Rawrawrbangbang wrote:Should I include prewar cores of nations that no longer exist? I.E. should there be cores for Belgium to be liberated if Reichsgau Flanders and Reichsgau Wallonia are conquered? Should I leave in all of Poland's cores, etc. I've included them in the list below, please feel free to let me know if any should be removed. Next, is it Russia or the USSR? I'm planning on including Russian cores on all pre war territory, let me know if I shouldn't. I was going to include Leningrad, Czech Republic, Crimea, and the Polish area as German territory without cores. Sound good?
Great job so far!
Here's the map I promised earlier:
And now to the question of cores. Belgium and Holland should have their cores intact, while Polish cores should be altered according to the historical borders of Generalgouvernement. Since both a national Russian state (Moscow Federation) and USSR will exist in the mod, so they should have separate cores. Instead of prewar borders ethnic Russian cores of the Moscow Federation would include the territories added to Reichskommissariat Ostland (Belarus + parts added to Estonia and Latvia) and Eastern Ukraine. Soviet cores are more tricky due the way core claims work in HoI3, but they should still have cores to all of Moscow Federation territory, Eastern Ukraine and Belarus.
German territory without cores goes well for Bohemia-Moravia and the annexed Polish territories - Crimea and former Leningrad region should start this way as well, but Germany will gain cores to them later by events. Polish Generalgouvernement should stay as non-core German-owned territory.
Now to the actual border changes and cores in case-by-case basis, check the map for numbers of each particular case.
http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/uusieurooppa.png?w=7001. Free City of Danzig, created as a result of the Versailles treaty, was regained by Germany in 19 September 1939 and incorporated into Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen. Danzig became an important industrial city dominated by shipbuilding, petrochemical and chemical industries.
2. Memel Territory, occupied by Lithuania in 1923, was regained by diplomatic solution in 23 March 1939 (”Heim ins Reich“) after a popular revolt. It was incorporated into East Prussia. City of Memel was quickly turned into a fortified naval base. The reunion was welcomed by the majority of population. According to the treaty, the citizens of Memel Territory were allowed to choose citizenship: either German, or Lithuanian; only 303 choose Lithuanian.
3. Reichsgau Wartheland was annexed to German Reich in 8 October 1939. Polish businesses were germanized and majority of the polish inhabitants were forcibly removed to General-Government without compensation of their lost properties. 300,000 poles were evacuated during the war. When forced displacement of population caused a general famine in the Wartheland area, evacuations were halted in May 1943 and postponed until the end of the war. Over a million poles were further removed to General-Government in the 1950s. Capital of the Reichsgau Wartheland is Posen (former Poznan)
4. Former German imperial province of Elsaß-Lothringen (taken by France in 1919) was informally annexed by Germany in 15 June 1940. Alsace was incorporated into Gau Baden-Elsaß, with Straßburg as a capital (Karlsruhe until 1953). German parts of Lorraine were incorporated into Saarland (Gau Westmark), governed from Neustadt. German became the sole official language; use of French or local Alsatian was discouraged. The annexation, while ending the two decades of fierce anti-German discrimination, was never popular among the populace and NSDAP membership in Elsaß-Lothringen remained low. Elsaß was home to many student uprisings in the 1960s.
5. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was occupied in 10 May 1940. It was officially annexed by Germany in August 1942 by incorporating it into district of Koblenz-Trier. New Reichsgau Moselland was governed from Koblenz. All luxembourgers received German citizenship. 13,000 young men were conscripted to the Wehrmacht, 2,848 were killed in the Eastern Front. In 1953, Letzebourg dialect received official recognition from Führer Rudolf Hess; however, German remained as the sole official language.
6. Eupen-Malmedy, occupied by Belgium in 1919, was regained by Germany in 1940, with the clear consent of most of the inhabitants. Support for the German takeover eroded sharply after the Operation Barbarossa and the subsequent conscription of most of the male population in the Wehrmacht (out of 8,700 drafted new Germans, 3,200 perished in the East). In December 1944, Allied bomber raids first destroyed Malmedy, then Sankt Vith almost completely.
