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The Empire is modelled on several real life empires, most notable being the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. The Imperial light tank looks like a M3 Lee tho. The medium tank is obviously the British Medium Mark III. The tank destroyer is a Jaged-Panther.
I have no idea what the Heavy Imperial tank is.
The Batomys is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 'Ratte tank'. Search it up.
The Gallian forces, Light tank is similar to the Panzer III/IV, built from a combination of PzIII and PzIV parts. The Gallian tank destroyer is a Stug III G (cut from game). #Stuglyfe.
The Shamrock is a Panzer IV H.
The Edelweiss looks like somebody descided to take a Tiger II chassis, scale it down, and change the slope a bit. The design is undoubtably very 'German' WW2. Oh please, its a Tiger II.
(Also the only good tank that the Gallians have.
I love tanks.
xD true, but most things in valkyria are a combination of different things historically. To prevent itself from becoming just another WW2 game.
Another fun thing: Look up a map of the old region of Gaul (Latin: Gallia) and compare it to a map of the nation of Gallia in the game.
Gotta say that the Shamrock is just a Gallian Light Tank with personal modifications by Zaka. That being said the Gallian Light Tank shares similarities with the Panzer 38(t) and the French R35 tank.The imperial tanks have multi-turret designs like the T-28 and T-35.
What strikes me is the military doctrine of each nation.
The Empire combines Germany's blitzkrieg tactics with heavy breakthrough tanks, demonstrated by the trend of "bigger is better" tactics. The infantry carry heavy armor too, I guess its because they are still stuck in the feudalism mindset.
The Federation is suppose to focus on cheap, but average quality tanks, and spam the living crap out of them. Apparently they focus on light infantry according to the wiki. So militarily they are like Russia with the economy of the US.
Gallia is unique. Captain Varrot said that Gallians focus on defense, using the homeland advantage. What strikes me as odd is that they use rapid-response light tanks with short 75mm guns to exploit breaches and use hit and run tactics as their armored "defense", akin to early US doctrine. They clearly focus on quality infantry and weapons, shown with experimental water-cooled rifles and SMGs with amazing performance. In real life, it those weapons would be unwieldly, heavy, and take alot of training to use efficiently.
I see Gallia as a faction that is completely focused on homefront and defence. They excel at fending invasions off and I think they would be crap at the offensive, at foreign front, given the compulsory nature of most of their self-defence forces.
This is about trying to track down influences, not saying "The Empire are The Nazis", or "Gallia is France."
That being said, it is pretty obvious they draw from various things. So let's get started.
The key conflict (or conflicts0 seem analogous to a mixture of WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the Thirty Years' War (for reasons I will tlak about later).
Some of the easiest to tell are- ironically enough- the Superpowers that don't get as much limelight. The Atlantic Federation is clearly analogous to the Western Allies of the World Wars and to NATO with its' affiliated powers in the Cold War. I personally add some seasonings about the Western anti-(Habsburg) Imperial powers of the late 16th and early 17th century (France, Sweden, Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, etc), but that is largely my own.
The Empire is a bit more interesting because it's a mashup of things, and in some ways the most accurate parallels are further from the obvious ones.. Everybody and their mother probably can tell it's a Nazi and Soviet standins in terms of doctrine, position, and most equipment. What fewer people (but still most) probably recognize are the WWI/Concert of Europe parallels, and not only that it apes Tsarist Russia, the Bismarkean Reich, and Austria-Hungary, but how deeply it does.
The Nazis and Soviets were both totalitarian regimes that were at least nominally populist, anti-aristocratic, and socialist. The Empire is exactly the opposite; it is a totalitarian absolute monarchy that seems to embrace the feudal traditions (if not feudalism itself) as well as industrialization. This means that the Central Powers of WWI and Czarist Russia are by far the closest parallel we have had to it in the modern world. Ideologically, philisophically, and on some level militarily and technologicaly. You can even see the parallels in the use of generally Germanic Medieval/Reformation plate armor by the Imperial soldiers, the use of the double headed eagle, and the rhetoric used (like in Johann's quote).
And while the Nazis and Soviets have bad press for Very, Very good reasons, most people tend to forget what monsters the enemy governments of WWI were. Which is odd, because it almost certainly had a direct relevance to the atrocities the Nazi government and the services fighting under it committed, given the dismal, murderous, and occasionally genocidal behavior of the OHL (Imperial Germany's War Cabinet and by the end virtual military dictatorship). Up to and including the use of human shields, "food requisitioning" as a terror tactic, enforced starvation, ethnic cleansing, destruction of infrastructure and territory (often simply out of spite, as the rampage they went in France in 1918 after the line ruptured happened), forced deportion and use of foreign civilians as slave laborers, and the like.
