Agora

Fifteen years had passed since the heady days of the Taube uprising. The revolutionary fervor had been quelled, but deep scars remained on the minds and bodies of Gettenfeld. The broken bodies of Tauben veterans lay prostrate in the dingy streets of Gettenfeld and Taube's cities, reduced to mendicancy like so many wounded soldiers before them. The Taube men, though no longer in the flower of their youth, represented the young guard of Gettenfeld's large community of dispossessed war wounded. Because they fought as an irregular force in a foreign civil conflict, the Taube men received no pension. The veterans on the Getten side of the border hardly fared better, as their pension was a pittance, barely enough to buy coal and bread, let alone the expensive medical care so many of them required. In dim alleyways and in the shadows of viaducts the young guard was joined by the old- the broken, aging bodies that build Gettenfeld up to her status as a great power. The Taubens were joined by veterans of the Arrian Intervention, The Troubles, the Panagoran Crisis, and peacekeeping duties in half a hundred places around the world. Though dwindling in numbers, some grey-whiskered veterans of the intervention into the Atravanian Civil War remained, and served as the de facto elders of this parallel society; marginalized though they lived in the beating heart of Gettenfeld.

On the surface, Taube had been a failure and the Getten Civil War wasted an ocean of blood for very little gain. Taube remains under Iennic rule, and today even has an air of normalcy. But the scarred walls and scarred people of Taube serve as a physical memory of the trauma this region suffered nearly a generation ago. New coats of paint and an economic boom distract her people from their pain, but material comforts do not erase the deep scars that still haunt this once sleepy Iennic hinterland.

The Getten Civil War of 1919-1920 was short, but sharp. Divided by factionalism, the numerous sides to this conflict achieved little in terms of strategic gains and grand offensives, but much blood was spilled nonetheless. Retribution became normalized, and escalated rapidly in the countryside. Vengeance for a slain son took another, then a whole family, then a whole village. To the surprise of outsiders, these blood feuds managed to remain along ideological divides and did not descend into ethnic or religious sectarianism. The true death toll of the Civil War cannot be accurately ascertained because, for some of those it cut the most, the War rages on still. The government prefers to publish, in the infrequent times it finds itself forced to acknowledge the Civil War at all, the much lower figure of battlefield casualties, which did not exceed ten thousand. This is deeply disingenuous, however, as the shape of the conflict that gripped Gettenfeld at the turn of the decade was less of a war, and more of a web of interconnected blood feuds, pogroms, massacres, and bouts of localized violence.

In its aftermath, the ruling dynasty was replaced and the economy underwent a massive restructuring. Although on a purely aesthetic level almost nothing had changed- Gettenfeld remained a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary legislature- the fundamental relationship between the masses and Power had been transfigured. The political meta-narrative of the century preceding the Civil War was one of the ascendant mostly-liberal bourgeois securing more and more concessions from the declining mostly-reactionary aristocracy. The system legitimized itself as the realization of Whig historiography, an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment. This narrative, however, denied historical agency to the laboring masses of Gettenfeld, who often did not see the fruits of these gains. The liberty the liberals sought was primarily economic so, while crumbs of political freedom might filter down to the masses, this liberty mostly took the form of decreased safety regulations and lesser government protections for labor. The Civil War swept away the last vestiges of aristocratic political influence, and demolished the political power of the bourgeois. This void of power was filled by the mass organizations of the organized working class. The economic power of the bourgeois was smashed as well, with massive programs of collectivization pursued across major sectors of the economy all across the nation. In the aftermath of the erection of the CES, many pauperized bourgeois emigrated to South Africa, which remained in the iron grip of Edward Toromas.

The Getten dependency of Bohemia entered the 1920's under the fascist government of the Necare, headed by George Wesr and Vidha Roskus. This unequal partnership- Wesr was always the one with more power- persisted until 1928, when George Wesr suffered a minor stroke. Wesr survived, but during his convalescence Roskus seized sole power in a bloodless palace coup. This move was transparently out of character for the obsequious and sycophantic Roskus, and the involvement of Getten intelligence agents was correctly suspected. George Wesr and his inner circle fled to South Africa, where the Toromist government warmly welcomed them. Vidha Roskus rapidly purged any remaining pro-Wesr elements from the bureaucracy with the help of foreign intelligence agents, and declared an indefinite period of martial law in Bohemia due to the continuing threat of "Wesrite subversives." Just as quickly as he cemented his power, Vidha Roskus' demeanor had been transformed. Roskus had restored the honor of his family name, besmirched by his father so many years ago in the lonely passes of the Hindu Kush. Vidha now held himself with the proud military-aristocratic bearing befitting his class, and acted more decisively as well. The cowardice of years past had been conquered. The new Vidha Roskus was a bold man of action, but also one who had been quietly learning George Wesr's weaselly tricks during all of their years of uneasy collaboration.

After securing power, Roskus reached out to the Getten government to normalize relations. Progress was slow at first, but eventually Roskus negotiated the 1930 Decade Accords, in which he and the Whiteshirts would remain in power in Bohemia so long as they accepted greater economic integration with Gettenfeld and formally returned to the Getten sphere of influence. This was a major diplomatic victory for the new Bohemian leader, and he used his newfound external security to focus on weeding out internal dissent. Roskus worked to clean up the image of the Whiteshirts in the first half of the 1930's, remolding them from roving bands of street thugs to a disciplined national gendarme corps. The Necare were officially removed from sole power in favor of a multi-party National Coalition. However, all the most powerful posts in the NatCol were occupied by Necare men. The remaining members of the NatCol represented an array of right-wing parties, but were essentially political set dressing. Vidha Roskus was elected as Generalissimo of the Whiteshirts, Chairman of the NatCol, and Minister of the Interior, giving him unrivaled political power. Though he was not the official leader of Bohemia on paper, Roskus was the defacto autocrat of the territory. The Roskus situation was not one the Getten government was particularly happy about or keen on supporting, but they much preferred Roskus' rule to Wesr's or, even worse, a costly and long reconstruction period.

George Wesr was blindsided by Roskus' coup, and fled in disarray with his family and closest allies to South Africa. He was accepted by Edward Toromas, Getten King-In-Exile, into the civil service, where his faculties as an administrator advanced his position at lightning speed. After seven years of dedicated service, Edward Toromas appointed Wesr as Prime Minister of South Africa in 1935. Wesr personally found the apartheid system Toromas had set up to be crude and distasteful, but he was seduced by the lucrative profits of the diamond trade. The extraction of precious metals was ramped up further and, as money poured into his purse as he acquired a financial stake in the mines, Wesr forgot all about his opposition to the near-slavery conditions that kept his profit margin high. Wesr increased the budget of Edward's armed forces, investing in a new and modern air force and expanding the Toromist Navy beyond the 20+ year old vessels of the mutineers. Wesr focused his greatest attention of all on building infrastructure in the hinterland. While it did provide greater mobility for rural subjects, the primary purpose of the new rail lines, roads, and canals was the facilitate the transport of raw materials to the ports for the profits of the Toromist elite. George Wesr came to South Africa a weaselly, backstabbing fascist but somehow managed to become even more morally depraved by wholeheartedly embracing the racist apartheid system of the Toromists.