It was always a given that Israel would have a constitution.

Only among the higher-ups at Mapai, particularly those most closely aligned with Ben Gurion’s pro-Western clique, was there an inkling that perhaps Israel would not need a real constitution. It could, like Britain, operate on a de facto, rather than de jure basis.

It is the right of the conqueror to decide policy upon the conquered, after all.

Among the constitutionalists in the Israel government, there were a few models that circulated during 1948, the height of Ben-Gurion’s dominance. Would the model be American? A few compromises stitched together with a bill of rights would certainly be enough, but it was also deeply lacking for the particulars of the Zionist experiment. Others pointed to the Mexican constitution, a tome of individual laws, meant to serve less as a guiding light in internal affairs and more as a Hammurabi-style legal code.

Eventually, a new model came to the forefront: Czechoslovakia. Even among western-aligned members of Mapai, the consensus was that if Israel were to have a constitution, it would be the Czech model.

Mapam and the Israeli left agreed, though perhaps not for the same reasons.

The first thing the Knesset did when it came into session in April of 1949 was to name itself. It passed unanimously. The name was just too good, too filled with biblical and practical meaning.

The second thing the Knesset did when it came into session in April of 1949 was to recognize the authority of the Central People’s Government of the Republic of China (in a resolution proposed by the great sinophile Yitzhak Sadeh). The Israeli diplomatic corps, still focused on the evacuation of Shanghai, responded to this with a few exasperated sighs.

The third thing the Knesset did when it came into session in April of 1949 was begin the drafting of the new constitution, a task which involved an equal combination of compromise, lying, and plagiarism.

It wasn’t just that significant sections of the constitution were stolen verbatim from the Czech constitution, itself stolen verbatim from the Stalin Constitution of 1936, but that everyone knew exactly what was happening.

There was an implicit threat, one which the right-wing opposition in Herut understood all too well. If the constitution was put into practice, Israel could no longer realistically claim to be neutral, but now a fully fledged member of the Eastern Bloc, in theory if not in practice.

But there was nothing the opposition could do. Herut Knesset members sat helplessly as Communists debated the best guarantees for the Kibbutzim.

Even the progressives, wooed by the promise of constitutionally guaranteed property rights and freedom of speech, went along. A clique of left-leaning Mapai members, led by Golda Meir, recognized at a certain point that it was far better to cooperate than to argue for the bewildering “anti-constitutionalist” position advocated by Herut.

And so it came to pass, on July 4th, 1949. The Knesset adopted a new constitution, and a new name change. They were now officially citizens of the People’s Democratic Republic of Israel.

Section One of the constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Israel (Adopted July 4th, 1949)

Article 1. (1) The State of Israel is a Democratic People’s Republic

(2) The people are the sole source of all power in the state

Article 2.

(1) The Democratic People’s Republic of Israel is a Jewish and Democratic state, the national territorial center of the Jewish people

(2) The Rights of all citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Israel will not be infringed due to religion, race, or language.

Article 3.

(1)The maintenance of the Democratic People’s Republic is the neccesarry duty of all citizens of Israel. No privilege prevents any citizen from building People’s Democracy in the State of Israel.

(2) All Citizens have the right to submit petitions for redress of grievances to the Knesset, and all citizens have the right to seek justice from the state

Article 4. (1) The enforcement of the rights in this constitution is the duty of the Knesset, elected by the people, controlled by the people, and composed of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Israel.

(2)All Citizens over the age of 18 have the right to vote in any national election in the Democratic People’s Republic of Israel. The vote is secret, universal, and direct.

(3)The right of citizens to form political parties, trade unions, women’s groups, Kibbutzim, and the other parts of community political life is fundamental and absolute.

Article 5.

The Knesset is the organ of the people’s will in Israel, the supreme national assembly composed of 120 members, elected to a term of 4 years each.

Article 6.

(1) The President of the Democratic People’s Republic is the head of state.

Article 7.

(1) The Rights of Women are absolute, and Men and Women are equal before the law

(2) The Knesset must take every action to defend the rights of Women, and no measure may be taken by any element of government which infringes upon their fundamental equality.

Article 8.

(1) Freedom of speech within the People’s Democratic Republic of Israel is absolute. Freedom of the press will not be infringed, nor will freedom of thought or belief.

(2) No citizen of Israel may be extradited, nor turned over to any foreign power for any reason

Article 9.

(1) The judicial power is exercised by independent courts. (2) The judges are both judges by profession and lay judges; they are both equal in any decision. (3) The judges discharge their office independently, being bound solely by the Legal Order of the People's democracy

Article 10.

(1)The economic life of the state of Israel is the purview and the responsibility of the state, with power vested in it by the people. It is the duty of the government to direct and plan the economy towards the maximum benefit of the Jewish People and all others residing in Israel.

(2) The Kibbutzim and cooperatives are the lifeblood of the Zionist experiment in Israel; safeguarding their existence and expansion is the solemn duty of all citizens, and the government which represents those citizens.

(3) Small and medium enterprises, where they do not conflict with the needs of the people, are to be protected.

President Chaim Weizmann has decreed that July 4th will be a new national holiday in Israel, Constitution Day, celebrating the achievement of the first Knesset and the creation of the first truly Jewish Constitution.

The Nahal was formed in 1948, intended by Ben-Gurion as a quasi-replacement of the Palmach, and established as a system of reserve training alongside agricultural service.

For Dr. Moshe Sneh, however, the establishment of the Nahal presented an opportunity that extended far beyond the creation of a reserve-training system. A former officer in the Polish Army, Sneh possessed direct knowledge of the interwar Związek Strzelecki (Riflemen’s Association), and how it occupied a particularly important place in Poland’s political imagination. During his time in the Polish Army, he had also become acquainted with many men who had served within its ranks, giving him a proper appreciation of organization.

Sneh believed that Israel, confronted with circumstances far more precarious than that of even interwar Poland, required an institution of comparable ambition and stature. Israel possessed a small population, a rapidly expanding immigrant community, a limited industrial base, and extensive frontier regions that demanded both settlement and protection. The Army for the Defence of Israel had emerged from the War of Independence with considerable experience but also with the organizational difficulties inherent from transforming several pre-state military formations into a unified national army. The government still faced the challenge of developing and rebuilding kibbutzim, and ensuring that the defence of remote settlements - some indeed on abandoned Arab villages - did not depend exclusively upon the permanent deployment of regular army units. Sneh had grand plans, believing that he could expand and transform Nahal, not only to serving as a mix of military training and the agricultural settlements, but also being an active reserve force which can assist both police and the military in times of trouble. Naturally, the Nahal would take from the traditions of the Palmach and pioneer-Zionism. Its members would receive military instruction and public order instruction, alongside their ordinary employment or agricultural service on the Nahal settlements, periodically attending training exercises and maintaining the skills necessary for mobilization. The Nahal would establish local branches in the cities, kibbutzim, amongst new immigrant communities, frontier areas, ensuring a sort of revolutionary militia system, as well as expanded its base of recruitment to any citizen of Israel.

The Nahal Reformation Act passed the Knesset on July 19, just days after the beginning of the Truman Affair. Already dominated by kibbutzniks, the new Nahal was further solidified with various Mapam-affiliated organizers and activists, aiming to whip them up into shape as quickly as possible for fear of “reactionary anti-Zionist excursions.”

June 1949

The Cabinet of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the sole legitimate government of the Korean nation, announces that the Workers Party of North Korea and the Workers Party of South Korea will merge into a single party, the Workers’ Party of Korea. A joint plenary meeting of the two Central Committees and a founding congress will be convened to carry this out, and the Government will give the work every assistance. This decision follows the proposal to form a Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, and the Government regards the two as parts of a single task: gathering every patriotic and democratic force in Korea under one banner against national division.

The two parties are branches of one tree. Both descend from the Communist Party of Korea, and both were formed in 1946 by uniting the democratic forces of their respective zones. The Party in the North has since grown to more than 800,000 members, with cells in every factory, farming village, and fishing community. It has carried out land reform, the Labour Law, and it fulfilled the 1948 economic plan. The Party in the South has been outlawed and hunted, yet it kept its organization alive. Its members led the strikes against the separate elections, rose on Jeju, and stood beside the mutinous units at Yosu, Sunchon, Kurye, and Taegu and in the mountains of Odae, Jiri, and Halla. Having fought side by side, they cannot be kept in separate organizations by a line that foreign powers drew across the country.

The Republic itself is the proof that Korea is one nation. It was founded on the decisions of the April 1948 Joint Conference of Representatives of Political Parties and Social Organizations of North and South Korea, and its Supreme People’s Assembly was chosen by electors from both halves of the country. Its Central Government is composed of representatives of parties and organizations from the North and the South. The Soviet Union has withdrawn its troops completely at the Republic’s request, and the last of them left in December 1948. American troops still occupy the South, shielding a regime of pro-Japanese elements and traitors to the nation that cannot stay in power without them. Its leaders now speak of a “northern expedition,” and they beg the United Nations Commission on Korea to bless the prolonged presence of foreign troops. To this the Government replies that Korea is for the Koreans, and that the Korean question will be settled by the Korean people themselves.

A nation seeking to reunify itself cannot be led by two separate party centers. The Party’s line is the peaceful reunification of the country by the Korean people’s own efforts, and the merger serves this line. It brings the Southern comrades into the leadership of the movement on equal terms and joins the industrial strength of the North to the revolutionary struggle in the South. It also gives the Government a single unified party to rely on in carrying out the Two-Year National Economic Plan, which will lay the material foundation for reunification.

The Government announces the following. A joint committee of both parties will draft the program and rules of the Workers’ Party of Korea and prepare the founding congress. The leaders of both parties will together lead the new organization. The Government will take all measures within its power to protect the Southern cadres and their families. The Republic will also support the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, which is open to every party, organization, and individual who opposes national division and the foreign occupation of the South.

The Government calls on all patriots, North and South, to unite more firmly around the Republic and carry forward the save-the-nation struggle. It calls on the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the people’s democracies that have recognized the Republic to welcome the new party as an act of national self-determination. And to Syngman Rhee, his American patrons, and the UNCOK, the Government states that the Korean nation is one, that its people will never be divided, and that those who sell the country will answer to the people.

---

Yoshida Loses Vote of No Confidence!