Its' doctrine is also very, very similar to the Russians and Germans in various degrees. It uses mostly Sovietesque tanks, seems to follow early WWII German doctrine and equipment, and fought a prior trench war.
Likewise, I would also say that the Empire also paralells the mid and late Holy Roman Empire, especially under the Hohenstaufen and the Habsburgs (who were capable of actually dragging the various things that made it up and trying to centralize power and revoke the various liberties the imperial contitution was supposed to protect). Beyond the obvious flag imagery, there is also the fact that the Empire is actually the "Autocratic East Europan Imperial *ALLIANCE.* ". Meaning it is not a single nation state but a mixture of them and noble holdings united under the Imperial Line.
One man wearing a bunch of crowns rather than the office of a nation held by somebody, if you will.This also helps explain the Slavic traits we see in the Empire and its' culture (which are subdued but there). To a lesser extent I would also say it fits for Rurikid Russia either before power starte dfalling from Kyiv or after Moscow started bullying and terrorizing the other Russian states under its' power.
On top of that, the close stylistic parallels, ideology, and approach to war definitely screams "Habsburgs." The Darcsen Hunts scream like a mixture of the average industrial genocide (go out there, meet interesting people, kill them because they're the wrong culture/blood/creed) like the Nazis and Soviet advancing units practiced, but also pogroms. Especially as institutionalized by the later Romanov Russian Emperors.
The Darcsen Slave Labor Camps strike me as the closest parallel to Gulags; work camps propping up the rest of the economy through cheap and bloody "slaves working themselves to death." Concentration Camps not only in the conventional sense of the meaning, but even moreso in the original sense. Where their main purpose actually was to Concentrate People rather than kill them off.
So if I had to sum up the Empire, I would say "More centralized/totalitarian Habsburg Dynastic Empire on a steady diet of Fantasy Steroids and Meth. with a Soviet economic system, German doctrine from WWII, and superficial trappings from all over."
I'd also say it has some superficial similarities to WWII Imperial Japan, given that it is a totalitarian and aggressive Empire under a revered/worshipped absolute Emperor. But that's about it. On top of virtually everything else being different, it seems like their imperial system is as well.
While we could debate forever about just how guilty Hirohito was and wasn't, the point is that he was heir to a tradition of figurehead emperors who stood aloof, looked pretty, and had to act indirectly and through bureaucratic channels if they were going to do it at all. While the actual military strongmen with the power ran things.
Taking a wild guess, I do NOT think that is how the AEEIA works.
Couple that with the fact that the Empire is clearly not homogenous, while the Japanese Empire was. More later.
Wil do. Was actually going to get to your post shortly. But first, an aside.
Part 2
You are correct about identifying the actual place of Bismark, and I have few qualms. But those that are are Absolutely Massive.
"Enacting several social and democratic reforms..." Really?
Yes, he did make several social reforms for reasons I'll touch on soon. But let's get one thing clear.
Otto Von Bismark was a bloody minded absolutist.
But don't take my word for that, take it from the words of his fellow German absolutists and co-conspirators/allies. Ideologically he seemed oddly wedded to the idea of the Divine Right of Kings and abolutist government even though there was nobody who sidelined the Emperor like he did.
He generally murdered (especially in 1848) and persecuted the people who generally wanted social and especially democratic reforms. His response to the generally lovey-dovey, peaceful, and staunchly German moderates of 1848 coming forth, asking for reforms, and *Offering the Crown of a United Germany to his (Prussian) king as a Constitutional Emperor*?
*AGITATING THAT THEY BE SLAUGHTERED.* And then helping to do some of the networking between the various German states and their militaries to make it happen.
I only wish I were exaggerating. Even in said 1848 when he was something of a mid/upper level bagman/coordinator between the various absolutist/government armies he shocked his allies with how bloodthirsty he was, such as advocating that the Prussian army be led into Berlin to crush the (peaceful at the time) crowds loyal to the Frankfurt Parliament.
And along with his allies, he created so many refugees fleeing that all but unprovoked slaughter that they actually coined a term for them. You ever hear of "Forty Niner?" "Miner 49er"?
