United We Stand - Political WIP

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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That will probably only happen if Anton could somehow convince the French Third Republic to put up a much stiffer and better thought out fight too and Hitler makes to mistake of wanting to take over the tiny fellow “German” country of Moravia simultaneously. Not impossible, Hitler made an awful lot of boneheaded military decisions historically after all.
Assuming enough former resistance fighters still keep some of their guns at home and particularly if we move towards a more Swiss style conscription “army of the people” (which might not be a bad thing for solidarity to try if in power, if only to break the stranglehold of general Falk and the old army), then, yes, Moravia could be even worse for the Germans then it was back in the alternate WWI.
If Moravia could give them about half the trouble Switzerland would probably have given them had they actually gone ahead and executed operation Tannenbaum as planned, then together with a stiffer French fight it might just be enough to end the Nazi regime early. Though that end would probably come by hardline, traditionalist military coup, so the Germany that is most likely going to replace it might not be all that much friendlier to even social democratic Moravia, let alone a (democratic) socialist one.

Of course should (socialist) Moravia “beat” the Germans and be sufficiently valuable to the other Great Powers, mainly the US and the Soviet Union both then an mc who manages to become the new hero of the Moravian resistance might be able to parlay that into a position not unlike that of Tito, but that would require a whole awful lot of things to go just right.

The way I see it for Moravia to stand a chance of repulsing the Germans outright most of these need to happen simultaneously:

First of all the Nazi’s have to invade Moravia either early (but not too early) or late in order for it to coincide with either the invasion of France if early or to coincide with the invasion of the Soviet-Union, if late. This will prevent them from just applying Zapp Branigan’s patented techniques and just overrunning us with limitless reserves. If early, which is rather more likely, unless Moravia manages to somehow become a Communist (Stalinist) republic firmly allied to Moscow, then France needs to fight better, smarter harder and longer then they did historically as well, since Moravia alone might delay them and bleed them but wouldn’t defeat them nor topple the Nazi regime outright on its own.

Secondly we’d need a large conscription or citizen’s army and a decent amount of guns to arm it with, both may not actually be all that easy to achieve with both reactionary and likely social-democrat opposition to any such plans.

Thirdly we need to be strategically valuable enough and have enough “teeth” to ensure the Brits and/or the Americans won’t just roll in for some regime change once the Germans have “softened us up a bit”.

Now it certainly doesn’t seem impossible, but neither does it seem terribly likely to achieve all of this.
However a Moravia that fights back hard and determined enough could certainly make the Nazi’s bleed enough to shorten the war by at least a bit.

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Wow, that is a perfect assessment of the situation. Consider yourself the newly appointed “Minister of Moravian resistance to foreign invasion”.

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I just wanted to say how awesome this looks, I have been hoping for a political game on this site as it makes perfect sense with the multiple choice game play.

One thing I also wanted to add was if New Order has been receiving aid from Nazi Germany?, or is that an actual plot point?.

Another thing, what was the major philosophical difference that Rosa has with the Soviet Union?, they seem similar with the whole advocating violence and so forth. Does she think they betrayed the workers after they came into power?. Last but by no means least (I only just thought of this because I am an idiot) is Rosa based on the real life Rosa Luxemburg?.

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Some typos that I noticed. Probably missed some more:

During the interview with the reporter:

responsible for several

Sharing your aristocratic backstory w/ Franz:

Skeptical

The encounter at Altstadt:

Gramophone? Or is it some new invention or something?

Talking to Franz in the soup kitchen:

Here

Scandal

At the film shoot:

Scandalous

Wulf’s special assignment:

Just “coffee” will do.

Voluntarily

Suspicion

Discussing the budget with Kant:

Also, I had to oppose her budget amendment twice in a row. First time, I got that response above. The next scene, she made me sit down and have a brandy, and she and I had the budget discussion again, as if we never talked about it a page ago. When I rejected the proposal a second time, she finally said my name.

I’ll try to replicate it with screenshots later , if you need it, when i’m not busy.