---
12th July 1949

---
With the effects of the Dodge Line, issued by American occupation authorities in March, being felt across the nation, Yoshida’s position became more and more precarious. By now it could be fairly assessed that the consequence of the American order was economic recession, accompanied by unpopular austerity policies. This had severe consequences for the average Japanese citizen, with many losing their jobs as businesses grappled with losses and in some cases were forced into bankruptcy. Many in the unions were beginning to get restless and fear of labour unrest was spreading.

These economic and social conditions provided the perfect opportunity for the enemies of Yoshida within the Diet to make their move against him. With American censors preventing occupation forces being officially blamed for the economic failure (although their responsibility was obvious to many), the responsibility fell primarily to Yoshida to defend the economic reform. This he attempted to do unsuccessfully on various occasions during debate in the Diet. He argued that stabilisation was necessary to prevent the continuing inflation and economic disorder, an argument many in the opposition found unconvincing.

With his failure seemingly apparent, the Socialist party triggered a vote of no confidence in his leadership, arguing the government had pursued its economic agenda without adequate protection for workers and small business owners who had been hit hardest by the recession. As such, Yoshida had lost the confidence of the house. 

The vote was supported by the Democrats, National Cooperatives, Communists and the Labourers’ and Farmers’ party, as well as a handful of independents, allowing it to pass. None of these parties had any reason to provide Yoshida with a rescue, despite his negotiation with the leadership of the Democratic party. Many Democrats had in fact been open to saving Yoshida, however he had proven difficult to work with in negotiations, unwilling to budge on various policy elements. The economic and social situation would make elections favourable for the opposition parties, and should Yoshida fail to call them it would only further discredit him and contribute to overall unrest. This would also likely have served only to annoy the American authorities further, who had no desire to see instability grow in Japan.

Under Article 69 of the Constitution, Yoshida was required either to resign his Cabinet or dissolve the House of Representatives within ten days of the successful no-confidence vote. Unwilling to surrender office to an opposition-controlled Diet, and confident that a new election could restore his parliamentary majority, Yoshida chose dissolution. In particular, the role of the Communists in allowing the vote to pass allowed him to attempt to portray the opposition as sympathetic to communism, and actively open to working with the Communist party, even if there had been no official cooperation. Likewise, the opposition was fractured, and could not necessarily reform to cooperate against him as it had earlier in the year, the chance to win power outright making cooperation harder for many in the Democratic or Socialist party to swallow. It would therefore be a simple matter of divide and conquer, Yoshida’s broad conservative movement against a fractured opposition. 

As per the constitution, the next election was scheduled for a month's time in August.

Using equipment largely paid for with US import/export loans and making deals with American companies making the equipment, President Carlos Prío Socarrás made a short speech to the ‘nation’ congratulating the CMQ broadcasting company on Cuba’s first television broadcast, and expressed his hope for the technology to serve as a force bringing citizens together from around the country. While the message was one of hope, the reality did not quite align with this hopeful view.

While competing interests mainly soon establish rival television channels, for the moment Cubans have a whopping single channel to listen to. This channel largely rebroadcasts Mexican shows and performances, with a special half hour block at 4 PM dedicated to Cuban news largely just paraphrasing articles in Havana’s top newspapers. Of interest to most Cubans is the broadcasting of baseball games which is some of the first live non-studio entertainment broadcasted, with CMQ mostly keeping their radio broadcasts of MLB games to the radio.

At the moment Havana is the only city configured to get any broadcasting, but there are plans to expand into Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, and Camagüey soon. Rival radio broadcasters have also announced their intentions to begin broadcasting television, with most electing to be ‘variety’ channels in the same vein as the CMQ. The President in his speech promised a plan to help bring television to rural areas, though considering that most villages in the countryside don’t even have electricity that seems like a tall order to fulfill.

25th July 1949,

As thousand of delegates enter the Luna Park indoor arena the art deco style arena famous for hosting indoor events like boxing events and concerts now take on a new type of event the Peronist Party Convention.

As other peronist leaders make their speeches from trade unionists to youth leaders the question remains on everyone's minds when will the President himself speak ? On the schedule itself it wasn't mention acting like it's a surprise and the President is watching from one of arena's suites or boxes but in actuality he was still at the Casa Rosada'

In his office he's contemplating while he stares at the ceiling and on his desk is another resignation letter from Jose Bramuglia his foreign minister a maestro in his 3 years term as foreign affairs minister one of the men who broke the blockade in Berlin last year now he wants out after months of harassment from Peronists who gravitate around the President's own wife Eva with the press aligned with the party have censured him making him feel like a non person or like he has never existed on this very earth. He begins to linger and think about his time with Bramuglia back when he was Secretary of Labour where they both met and collaborated in uplifting the workers of Argentina they both work hand in hand on matters related towards social security, education and labour rights even when Peron was Vice President and when he moved up the ladder after the election in 1946 and became President he entrusted Bramuglia to be Foreign Affairs Minister now the man who was there with him since day 1 is now leaving.

Peron turns towards the mirror and said "Monsters. I've created monsters." like he was speaking to someone to let his real feelings out but he can't to keep up the momentum of his movement to ensure reform in the republic he loved. "I hope he understands. God im so fucking helpless" as Peron sighed by himself.

26th July 1949,

On the next day of the convention Bramuglia was invited to speak as he get on stage some peronists heckled him calling him "traitor' 'scumbag" before being silence by the head of events telling the crowd to be silent.

So begins his speech:

"The members of this hall i have been grateful to serve with you. You are comrade in arms in our struggle for a better Argentina. Just because of a few people and their willpower i have been sidelined, slandered and defamed. Do not think if you erase my name and image from the papers you can take away my faith in the cause !"

The crowd begin the heckle him throwing materials like shoes towards him some of the Peronist Youth shielded him and he continued off script and began another speech where he said:

"You hate me Today because you still love me !"

The crowd heckles grew louder as they call him "traitor" "crook" and "oppurtunists"

"Its incredibly ironic how all of you call me traitor while i have fought for the cause since the start i was loyal to President even when he sent to prison 4 years ago ! The fight for the betterment of the workers is something that stays deep in my blood. Do not think of you bullying me will deny me from being a Peronist, that you will prevent me from working for the cause and for the republic itself ! But let me tell you this i have no forgiveness for the cowards who want me out. I gave you 6 years of my life. 6 years !"

The crowd heckled became violent as they began throwing coins and seats at the stage with Peronist Youth escorting the minister out to the backstage. Peron watching the speech from the arena's suites was shocked to see the hecklers but even more shocked that Bramuglia has said those words. But in the suite his colleagues all laughed at Bramuglia speech especiall Jose Acre a chief opponent to Bramuglia and the person eyeing for his job. Peron began saying Bramuglia will grovel back to his feet he says he will keep him in line for sure and will trap him like a quail in a birdcage. Carlos Aloe the President's Private Secretary said "Fine we agree with the plan. So what newspaper we will erase him from ?" the people the room laughed Jose Acre then said "maybe misspell his name to annoy him more ?" the people continue to laugh as they laugh Peron kept saying No No No and end it with "This censoring has to stop." Hipolito Paz a young lawyer of the Presidential Office began breaking the silence with "Oh your excellency you're joking he's joking !"

Peron says he's not joking he sees that Bramuglia is rising but he doesn't want a person like him leaving yet in this trying time for Argentinian diplomacy he later rambles about how he doesn't want Argentina to snowball into a tinpot nation where everyone can't trust it. The people in the room stayed silent and began leaving. Peron begins looking at your direction and says "unity is something i will preach on later but even i myself a hypocrite to those plans."

29th July 1949,

Some peronists call this mega day as both President Peron and Eva Peron are to make their speeches to end the convention. 3 days ago still shocked from Bramuglia outburst on the stage made the President go on a daze for a couple of days he began to think yes Bramuglia looks like a threat but he was a loyal follower of the movement even before Peron were president but factions within the party and Peron's own wife Eva despises him over him talking down about the Rainbow Tour. The President must make a decision soon to calm his party down or not he has a tough time winning the 1951 election "Unity yea something i need right now is something like that. Jesus Christ."

The first big event for the final day will Eva Peron's speech she is met with cheers and chants of support from the crowd as the crowd calms down she begins his speech explaining why she's here. She praises the new constitution granting voting rights to all women in the republic and thanked the members of the constitutional convention as a gift to the women of Argentina an avenue for political representation she announces the creation of the Partido Peronista Femenino or the Peronist Feminist Party a parallel wing to the main Peronist Party. Their aim is to empower wome voices and encourage women to run in elected offices from local up to the national level in Congress.

"The female party that I lead in my country is logically tied to the Peronist movement, but it is independent as a party from the one made up of men. I have arranged it precisely this way so that women do not become masculinized in their political zeal.

Just as only the workers could save themselves, and just as I have always repeated Perón's words that 'only the humble will save the humble,' I also believe that only women will be the salvation of women. There lies the cause of my decision to organize the female party outside the political organization of the Peronist men. We are entirely united by the Leader, unique and undisputed.

We are in this gigantic struggle what we have always been: great or heroic, humble or forgotten in glory or adversity; women ready to fulfill our duty, making of America what it must be a grand and indisputable land of brotherhood."

As the crowd cheers they call upon the President to deliver his speech he enters a place and crowd outside sounds slowly drown out and he begins to speak towards somebody no one knows who he begins to say:

"Today, 29 July, in the year 1949, is a date that will go down in history. I'm like an animal, I can smell the times ahead."

Slowly the sound of the crowd comes back singing the Peronist Anthem Marcha Peronista

"And this is my time. Out there, my people, My lost people, in need of a man of strong conviction and simple ideas. The desperate, the downtrodden, the machinist, the dock workers, Labourers."

Crowd noises grow stronger and stronger as he steps out and the crowd begins to cheer and sing praises of the President

"In this desperate moment, these people who felt they have no place in the world got their moment, they were dismissed like trash on the spot, these people are My People. I can feel their anger, their hatred. I only have them and they have me. History is made out of outcast, inflame their anger, arm them with not just bombs and guns but even with the ballot pencil as well. I will make Revolution with them !"

He then turns to the crowd and begins his speech he talks about unity the unity of a party is as important as the unity of the people of the republic it shows that the nation is stable and ready to face challenges head on. The reformation of the party structure is absolute and needed therefore all warring factions will be dissolved no more are the days of independence under one banner now its Unity among Everyone. The Labour Party and UCR dissidents will be fully absorbed and the creation of a three column system is introduced (Men, Women and Trade Unions).