Well, less common today are the "Forty Eighters." Reformists from the German states, Poland, and Hungary who fled West a year earlier. to escape that sort of stuff. While Bismark was far from the leading figure in it or even the most prominant figure (the crackdowns of 1848 were relatively decentralized; with a bunch of different German state governments acting in loose alliance), it certainyl doesn't say much good about him.
As for his "democratic reforms".. .no, not really. He intentionally formulated the Reichstag to be a token representation with as little power as possible, and intentionally isolated it from the real power of government in the Imperial Cabinet and the military. Which was why the Reichstag did not and ultimately could not reign in either as they grew more and more terrifying throughout this period up until the end of WWI had an outside power break the strength of both.
As for "reducing the power of the Church in government", No Bismark Did not. The church in Prussia had been thoroughly under State control since at least the times of the Great Elector (in the 1650's), and it was Protestant (Lutheran, to be specific). What he did do was launch one of the most far reaching and brutal persecutions of the *Catholic* church Northern Germany had seen since the Thirty Years War over two centuries before. This was the "Kulturkampf."
His interest in doing so was obvious. To retaliate against the Papacy for its' growing hostility towards his politics (for both good and bad reasons), and to break the identies and resistance of the Southern Germans and- ESPECIALLY- the Poles. Whom Bismark's opinion on was rather brutal. It was not about removing religious interference on state matters, it was stamping state dominance over the corpses of religious and cultural freedom.
That being said, Poles, Catholics, and Republicans had plenty of company; he tried to stamp out plenty of other groups as I have mentioned. He spent most of his reign surpressing and persecuting Socialism of all stripes (especially the Social Democrats), who were the actual proponents of the "social reforms" you are thinking of like Welfare.
He only changed tack and adopted some of them long after it was obvious that just persecuting them wasn't going to work, sending in the military to slaughter them would not have been productive, and public demand was growing. And he did so to try and take the wind out of their sales and adopt some for himself.
Not that he limited himself to those inside German borders. The militaries under his control were- to put it bluntly- brutal even by the standards of the day. Many of the atrocities we see play out in VC could practically have been ripped from their pages (in fact, the attack on the refugee convoy comes to mind, sans grenade). They used terror as a conscious weapon, persecuted on the basis of nationality/race/culture, and happily took innocent hostages in order to intimidate their enemies. All while being protected from the consequences by military victory and the neutering of the Reichstag and German legal institutions to deal with military abuses.
Don't get me wrong. They were not genocidal; certainly not on the level of the Nazis or their direct heirs in the leadup to WWI. But I think it's fair to say they helped lead into it.
FInally, a large part of the reason Wilhelm sacked Bismark- and was the way he was in general- was not merely because of his own personality (which was rash, imperious, and generally hostile). It was also because he had more or less been judicially kidnapped by Bismark from his family and subjected to what would qualify as profound emotional abuse under the laws of today.
He obviously never forgave the man even if he did take many of the basic stances he had with them. And I honestly cannot blame "Willie" for that.
Ultimately, Bismark's legacy was a powerful, united (North) Germany, a new and dynamic European great power, and the deeply authoritarian regime that ran it all and would be the prototype for what it was to be in power in Berlin until the end of WWII.One that had dragged Germany and its' neighbors through horrifying depths by the time of Bismark's death, and which would only go further in the years after it.
I do not mean to diss Bismark *too much.* I obviously am not that fond of the man on a moral level, but this post is m ostly addressing the negative side of his effects (because you handled the other side of the coin fairly well). And he was a skilled player of politics. But while I admire him as a handler, diplomat, and statesman I cannot admire him much as a human being.
Which is why I do think the application of his name to a major industrial power in the Empire is a fitting comparison. In many ways I believe the Empire is very much like the Reich Bismark created, in both Good and Bad ways.
The reason I get twisted out of shape about thjis is that it is the century of WWI, and it is long past time we understood that.
As for the mention of the name Adolph/Adolf; I agree that it was a generic German name, but I also think it's been so strongly tainted by who it was tied to. So on some level I think it's the equivalent of saying "Here is Generic German Badguy."
This- especially the latter- is more or less canon, or assumed to be so. The artbooks in particular clarify it. Gallia has more or less always maintained a defensive stance, or at least has in the lifetime of anybody mortal.
Part 3
In many ways, the hardest and most nuanced nation to pin down is the one that features the most.
So, what the heck is Gallia?
Well, sorry for getting a bit further from VC1, but to answer that let's turn away from Gallia as a whole or even the Gallian government and those on it. Let's look at a specific, identifiable part of Gallia that has doubtless had a part in the former things, but is also distinct.