The voting:

“Means Test” was capitalized the last time Kant mentioned it.

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That was confusing me, I had a look in the coding and realised that the conversation you have with her is based on your relationship score with her and that choosing not to support the amendment damages it, therefore making it possible to then trigger another conversation for a lower score. Long story short fixed now, although I don’t have time to do all the typos, thanks a lot for the detail!

Thanks!

No, in part due to Riga’s hostility to the Germans and vice versa. But New Order do have backing from Mussolini’s fascist party, which will come in to play when you meet Alessandra. Cultural attache is a good diplomatic cover for spy basically

Like quite a large part of the left in the 30s, Wulf rejects stalinism as a betrayal of the russian revolution. Although she believes in violence, their vision is to use violent revolution to create a socialist republic rather than a communist dictatorship.

Certainly the name was part of the inspiration, so not idiotic at all!

I second this appointment, @idonotlikeusernames you need to start drawing up contingency plans!

Only replaying it 3 times? :cry:

Hmm, the only thing is I’ve already got to write a 2 sided game with 13 different ROs. Adding a 14th is pretty low down on the priority list…

For those of you wondering, my estimated release for New Order chapter 3 is next Friday

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Well since posting that I only have one little thought to add after basically getting beat up about it in a chat with one of my distant Swiss relatives over this and that is this: Does fictional Moravia share any land border with Switzerland? If so it would make commencement of the disaster that would have been Tannenbaum that much more likely, since Hitler barely tolerated “neutral” Switzerland being a “fellow German country” not under his control he probably won’t tolerate openly hostile Moravia existing as an independent. But if the two do share a border then the Nazi’s are likely going to want to deal with both at the same time to cut off even the possibility of passive aid from one to the other and this would be a huge tactical mistake, likely huge enough that, provided France holds up a bit better then it did historically, Nazism could be defeated on the continent alone.

Still the key to making sure Hitler gets deposed or perhaps even defeated outright and Nazism getting squashed early is always going to be France, for any of that too happen this alternate world France simply has to perform better and be more willing to fight then they were historically.
But again, Hitler deposed by coup is more likely to lead to either a different kind of fascist Germany or a deeply conservative traditionalist one, so it wouldn’t all be sunshine and roses.

It might also be that this is the kind of universe that leads to Stalin going on the offensive “Red Alert” style or something else happens to give us a different sort of WW2 altogether. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Well since I don’t have it in me to ever play “New Order” (no matter how cute the uniform is going to get). I’m currently planning on two Anton runs and one for Franz.

There is, but they’re fighting for a cause that will eventually swallow them and spit them out, just look at Rohm and the Nazi’s and Hitler while presiding over the most extreme version of it was far from the only Fascists dictator to “tolerate” some homosexuals, but only so long as they remained personally useful to them. Again look at Rohm.
Fascism is ultimately a dead end for gay people in the most literal sense of the word.

Hmmm…maybe a gay fascist could become the prince’s “dirty little secret”, but you’d pretty much have to get rid of Riga, before he decides to get rid of you.
Ultimately gay fascists are like lower class conservative people mostly voting and acting against their own self-interest, though for fascists gays this is a far more immediately lethal and dangerous proposition then it is for poor conservatives.

On the other hand my mc, much like Lenin himself was, is for scrapping crimes against “morality” out of Moravian legislation entirely and should the author’s plan still be to give us the interior ministry my mc would probably start by cutting off all funding for the actual law-enforcement part of the so-called crimes against morality.

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There are quite a lot of ifs, but I suppose I do agree with most of the points you raise (here and your earlier post), though I think you’re a bit too optimistic.