"Gentlemen: First of all, I celebrate having the immense satisfaction of being able to greet all the men assembled here who, at this moment, represent the feelings and bring the representation of the political forces that support our work and our labor in all corners of the Republic.

I celebrate it, gentlemen, because our forces had constituted until now and especially during the electoral struggles of February 24 what I call more or less 'a warfare of montoneras' [unruly local militias]: a force that had more enthusiasm and decision than organization. And I celebrate it even more because, from this moment on, we become an organized, unified body.

The time of internal factions, of names that divide us, and of regional rivalries has passed. From today forward, the movement moves as a single machine under a vertical command, where the individual aligns behind the collective purpose of the Fatherland."

After the unification decree The President begins his official codification of Justicialismo into the party's constitution stating it's the absolute ideology of the party

"The Argentinian community will be well-organized only when it is united by the spirit, alongside the organization that binds it from a legal perspective. The doctrine is the point of departure for the organization of a collective.

This ethical foundation is what the people must deeply sink their teeth into, to imbue generations of Argentines with this civilization that brings respect for tradition and customs, for the family, for the Fatherland, and for the honor of the Nation.

It is absolutely necessary to resolutely face this third stage: that is, the consolidation of social reform and the consolidation of economic reform, thus favoring the materialization of a new one, which is, casually, the political reform. Our goal remains clear: to permanently establish a nation that is socially just, economically free, and politically sovereign."

“Brothers and sisters, if you can hear my voice tonight, then know that we are still here.

Having pleaded with the government in vain to enforce the laws established to protect ordinary Bolivians, we now look to defend our people ourselves.

Seeking to protect our Indigenous communities from foreign exploitation and the violent encroachment upon their lands by oligarchs and landowners.

Denouncing the illegal practices of colonato and pongueaje, which condemn the Indigenous peoples of Bolivia to humiliation, exploitation, and violence at the hands of landowners and estate authorities.

Asserting the right of all Bolivian miners and peasants to receive wages in legal tender, rather than tokens issued by corporations.

Vindicating the dignity of Bolivian miners and their right to safe working conditions, pensions, and union representation.

Condemning the administration of Mamerto Urriolagoitia and his cabinet for their incompetence and flagrant collusion with those responsible for the National Catastrophe.

Demanding immediate elections, the liberation of all political prisoners, and an end to the persecution of union leaders.

The National Revolutionary Movement, in defense of the right of every Bolivian to a decent life and an honest living, and representing the miners, peasants, and students of Bolivia, is therefore compelled to call for a General Strike, beginning on July 1st.

To our party cadres, union leaders, and veterans: we call upon you to action. Reactivate your formations.

To all Bolivians: do not surrender hope. A better Bolivia is possible.

¡Viva Bolivia!

¡Vivan los trabajadores!

¡Vivan los campesinos!

¡Viva el Ejército!"

The political and social situation in Bolivia had been deteriorating since the end of the Second World War. The country was still reeling from its humiliating defeat in the Chaco War, while successive ineffective governments, although reformist in character, had failed to deliver meaningful results.

Foreign corporations, supported by the United States and the United Kingdom during the war to secure a steady supply of ore, had grown exponentially, acting as a state within a state across much of the country. Through company stores and payment systems, they issued tokens redeemable at designated suppliers instead of legal tender, while their contracts gave them considerable influence over the country's fiscal policy.

Landowners, emboldened by the influx of foreign currency generated by mining, consolidated their holdings, acquiring land from smaller proprietors through violence and extortion. Mechanization followed, with tractors and modern agricultural techniques making their way into Bolivia. Yet, stripped of the social and economic reforms that had accompanied modernization elsewhere, these changes did little to improve the lives of rural workers. Wages stagnated, material conditions deteriorated, and landowners increased production to unprecedented levels through coercion and the violent exploitation of peasants.

Indigenous communities bore the brunt of this brutality. Pongueaje, the unpaid domestic servitude imposed upon Indigenous people by landowning families, expanded as peasants were driven deeper into poverty. Physical and sexual abuse were widespread. Colonato, a system of servitude binding Indigenous families to estates, likewise expanded as landowners modernized their properties, extending roads and irrigation systems while maintaining armed paramilitary formations to suppress their workers.

The National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) grew out of these grievances. Formed by intellectuals, disgruntled military officers, and union organizers, it sought to break with the oligarchic system that had governed Bolivia since the turn of the century. The party's central objective was the modernization and democratization of the country through the authority of the state, dismantling feudal practices and structures.

The MNR had briefly entered government in the 1940s before being overthrown in a coup led by officials loyal to the established oligarchic order. The overthrow was facilitated by an economic crisis and widespread popular anger over the movement's authoritarian policies.

Tensions continued to accumulate as the government refused to acknowledge the deepening social crisis. Meanwhile, the MNR reorganized, reactivating party cells throughout the country and securing the support of sympathetic army units, Indigenous leaders, and labor organizers.

On July 1st, miners in Oruro, Chiquiasca, and Santa Cruz clashed with private security forces, overpowering them and seizing control of the principal mines. Peasants subsequently joined the strike, seizing weapons from sympathetic army units and taking control of haciendas, killing their owners and administrators.

During the night, the garrison of Santa Cruz de la Sierra surrounded the governor's palace, arrested the governor, and ordered the seizure of banks to finance the insurrection.

On the morning of July 2, Captain Antonio Seleme assembled a Revolutionary Government Junta in the city, lifted the restrictions imposed on the MNR, and called for party members living abroad to return to Bolivia to organize and support the war effort.

The government in La Paz refused to surrender. Mobilizing loyal army units and the newly formed Air Force to crush the uprising, while Santa Cruz organized worker militias to confront advancing government forces.

April, 1949

Tân Sơn Nhứt Airfield, Saigon

The crowd of reporters, government ministers dressed smartly in western suits and a well-manicured list of key stakeholders in the Provisional Central Government---no---State of Vietnam waited with baited breath in the sweltering humid air that was Saigon in April. With temperatures above 30^o C, many silently cursed the time of day as the lumbering DC-8 carrying the Chief of State and Emperor wheeled off the runway and slowly taxied towards the terminal. Four days, five transfers and weeks of struggle finally came to this moment: Bao Dai was back in Vietnam.

The ramp descended, bringing with it a welcome cool as the props gradually slowed down. Two local policemen saluted smartly as the Emperor stepped down the stairs and onto the hard asphalt of the airport. Prime Minister Nguyễn Văn Xuân was first to greet him with a respectful bow.

"Your Excellency. Welcome to Saigon."

Photographers of the government press captured two smiling men smiling, united, together. But to those visiting, there was an undeniable tension. Vietnam was to be, at least on paper, self-governing. However, even with the return of Cochinchina, the situation was far from stable. The ever aloof Bao Dai would soon be knee deep in the resorts of Nha Trang, all the meanwhile the state would be tasked with building from the ground up functioning institutions, all the while the formal details of independence were yet to be ironed in Phenom Penh. To those stakeholders, arrayed carefully in immaculate protocol, the air was the least sticky thing in the Pearl of the Orient.

15th February 1949
The home of Marius Moutet, Paris

There was a knock at the door, soon answered by the household butler. Opening the door, the butler froze with shock

“Gaston? Who is it?”

The butler replied with a quiver

“Sir, it’s…it’s General de Lattre and”

“General René Cogny”

“General-”

Before Gaston could finish Marius was already at the door

“Gentlemen! What a surprise! Gaston, please bring our best red wine for these two gentlemen here”

Jean smiled

“Mr Moutet, while I appreciate the gesture we both must refuse. We are technically still on the job”

“Ahh I see. Then Gaston, please fetch us all some water”

“As you wish sir”

Gaston waddled off to the kitchen while Marius welcomed the two war heroes into his home

“Gentlemen, I hope you take no offence when I ask, why are you here? I am simply a member of the assembly, I have nothing much to do with the French Armed Forces. I cannot think of anything we have to talk about”

Jean and René sat down opposite the jovial man in front of them, accepting their respective glasses of water from Gaston before answering

“Mr Moutet-”

“Please, call me Marius”

“Marius, we saw the newspaper articles on Minister Coste-Floret’s speech. You were there, lurking in the background. We also conducted our own research into what happened in 1946 and 1947, when you were minister. This new…direction definitely did not come from the MRP. No, you are the brains behind the ‘confederation’.”

Marius straightened his back, voice cooling, smile fading

“My point still stands, what does this have to do with you two?”

Finally the elder general spoke

“I want in.”

“You want…in?”

“I want to help. I recently became fascinated with the situation in Indochina, especially after the failures of operations Papillion, Lea and Ceinture. I’ve drafted up a number of ideas for how we can ‘win’ in Indochina and your Confederation is at the heart of them”

Marius remained stiff, cautiously evaluating the former commander of the French First Army, the face of the French army post-liberation. He had a cushy job as commander-in-chief of the WUDO, simple curiosity would not motivate the man to seek an active combat role in the far east of all places. There was something else at play…which, at the end of the day, need not be uncovered. Just as he had approached minister Coste-Floret unprompted, General de Lattre was approaching him, and his need for assistance was plain

“When I drafted my initial drafts for the Confederation I had concepts of a Confederal army but I am a politician, not a soldier. If you can develop a proper proposal for such a force by the time the conference starts, then I’m sure that I can push for your appointment as its commander amongst political circles.”

Jean betrayed a hint of a smile

“I think that is amenable. What say you, General Cogny?”

“I agree wholeheartedly, sir”

Marius clapped his hands and rose from his chair

“Perfect, then let us begin!”

Jean and René followed suit

“Indeed. I’ll have a briefing ready for you with my ideas within the day. In the meantime René here will prepare to accompany your entourage to Phnom Penh to lay the groundwork for a part of my plan that doesn’t require the Confederation, per se”

Marius raised an eyebrow

“Won’t that be stepping on some military toes?”

“I’ll handle that. Military advisors is not a controversial idea”

Marius relented, not entirely satisfied but also not in any position to contest further

“Then we march forward arm in arm, to victory!”

All three men raised their glasses of water

"To Victory!"