7. Nice (Nizza) was occupied by fascist Italy in 15 June 1940. It was annexed in 12 November 1942 and retained by the Social Republic of Italy. About half of the inhabitants are French- or Occitan-speaking.
8. Savoy region, occupied and absorbed by Napoleon III in 1860, was administered by fascist Italy in 1940-1941 and annexed in 12 November 1942. Although fiercely contested by premier Pierre Laval, Savoy remained in italian hands and became an autonomous region in the Italian Social Republic.
9. South Slavic country of Slovenia, part of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was partitioned in 3.5.1941 between fascist Italy, Germany and Hungary. Western Slovenia became Italian territory, Spodnja Štajerska (Untersteiermark) was annexed to the German Reich and completely germanized, administered from Laibach (former Ljubljana). 47,000 Slovenes were deported into Independent State of Croatia, where they remained as refugees, harassed and exploited by the fascist Ustasha regime.
10. Dalmatia was annexed by Italy in 20.5.1941. Provincial capital was established at Zara (Zadar). Many Croats moved away from the Italian Governatorato di Dalmazia and took refuge in the Independent State of Croatia, which subsequently became the fighting ground for a guerilla war between the Axis and the Partisans. Remaining Croats opposed violently to marginalisation of the Croat language in Dalmatia. Legendary FC Hajduk of Spoleto (Split) refused to play in Italian league. In 1943-1945, there was an influx of Italian fascists fleeing from southern Italy, occupied by the Allied forces. The Dalmatian Question has strained the relations between Croatia and Italian Social Republic ever since.
11. Hungary occupied and annexed in 19 April 1941 Hungarian parts of Slovenia and Croatia, called Muravidék (Prekomurje) and Muraköz (Medimurje).
12. Baranja and Backa, inhabited by ethnic Hungarians, were regained by Hungary at the Treaty of Vienna (19 April 1941).
13. Banat region was always officially part of the Serbian state, but in practice the Danube-German minority (volksdeutsche) lobbied and received concessions which made it fully autonomous region during the war. 7. SS Gebirgs-division Prinz Eugen was recruited among the Danube Germans.
14. Kosovo (Kosovë in Albanian) was united with fascist Albania in 12 July 1941, with seat of local government in Prishtinë. In June, 1942 Albanian prime minister Mustafa Kruja started an ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, during which 100 000 Serbs were killed. After the surrender of Italy to the Allies in 1943, a National Albanian Committee was formed in Italy (8 September 1943), which called for German help. The Germans recognized the National Commitee on 26 September 1943 and their troops occupied the country. Kosovo remained in Albanian hands, although bloody guerilla war against communist partisan movement led by Enver Hoxha continued until the 1960s.
15. Epirus and Pindos (Printsipat di la Pind) is a small puppet state composed of ethnic Aromanians (Vlach), Greeks, Albanians and Slavic Macedonians. The area of Epirus and Pindos was claimed by Albania but given to Aromanian separatists by Mussolini government in 1941. The capital of the statelet was Metsovo (Aminciu in Aromanian), but the national assembly sat in Trikala. The first prince of Pindos, Aromanian activist and poet Alkhiviad Diamandi, left his chaotic princedom in 1942 and took refuge in Romania. Armed Greek partisans took over most of the area. Italian occupation authorities tried then to rely on local Macedonian activists, who were waging their own guerilla war both against the Bulgarian army and the Greek partisans. The state collapsed after Italian capitulation in September 1943, and the area was taken over by the Germans. German army favoured the Albanian claims Greeks, and Principality of Pindos was re-established in 1944 with M. Hatzi as the Minister-President. Deadly partisan warfare continued for many years. Minister of Defense, Albanian-born Vasil Rapotika, was shot dead by a Greek guerilla group just outside Larissa in 1945. Finally, in 1949 Epiros and Pindos was annexed by Albania as an autonomous principality. -
We could just add it to Albania immediately or include it for flavour, your call here people.16. Macedonia, also called Old Serbia, had become Serbian territory in 1912 and during 1929-1941 it was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When Bulgarian army occupied it in 18 May 1941, most of the local population hailed the Bulgarians as liberators. Local Macedonian revolutionary movement VMRO (Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizaciya) split into several splinter groups, some of which opposed the occupation, others supporting it. Armed anti-Bulgarian separatists tried to establish an independent Macedonian Voivodeship in 1942, but they were defeated by the combined German and Bulgarian armies. VMRO continued its terror campaign along with Tito’s Partisan movement until 1949, when Bulgaria regained most of Macedonia. Violence escalated again in the 1960s, with both Albania and Greece covertly assisting Macedonian separatists against Bulgaria. Germany was forced to deploy two SS-divisions as peacekeepers, but even with the full German military might and equipment, peace is nowhere in sight.