Moravia isn’t likely to put up nearly half as much the fight as Switzerland hypothetically would in that it didn’t sit out the First World War, nor does it have a strong arms industry or as strong a shooting culture. I’ll assume that the Moravian governments did not spend the Depression trying to build up defences with unemployed; by 1936 or-so it might take too long considering that when the Moravian Army surrendered in WWI, the Germans would have probably disarmed or destroyed Moravia’s border fortifications as well, for the sake of removing a barrier between Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Getting France to fight more than they did historically by the introduction of Moravia is going to be difficult, since France just came out of an era of unrest including multiple changes of governments from socialist to centrist and back, and I doubt French High Command would be that more interested in saving Moravia if it turned socialist

I’d put some more faith in the British, rather than the French, but not necessarily through any political overtures by the Brits. If OKW launched an invasion of Moravia at the same time as the invasion of Norway, that would plausibly pull troops and planes away from the invasion of Norway. Consequently if the RAF and the RN have better success up there, that could have butterflies in France. Perhaps the French decide to attack instead of stalling; perhaps the Fairey Battles could manage to take out the bridges over the Albert Canal; perhaps the Germans could be driven back at Arras due to a lack of support leading to a counter attack on the tiring German forces (France would be lost by Arras, but the allies could get more troops out as a result of smashing Rommel).

However, these require arms as you mention. The most likely candidate I’d see would be France or Czechoslovakia; but the latter stops being an option by 1938.

With Moravia being so far from the west and so small I can’t see Moravia managing to survive in its pre-war state for long. Instead, I’d bring in Czechoslovakia, rather than comparisons with Switzerland: The greatest likelihood I see of Moravia surviving would be the allies fighting in 1938 due to a failed Munich Agreement. Chamberlain was already considering and in the process of rearming the UK, so if he and Daladier choose to fight it out with Hitler, and the Germans decide to attack both Moravia and the Czechs simultaneously, then the German High Command and Intelligence might launch a coup in 1938. In the event of a failed coup/a longer war starting in 1938 with the Czechs on side the allies have a better chance at winning before the US intervention. Of course post-war Moravia will probably end up as part of the Czechoslovakian sphere and there’s the possibility of a war with the USSR in the future.

Getting Chamberlain to fight might not be that difficult: the guy, despite the “Peace in Our Time” stuff, was willing to rearm and only really did so (sign the Munich Agreement) because he felt the UK was unprepared for a war while being unaware that the Germans were equally unprepared. A confident, but more importantly well armed Moravia alongside Czechoslovakia could well be the thing to change his mind. More importantly, Moravia must be seen as being able to cooperate with the allies and being very opposed to Moscow.

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Oh I wasn’t necessarily talking about France fighting for Moravia, I was just talking about having the invasion of Moravia coincide with that of France/Switzerland in one of Hitler’s boneheaded moves, and then as long as France holds out they cannot completely overrun Moravia, particularly if they go for triple folly like my distant relative suggested and try to invade Switzerland too.

I had thought to get the weapons from Belgium myself, high quality small arms and what we’d be ordering for a citizen’s army would be mostly small-arms anyway and if we start early then Czechoslovakia would be another good source too.

As you say the trouble with the Brits is that we’re the Solidarity party and the Brits would probably rather like the idea of a Moravian regime change themselves at that point. :worried:
The Brits are far more reactionary then the French Third Republic though, which is why I put less faith in them, I’m well-aware of the shortcomings and potential strengths of Chamberlain.

For further geopolitical considerations that would depend on Moravia’s exact location along the Danube:

Now the two best point would be in part of what is Germany itself in our timeline, which would make sense given Moravia’s mostly German population, which means it would border Austria, Germany Switzerland (and that would be the crucial border in the scenario my relative proposed) and perhaps even France and/or Italy itself. In this case getting our weapons from either Belgium or France itself would make the most sense.
The other good possibility would be all the way on the other side of Austria, occupying parts of what are now Hungary and Slovakia to us. In this case we’d be in the Czech sphere of influence and what is worse, apart from Czechoslovakia itself, which will fall in a few years if things proceed more or less as we know them, surrounded by regressive and hostile states on all of our borders (at least when playing Solidarity).