7 July 1949

In a truly momentous occasion for both the United Kingdom and the Western world at large, the North Atlantic Treaty was recently signed in Washington D.C. by the twelve founding member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with the United Kingdom being one of them.

The purpose of this new organization and the treaty which underpins it is to provide for the collective defence of Western Europe and North America. While the treaty itself does not explicitly name any particular foe against which the alliance is arrayed, it is very clear from the context of the treaty and the state of global affairs that NATO will exist to oppose and defend its member states from the Soviet Union. The founding members of NATO have found a common threat and a common cause in this regard, and thus have declared with the signing of this treaty that an attack against any one of them shall be considered an attack against all of them.

Merely signing the treaty does not complete the process however, as it is up to each signatory to also ratify the treaty before it can fully come into effect. In this regard, the United Kingdom has moved relatively swiftly, with the House of Commons briefly debating and soon overwhelmingly endorsing the treaty. The official instrument of ratification was signed a few days later by His Majesty King George VI, and on 7 July 1949, the instrument of ratification was deposited in Washington D.C., with the United Kingdom being one of the first signatories to do so. All that remains is for the rest to follow suit for the North Atlantic Treaty to come into effect.

Paris, June 1949

Paul Giacobbi had returned to the meetings of the Rassemblement's parliamentary leadership at an awkward moment. On 2 June, General de Gaulle presided over a meeting of the liaison committee between the RPF and its intergroups in the National Assembly and the Council of the Republic, where complaints concerning the movement's internal organization had become increasingly difficult to separate from disputes over electoral discipline. Giacobbi, the Radical deputy from Corsica and president of the Gaullist intergroup in the Palais-Bourbon, had spent much of the preceding months recovering from illness, but his objections to the conduct of the RPF's national leadership were already familiar to Jacques Soustelle. The General's secretary-general presided over an expanding apparatus of departmental committees, propaganda services and political organizers, while the twelve members of the national executive committee remained entirely outside Parliament. André Diethelm had even been obliged to surrender his place on the executive following his election to the Council of the Republic, despite subsequently becoming one of the most prominent Gaullist senators. The parliamentarians possessed representation on the National Council and had secured the establishment of a liaison committee, but they continued complaining that decisions concerning local candidates, parliamentary votes and relations with other political groups reached them after the national leadership had already settled the matter. De Gaulle considered the independence of the Rassemblement's direction essential to its purpose, particularly when so many of its supporters continued belonging to the Radicals, Independents and other parliamentary formations. Giacobbi regarded precisely those connections as the movement's greatest political strength, and the difference was becoming increasingly evident whenever the RPF attempted to impose the discipline of an ordinary party upon politicians who had joined it to escape the constraints of their existing organizations.

The disagreement was made unusually public by a cantonal by-election in Seine-et-Marne. Henri Lespès, a deputy elected under the MRP label in 1946 before joining the RPF, had presented himself for the general council seat of Melun-Sud with the support of the movement's national direction. His candidacy was challenged by the Independent Marcel Houdet, whose supporters included the department's RPF committees, the Radical-Gaullist deputy Lucien Bégouin and three senators associated with the Rassemblement. The dispute had already brought Edmond Michelet into the department to campaign for Lespès at Barbizon, where Bégouin publicly criticized the former minister over his conduct of the post-Liberation purges. De Gaulle had expressed his astonishment that two parliamentarians claiming allegiance to the same movement should oppose one another in a local election, and had given his support to Lespès. The departmental organizers were no more disposed to abandon Houdet, however, and the controversy exposed disagreements extending beyond the selection of a single candidate. Michelet, who had broken with the MRP over his attachment to de Gaulle, regarded the RPF's official endorsement as carrying obligations which its members could not disregard whenever local circumstances became inconvenient. Bégouin and the senators maintained closer connections with the Radicals and Independents of Seine-et-Marne, and considered the departmental committees better placed to judge which candidacy could attract the wider non-Communist electorate. Giacobbi had little sympathy for a system under which the national executive might disregard such advice while expecting elected parliamentarians to defend its consequences before their constituents.

René Capitant's departure from the UDSR during its June congress complicated these discussions further. The former Resistance leader and his parliamentary associates had refused to accept restrictions upon their membership of a separate Gaullist group, and Capitant now had particular reason to insist that the RPF preserve the distinction between a national movement and the older political parties. He remained committed to de Gaulle's constitutional objectives and rejected participation in the ordinary combinations sustaining Queuille, but the dispute with René Pleven and François Mitterrand had demonstrated the difficulties created by incompatible parliamentary allegiances. Soustelle was concerned that admitting parliamentarians more directly into the direction of the Rassemblement might reproduce the disagreements which had already weakened its intergroups, while Jacques Baumel, occupied with the movement's organization and recruitment, had to contend with reports from departmental committees complaining of insufficient consultation over electoral affairs. Michel Debré and the supporters of a firmer constitutional campaign had little interest in allowing the elected representatives to transform the movement's opposition into negotiations over ministerial appointments. Giacobbi, by contrast, insisted that consultation with Independents and Radicals did not imply acceptance of the existing regime, and that parliamentary cooperation could remain useful even when the RPF refused to enter its governments. The General heard these arguments without accepting that the political direction of his movement should become dependent upon the calculations of deputies whose parliamentary affiliations and local interests were often considerably older than their adherence to the Rassemblement.

The second ballot at Melun-Sud, held on 19 June, gave the controversy a more immediate consequence. Lespès withdrew in favour of the better-placed anti-Communist candidate, but Houdet's victory, secured with the support of local Radicals, Moderates and Christian Democrats as well as the Gaullist departmental organization, left the national leadership facing an embarrassing result. A candidate it had refused to endorse had won with the assistance of politicians who otherwise supported the RPF, while its own deputy had failed to obtain the position for which he had received the official nomination. The national organizers were unwilling to concede that a departmental committee could substitute its judgment for that of the movement's direction, and several parliamentarians considered the result further evidence that Paris could misjudge political circumstances outside the capital. Frédéric-Dupont and Edmond Barrachin, familiar with the practical demands of conservative electoral organization, had reason to sympathize with complaints about decisions taken without sufficient attention to local alliances, although neither wished to surrender the RPF's capacity to impose a national line. Diethelm faced a comparable problem in the Council of the Republic, where the disciplined Action démocratique et républicaine group sat alongside an intergroup containing senators whose attachment to the RPF varied considerably. Some of these men had already disregarded decisions reached at common meetings when voting in the Luxembourg, and demands for stricter discipline had arisen among the more committed Gaullists. The Melun affair consequently confronted the leadership with two contradictory demands: greater freedom for departmental organizations to arrange elections and more effective authority over parliamentarians who claimed to speak for the Rassemblement. Giacobbi and Diethelm also questioned whether disciplinary proceedings against elected representatives should be settled by the national secretariat without first hearing the parliamentary groups concerned, particularly when the dispute involved rival candidates supported by different sections of the movement.

By 24 June, the discussions between the General, Soustelle and the representatives of the parliamentary intergroups had produced agreement upon a reorganization of the national direction. Giacobbi had been pressing for the admission of parliamentarians to the executive, arguing that the existing liaison arrangements did little to prevent disagreements which arose before the deputies were consulted. Michelet and Capitant supported parliamentary participation for somewhat different reasons. The former was concerned with preserving the unity of the movement and the authority of its official candidates, while the latter wanted the constitutional case against the Republic to be defended by men familiar with the Assembly's proceedings rather than confined to declarations prepared outside it. Soustelle accepted that the intergroups possessed information and relationships unavailable to the secretariat, particularly concerning proposed legislation, local political combinations and the difficulties of retaining support among elected Moderates. De Gaulle agreed to replace the existing executive committee with a broader council of direction, admitting parliamentarians from both chambers while retaining his authority over its composition and general policy. The concession satisfied an important demand of the deputies without transferring control of the Rassemblement to its parliamentary representatives. The General continued to regard the establishment of new republican institutions, rather than an ordinary change of parliamentary majority, as the object of the movement, and refused to authorize negotiations which would commit the RPF to sustaining a government formed under the existing Constitution.

The names under consideration nevertheless gave Giacobbi reason to believe that a more effective arrangement might emerge. Michelet, Capitant and Barrachin represented distinct political backgrounds within the parliamentary movement, while Diethelm could bring the concerns of the senators directly before the national direction. Soustelle and Baumel were especially interested in making the enlarged council useful to the departmental organizations, whose correspondence had become increasingly extensive following the March cantonal elections. During the preparations, they agreed to a more regular procedure for transmitting parliamentary and local reports to the secretariat. The bureaux of the two intergroups were to communicate the principal difficulties arising from legislative business and electoral arrangements before the council examined questions affecting their members, with the secretary-general responsible for circulating the relevant information to the national organizers. Parliamentary representatives serving on the new council would be able to submit observations from their colleagues and request the examination of disputes originating in the departments, while the departmental committees would be asked to provide fuller accounts of proposed local agreements and competing candidacies. Baumel undertook to coordinate the organizational correspondence with Soustelle's services, and the parliamentary representatives secured provision for discussing contested endorsements before recommendations were presented to the General whenever circumstances permitted. Giacobbi pressed for a further safeguard concerning disciplinary proceedings, arguing that consultation would accomplish little if a parliamentarian could be deprived of his standing in the movement before his colleagues were permitted to examine the accusation. Michelet was initially reluctant to restrict the leadership's freedom of action, but accepted that referring contested cases to the existing commission des conflits might prevent the repetition of public quarrels such as the one at Melun-Sud. Soustelle agreed to establish that disciplinary action against parliamentarians arising from local electoral disputes would first be examined by the commission, with the parliamentary representatives on the new council receiving an opportunity to present their observations before a final decision was taken. The procedure would suspend the announcement of an exclusion until that examination had been completed, without preventing the national leadership from maintaining an official endorsement or issuing instructions to its members. De Gaulle accepted the arrangement on the understanding that the commission's findings were advisory and that final authority remained with the movement's direction. Giacobbi obtained a means of contesting disciplinary decisions before they became definitive, while Soustelle retained the power to enforce the political line once the required consultations had taken place.

