Daxian occupation of Caldera

Group photograph of Daxian chiefs of police in charge of maintaining control over Caldera's urban centers

The occupation of Caldera by Qian Daxia during the second Great War started on 8 May 1936 after the surrender of all remaining Calderan forces by order of General Jon Weinworth, in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Bravador at the end of the Daxian Invasion of Caldera. Despite the official surrender, various armed formations, especially those linked to the Volkspartei, continued to resist the occupation and carry out hit and run attacks. Caldera was governed by a military authority until 1938 at which point the Daxians organized a native collaborationist government to oversee most civilian affairs; due to the deep seated resentment of Gothic domination this government was mainly staffed by Volins. In spite of this apparent concession to native Calderan rule, Daxian actions and historical records point to a plan to permanently control the island and colonize choice areas with ethnic Daxians. To this end occupation authorities built several towns and road infrastructure close to important mineral deposits in order to exploit them for the wider war effort. By 1940 some two thousand families had been moved into these new towns, although most would flee the island with the end of the occupation. Losses incurred in other fronts around Audonia, the continued and intensifying resistance of Caldera's population and the complex logistics of supplying a force in a far off island all contributed to the withdrawal of Daxian forces from the island in the spring of 1943. Several hundred Daxian settlers refused to leave with the army and, pillaging some of their equipment as it retreated, some managed to hold out in isolation against Calderan forces until 1958.

The occupation by Daxia is remembered in modern Calderan history as a time of deprivation and hardships brought on by the cruelty of Daxian forces. In Daxia the defeat and occupation of Caldera gave General Xiu Guangho an edge against his rival Dai Hanjian as the leading military man in government but the retreat in 1943 completely discredited him and led to his sidelining and assasination. Relations between the two nations continue to be strained in modern times as Daxia has refused to either offer any reparations or issue any apologies on the subject; an especially thorny issue being that of the Daxian-run POW death camps, which Daxian authorities deny ever existed.

Occupation

Military rule

Daxian troops prepare to attack a tank manned by Volkspartei partisans in the streets of Movingwater. The Volkspartei Defense forces managed to secrete away approximately four such vehicles after the surrender.

The aftermath of the surrender of Calderan forces gave way to a two year period of direct military rule during which the occupation forces extended their writ to most of the island though holdouts remained in parts of Bavogia province in the north. General Xiu Guangho served as the island's governor for a period of two years before parlaying his military achievements into a more prestigious command in mainland Audonia. During his tenure Guangho instituted an iron fisted regime, one of his first actions was the issuing of an order to deport the families of all captive Calderan soldiers to prison camps in Xisheng where they were held as hostages to ensure the good behavior of the prisoners; the fact that the Daxian navy did not have complete control of the sea lanes in the Nysdra Sea meant many of the unarmed transports carrying the families were targeted and sunk by Urcean forces unaware of what the vessels carried. Guangho resisted attempts by civilian ministries to restart the Calderan economy beyong the barest of subsistence levels, arguing that native Calderans should be transformed into a mass of subsistence farmers and unskilled labor. To this end Guangho closed all newspapers, research centers, schools and other institutions of higher learning. In 1937 he ordered the phasing out of the local currency, the Calderan Piece, and its replacement with the New Calderan Peso issued by the Daxian military itself; the new currency can be understood as very similar in purpose to scrip or IOU credit notes.

The governor's continued tinkering with the island's economy and his recalcitrance to carry out needed reforms led to his 'honorable transfer' to the Tapakdore front in 1938, a hot sector at the time. Despite not being at the helm of the Calderan ocuppation by the time of the withdrawal in 1943, Guangho was heavily blamed for the failures by both the public and his military colleagues at the Imperial Headquarters. Rightly or wrongly he was seen by the Emperor as responsible for the hardening of attitudes against Daxian rule through his economic mismanagement and draconian behavior. Guangho's governorship was followed by the appointment of a civilian administrator with oversight of all occupation forces.