Considering who and what is present in the game we judged the first location (consisting of territory that in our world is part of Germany and/or Austria) to be more likely considering who are present and playing a large role in Moravia on the foreign side, where the most prominent foreign actors seem to be the French, the Germans (though the one thing that unites all parts of the country at the moment is dislike of them) and the Italians, probably also the Swiss…but well they’d be (mostly) “neutral”.
In the second location you’d expect to see more Poles, Czechs, Romanians and Maygar play larger roles in Moravian affairs. Plus, much like us over here in the Netherlands, the ethnic makeup of Moravia seems overwhelmingly German, which would be less likely on that other side of Austria.
Still either location could plausibly work for a small kingdom along the Danube, it is just that given what is presented in-game thus far I think the first location would work better.

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Notice that I said 3 times just for the sake of the ROs. I am planning an infinite amount of times for politics. Until now, the game I played the most was the Sabres/Guns of Infinity series. More than 40+ times each game. This one is probably going to beat that :tada:

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I just played the demo version and quite frankly I loved it. I’ve always appreciated a good story about political intrigue especially without the action or excessive drama associated with the genre.

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Considering Frances opinion on Communism at the time (banning the party in 1939) it is probably safe to assume a Socialist Moravia would be little more to France than a mini Soviet Union, only useful in so far as they can fight Nazi Germany.

Moravia is literally in the WORST position possible for a Socialist state being surrounded by Fascist Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. No matter what was to happen Moravia would HAVE to be conquered for Germany to feel secure, especially after Barbarossa. Even then if Moravia was to limp on after the war remaining independent they would almost certainly be forced into the Warsaw Pact if not outright invaded by the Soviets when they are pushing into Germany.

The only thing I can consider for them to survive is a revolution would have to happen NOW with a Socialist Republic being formed, links to the Union would have to be brokered out of mutual hatred of Germany and the build up of Moravia’s military forces would have to be accelerated 10 fold so that when war comes in 1939 they can strike Germany from the soft underbelly perhaps giving France more time to organise and MAYBE giving the Soviet Union a bit more confidence so that they keep going west after Poland.

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Like I said being surrounded by Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria and just maybe even France itself would make more sense with how the country is portrayed and presented in-game, but I guess we’ll see.
The Danube is a big (well by our European standards anyway) river covering a lot of territory and flowing through a lot of countries, I don’t believe it has yet been specifically stated which countries exactly it borders.
I think my cousin made a decent observation that you’d expect the presentation and ethnic make-up of a country bordered by Hungary and Romania to be different from how Moravia is currently presented to us in game.

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Either way it is a terrible position, all with an outcome of being conquered by an Axis nation. Or of course if New Order were to win then Moravia could just become another Axis nation like Hungary.

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True, best case we have borders with Switzerland and France who are not fascist countries though, and a bit more wiggle room then in the other case where the only sort-of friendly country on our borders would be Czechoslovakia.

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Mighty Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece and France will help the workers in need! nothing bad at all could happen to them in a few years time!. :slight_smile:

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Historically Moravia is a name for a part of the Czech Republic.

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Considering the name “Moravia” I’d always considered it to be similar to where the actual region of Moravia is i.e. your second location, but I admit I haven’t given it much thought.

FN has a habit of producing stuff that’s overpriced :P. More seriously, I was considering Czechoslovakia not only because of the location but predominantly because Brno was not only designing some really quite modern arms but also because they did export weapons over the world, particularly machine guns, mortars and artillery. The same goes for France and Sweden. Belgian companies I’m not so sure about, I know they exported small arms, but not sure about artillery. Small arms like rifles and SMGs can probably be domestically produced. Moravia probably used Mausers or some Mannlicher rifle before and during WWI, so when Germany occupied Moravia they either kept the tooling or kept the rifles. If Moravia was producing Mausers under license from DWM before the war or got the tooling after Versailles they can keep making those. As for SMGs, might as well copy the MP28, simplify it and produce it in small shops e.g. like the Sten or the Polish Błyskawica SMG.