On 28 June, de Gaulle completed the reorganization and appointed the new Conseil de direction, replacing the twelve-member executive committee with a body of twenty. Seven places were given to parliamentarians, including four deputies, Edmond Barrachin of the PRL, René Capitant of the Action démocratique et sociale, Paul Giacobbi of the Radical Party and Edmond Michelet of the RPF, together with three members of the Council of the Republic: Eugénie Éboué, Victor Chatenay, the mayor of Angers, and André Diethelm, all belonging to the Action démocratique et républicaine. The remaining thirteen places went to non-parliamentary figures, including Soustelle, Baumel, André Malraux, Pierre de Bénouville, Christian Fouchet, Gaston Palewski, Louis Vallon and other members of the national organization. Marcel Prélot, the former Strasbourg rector and former member of the MRP, also entered the direction. Alongside this council, de Gaulle constituted an administrative commission under his presidency or that of the secretary-general, charged with preparing and carrying out decisions. Soustelle, Baumel, Fouchet, Malraux and several other organizers served upon it, maintaining the practical management of the movement in the hands of men primarily occupied with its national organization. The parliamentary members consequently obtained a place in the direction without acquiring a majority over the non-parliamentary leadership, and de Gaulle continued appointing the organs of the movement himself. The arrangement concerning disciplinary proceedings was communicated to the parliamentary representatives as part of the new working procedures, requiring the secretariat to transmit relevant electoral disputes to the commission des conflits before the council reached a final decision upon exclusion.

The distinction between the two bodies was important to Soustelle, who had resisted turning the national secretariat into an instrument of parliamentary bargaining. The new council could now examine questions raised directly by Capitant or Giacobbi, and the presence of Diethelm and Éboué gave the senators an opportunity to explain disagreements emerging within their own intergroup, but the administrative commission retained responsibility for execution and the departmental machinery remained subordinate to the movement's national direction. Michelet welcomed the possibility of settling disagreements before they became public confrontations, particularly when questions of electoral endorsement involved several political families within the RPF. Barrachin was more concerned with the practical arrangements required to preserve alliances with Independent and conservative candidates, whose organizations frequently expected to retain control over their own nominations. Capitant continued pressing the constitutional question, regarding the parliamentary presence as an opportunity to confront ministers and deputies more effectively over the government's inability to undertake sustained reform. Giacobbi considered the additional disciplinary safeguard a necessary concession, but remained dissatisfied with the absence of an agreed limitation upon the sanctions themselves. His supporters welcomed the reform as recognition that the Rassemblement could not function without its elected representatives, while several national organizers regarded the enlargement chiefly as a means of securing closer adherence to decisions made by de Gaulle. The disagreement over the meaning of parliamentary consultation was therefore carried into the new council itself, where the parliamentarians now possessed a regular opportunity to argue their positions but remained subject to the General's ultimate authority. The commission des conflits could examine the circumstances of a disputed candidacy, including representations from departmental committees and parliamentary colleagues, but it could neither annul the national direction's electoral decisions nor oblige de Gaulle to accept a recommendation for leniency.

Before the month ended, Soustelle began organizing the circulation of departmental reports through the enlarged direction, with particular attention to constituencies where Radical, Independent and Gaullist candidates had competed for the same electorate. Baumel arranged for the secretariat to receive the intergroups' parliamentary observations alongside reports from the local committees, allowing the council to examine disputes over recruitment and electoral coordination with fuller knowledge of the persons involved. Michelet and Diethelm were concerned with the continuing disagreement in Seine-et-Marne, while Giacobbi maintained that the handling of Bégouin's conduct would reveal whether the national direction intended to treat its parliamentary members as participants in decisions or merely as recipients of instructions. De Gaulle remained firm in his support for Lespès and in his refusal to recognize competing authorities within the Rassemblement. Under the arrangements agreed during the reorganization, the secretariat was required to submit the disputed conduct of Bégouin and the other parliamentarians involved at Melun-Sud for examination before any exclusion became definitive. Giacobbi and Diethelm prepared their observations concerning the departmental election, while Soustelle continued defending the authority of the national endorsement and Baumel assembled the correspondence from Seine-et-Marne for the commission. The secretariat proceeded with the preparation of the council's next business, and the disciplinary question remained before the movement's newly constituted leadership.

The Carro Armato P.43 was the last in the line of Italian tanks developed during WWII. Classified then as a 'heavy' tank, it is in a sense outmoded in the coming world of the 1950s. That being said, the design is there, and given the refusal of the Americans to supply Panther II designs, is likely the best possible route for future Italian tank development.

The design will be split into two tracks, focused mainly on new medium and heavy vehicle hulls. The medium hull will be the basis of a new, 43-ton 'main battle tank', featuring the American 90mm Cannon, hull-mounted .30-06 MG, and top mounted M2. A casemated variant will mount the 90mm as a medium tank destroyer, developed with the possibility of up-gunning it to 105mm. Variations of the hull as a self-propelled medium gun, and self-propelled anti-aircraft gun will be developed. Both will have wider tracks and more reliable, powerful engines than the WWII-era design.

The heavy hull will form the basis of a 46 ton heavy tank featuring a to-be-developed 120mm cannon. Meant to match, approximately, the capability of the Soviet IS-2. A variation featuring a modified, 155mm version of the Cannone de 149/40 Modello 35 will be developed as a heavy assault gun, matching or exceeding the Soviet ISU-152. If the designs to the German 172mm cannon are acquired, the possibility of a heavy self-propelled gun will be pursued.

[June 1949, New Delhi]

Vallabhbhai Patel, Home Minister of India, and the second most powerful man of the Republic, delivers a radio address to the constituent assembly. His tone is serious but relaxed. The address would be published the next day in weekly newspapers.

"...As this nation comes into independence, we must endeavor to know ourselves, our strength, and our neighbors. For this reason our government shall create a new National Grand Survey, to take stock of the country's land, people, and finances. Just governance depends upon the foundation of public policy in fact, and the evidentiary process. These surveys shall form the foundation of the states knowledge moving into the era of independence. The Committee shall oversee several distinct studies, and shall coordinate resources between them. The Nation Census Study shall go into every corner of the country, and interview households to determine their holdings, its members, its language, to what caste or tribe it belongs, if any, and what its economic condition is. This effort shall also form the basis of the countries future electoral structure, with census takers being registered into the national voting rolls; and population tables being created for the purpose of creating electoral maps. The National Geographic Study will endeavor to create an accurate cadaestral map of the whole country; as well as to accurately record information about soil quality, water table levels and rainfall, and geologic type. The National Financial Survey will investigate all existing sources of National, State, and municipal revenues, compile customs information on all imports and exports, and create a comprehensive map of the countries financial institutions, both public and private. These efforts combined will enable the government to make appropriate decisions on behalf of all our citizenry, not just those who happen to live near centers of power. Without an accurate measure of ones self, one cannot ever hope to accomplish the fullest of ones potential."

The new Grand Survey committee would be subsidiary to ministry of Home affairs. Notable among its members is Sukumar Sen, a capable mathematician who is put in charge of the Census study portion of the Survey. The Survey represents a monumental task for the new nation; but the importance of its work is difficult to understate. The project is expected to take at least two years; with components of the Geologic study expected to take even longer, as the program would be bottle-necked by testing equipment and trained geologists. The government will recruit heavily for volunteers among the countries literate university students, with the hope that civic duty may help bridge some of the gap in available resources with which to pay.

Karachi — July 1949

The Government of Pakistan has authorised the preparation of a comprehensive programme for the reorganisation, standardisation and gradual expansion of the armed forces. The experience of the past two years has demonstrated the difficulties of maintaining a modern military establishment amid the division of inherited equipment, shortages of trained personnel, inadequate infrastructure and the extraordinary geographical separation of Pakistan's two wings.

The new programme will seek to replace improvised arrangements with a consistent system of divisional organisation, common equipment standards, professional training and domestic maintenance capacity. Its guiding principle shall be that Pakistan's armed forces must be capable of sustained national defence, rather than depending upon emergency mobilisation and the uncertain availability of foreign supplies.

Divisional Reorganisation

The Army shall establish a common divisional framework, with each formation assigned a defined geographical responsibility, training establishment, equipment scale and logistical organisation.

The western establishment shall be organised around the 7th Infantry Division at Rawalpindi, 8th Infantry Division at Karachi, 9th Frontier Infantry Division at Peshawar, 10th Infantry Division at Lahore, 12th Infantry Division at Murree and the proposed 13th Balochistan Division at Quetta. The development of the 1st Armoured Division, centred upon the Multan region, shall provide the foundation for a larger future mobile armoured force.

The Government recognises that these formations cannot all be brought to full strength simultaneously or immediately. Priority shall therefore be given to establishing reliable divisional headquarters, communications, training and supply systems, followed by the progressive expansion of their subordinate units.

In East Pakistan, the Government shall develop the 14th Riverine Infantry Division, headquartered at Dacca, as a formation specifically adapted to the geography of Bengal. Plans shall also be prepared for the future 15th East Bengal Division at Comilla and the 107th Independent Infantry Brigade in the Jessore–Khulna region.

The Eastern Riverine Programme

The 14th Riverine Division shall receive a distinct transport and engineering establishment suited to the waterways of East Pakistan. A programme of smallstandardised shallow-draft craft, powered troop boats, cargo boats and small liaison vessels shall be developed in cooperation with local boatbuilders and qualified technical advisers.

The objective is to create a dependable system for moving personnel, supplies and equipment through the delta, supported by permanent maintenance facilities, trained crews and established supply points. The Government shall also examine the future establishment of an Eastern River Flotilla to complement the Army's requirements.

If our provinces in the East are attacked, it is the waterways, swamps, and monsoon floods, which will be our first line of defence. Any troops stationed there need to have the ability to master those waterways, not merely survive them. This Division, and the other future formations for East Pakistan, will operate using Bengali as tge language of training and deployment. Officers may transfer from our other formations on condition of profieicency in Bengali.

Equipment Standardisation

The Army shall undertake a review of its small arms, artillery, vehicles, radios and engineering equipment, with the objective of reducing unnecessary variety and improving the supply of ammunition and replacement parts.

Existing British-pattern service rifles, machine guns, mortars and field artillery shall remain the immediate foundation of the Army's equipment establishment. Priority shall be given to ammunition supply, repair facilities, technical training and the establishment of common equipment scales. No sense reinventing tge wheel here, though we note the emergence of select fire and releating rifles emerging in Europe as a possibility for years to come. Our focus at this point is to ensure soldiers have reliable access to spares, repairs and ammunition, which at this point we dont have reliably.