Namely, the Gallian Revolutionary Army/Rebels of Valkyria Chronicles 2. Who rise up in revolt after the events of the first game in reaction to Cordelia's revelations (I'll try and avoid saying what they are) and liberalizing reforms. With a rival noble house at their head (the Gassenarls) and a power base in the South they seek to overthrow Cordelia's government on a plank fo Darcsen Hatred, Gassenarl pretentions to the Throne, and defense of aristocratic power over the lower masses.
They also use a ton of the old Imperial colors as well as Greyish/Whitish Yellow.
Ultimately they had a strong core of professional troops and officers loyal to the Gassenarl cause and local support in the South and were capable on the Gallian government for a year and a half. But they're something of a glass cannon (the limits of their spearhead units are pointed out), and while they did do a lot of damage and briefly seize the capitol of Randgriz (which raises interesting questions about WTH they intended to call it since Randgriz is the name of the rival dynasty..) they ultimately failed.
So what are they?
The obvious example is that they are the Confederate States of America from the US's civil war. Looking at their flag, who is leading them, their general platform, and the vaguely-KKKish look of their average mook I think that is reasonable. But many parts of the comparison do not fit.
The Confederates wanted to break off from the rest of the Union, not take it over like the GRA does. The Confederacy was fashioned as a republic/non-monarchy; the Rebels are largely monarchist. The planter "aristocrats" that provoked and led the Confederacy were not actual, titled aristocrats. The GRA's are. The Confederacy probably had more issues with their white, "Yankee"/Northern erstwhile countrymen than with Blacks; the GRA seems to hate Darcsen and not be limited to a region.*
And finally, the Confederacy fought largely to protect chattel slavery; we have absolutely no reason to believe that is a thing in Gallia, or ever has been a thing, even in rebel held territories. The closest faction we see to doing that is the Empire with their Darcsen Slave Camps (like the one under Gregor in VC1), and that does not look to be something indigenous to Gallia.
So if they're not cut and dry Confederate expies, what are they?
Well, another thing I think is that they're the Spanish Rebels/Nationalists of the 1936-39 Civil War that brought Franco in. Which is an easy thing ot see given the parallels to Spain (especially in the year VC2 takes place in). But the Nationalists were a big tent alliance, and I would say the GRA looks particularly like the Carlists of Spain.
In the early/mid 19th century, as the Spanish King of the time (the truly horrible Ferdinand VII) lay dying, his wife persuaded him to change the existing laws of succession that had determined the Spanish monarchy until then. The changes he made put in the rather liberal Isabella, overriding the scucession Carl/Carlos. Who was up until then heir apparent to the Spanish crown and a fanatical supporter of absolutism, what he saw as Spain's traditional values, and what we'd call reactionary politics.
The Carlists- at their core- were the supporters of Carlos's claim to be Spanish King, and along with it his ideology. They largely came from the old hildalgo landowners, the deeply religious, and groups used to the semi-feudal structure of Spanish law and customs before the French invasion, like the Basques. Before long they went to war with the comparatively liberal Spanish government and ruling house many times over the 19th century, and conspired against it even further. They were defeated militarily each time they tried (though the first time it was a very narrow victory), but they signed up for Franco's rebellion and helped win it. Only for Franco to sideline them afterwards and reduce them to impotence.
The Carlist influence on the GRA explains the dynastic side of things the American Confederates lacked. Their ideological values and constituencies are very similar (though we shouldn't overstate them). Their flag is rather similar to the rebel one as well.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41wa0EI220L._SY355_.jpg
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/valkyria/images/3/31/Gallian_Revolutionary_Army.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120402043417
(Note: A lot of times on the battle map, they delete the Black Supporting Lions, making the resemblance even stronger). So I'd assume this is a more formal flag, with battle ensigns often being simplified.
And ultimately, a lot of the same problems pop up for them. Coupled with their positioning in the Spanish Civil War, the fact that they are broadly the same culture as their enemies (rather than Dixie v. Yankee), and how manny saw service under the Gallian government, this makes me believe the GRA (or at least the "core" GRA) is heavily based off of them. Certainly more than the Spanish Nationalists as a whole.
So, what does this tell us about Gallia proper?
I'll get to that in my next post.
This does not mean the CSA was oh so fond of African-Americans; they did justify the revolt in the rhetoric of racial superiority. But the main tensions was with Northern industry and abolitionism rather than Southern Blacks themselves, and the veer to having hostility to Blacks being the main focus was largely something from the post war period.