A little bit of prologue for how the Entente returned to Britain. Bear with me. Unfortunately as I didn't have an AAR in mind at the time, I didn't screenshot anything, so this part will have to be completely imaginative.

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The Beginning: The Syndicalist War & The Liberation

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Sparked by the Alsace-Lorraine Crisis, the Syndicalist War broke out in June of 1940, pitching Europe and the world into a Weltkrieg once more. Despite decades of continuous military build-up, a massive industrialization programme in the 1930s, and increasingly successful foreign excursion in the Americas and Asia, Entente leaders were initially divided about entering the war. The Syndicalists were strong, and the perils in launching trans-oceanic assaults numerous. Events, however, would force the Entente’s hand. Abandoned by its Austrian allies, Germany faltered in the first year of the war, as the Commune pressed deep into the Rhineland, even threatening Munich for a time. Mosley's Union of Britain, meanwhile, launched successful overseas assaults, first against Morocco, and then Denmark, annexing the country and pressing Germany from the north. Fearing Germany might fall to Totalism, and with it Europe and any hopes of return, with perhaps even their distant exile safe-havens being threatened in time, the Entente felt compelled to open a second front.

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Frankfurt following the city's liberation from the Commune of France. Siege and battle devastated the German Rhineland.



Troops and aircraft from across the British Empire were hastily transported to North Africa to join up with their French and Spanish allies for a Mediterranean assault on the underbelly of the Commune of France and its partner, the Italian Socialist Republic. Meanwhile, after its long build-up, the new Canadian Royal Navy sailed from its Atlantic ports for its inevitable confrontation with the People’s Fleet. The ensuing months saw fierce fighting across the Pyrenees and the Strait of Messina, while the Canadian and Union fleets did running battle through the Bay of Biscay, and the Irish and North Seas, with heavy losses on both sides. Ultimately, as the Germans regrouped, the Commune could not withstand war on two fronts, and was soon driven back. The decision of the Pope to join the war sealed the fate of the ISR, and brought the Italian Federation into the Entente in return for the restoration of its southern provinces.



It was a similar story at sea for the Union. The great People’s Fleet could match the Kaiserliche Marine or the Royal Navy head-to-head, but not both at once. As its losses mounted, it found itself increasingly forced back to port. On land, Germany drove the Union out of Schleswig-Holstein and liberated Denmark, while in North Africa French troops took the justification of Union invasion to reoccupy their former colony of Morocco.

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The Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Valiant under Syndicalist aerial attack in the Celtic Sea. Despite Canada's frantic naval construction programme, the Royal Navy was still reliant in many places on ships that had seen service in the Weltkrieg.



The Commune of France surrendered to Germany in October of 1941. Already effectively partitioned by the advance of the Entente in the South, the Kaiser and French Emperor negotiated a formal division between the German-controlled North, and Nationalist France in the South. The former was soon reconstituted as the ‘Kingdom of France’, while the latter declared itself ‘Imperial France’. The final annexation of the ISR a few weeks later marked the effective defeat of Syndicalism on the European mainland.



At the end of 1941, despite setbacks, the Union of Britain still stood largely secure on its fortress island, where Chairman Mosley could prepare at leisure to repel the enemies of Totalism. The Germans had little appetite for an amphibious invasion, even if they had the capacity. Sitting in the South of France, the longed-for goal of return to Mother Britain seemed tantalising close for the Entente’s high command. Still, they knew this was a confrontation the Union had been preparing for practically every day of its existence. The British coast was heavily fortified, and defensive paranoia had only increased under Mosley’s tyrannous regime. The Republican Air Force was still a potent obstacle, and armies of fanatical Totalist apparatchiks stood ready to resist invaders in every field and town. Nothing but overwhelming force could return the King to Britain.

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Mosley's Totalist regime accelerated sea-fortification efforts that had been ongoing since the Revolution, turning great stretches of the British coastline into veritable death-traps.



Fortunately, for the Entente, the Totalists had made a long-term strategic error. In 1938, the Union of Britain had outraged world opinion by invading neutral Ireland and installing a new Syndicalist regime. Under Chairman Jim Larkin, Ireland was a servile partner in the Internationale, but unlike Britain, its coast was largely unfortified, and the population had little love for their hated government of collaboration. In June 1941, Entente fleets sailing from ports on the Bay of Biscay landed a massive amphibious invasion on the beaches of Galway. The token resistance of the Irish Syndicalist army and the Union of Britain forces present in Northern Ireland was quickly crushed, and Ireland brought under Entente control. For the next six months, it served as a landing strip for the air forces of the Entente as they battled for air supremacy over the British Isles and launched punishing bombing campaign against Union forces and industry. Meanwhile, troops and equipment from as far afield as the Pacific States, India and Australasia poured into Irish ports, as it became a staging ground for the largest invasion force ever assembled. The nightmare that had kept Entente strategists awake for two decades - the prospect of their troops being driven from the beaches back into the unforgiving Atlantic - had been bypassed. At the narrowest stretch of the Irish Sea, Entente forces were now only 50 miles from their goal. In the Union, Mosley gave apocalyptic speeches demanding every Briton become a citizen-soldier ready to lay down their life for the Totalist cause. His forces dug themselves into their mighty fortifications, and held their breath.

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D-Day began the liberation of Britain, and saw scenes of carnage and heroism as Entente troops came ashore on four famous beaches: Destiny, Deliverance, Dominion & Danger.



D-Day, the 12th February, 1942, broke over South West England and Wales as a grey, rainy morning. In their leaky bunkers, the defenders of the beaches stayed dry as best they could, and stamped their feet against the coldness of the dawn. Suddenly, a little after 7am, the misty horizon lit up with fire as the combined guns of the Entente fleets unleashed a bombardment unprecedented in the history of warfare. The landing craft sailed in from the mist and into a hell of bullets and shellfire. History well-records the carnage of those scenes, as over the next hours 40,000 men attempted to take four selected beaches along the Bristol Channel: Destiny, Deliverance, Danger and Dominion. Knowing that raw power was the only way to smash Mosley’s coastal wall, the Entente planners unleashed everything in their arsenal: rolling naval bombardment, dive bombing, flamethrowers and worse. Friendly fire was inevitable. Still, at great cost, a beachhead was established. It is said that after anxiously waiting back in Canada, King Edward, on receiving the news, broke down and wept. There was much struggle ahead, but the long exile was finally over.

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The beaches of the Gower Peninsula (AKA. 'Deliverance') were the sites of some of the fiercest D-Day fighting.

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