At the same time, the Government shall establish a programme of technical evaluation for future infantry weapons. The purpose shall be to ensure that Pakistan can adopt improved small arms as international developments permit, without committing prematurely to experimental designs or incompatible ammunition standards.

Domestic Production and Maintenance

The Government shall invite British and American technical assistance for the development of military workshops, ordnance facilities, machine-tool capacity and the domestic manufacture of selected components and consumables.

Initial priorities shall include small-arms ammunition, weapon repair, vehicle overhaul, engineering stores and the maintenance of communications equipment. Further expansion into licensed production and more advanced manufacturing shall depend upon the availability of capital, trained personnel and reliable foreign technical partnerships.

The Government regards these facilities as an investment in the long-term independence of the national defence establishment and in Pakistan's wider industrial development.

International Cooperation

The Government of Pakistan welcomes cooperation with Britain, the United States and other friendly countries in developing a professional and sustainable defence establishment. Assistance is sought not merely in the acquisition of finished weapons, but in the technical education, industrial capacity and infrastructure necessary to maintain them.

The programme shall proceed in stages, with immediate emphasis upon restoring existing capabilities and establishing common standards, followed by the progressive expansion of formations and the introduction of more modern equipment.

Pakistan seeks an armed force capable of defending the sovereignty of both wings of the country, protecting its communications and contributing to the stability of South Asia. The Government believes that disciplined organisation, sound industrial foundations and enduring international partnerships will provide the surest means of achieving these objectives.

13th July, 1949

Today the Iranian Constitutional Convention of 1949 has voted to approve several constitutional changes expected to increase the Shah’s political power and institute more political stability in the legislative system.

• The Shah has the right to dissolve parliament, with elections to be held within three months of dissolution.
• The Iranian Senate will be made a reality, an appointed body wholly by the Shah. This upper body, although technically already in the constitution, has never actually sat since its creation in 1906. It being reality will allow the Shah to control the legislature much more effectively.
• Giving the Shah the power to make laws on the security of the state and the upholding of the constitution, effectively giving the shah broad emergency powers should he deem something a threat to national security.

As can be expected the constitutional convention has caused protests across the country as many liberal and left wing citizens see it as what it is, the strangling of democracy and through the Senate allowing the Shah to control democracy. The Tudeh party, even with its leaders arrested or in exile (with the latter given death sentences for their “treason”) has seen its ban backfire on the authorities and secret meetings have grown across the country especially amongst the young and working class.

Elections have been called for mid 1950, and many expect it to be a referendum of sorts on the new constitutional changes and the Shah’s popularity. Several liberal leaning politicians such as Mohammad Mossadegh have urged the Shah to show restraint and to release some of the arrested dissidents, which the Shah has refused. To try and alleviate the protests the government has promised to pass land reform legislation as well as more public spending.

June 3rd, 1949

Eduard Frank, the new Minister of Justice, has ordered an immediate halt to executions in Czechoslovakia. The first benefit of these halted executions is former Czechslovakian Deputy Chief of General Staff ​​Heliodor Píka, who received a stay of execution at the last minute following Eduard Frank’s negotiations with other high ranking communists. Allegedly, Prime Minister Antonín Zápotocký and Minister of Defense Ludvík Svoboda interceded on the behalf of Píka.

At the same time, Deputy Minister of Defense Bedřich Reicin saw his role significantly diminished as punishment for his involvement in the plot to kill a fellow Czechoslovak. In particular, he has been excised from the military intelligence apparatus. While still a Brigadier General in name, he is now Czechoslovakia’s first Brigadier General of the People’s Militia. He has been tasked with building the People’s Militia, still an official branch of the army and not the Communist Party, into an effective fighting force, with all the resources that Svoboda has chosen to give him. At present, he has chosen to give him nothing beyond existing milita funding.

Following negotiations, Klement Gottwald issued a secret policy memo announcing an end to executions in Czechoslovakia. All prisoners currently sentenced to death are to instead serve the remainder of their natural lifetime performing manual labor in Czechoslovakian uranium mines. Following this directive, Heliodor Píka was transferred to Jáchymov, where he will be tasked with laboring for the benefit of the working people of the world. He is soon to be joined by the other prisoners who were to be executed. Political prisoners, alongside murderers, will serve out their sentences below the earth.

During the meeting with Klement Gottwald, Ludvík Svoboda’s primary argument was about industrial production. After all, a bullet costs… something, even if that cost is a rounding error in a country like Czechoslovakia. Uranium Mining, however, is dangerous, and it would be wrong to force innocent people into the mines. It is more cost effective for Czechoslovakia to stop executing prisoners at all, and to instead use prisoners who would’ve been executed to perform the most dangerous tasks in the uranium mine. Gottwald was understanding on this, and Bedřich Geminder, one of Czechoslovakia’s leading minds on foreign policy, further told him that ending executions would improve Czechoslovakia’s standing abroad, especially with those living in countries currently suffering from imperialist regimes that practice arbitrary state executions.

On the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba, the town of Umm Rashrash had been abandoned by the Jordanians and in turn liberated by the Defence Army of Israel on March 10, 1949 following Operation Uvda. Since its capture, it had been largely uninhabited except for a small community of soldiers from the Negev Brigade that had elected to stay there.

Its strategic importance necessitated its settlement, however, and soon after the formation of the Sneh government, construction crews, engineers, and A.D.I. labor detachments were dispatched to the area to prepare the ground for an airbase. Despite the difficulties of the Negev, the modest airbase was completed in early July. The Government Naming Committee on July 1, 1949, renamed Umm Rashrash with the Hebrew name of עֶצְיֹן גֶּבֶר, or Ezion-Gever/Eṣyōn Gevér. Only a few days after the renaming, the Ministry of Transportation announced the commencement of a permanent Red Sea port for Israel at Ezion-Gever. To encourage its settlement, the Minister of Immigration Meir Vilner declared on July 19th that Ezion-Gever would become one of the possible destinations for Jewish immigrants arriving in Israel, as the government feared that some of Israel's cities may become too crowded for returning immigrants, both from Europe and from the Arab world, and that they may be better used to establish new communities such as at Ezion-Gever.

With the Mapam government not inclined to leave the development of the Negev region to private capital, Prime Minister Sneh hoped that the development of Ezion-Gever would be a clear victory for the path to socialism in Israel and ensuring the view among the Labour Zionist public of Israel that a strong and active government would always be the best form of government for Israel.

Already, at Mapam's orders, veterans of the war associated with the Party have established two kibbutzim around Ezion-Gever: Beit Gromiko (House of Gromyko, founded by Hashomer Hatzair members) and Mishmar HaMifratz (Guard of the Gulf, founded by Ahdut HaAvoda members).

Seoul, June 1949

On the first morning of October, a small crowd of officers gathered at an airfield south of the Han and watched a flag go up that had not been flown before. The air arm of the Army had been given a new name, and an independence it had not had the day before. The Republic of Korea Air Force was now a service of its own. It began its life with (officially) about twenty light aircraft, and a chief of staff, Kim Jeong-ryeol, who had been given the job of making something larger from them.

Kim had been preparing for the day since the constabulary's aviation unit was formed.

The thing he cared about most was not the ceremony or the actual aircraft. It was the cadets. The men who would fly the aircraft. A pilot takes years to produce, and the Republic had almost none. Very few had any sort of experience. The Army had set up an Army Air Academy in January, with a few instructors and a handful of students, and in early June it was renamed the Air Force Academy and given a proper establishment consisting of dormitories in place of tents (although it must be said, they were closer to sheds), a lecture hall, a flight line of its own, and a curriculum that Kim had sat up several nights writing.

The first cadets had been chosen with care. They had to be young, they had to be literate, and they had to pass a medical examination that rejected nearly three in five applicants. A good many had never seen an aircraft at close range. The aircraft that the Academy and the air force had were not great. About ten L-4 Grasshoppers in September for observation work. A light liaison aircraft is a fine thing to learn the basics in and to fly in, but it is not a combat ready air force. However soon they would not have to worry about that.

Kim's staff had been told some months earlier that the Republic would shortly be receiving help from a quarter that did not wish to be named in public. It came from a friendly government outside the Pacific, one that had no stake in the arguments about the 38th Parallel and a surplus it was glad to place in good hands. The less said about this, the better it must be said. With their gift came a small party of instructors, men who spoke little English and less Korean, and who were willing to teach anyone who would listen. Not a bad deal, it must be said.

The Government had learned the hard way what happens when it asks Washington for aircraft in the open: the request for more planes had been turned down. It had been decided that the Republic would not ask again, and would not make a noise when it did not need to.

By the end of the month the first of these gifts had flown. The cadets who watched it from the edge of the field were told only that it was a training exercise.

Learning to fly a REDACTED from men who did not share a language with the student was not simple. Interpreters were found, and then found to be inadequate, since aviation has a vocabulary that most of them had never met. The instructors took to drawing on a blackboard instead, and one is reported to have said that the REDACTED itself was a better teacher than he was.

The Republic has an air force on paper and a school with good students. It does not have the pilots, the ground crews or the fuel to use them in large numbers, and it will not for a good while. If the Americans ask about REDACTED, there is no need to hide it from them.

Dr. Rhee's view is that a country that is not allowed to ask for an air force will have to build one without asking. It is a view that Washington may not share, and the Air Force has been told to give the Americans nothing to object to until it is ready.

Ottawa, 30 April 1949

The Incorporation of the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company

The Government of Canada announces the incorporation of the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company (IPL), established through the joint initiative of Petro-Canada and Imperial Oil Limited for the purpose of constructing and operating a major petroleum transportation system connecting the oil-producing fields of Western Canada with the refining and industrial centres of Central Canada.

The discovery of substantial petroleum reserves at Leduc, Alberta, in February 1947 has opened a new chapter in Canadian industrial development. With further exploration underway throughout the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, the Dominion is presented with an opportunity to reduce its longstanding dependence upon imported petroleum and establish a domestic market for the growing production of the Prairie provinces.

At present, the absence of adequate long-distance transportation facilities remains a principal obstacle to this development. While Canadian petroleum production is increasing, the refineries of Ontario and Quebec continue to depend heavily upon foreign supplies. The Government considers the establishment of an economical, reliable, and wholly Canadian transportation route to be an important national undertaking.

