Azur Lane: Leipzig Missile Cruiser Class

Interlude IV: Balkan Powder keg

Also Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria, with parts of Slovenia (upper Yugoslavia) are the Alpine Confederation, whilst Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and the rest of Yugoslavia are the Balkan Federation. The Benelux countries are the Benelux Confederation.
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The Balkan Federation was formed with the end of the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles, and the dissolution of the Danube Federation. With Austria and Slovenia becoming states within the Apline Confederation and Galicia becoming a large part of Poland (now Intermarium) due to its majority of Polish nationals voting for integration, the Balkan Federation is mostly made up of the other nations of the Balkan Peninsula.

While many belonged to the Danube Confederation, others were legitimate countries, but with the Great War ending so suddenly, the economies were only recently converted to war economies, meaning that many soldiers were suddenly thrust back into civilian life without ever having fought, and now unable to find jobs, the social systems and hyped-up economies crashed to pieces. Romania and Bulgaria were among the many to suffer, with royalists and loyalists fighting each other for control of the government.

The Entente (British Empire, Iris Orthodoxy, Sardegna Empire) decided to put them all under one nation, thus creating the Balkan Federation. With their militaries severely weakened by infighting, the various nations had to give in, allowing Serbia, which had been occupied by the Danube Federation and Bulgaria for only a month before the invasion of the Siren, to invade. Obviously, the military and government in exile, hiding in Albania (without the consent of the Albanian government), used this opportunity to gain leverage.

Unfortunately, the Serbs bit off more than they could chew, and ethnic tensions arose over who should govern whom. Since it was a federation, everyone wanted a representative of their nationality, but the Serbs kept dissolving the parliament and arresting the "illegitimate" statesmen, including ambassadors of alleged conspirators. Since the British and French economies were heavily indebted to the Eagle Union, they could do nothing to pay the bail in order to avoid losing profitable resources, including the Romanian oil fields, which covered about 45% of all oil production in the entire world, as the E.U. government was still developing its huge oil fields in the frozen plains of Alaska and the deserts of Texas.

With the continued unequal treatment and usurpation of the parliament, the various factions decided to go a step further. Thus began the guerrilla warfare, the harassment of pro-Serb villages and towns, and the assassination of elected Serb government officials. With conscription of all males between the ages of 17 and 45 still in effect, sympathizers were easily brought on board, and entire stocks of old and soon-to-be-decommissioned rifles, grenades, bayonets, Maxim machine guns, and even vehicles were soon looted and stolen. The huge monopolizing senior officials realized that the funds to destroy such weapons could now be diverted into their own pockets and allowed to continue, even if it hurt their own reservists and active divisions.

By the early twenties, this led to a huge increase in corruption, scandals, murder, looting, military attacks, and more. In the end, the Economic Alliance was soon seen by every guerrilla fighter and Balkan official as a ticket out of this cycle of disunity. Of course, it was never going to be easy, and both sides tried to take advantage of the situation. This led to the Weimar Republic, the Northern Parliament, the Sardegna Empire, the Heliux Empire, the Crescent Moon Empire, and the Intermarium, seeing the massive corruption right on their borders, deciding to embargo the Balkan Federation.

Obviously, with the influx of migrants fleeing the countryside, the government realized that the importation of food and all commodities was in jeopardy and tried to buy time. Time that their military didn't want to give, because within one week there were massive border incidents (skirmishes), as many people of different ethnicities fled the country, trying to cross the borders of many nations, legally and illegally, most of the time even being shot at by the Serbian hunter-killers. The border guards of the neighboring nations responded in kind, and an escalation was imminent.