@AlexClifford1994: What’s the state of Moravia’s arms industry and what did Moravia get out of Versailles in terms of reparations? Does Moravia have a small shop-based arms industry like Spain?

Chamberlain/France would be more likely to fight if they believed that the Moravians could slow down the Germans without resorting to guerrilla war. If Moravia enters the same time as Czechoslovakia or Norway, that means the German Mountain Divisions and paratroopers are elsewhere, and they’d have a harder time at cracking the nut. In spite of being outnumbered, outgunned and attacked by the Luftwaffe, the Poles at Westerplatte and the Norwegians at Drøbak Sound managed to put up one hell of a fight.

If Moravia is in your first position near France, however, I would expect the Germans to go in before they invade France and the Low Countries; doing that at the same time would draw troops away from the Low Countries. A benefit would be that the French troops left holding the Maginot would not necessarily be wasted and fewer German troops would be available to support the thrust in the north, and that attack was a close-run thing. A Moravia closer to France has the benefit of possibly benefiting from French air cover, which would be more substantial than anything the Czechs could give. If Moravia’s in the second location I can see the Germans asking for it alongside the Sudetenland at Munich as I’ve mentioned before. The advantage of this would be that the troops trying to take Moravia would be even further from France. Either way, timed correctly (incorrectly for the Germans) the logistical troubles and the resources needed to knock over Moravia could prove disastrous for Germany in the long run, since they were gambling big and with poor logistics.

Being considerably smaller than Yugoslavia Moravia’s potential for a guerrilla war would be reduced. If Moravia was up for grabs at Munich and the Allies fought over it or was hit in 1940 before the Fall of France, then the aim would be to fight as long as possible until allied forces show up. Starting a guerrilla war would pin down more German troops in the long run, but in the short term in 1940 having a couple of German divisions and a non-insignificant part of the Luftwaffe trying to smash through a well-entrenched Moravian Army with decent artillery could just be enough if we assume Allied High Command was as unlucky and made as many mistakes as it did OTL.

If the monarchy was still in place by this time, even if it were very weak, I’m not sure whether the Brits would be that inclined to regime change. I’m aware the Brits did participate in regime change during WWII, particularly in the Middle East, but they had intimate interests in those countries, while the continent would be more of France’s business. Either way, they supported Tito during WWII to some extent, even though they preferred the monarchists. A Solidarity-led Moravia led by Wulf would be in between a rock and a hard place indeed. Of course, a multi-party Anti-Fascist Front (especially with a formerly New Order/aristocratic MC) would have an easier time of it.

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I think most of us know that, but this is alternate history and particularly for a country bordering Hungary and Romania its ethnic makeup and presentation are off, it would fit better, as it is currently presented between Germany, Austria and likely Italy too.
Besides lots of places have similar names in our own history too. Heck Germany itself has two Frankfurt’s, so the name would not exactly need to be decisive for its exact geographical location along the Danube.

Not unless King Alexander lives, he died in 1934 and Prince Paul was nothing but a puppet for the worst reactionaries in the country and quintessentially “British” in the most reactionary fashion, despite his bisexuality. Peter II, in whose name he held that regency was of course a non-factor.

Coup and one of the worst monarchical “restorations” in history coming in 1935. In any case even Democratic Greece wouldn’t be in a position to offer anything substantial, unlike Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia should Moravia border them.

Trouble with that is you’d expect to see a different ethnic make-up of the country and its prominent figures and much more Maygar influence, or at least persistent attemtps at it then we do in the game thus far. In fact if the second location was true one would expect Riga to be able to get more Hungarian support in and be more influenced by them, instead of Mussolini’s Italy.

I second this question.

I think that is an accurate assessment of both positions, given the role Anton, the French representative can possibly play is another reason I lean towards my first location for Moravia in-game. Again otherwise I would have expected to see Hungarians and Czechs at the very least be more prominently featured among the cast of npc’s.

Exactly a possible benefit of getting cosy with Anton in the game would be trying to convince France to actually give said air-support when the time comes.