Incorporation and Joint Venture

Pursuant to the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company Act, 1949, the Company has been constituted as a separate corporate enterprise, with its head office established in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Company shall have an authorized capital stock of $200,000,000, divided into 4,000,000 shares having a par value of $50 each. The initial issue of voting shares shall be subscribed equally by Petro-Canada and Imperial Oil Limited, providing for equal participation in the ownership and initial direction of the enterprise. The authorized capital represents the Company's permitted share capital and does not constitute an immediate expenditure of that amount.

The provisional Board of Directors shall consist of eight members, four nominated by Petro-Canada and four by Imperial Oil Limited. These directors shall oversee the initial organization of the Company, the preparation of its engineering and financial programme, and the establishment of its commercial operations, pending the election of their successors in accordance with the Company's by-laws and applicable law.

Imperial Oil will contribute its commercial experience, petroleum industry expertise, and established relationships with Western Canadian producers and Eastern Canadian refiners. Petro-Canada will represent the Dominion's financial and strategic interests in the undertaking.

The joint venture is intended to combine private industrial enterprise with public investment in infrastructure of national importance. IPL shall maintain its own corporate accounts, assets, and liabilities, separate from those of its shareholders, and conduct its operations on a commercial basis.

Under its incorporating legislation, the Company shall offer transportation facilities to qualified petroleum producers, refiners, and purchasers on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, subject to available capacity, technical suitability, and applicable regulation. Published rules shall govern transportation charges, nominations, connections, and the allocation of capacity, ensuring that the system may serve the wider Canadian petroleum industry rather than exclusively the interests of its founding shareholders.

The Proposed Edmonton–Sarnia Pipeline

The principal undertaking of IPL will be the construction of a crude petroleum pipeline extending eastward from the Edmonton producing district to Sarnia, Ontario, one of Canada's principal petroleum refining centres.

Two principal routes are presently under consideration. The first would follow an entirely Canadian alignment, passing through Saskatchewan and Manitoba before continuing across Northern Ontario toward the Great Lakes industrial region. The second would follow a more southerly course through the United States, crossing the international boundary after traversing the Prairie provinces and proceeding through the American Great Lakes region before re-entering Canada to reach Sarnia.

Preliminary considerations suggest that the American route would offer substantial savings in construction costs, owing to its more favourable terrain, shorter or more economical alignment, and the avoidance of some of the difficult geological and geographical conditions encountered across the Canadian Shield. The entirely Canadian route, however, would retain the whole undertaking within Canadian territory and jurisdiction, reducing dependence upon foreign transit arrangements and providing greater national control over a strategically important transportation system.

The Government has therefore instructed IPL to undertake comparative engineering and financial studies of both alternatives before a final route is selected. These examinations will consider construction and operating costs, pipeline length, pumping-station requirements, rights-of-way, regulatory obligations, security of supply, and the long-term economic and strategic advantages of each alignment. No final decision concerning the route has yet been reached.

The Government has directed that particular consideration be given to the procurement of Canadian-produced steel, machinery, electrical equipment, and construction materials wherever these can be supplied economically and in accordance with the necessary engineering specifications.

Construction is expected to proceed in stages, allowing Western Canadian production and available refinery demand to determine the appropriate pace of investment. Provision will also be made in the original engineering studies for subsequent increases in carrying capacity and possible connections to additional producing fields and refining centres.

While the Government recognizes the national advantages of an entirely Canadian route, it also considers the economical transportation of Western Canadian petroleum to Eastern refineries an essential objective. The final alignment will therefore be determined following a comprehensive examination of both alternatives, balancing commercial feasibility, construction expenditure, transportation efficiency, and the Dominion's long-term strategic interests.

Financing and Administration

The capital requirements of the undertaking will be met through a combination of equity subscriptions by the participating enterprises, commercial borrowing, and such additional financing arrangements as may receive the necessary governmental and parliamentary approval.

The Government does not propose that the entire cost of construction should be borne by the public treasury. Rather, the participation of Petro-Canada is intended to secure a continuing Canadian public interest in the enterprise while drawing upon the technical and financial resources of established private industry.

The Company's incorporating legislation authorizes it, subject to applicable law, to borrow money and issue bonds, debentures, and other securities for its corporate purposes. Such financing may be supported by the Company's lawful revenues and assets, while any additional assistance from its shareholders shall require the appropriate corporate and governmental approvals.

The incorporation of IPL does not, in itself, constitute a guarantee by the Dominion of the Company's debts, nor does it authorize expenditures from the public treasury independently of existing statutory and parliamentary authority.

IPL will be responsible for preparing detailed engineering estimates, negotiating rights-of-way, arranging construction contracts, and securing the necessary federal and provincial authorizations. Its initial programme will be subject to review by the participating shareholders and the appropriate regulatory authorities.

The Company shall be subject to the provisions of the Pipe Lines Act, 1949, together with other applicable federal and provincial legislation. Its incorporation shall not dispense with the certificates, licences, or other permissions necessary for the construction and operation of its facilities.

A National Petroleum Market

The establishment of IPL is intended to provide the foundation for a more integrated Canadian petroleum industry. By connecting Western Canadian producers with the manufacturing and refining districts of Ontario, the pipeline will encourage further exploration, provide a dependable market for domestic crude, and reduce the transportation disadvantages that have historically separated the Prairie oilfields from Eastern Canadian consumers.

The Government further considers that a transportation system operating upon fair and non-discriminatory commercial principles will encourage the growth of independent Canadian petroleum enterprises. Access to major refining markets should not depend solely upon the ownership of transportation facilities, and the Company will be expected to accommodate qualified shippers within the practical limits of its system.

The development of such facilities will also create opportunities for Canadian engineering firms, steel producers, equipment manufacturers, and construction contractors, while contributing to the longer-term development of petroleum refining and associated industries.

The Government recognizes that the undertaking will require substantial capital, extensive engineering work, and cooperation among several provincial governments. Nevertheless, it considers the development of a Canadian petroleum transportation system to be an essential part of the Dominion's continuing industrial expansion.

The Minister of Trade and Commerce, the Honourable C. D. Howe, will oversee the Dominion's participation in the project, in consultation with the Minister of Finance, the participating provincial authorities, and representatives of Petro-Canada and Imperial Oil Limited.

The Government of Canada regards the incorporation of the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company as the first practical step toward the establishment of a permanent, nationally integrated petroleum transportation system, capable of serving Canadian industry for decades to come.

Seoul and the countryside, April–June 1949

At the market

Man Chun-gil heard about it at the market in the first days of May, standing next to a cart of barley sacks. A man he did not know said the Assembly had passed a law in Seoul that would give the land to the people who farmed it. Man asked which land. The man shrugged and said all of it, more or less.

Man had rented the same four plots for twenty-two years, from a landlord whose face he had seen perhaps six times. Maybe he was Japanese? Maybe American? What difference did it make? His father had rented them before him. His father's father did the same, probably from the same person, maybe from his father's father. Each autumn, half of what the fields produced went to the landlord's agent, and Man had long ago stopped working out what the other half had to cover. He asked the man who had told him whether it was certain. The man said that was what the newspapers said, and went off to find his cart.

Man bought his salt and walked the six or maybe seven miles home, thinking about it. He did not mention it to his wife until the next morning, because he did not want to say something that might turn out to be false. More disappointed was not hard to come by in rural Korea.

The landlord

On the same day, forty miles away, a landlord named Han Sung-ho read the same news in a Taegu newspaper and put it down slowly. He owned a little over forty chongbo, spread across three counties, and had never farmed any of it. His father had acquired most of it under the Japanese, and Han had always supposed it would pass on in the same way.

His son, who worked at an accountant's firm, had come down from Seoul to talk about it. The young man had read the Act carefully. Under it, he said, the family would keep three chongbo, and the rest would go to the State for bonds worth one and a half times a year's crop, paid out over five years. He admitted that it was not a good price. Not a fair price, but it was better than nothing. But Article 10 gave landlords priority in buying the former Japanese properties that the Government still held, and some of them were factories.

"A field pays you rent," the son said. "A factory pays you profit. And nobody can take a factory away by writing it into a law." (or so he thought...)

Han said he had been a landlord for thirty years and did not intend to become a manufacturer at sixty. The son said he might not be given a choice about that.

The President's message

The bill that Man and Han were reading about had been passed in Seoul on 27 April, after months of argument. It covered roughly 1,800,000 acres of the largest holdings in the country. The President had announced his own land programme in February, and many in the Assembly had treated the bill as its natural completion. They expected him to sign it.

At the Office of the President, an aide recalled years later, the mood was different. The Finance Ministry had sent several memoranda urging approval, and each was more worried than the last. The bonds would have to be redeemed. The Treasury would have to find the money. Prices were already rising. Tempers were rising too. An official... maybe a director from the Ministry of Agriculture, a careful man named Choi Il-sun, told the President that the committees and surveys the law required could not possibly be in place by the autumn, and that the Ministry did not yet have the staff to run them.

The President is said to have heard them out without comment. But he did ask a single question. Whether a law that could not be carried out was better for the farmers than no law. Nobody in the room was willing to say that it was, but on the other side of the coin, it can't be any worse.

At the start of June the bill went back to the Assembly with a veto. The President's message was short. He wrote that he remained committed to land reform, and that his objection was to this particular bill, whose compensation could not be paid without a flood of new bonds and whose machinery was not ready. Such was the case, that the bill was nearly dead.

A lobby, and a cup of tea

Representative Yi Kyong-su, who sat for a farming area in the south of the Republic and had worked on the bill for most of a year, read the message standing in the Assembly lobby with a cup of tea that had gone cold in his other hand. Another member asked him what he thought of it.

"I think it is the most reasonable letter that I have ever hated," Yi said.

He did not believe the President was acting in bad faith. The President was a good man. He believed that the President had been persuaded by the people who stood to lose, and who had spent two months explaining the dangers of inflation to anyone who would listen. Yi's district had been waiting for the law since the spring. In the meantime, he had heard that landlords were quietly dividing holdings among relatives and evicting tenants who might claim to be owners-in-waiting.

"Every month we wait," he said, "the Landlords get a month's head start."

The two men stayed in the lobby for some time. Across the hall, a group of representatives who had voted against the bill was gathered around a table, looking pleased and trying not to.