Formation of the Calderan Friendship government

Green Eagle, Premier of the collaborationist Calderan Friendship government. A complicated figure in Calderan history, he is lionized by parts of the public as a Volin patriot.

The new Caldera administrator was Khajigin Munokhoi, a functionary of the Bureau of Cronan Affairs of Degei origins who arrived with instructions to pacify the island and reactivate its economy in service of the empire. To that end Munokhoi asked for and was granted approval to reconstitute a civilian administration run by sympathetic locals to handle non-security related administrative tasks. The Daxians mostly targeted the Volin with promises of undoing their long oppression under the Gothic minority rule, Munokhoi chose a former Volin soldier named Green Eagle (Wang Chu by the Daxians) to serve as Premier of the 'Calderan Friendship government'. This government was initially formed by the Ministries of Health and Welfare, Education and Infrastructure; Daxians retained direct control of all security, financial and budgetary matters in addition to economic extraction of materials. The Friendship government lacked any independent security force with the exception of the Premier's personal bodyguards and all security was in the hands of police chiefs from Daxia and the commander of the Third Brigade. Economic exploitation of Calderan resources was mostly focused on the extraction of minerals and substances useful to the Daxian war effort such as potassium nitrate, coal and iron which was done mostly by prisoners of war in extremely dangerous conditions. As the island lacked the industrial facilities to process them, they were instead shipped back to Daxia by way of allied Metzettan ports. The economic drain to Caldera's economy just in stolen minerals during the ocuppation years is estimated in the tens of billions of Calderan pieces.

The Friendship Government enjoyed a degree of initial popularity among broad sectors of the Volin majority; Volin elites were under the mistaken impression that after the end of hostilities Caldera would become an independent Volin republic only loosely affiliated with Qian Daxia. By 1940 it was quickly becoming clear that the Daxians had no intention of granting true Volin independence or even leaving the island; furthermore the increase in the arrival of Daxian settler families revealed a long term plan for ethnic subjugation. Another factor in growing discontent and resistance was the forceful conscription of Volins to serve in the Imperial army, with several thousand men shipped off to battlefields in western Audonia or to garrisons in Peratra. During a public appearance in June 1940, Administrator Khajigin Munokhoi publicly rubbished the idea of recreating Volinia, calling on Volins to "patiently and diligently learn at the feet of Daxians, for you are as children as pertains to statecraft". The public patronizing led to protests that lasted for four days until Munokhoi ordered their suppression with live fire; 256 Volins were killed all over the island. Premier Green Eagle privately complained about the brutality of the reaction but him and his cabinet were threatened with house arrest and the dissolution of the government if it did not fall in line. The killings are contemporaneously known as Red June.

Liberation

The Red June massacres tipped Volin opinion decisively against the occupation and many functionaries and security personnel of the Friendship government began actively deserting to resistance groups or stopped going to work in protest. The Daxians decided then to go ahead with long developed plans and took over the administrative apparatus of the Friendship government, sidelining or arresting its leading members and placing ethnic Daxians or hardline collaborators in all leading positions. In terms of its demographic makeup, the occupation administration went from being 75% Volin to only 36%. Notwithstanding the increase in apparent control, attacks by rebel forces increased exponentially especially given that they now seemed to have better intelligence on targets thanks to internal information leaks within the occupation apparatus. Bavogia province was especially unsettled and during 1942 and early 1943 the administration retrenched its presence to provincial urban centers and heavily guarded mineral extraction points. Adverse developments in the war outside Caldera impacted the occupation, increasing Urcean naval and raids on the sea lanes around Cusinaut were making the long term supply of Daxian troops on the island a more uncertain proposition; if the situation on the island deteriorated, reinforcements and support might not be forthcoming with disastrous consecuences.

Aftermath

A Calderan resistance fighter examines a pile of discarded New Calderan pesos, worthless after the Daxian withdrawal.