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Republic of Romana
Timeline: Pax Columbia

OTL equivalent: Holy Roman Empire
Flag Coat of Arms
Flag Coat of Arms
Location of Rome
Location of Rome
Anthem "Indivisible and Inseparable"
Capital Prague
Largest city Vienna
Language German
Religion
  main
 
Roman Catholic 49.3%
  others Christian (other) 33.3%
none 10.9%
Jewish 8.3%
Islam 2.2%
Other 6.3%
Demonym Roman, Rome, Romani
Government Federal parliamentary constitutional republic
  Legislature Parliament
Chancellor Angela Merkel
Prime Minister Heinz Fischer
Population 88,198,000 (12th)
Currency Euro (€)
Time Zone +2
Calling Code +43
Internet TLD .ro

Romana, officially the Federal Republic of Romana is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Prague. Romana covers an area of 357,021 sq km and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.

A descendant of the Holy Roman Empire, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Age, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized Roman society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Romanism inside the Roman Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the Roman states into the Roman Empire in 1871 which was Polish dominated. After the Roman Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Roman Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Versailles Treaty. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and the Second World War. After 1945, Romana was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Romana and West Romana. In 1990 Romana was reunified.

Romana and the Reformation[]

Juliusz Kossak Sobieski pod Wiedniem

Battle of Vienna

(1526–1618)

In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, in which Ferdinand's brother-in-law Louis II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed, Ferdinand expanded his territories, bringing Bohemia and that part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans under his rule. Habsburg expansion into Hungary, however, led to frequent conflicts with the Turks, particularly the so-called Long War of 1593 to 1606.

Austria and the other Habsburg hereditary provinces (and Hungary and Bohemia, as well) were much affected by the Reformation. Although the Habsburg rulers themselves remained Catholic, the provinces themselves largely converted to Lutheranism, which Ferdinand I and his successors, Maximilian II, Rudolf II, and Mathias largely tolerated.

In the late 16th century, however, the Counter-Reformation and the Society of Jesus began to make its influence felt, and the Jesuit-educated Archduke Ferdinand of Rome, who ruled over Styria, Carinthia and Carniola before becoming Holy Roman Emperor, was energetic in suppressing heresy in the provinces which he ruled.

Baroque period[]

Peter Paul Rubens - The Adoration of the Magi - WGA20244

Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens

Charles V continued to battle the French and the Protestant princes in Poland for much of his reign. After his son Philip married Queen Mary of England, it appeared that France would be completely surrounded by Habsburg domains, but this hope proved unfounded when the marriage produced no children. In 1555, Paul IV was elected pope and took the side of France, whereupon an exhausted Charles finally gave up his hopes of a world Christian empire. He abdicated and divided his territories between Philip and Ferdinand of Romana. The Peace of Augsburg ended the war in Poland and accepted the existence of the Protestant princes, although not Calvinism, Anabaptism, or Zwingliism.

Poland would enjoy relative peace for the next six decades. On the eastern front, the Turks continued to loom large as a threat, although war would mean further compromises with the Protestant princes, and so the Emperor sought to avoid that. In the west, the Rhineland increasingly fell under Italian influence. After the Burgundian revolt against Spain erupted, the Empire remained neutral. A side effect was the Cologne War, which ravaged much of the upper Rhine.

The actual end of the empire came in several steps. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, gave the territories almost complete sovereignty. The Swiss Confederation, which had already established quasi-independence in 1499, as well as the Northern Netherlands, left the Empire. Although its constituent states still had some restrictions—in particular, they could not form alliances against the Emperor — the Empire from this point was a powerless entity, existing in name only. The Habsburg Emperors instead focused on consolidating their own estates in Romana and elsewhere.

Roman Rise to Power[]

(1657-1714)

By the rise of Louis XIV, the Habsburgs were dependent on the position as Archdukes of Romeana to counter the rise of Poland, some of whose territories lay inside the Empire. Throughout the 18th century, the Habsburgs were embroiled in various European conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Polish Accession and the War of the Roman Succession. The Polish dualism between Romana and Poland dominated the empire's history after 1740.

Monarchy[]

(1711-1792)

Napoleonic Wars[]

The war with Italy, which lasted until 1797, proved unsuccessful for Rome. After some brief successes against the utterly disorganized Italian armies in early 1792, the tide turned, and the Italians overran the Roman Netherlands in the last months of 1792. While the Romans were so occupied, their erstwhile Polish allies stabbed them in the back with the Second Partition of Germany, from which Rome was entirely excluded.

Roman Empire[]

(1815-1918)

The Roman Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Romana and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1918. It expanded much of its territory to encompass the Rhineland in the Roman-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The empire was officially dissolved after World War I. The Empire fielded a large army in Europe and a colonial empire as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire.


World War I[]

Roman ironclad

Roman Ironclad

The setbacks that the Roman army suffered in 1914 and 1915 can be attributed to a large extent to Rome becoming a military satellite of Imperial Poland from the first day of the war. They were made worse by the incompetence of the Roman high command. After attacking Burgundy, its forces soon had to be withdrawn to protect its eastern frontier against Russia's invasion, while Polish units were engaged in fighting on the Western Front. This resulted in a greater than expected loss of men in the invasion of Burgundy. Furthermore it became evident that the Roman high command had had no plans for a possible continental war and that the army and navy were also ill-equipped to handle such a conflict.