The second vote

The Assembly took up the bill again on 21 June. The debate lasted into the evening, and the speeches were, by Yi's account, the best he had heard in the chamber. A member from the north of the Republic talked about his own father, who had rented a plot for forty years and died without owning a centimetre of it. Another, who represented a more affluent district, argued that it was not the principle of the bill that he opposed, but its price, and that the Government would pay it for years.

When the vote was counted, the Assembly had overridden the veto. The bill that Dr Rhee had returned became law as it stood. Members from the farming provinces cheered, and Yi, it was said, sat down very quietly and did not cheer at all.

The President promulgated it the next day. His statement said that he had made his objections known, that the Assembly had considered them and had chosen otherwise, and that the Republic would now see whether it could carry the Act out. He added that a veto was a request for a second look. That is not how it was interpreted.

The first weeks

For Choi, the work began that same afternoon. The Assembly had not passed the budget to carry the law into effect, and without money the committees could not be formed or the surveyors sent out. The President authorised 100 billion won from his own office to start the programme, and the Ministry set to work. Choi spent the week writing instructions to county offices and finding that some of them were slow to answer. A few officials, he suspected, had landlords for relatives. He wrote their names in a blue official looking notebook and said nothing.

The Finance Ministry was still worried. The Assembly's Industry Committee had put forward amendments that would raise the landlords' compensation from 150 to 240 per cent and stretch the payment over eight years. Choi thought it would lead to a worse problem, and said so in a memorandum.

Out in the country the effects were already visible. Land prices had begun to fall. Landlords who expected to be bought out were selling early, and buyers were waiting to see what the law did.

The official list

In July the county office in Man Chun-gil's district put up a notice on its front wall. It was a list of parcels, with the names of present tenants beside them. A young clerk named Pak had spent two days copying it out by hand.

Man arrived early and stood in front of it for a while. He found his own name next to four plots, and next to it a figure and the words "to be purchased by the cultivator." He read it twice. Then he asked Pak what it meant he would have to pay.

It was a good deal of grain over five years, but not more than he had paid in rent in two. Man thanked him and walked out. At the corner of the building he stopped and looked back at the list, as if checking that it was still there.

Han Sung-ho's name appeared three counties over, on a much longer list. His son had made the arrangement for him in the end. It involved a share in a textile mill in Taegu, and Han had been persuaded to look at it. He had not decided what he thought of it. He had decided, though, that the Republic was not going to leave things as they had been, and that arguing about it was now a waste of time.

接过四二二革命烈士的火炬！壮大队伍，解放整个大陆！

Take up the torch of the 22 April Revolutionary Martyrs! Grow the ranks, liberate the entire mainland!

Posters went up in every major city liberated by the People’s Liberation Army thus far, from Harbin to Nanking. The bright red characters extolled the Chinese people to action as the radios read out the latest heroics of the Army, whose positions were carefully reported only at their southernmost point, and with special attention paid to adjusting it further south every broadcast. 

Almost as soon as it was liberated, the same posters went up in Nanking, the erstwhile rebel capital. To the surprise of many of the citizens, the People’s Liberation Army behaved with the utmost attention paid to the Three Main Points for Order and Eight Points for Attention, the standing orders for conduct among the Army. Soldiers standing guard on street corners in their ill-fitting uniforms looked like boys, and they spoke with the thick accent of the countryside. 

It was a mostly quiet changeover as the soldiers of the Liu-Teng Army departed and the soldiers of the 4th Field Army arrived from over the river. Citizens watched in awe as the railway ferry carried across hulking tanks with red stars painted on the turrets, which soon rattled windowpanes in their frames as they trundled up the streets with smiling PLA soldiers riding on their backs, bayonets glinting on the ends of their rifles. 

Beneath all the activity, with the transfer of tens of thousands of men across the ancient Yangtze proceeding unabated, the elite cadre of officers at the head of this mass of humanity passed into the city.

Teng Hsiao-p’ing had thoroughly swept the old government offices for intelligence, and political officers still occupied the Presidential Palace. The characters that had once spelled “Nationalist Government” had been peeled from the wall and cast into a bin, though their ghosts were still visible on the archway upon which they had hung for several years. Lin Piao, whose army now occupied the city, arrived under the eaves of the old Palace with his commissar, Lo Jung-huan. The two men could scarcely have more different appearances: Lin was lean and tall, with a long face framed by bushy eyebrows; Lo was shorter, with a round puggish face and spectacles. 

Even so, they had come a long way in a year. In April of 1948 they had yet to liberate Shenyang, now in April of 1949 they stood in Nanking. The 4th Field Army was elite but divided, and now it would reassemble south of the Yangtze. 12th and 13th Armies had embarked upon the trains at Beijing, and could now ride all the way to Nanjing uninterrupted. 

Lo took over for Teng in quietly marking the city of Nanking’s Kuomintang sympathizers and probable political threats while combing through the documents left behind in the hurried evacuation by the Nationalist rebels. 

Neither Lin nor Lo had much interest in wasting time on the streets of Nanking. A parade had been organized by Lo’s office. A portrait of Mao Tse-tung was carried by the city’s youths as traditional music – with decidedly updated lyrics – played and a troupe of dancers followed along. A train of streamers and paper lanterns gave the impression of a great celebration, and with good purpose: a banner carried behind the dancers by workers and citizens of the city read, “Congratulations to the People of Nanking on their Liberation!” 

Citizens of Nanking stood on the sidewalks, looking on, somewhat bemused as their children and more radicalized coworkers waved the new red flag. As in Beijing nearly six months earlier, the people were bewildered that the city had changed hands with a parade, and not looting and wanton violence.

Elsewhere, the symbols of the Kuomintang rebels had vanished from the streets. In their place a new array of patriotic posters calling the people to action had been pasted to walls and hung in windows, with red flags flying over every street. 

A campaign was also undertaken to call upon the people to assist in rooting out traitors: landlords, rich peasants, and capitalists. Most of the latter two categories had fled with the Kuomintang, but the peasants were happy to corroborate the lists of “good” landlords, as determined by the Nationalists. Unfortunately for them, a judgment of “good” by the Kuomintang rebels was the opposite for the Communist authorities, and more than one thousand “good” landlords found themselves dispossessed of their land and thrown into prisons to await trial. The involvement of the people in this process was not just ideal but mandatory: from on high in Beijing, it was determined that the citizens of China must be linked to the prosecutions, to invest them in the process. Soon enough, everyone with an axe to grind was prepared to report any landlord to the Communists. 

Soon, the masses of leftist workers and peasants rejoiced as the reports went out that 1,000, then 1,500, then 2,500 landlords had been imprisoned by the new Communist authorities. Land reform in the Communist way followed, to the approval of many more. The old ills were at long last seemingly being addressed, and many Kuomintang sympathizers were removed from the political picture in the deal. 

The same men, peasants and workers each, lined up to join the Army. Over all flew the banners: 

接过四二二革命烈士的火炬！壮大队伍，解放整个大陆！

Take up the torch of the 22 April Revolutionary Martyrs! Grow the ranks, liberate the entire mainland!

March 4th 1949
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Marius had been in Cambodia for all of a week to help with the preparations for the conference. To most, his presence had gone mostly unnoticed. Simply a former minister with extensive knowledge of the region being recruited to assist an event with profound implications for the region's future. Few knew that he was the architect behind it all. His day had been long, but even now with the coming of the evening he still had one thing left to do

The phone rang

"Sir, it's Francois"

Marius picked up

"So...did it pass?"

The phone crackled loudly, causing Marius to flinch

"Yes! Yes it did! You're good to go on your end"

Marius grinned. He had little doubts that the bill to institute a new Cochinchinese assembly would pass, but it was still a sweet victory. Hanging up he called back the assistant

"Get me a line to Saigon"

"Will do, sir"

A couple minutes later the phone crackled again, this time with the heavily accented voice of a Vietnamese lawyer

"Monsieur Moutet! I was wondering when you would call."

"My friend, I have good news! The French Assembly as of...5 minutes ago passed the Cochinchina assembly bill. You're free to start organising"

"Ah! Finally! I cannot wait to see he faces of those bastards on the council when their powers are stripped and we end this abominable ""autonomous republic"". Once again, thank you for everything you've don-"

"Tuấn, please, don't thank me yet. There is still much left to do"

"Indeed there is. I'll get my colleagues together and start on our work. Soon the council will be nothing but dust"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

March 30th, 1949
Saigon, Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina State of Vietnam

Cheers flooded the assembly hall as the vote to dissolve the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina passed with an overwhelming majority. From the observer stands many grim-faced French colonists walked out in disdain, for that is all they now had left. The last true obstacle to the formation of a Vietnamese was now removed

Fraternal Friendship between the Soviet Union and the DPRK

June 1st, 1949 -- Khabrovsk

URGENT -- MINISTRY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE SOVIET UNION

On orders of the Council of Ministers, and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the General Staff has instructed the Foreign Military Assistance Directorate to prepare an assistance package of hardware to be dispatched to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Commanders of the Far Eastern Military District are hereby notified that they are to receive a number of officers and cadets from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to be trained in the adequate institutions and acquire knowledge in servicing and operating equipment that is to be dispatched to our comrades in Pyongyang.

It is paramount that intelligence regarding their specific training, movement of equipment, and so forth remains known only to the Commanders and Soviet officers tasked with executing the training and exercises. Failure to do so will be considered treason and will be met with adequate punishment.

Equipment to be dispatched:

• 40,000 Mosin Nagant Rifles
• 15,000 PPSh Submachine Guns
• 2,100 DP-27 Machine Guns
• 450 82 & 120 mm mortars
  
• 100 76 mm divisional guns (ZiS-3)
• 50 122 mm howitzers
• 165 45 mm anti-tank guns
• 150 57 mm anti-tank guns
• 50 T-34/85 tanks
• 30 SU-76 SPGs
• 400 GAZ-AA/GAZ-MM trucks
• 400 ZIS-5 trucks
• 85 GAZ-67 light vehicle
• 32 85 mm AA gun
• Additional radio and communication equipment

Additional equipment will be granted to the Democratic People’s Republic based on the speed at which the pilots will be trained in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Far Eastern District will be tasked with performing a survey in order to provide the adequate pontoon bridge to our comrades in Korea.