets a bill to sign to start the autobahn construction. I expect cities to soon begin demolishing large portions of themselves to build autobahns through them to accommodate the large volume of cars, which would encourage further car usage. Until they start using large amounts of hydraulic fracking and offshore drilling in new areas, which won't happen for years, the US will become a net oil importer."

Constantin Groza was about to say something but chose not to, and instead scribbled something in his notes. Thorvald Buhl gave me a confused look and held a quiet side conversation with Constantin Groza.

Of course I wasn't going to mention that the Volksauto company was also involved with demolishing public transportation to sell more of the People's Cars. Considering that the US in my previous world still continued on with their love of highways, suburbias and big vehicles even with high gas prices of the 1970's and the 2008 recession, I'm assuming the companies that ripped up the streetcars only got slaps on their wrists. Not exactly the ideal version of free capitalism, but I'm not going to handicap my industries against other countries' industries in the name of "fairness" when the other country can't get their act together to update or enforce their rules.

"That is ridiculous!" Luigi Falasca shouted. "Who's going to supply the oil now?"

"Well there is the Middle East. But we don't have much relations with them so we can't assume that we can get a reliable oil supply from them. I'm also not sure about the stability of the region, and we can't use our military down there to enforce our will without risk kicking open a hornet's nest. Besides, if we can fully tap into the two republics while stopping pro-communist rebels from blowing up the pipelines, we potentially can ship oil to the Americans which would improve our diplomatic standing with them. The Americans don't have much relations with the Middle East region either, and I think they would rather count on us than unknown parties. The US might drop their isolationism should they find their way of life threatened by oil shortages."

Constantin Groza continued rapidly scribbling notes down. Thorvald Buhl also followed suit.

"Isn't the Middle East mostly controlled by the Allied Kingdom and the Francois Republic?"

"For now. Bharat used to be the Allied Kingdom's crown jewel, and all it took was some NKVD mages to light the powder keg of a massive independence movement to force them to abandon the colony. Bharat won't be the only colony on the edge. Francois Republic's colonial mages that were used as cannon fodder are not going to forgive their colonial master, and rooting out angry combat hardened mages in counter insurgency operations when your military is already stretched thin is just as much fun as you would expect."

There were some murmurs between the OZEV members.

"Chancellor, what is your plan regarding the two republics?" Jan Benes asked.

"We will need to develop a counter-insurgency operation plan. These are the general principles that we should be following. I want to maintain our goodwill with the republics and have them voluntarily be a partner with us rather than hold them at gunpoint."

I fiddled with my computational orb to display the slide on the projector:

- Encourage the development of at least a partial democracy, and clearly communicate a force drawdown plan when the local government has an operational local - military.

- Train the local military

- Avoid relying on militia groups, or they may challenge the local government for power

- Operate with legal authority

- Minimize collateral damage or at least ensure that the insurgency causes far more harm than the counterinsurgency operations.

- Avoid collective punishments or mass resettlements.

- Ensure that the media coverage of the counterinsurgency is generally positive and the insurgency is portrayed negatively.

- Infrastructure development and providing aid for the locals. A strong economy is needed to discourage people from supporting the insurgents.

- Stricter border controls to strangle the insurgents' flow of foriegn funding and supplies.

- Support insurgency groups in the Russy Federation as a counterweight against the Chinese Soviet Republic.

"That last point, wouldn't that just push the Russy Federation further into the CSR's hands and encourage the CSR to escalate their intervention?" Istvan Ronai asked.

"That is a good point. We could just back factions that are fighting against the Chinese-backed factions, regardless of their ideology. Rus will be the most dangerous if they become a direct CSR client state."

"Even if it's a faction that is even more extreme than the CSR or the previous Russy Federation?"

"The Russy Federation built many rail lines across Sibyria to deploy their war machine against the Akitsushima Dominion. Then used those same rail lines to send their war machine against us. The CSR can make use of those same rail lines if they control the Russy Federation to deploy their land army towards Europe. Kazakh, Kieva, Belarusia, Lithuania, and Livonia have relatively few natural defenses against an attack from the east, and Caucasia and Crimea can be easily isolated. They also have mages in their army instead of purging them, and if the Russy Federation had their NKVD mages equipped with the Type 97 orbs, it's only a matter of time before the CSR also gets their hands on those."

The men talked amongst each other. I could hear multiple topics going on at the same time.

"Unless anyone has questions, we should break for lunch and come back in two hours."


AN: I did some research on President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Truman. Both of them had a history of supporting highway construction.

For FDR's situation, the 40,000 miles construction that the committee recommended never happened because WW2 took priority.

For President Truman, inflation was sky high in the immediate aftermath of WW2 so the highway construction projects were constantly short on money, and many of the construction companies were tied up with building houses (as there was a severe shortage of housing inventory because of the earlier Great Depression). A lot of money was also being used to rebuild western/central Europe.

I used the fhwa's website (Federal Highway Administration - Department of Transportation) for the research.