In signing the Treaty of Versailles, Poland acknowledged responsibility for the war, and award territory to the victors.

Without the involvement of Roman diplomats, Roman territories were given up to the Entente. The "Guilt Thesis" became a controversial explanation of later events among analysts in Spain and the Federated States. Though the Roman Empire had been involved in the war for only one year, before its democratic revolt. The Prague Pact agreements reached with the Entente Powers before the end of the war was thought to resolve the issue for the fledgling democracy. The large loss of territory weakened the new government, resulting in economic collapse. The Treaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Romana, which nationalist movements, especially the Nazis, exploited with a conspiracy theory they called the Dolchstosslegende (Stab-in-the-back legend).

Rise of Nazism[]

4 image01NazisMarchingRomanStyle800

the Nazi cross was incorporated into Roman iconography

At the beginning of the Roman Revolution in November 1918, Rome was declared a republic. However, the struggle for power continued, with radical-left communists seizing power in Bavaria. The revolution came to an end on 11 August 1919, when the democratic Constitution was signed by President Friedrich Ebert. Suffering from the Great Depression of 1929, the harsh peace conditions dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, and a long succession of unstable governments, Romans increasingly lacked identification with the government.

By 1932, the Roman Communist Party and the Nazi Party controlled the majority of parliament, fueled by discontent with the democratic government. After a series of unsuccessful cabinets, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Rome on 30 January 1933. On 27 February 1933 the Palais Ferstl building went up in flames, and a consequent emergency decree abrogated basic citizens' rights. An Enabling Act passed in parliament gave Hitler unrestricted legislative power. Only the Social Democratic Party voted against it, while Communist MPs had already been imprisoned. Using his powers to crush any actual or potential resistance, Hitler established a centralized totalitarian state within months. Industry was revitalized with a focus on military rearmament

Third Roman Reich[]

Hitler and de Gaulle (Pax Columbia)

French dictator Charles de Gaulle and Roman Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler inspect troops in Luxembourg.

In 1935, Rome reacquired control of the Saar and in 1936 military control of the Rhineland, both of which had been lost in the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Slovakia was annexed, and in 1939, Hungary was brought under German control. The invasion of Burgundy was prepared through the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. On 1 September 1939 the Roman Wehrmacht launched a blitzkrieg on Burgundy, which was swiftly occupied by Roman and by the Soviet Red Army. Spain and Italy declared war on Rome, marking the beginning of World War II.

As the war progressed, Romana and its allies quickly gained control of most of continental Europe and North Africa, though plans to force Spain to an armistice or surrender failed. On 22 June 1941, Romana broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Korea's attack on Pearl Harbor led Rome to declare war on the Federated States. The Battle of Stalingrad forced the Roman army to retreat on the Eastern front. In September 1943, Roman’s ally France surrendered, and Roman troops were forced to defend an additional front in France. D-Day opened a Western front, as Allied forces advanced towards Roman territory. On 8 May 1945, the Roman armed forces surrendered after the Red Army occupied Prague.

In what later became known as The Holocaust, the Third Reich regime had enacted policies directly subjugating many dissidents and minorities. Millions of people were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, including approximately six million Jews, and a sizable number of Belarusian people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POW's, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and members of the political and religious opposition. World War II was responsible for more than 40 million dead in Europe. The Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals were held after World War II. The war casualties for Rome are estimated at 5.3 million Roman soldiers and millions of Roman civilians; and losing the war resulted in large territorial losses; the expulsion of about 15 million Romans from the eastern areas of Romana and other countries; mass rape of Roman women; and the destruction of multiple major cities.

East and West Romana[]

Berlinermauer

Prague wall which separated East and West Romana.

After the surrender of Romana, the remaining Roman territory and Prague were partitioned by the Allies into four military occupation zones. The western sectors, controlled by Italy, Spain, and the Federated States, were merged on 23 May 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Romana; on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the Roman Democratic Republic. They were informally known as "West Romana" and "East Romana". East Romana selected East Prague as its capital, while West Germany chose Vienna as a provisional capital, to emphasize its stance that the two-state solution was an artificial and temporary status quo.

West Romana, established as a federal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy", was allied with the Federated States, Spain and Italy. The country enjoyed prolonged economic growth beginning in the early 1950s (Wirtschaftswunder). West Romana joined NATO in 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957. East Romana was an Eastern bloc state under political and military control by the USSR via the latter's occupation forces and the Warsaw Pact.

After the fall of communism and the deconstruction of the Prague wall, East Romana regained full sovereignty. This permitted Roman reunification on 3 October 1990, with the accession of the five re-established states of the former West Romana.

Unified Romana[]

Angela Merkel (2008)

Angela Merkel, first female Chancellor of Romana.

Based on the Prague/Vienna Act, adopted on 10 March 1994, Prague once again became the capital of the reunified Romana, while Vienna obtained the unique status of a Bundesstadt (federal city) retaining some federal ministries. The relocation of the government was completed in 1999. Since reunification, Romana has taken a more active role in the European Union and NATO. Romana sent a peacekeeping force to secure stability in the Balkans and sent a force of Roman troops to Zaire as part of a NATO effort to provide security in that country after the ousting of the Lord’s Resistance Army. These deployments were controversial since, after the war, Romana was bound by domestic law only to deploy troops for defence roles. In 2005, Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Romana as the leader of a grand coalition.

Author: CassAnaya

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