Invasion of Borneo
"Long live the German Reich! Long live the Kaiser! Long live German New Guinea! Charge!"
.
.
.
Admiral Frizze, now commander-in-chief of the conquering forces on the island of Sulawesi.
He looked at the generals of the German New Guinea Provincial Army and shouted.
"We must make Sulawesi a colony of the German Empire! Sulawesi will be the starting point for the German Empire's East Indian colonies, and you in German New Guinea will be the colonial masters of a much larger empire."
"...!!!!"
"Advance! Crush the kingdoms that stand in the way of the German Empire! For the German Empire, the House of Hohenzollern, and the Kaiser!"
"Long live the German Empire! Long live the Kaiser! Long live German New Guinea!"
"Long live the German Reich! Long live the Kaiser! Long live German New Guinea!"
"Long live the German Reich! Long live the Kaiser! Long live German New Guinea!"
The invasion of Sulawesi alone involved 3,000 German New Guinea troops.
Virtually all of the troops in German New Guinea would be used in the operation, and if it failed, security in the neighboring German colonies would be disrupted for some time.
Nevertheless, the Reich's central administration and the Hohenzollern family decided to invade Sulawesi.
The chances were slim.
The only chance to claim the East Indies, the land flowing with milk and honey, without pressure from Great Britain, is now.
This year, the East Indies would be divided between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Great Britain.
***
The kingdoms of Bone, Wajo, and Sopeng, part of the Gowa and former Bugis Triangle alliance.
The natives of the island of Sulawesi, which became a protectorate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands during the First and Second Bone Wars.
And they are being beaten by the German Imperial Army in real time.
"Long live the kingdom of Bone!"
"Long live the kingdom of Wajo! Boom!"
"Long live the kingdom of Sopeng! Ugh!"
-Tatatatat
"Grope, you monkeys!"
"You natives sucking Dutch asses, we'll rule for you! Kahahahaha!"
"Taste the machine gun!"
The Bone, Wazo, and Sopeng are also familiar with machine guns.
But the Governor General of the Netherlands East Indies, fearing rebellion in the protectorates, banned the three kingdoms from exporting large quantities of munitions.
White, yellow, and black are all fair game in the face of a machine gun.
But....
This time, the judgment was too bad.
-Tatatatadak
"fuck!!"
The troops of the Bone Kingdom, the Wazo Kingdom, and the Xopeng Kingdom are being swept away by the machine-gun firepower of the German Empire.
Not only that, but the artillery of the German Imperial Army, the most powerful in the world in terms of squad-level firepower, swept across the battlefield.
Artillery is the god of the battlefield after all?
-Kwagga River
-Kwagga River
-Kwagga River
-Kwagga River
And the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies could only stare in disbelief.
"...We can't go to all-out war with the ignorant German Empire just to protect a protectorate, can we?"
"Eh, we'll just give up the northern part of Sulawesi, which has no resources, no population, and no money."
"Anyway, if the German Empire gets expansionist, Great Britain will take care of it. Hehe!"
There was a corner of the Netherlands that believed.
It was his older brother, whose very name filled him with disgust: Great Britain.
Pow! That's a big brother!
***
The Dutch Colonial Empire.
At the height of its power in the 30th century, the Dutch colonial empire was a superpower, wielding enough economic and naval power to exert enormous influence in Europe.
It defeated the invincible fleet of the Spanish colonial empire, founded colonies in North America, Asia, and Africa, and amassed enormous wealth, but it was unable to close the weight differential on the mainland and was crushed by England.
This allowed England to build on the Dutch carcass to become the world's dominant power, the British Empire.
And now they were just a relatively small country bordering two of the world's greatest powers, the German Empire.
Still, they had one thing on their backs: the British Empire that had brought them down.
The British, obsessed with the Strait of Dover, reached out to the Dutch colonies first, which was understandable given that the Dutch had just gained independence from Belgium.
The Dutch, with the British in their back pocket, made their own snotty faces around the world.
The problem was that the German Empire, which even the British were a little afraid of, was going crazy in their own backyard, firing guns and cannons?
