I am reading the book, and I was quite surprised when the author skipped over to Japan to tell the story of the weakness of the Taisho democratic era.
That part is by Pablo Portillo, and I feel it provides useful perspective on the underlying reasons for the deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations.
I read the second Sino-Japanese War from the perspective of one of the Iron Phoenixes and Afanasy Khristoforov.
Hope you enjoyed it, especially the latter, which is by Jason "
@Talwar" Sharp. I don't think anyone had ever written an AH story from the point of view of a diamond prospector. I'm also interested in what you think about the story by
@Bruno Lombardi and how a foreign visitor experiences the war.
Gosh, ten years fighting Japan to defeat virtually alone, or did the U.S.A. and other countries contribute?
Not at first. China remains pretty much on its own until 1941, and the fact that both belligerents are more or less evenly matched makes the war a long, bloody, indecisive slog until the Western powers get dragged kicking and screaming into it.
I'm glad the Soviet Union was established in the Civil War, though it is a shame they couldn't break the Whites at the Yenisei River.
Yes, the situation in Russia is mostly unaffected by the POD until later, so the Bolsheviks take over on schedule (there are a few minor butterflies but nothing that causes serious changes). I must say setting up the White regime in Eastern Siberia was one of the most fun parts of the project, and I have developed quite the soft spot for Dmitry Horvath.
Did War break out in Europe? Afanasy did infer something like that.
I and the other contributors seriously debated to what extent the TL should diverge from OTL when it comes to the war in Europe and in the Pacific, but after weighing the pros and cons we thought it best to have things play out in a roughly similar way, notwithstanding a number of butterflies.
Did the Soviet Union manage to defeat the Third R---- even with a portion of Russia missing? I was hoping the Chinese, as being imperialists, would not ally with the R----. But if fascist Japan invaded China, then it seems the alliances of the war remained the same.
WW2-era USSR is missing a few points of GDP and a few million citizens compared with OTL, but isn't weakened to the point of being unable to roll back the Nazi invasion. And yes, the wartime alliances are more or less the same.