Yes, much like had they gone for Tannebaum, though with more limited effect. Still given the precarious German logistics at the time even a lesser punch in the gut then Tannenbaum would have been could line them up for the knockout blow, providing those other factors line up.

Yeah, I’m kind of endeavouring for a plebiscite to abolish the Monarchy well before then with my mc. He isn’t exactly a fan of the monarchy and would much prefer a republic.
If necessary we can still form a united front without the monarchy and possibly without most of the conservatives, though it would probably require submitting to a president from Centre for foreign consumption. Of course we can technically already keep the door open for an anti-fascist front that includes even conservatives on the Solidarity part as well and tell Starc so. Indeed it is not uncommon for a parliamentary system to present a multi-party united front when faced with (imminent) war, even cooperating with parties we’d never contemplate working with under “normal” circumstances.

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Ok @AlexClifford1994 finally got time to try out the new part. Going through it again I’m really impressed with how well written it is :slight_smile: in general, but also due to my computer reading out things due to my visual imparement I’m usually pretty good at finding typos and such as it says them differently, but can barely find any in this yp :slight_smile: . But when playing as solidarity and talking to the reporter: "Given that Solidarity are responsible several violent crimes in the election " *should that be “responsible for several”?

chose to fight the new order guys, next bit is during wolf’s speech “I know, comrades, that this is has been a bittersweet election for us” *remove “is”

"keeping itself afloat with thugs and criminals. We all now how this will " *“know how”

The scene with Ben’s list "2.We need an MP to show their face at our " * missing a space between 2. and we.

In the SDP person’s office "Stop this terrible idea every becoming law. " *ever

during the budget speech "Record levels of debt, business struggling and many unemploymed. " *unemployed
"Namely, the abolition of the humilating means test which she " *humiliating
"Speaker, is that the people of this great nation are left with a very simply choice. " * simple

Loved the new content :slight_smile: will try the other choices at some point. One thing though, wolf never spoke to my mc about the newspaper reporting about the possible leadership challenge when I said I had ambissions of leadership :confused: .

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The name Moravia isn’t German, though. From a glance at the etymology of the word for the German name of the region could come from the word “March”, which I suppose could also be a result of it being formerly part of the Margraviate of Baden. Alternatively, like Czech Moravia it also has a Danube tributary called the Marus by the Romans and somehow that also ended up getting the region called Moravia without any Czech or Magyar influence.

Racial minorities are mentioned as part of the independents, but they have a tiny portion of the vote share compared to what they ought to have were Moravia closer to where the real Moravia is. I suppose it is possible for non-ethnic Germans to be really well-integrated in Moravia due to being outside of either Germany or Austria-Hungary (speaking of, how did it escape the Unification of Germany?), but that would be unlikely and as you’ve mentioned the lack of mention of any influence from Czechoslovakia and Hungary, is a major omission in that case. If it were where real Moravia was, Moravia would probably expect to be part of the Little Entente.

One thing I haven’t considered really is the effect of remilitarisation of the Rhineland, which, if Moravia is close to France, ought to have Moravia’s political leaders (whoever they are by 1936) seriously protest at the League of Nations. If that is followed by an attempted German-backed coup like in Austria in 1938 since Germany clearly has designs on the country, that could have serious knock-on effects. The Moravian population’s opinions towards the Germans is quite clear. The British journalist might be able to stir up comparisons with Belgium, which was quite significant behind the British populace’s backing of intervention in WWI. Moravia ended up in a similar place to Belgium during WWI, except it got occupied entirely and the Government collaborated, but the idea’s similar. Add to that the British proclivity to marry their royals to German royalty, that might be another reason why Moravia remained out of the Prussian/German and Austrian spheres (if it was French-sphered, it would have probably gone with Alsace-Lorraine).

Having all that occur closer to France might convince the allies to rearm earlier or simply to give a tougher stance at Munich, since the French would be dealing with potentially major civil unrest in neutral countries either side of France with serious German meddling.

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