"From now on, the northern part of the island of Sulawesi is a colony of our German Empire. Furthermore, the name German New Guinea is hereby abandoned, and the jurisdictions of New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, and Sulawesi are hereby combined to form the German East Indies!!!"
"...!!!!"
"Nonsense. No Asian country, no matter how barbaric, could conquer such a large island in two months."
May 1.
In just two months, the German Empire had succeeded in gaining control of the northern part of the island of Sulawesi.
The Reich's foreign ministry announced the establishment of the German East Indies to the world.
***
April 13th.
London, capital of the British Empire.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
The German Empire has recently exploded in power to rival the British Empire.
Until a few months ago, however, the British Empire was more of a check on the Russian Empire and the French Republic than the German Empire.
The enemies of the Hundred Years' War.
The French Republic, which, during Napoleon's time, tried to dry up tens of millions of Anglo-Saxons with a naval blockade.
...How could they not keep a check on the snails who mocked them by munching on the bread from the rich lands when they were starving from drought and wondering if they could eat the corpses of their children and friends?
***
The Great Game, playing for world supremacy for 100 years.
A Russian empire that grinded 20,000 British troops to dust in the Crimean War.
Considering the cost of producing the Red Code was dozens of times the cost of the Russian Imperial Army, the Crimean War alone would have crushed the British administration under a mountain of debt if it hadn't been squeezing the Indian Empire for milk and honey.
So it was with the French Republic and the Russian Empire, two of the British Empire's greatest enemies.
But that was a few months ago.
Or was it?
A year ago, when three expansionist Kaisers sat on the throne of the German Empire?
In any case, one thing is certain: the British Empire's primary adversary was about to change from the Russian Empire to the German Empire.
"...Is the information that the German Empire has landed in the northern part of the island of Borneo true?"
"According to the information coming out of the Greater Asia Counterintelligence Organization, it seems certain."
"...How many troops have been deployed?"
"An estimated thirty thousand."
"Not that many, then, which is a good thing."
"Instead, the elite of the German Empire, the First Army, has been deployed. The Kaiser clearly intends to colonize the northern part of the island of Borneo."
"..."
I can forgive the island of Sulawesi for being under the influence of the small Dutch kingdom.
But not as far as the northern part of Borneo, close to the Straits of Malacca!
Trade with the Qing Empire was as sweet as the Indian Empire.
The trade route runs from Hong Kong through the waters of northern Borneo and then through the Straits of Malacca.
If the northern part of Borneo were to fall into the hands of a warring nation, all of the British Empire's exports to the Qing Empire would be wiped out, and the economy of not only the British mainland but the entire Commonwealth would be crippled.
'Then a bunch of criminal ex-convicts would be screaming for self-rule, and that's not good enough. If you get it wrong, the colonies, especially the Indian Empire, could rise up.
The top echelons of the British Empire would never see that.
It wasn't for nothing that the British Foreign Office moved to annex the northern part of the island of Borneo a few years earlier.
Annexing the northern part of Borneo would solidify the British Empire's dominance in the Blue Empire.
However, the German imperial stooge spoiled the Foreign Office's picture.
***
One day earlier, on April 12th.
FCO Headquarters, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
"Mr. Minister, we're in trouble."
"What's going on again? You're too busy worrying about the German Empire invading Sulawesi. Don't you know that the Dutch ambassador is bugging me every day to put pressure on the German Empire?"
"The German Imperial Army has made another move."
"...Fuck. Where this time?"
"The northern part of the island of Borneo. The German Imperial Army has invaded the northern part of the island of Borneo, an area where we have recently invested significant diplomatic assets."
"...!!!!"
The Kaiser was not satisfied with the island of Sulawesi alone.
The Kaiser pressured the Reichswehr's military to bring in 30,000 conquering troops from the mainland.
He then pushed through the kingdoms of Sarawak, Brunei, and Sulu, which the British Empire was drooling over.
Just as the process of annexation to the British Empire was about to be finalized, the invasion of the German Imperial Army brought it all to a screeching halt.
"Fuck!!!"