17. After Greek capitulation in 18 May 1941, Western Thrace, Thasos and Samothrace were all occupied by Bulgarian Army. Greek population was deported and ethnic Bulgarians - some of which had lived in Thrace before the First World War - were resettled in the area. Germany retained a narrow security zone in the Turkish border until 1949 when it was given back to Greece, infuriating the Bulgarians. Thracian question is still hotly debated in the European Parliament at Berlin.
18. The Dodecanese Islands declared independence from Ottoman Turkey in 1912, but had been immediately occupied by Italy. Greece demanded the islands for herself, but the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War and the foundation of modern Turkey made this solution impossible. With the Treaty of Lausanne the Dodecanese was then formally annexed by Italy, as the Possedimenti Italiani dell’Egeo. Mussolini embarked on a program of modernization, resulting in the eradication of malaria, the construction of hospitals, aqueducts and a power plant to provide Rhodes with electric lightning. Italian cultural policy was more repressive. Native Orthodox Religion was heavily discouraged and Italian was taught in all schools. These measures caused a good deal of Greek emigration from the island, replaced by a moderate amount of Italian immigration. After the surrender of Italy in 1943 the Dodecanese were conquered by Germany in the Battle of Leros and remained in Axis hands. Hitler used the islands as a bargaining chip to get concessions from both collaborationist Greek government and the Italian Social Republic. Rhodes remains as an important military base for Axis forces.
19. Distrikt Galizien. Historical region of East Galicia has formerly belonged to Austria-Hungary, Poland and Soviet Ukraine. Short but brutal repression under Soviet rule came to an end when Germany occupied East Galicia during Operation Barbarossa, but evacuating Soviets decided to exterminate all those people who had been waiting deporation to Gulag. Mass killings of Jews and Poles were uncovered by arriving Wehrmacht forces, and Germans were first hailed as liberators. In 30 June 1941 Yaroslav Stetsko declared Goverment of independent Ukraine in Lemberg (pol. Lvov, ukr. Lviv), but without German approval, and Galicia was subsequently incorporated into the General-Government as Distrikt Galizien. As Germany viewed Galicia as already germanized and civilized (being former part of Austria), occupation policies were quite lenient - except for the Jews, who were deported to concentration camps. Conflicts in Galicia and Volhynia between Poles and Ukrainians also intensified, with skirmishes between Polish Home Army, Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Soviet Partisans. Ukrainians massacred Poles in Volhynia, which resulted in revenge attacks against Ukrainians in Galicia. Despite these warring factions, many Galicians joined Germany in its fight against communism. It remains part of the General-Government, with Lemberg as the eastern cultural capital of the Greater German Reich.
20. Bialystok Voivodeship was annexed to East Prussia in 22 June 1941. National Socialist government pursued a ruthless program of forced germanization and extermination of Jewish population, which stirred local resistance and led to a major insurrection on 15 August 1943, organised by AOB (Polish Anti-fascist Military Organisation). Ethnic cleansing of the Bialystok area was completed in the 1950s, when it became a border march of the new German Reich, resettled with German peasant-farmers (Wehrbau).
21. Sudauen. Former Polish county of Suwałki had been captured by the Red Army in 1939, but was transferred to Germany according to the First Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement. In 12 October 1939 it was renamed Sudauen and incorporated into East Prussia. In spite of severe German countermeasures, Polish underground resistance continued a limited guerilla war until 1956, when the last organised armed groups were eliminated.
22. Transnistria. Separate peace negotiated in Stockholm between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union guaranteed the regions of North Bukovina, Bessarabia and Transnistria to Romania. Adolf Hitler persuaded Ion Antonescu to accept Transnistria as a substitute for Northern Transylvania, which was returned to Hungarian control in 1940. From 1943, Transnistria has been a part of the Greater Romania, with regional capital in Odessa. The wartime Romanian occupation was marked with famine and epidemic. Jews and Roma were crowded in concentration camps where they were decimated by hunger and typhus. Most of the Ukrainian population was deported in 1943-1945 to Reichskommissariat Ukraine to make room for Transylvanian Rumanians resettled into Transnistria. The solution proved unpopular, both among Romanians and Ukrainians. Transnistria is now among the poorest regions in the New Europe, with standard of living comparable to developing countries.
23. Nevel. Southern part of the former Pskov oblast was annexed by the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1943. The oblast had suffered terrible damage in the bloody battles of 1941-1942, in which the city of Velikiye Luki was utterly destroyed and never rebuilt. As most of the Russian-speaking inhabitants had fled, the area was deemed suitable for colonisation. In 1951 Nevel became the easternmost gau in Latvia and it received a substantial Latvian immigration. It still has a significant Russian minority (314 000 people).
24. Pleskau and West Ingria. Northern parts of the Pskov oblast and West Ingria were initially selected for the German colonisation effort in the secret Generalplan Ost (GP), prepared by the Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA) of Heinrich Himmler. They were first incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1943 and became part of autonomous Reichsbezirk Estonia in 1951. Colonisation programs met considerable difficulties in obtaining enough volunteers, but three German cities were constructed in 1944-1951: Jamburg, Luga and Pleskau, with total German population of 89,000. Other areas were forcibly assimilated into Estonia. A considerable Russian minority still prevails in the Pleskau area, which is also the poorest in Estonia. Local Russians naturally blame Estonians for all their miseries.
25. Reichsbezirk Petersburg. Former Russian metropolis of Leningrad was devastated in the war. 1,600,000 citizens perished during the two-year siege. Famous palaces and churches were turned into rubble by German artillery and aerial bombing. Stalin had forbade any notion of surrender; the city was not captured until in 1943 by joint German-Finnish force and with heavy casualties. At first Hitler and Finnish prime minister Ryti supported for total annihilation of Leningrad, but finally it was agreed that Germany would annex the area and make it a major supply center for the Axis armies fighting in Russia. From the ruins of Leningrad RAD constructed a German Freiestadt Petersburg with 500,000 permanent inhabitants, thus closing Russia’s “Window to the West” permanently.
26. Reichsbezirk Gotenland became the German colony in the Eastern Europe, a Lebensraum for two million inhabitants (67 % German, 24 % Tatar, 5 % Armenian and 4 % Greek). It consists of the Crimean peninsula, isthmus of Perekop and outlying territory south of Dnepr (Generalbezirk Taurida). During the war it was fiercely contested by both Red Army, and after the war by pro-Soviet partisans who held out in the mountains of Crimea until 1954. In post-war years, Gotenland thrived as a prime tourist destination, built with new attractions and sanatoriums for tourists, who came from all around the New Europe. Crimea’s infrastructure and manufacturing was developed, particularly around the sea ports at Kerch and Theoderichshafen and in the Gotenland’s landlocked capital, Gotenburg (former Simferopol). Crimean Tatars enjoy cultural autonomy.
27. Chechnya-Ingushetia. Having suffered years of Soviet repression, Chechen leaders Israilov and Sheripov formed a rebel pro-Axis government in May 1942, in order to regain independence with German aid. The act proved to be premature, as Axis advance into the Caucasus was too slow to prevent Soviets from deporting part of the Chechen people to Siberia. After the Second Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement, Chechen National Council continued supporting the Axis cause. But promised cultural autonomy was slow to come, and another guerilla war broke out against occupying Axis forces. Chechnya is still officially a German minor ally, but no country has recognized its sovereignty.
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