The Unfinished World War
The war that began in 1939 did not end with the victory of any one side.
Germany conquered Europe but could not subdue Britain, nor could it defeat the Soviet Union. The Soviets defended Moscow and the industrial heartland of the Urals but lost the strength to reclaim their western territories. The United States grew into the world's largest industrial power but could not end the two-front war in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously. Japan, while losing its outer Pacific strongholds, maintained its control over Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and the Chinese coast.
The war evolved beyond a simple conflict between Germany and Japan against the Allies, gradually splitting into four spheres of conflict:
- The European Continental Sphere, centered on Germany
- The Maritime Alliance, centered on the United States and Britain
- The Revolutionary Front, centered on the Soviet Union
- The Greater East Asia Sphere, centered on Japan
These four powers were hostile to each other, but their internal interests also diverged. Germany and Japan were nominal allies, yet they viewed Europe and Asia as their respective exclusive domains. The United States and Britain, while fighting together, clashed over colonial issues and the post-war order. The Soviet Union advocated for world revolution but was in reality struggling to maintain its own territory and regime.
From the late 1940s, the war transformed from a conflict between nations into a hybrid of occupied territory rebellions, colonial independence wars, military coups, and civil wars. The fronts widened, but no power could launch a decisive offensive.
Nuclear Weapons and an Armistice of Fear
The United States was the first to deploy nuclear weapons in combat. However, nuclear weapons did not immediately end the war.
Limited nuclear strikes were carried out against Japanese naval bases in the Pacific and German industrial facilities in Europe, but key production facilities were either underground or dispersed across multiple regions. The nuclear attacks destroyed cities and civilians but did not provide enough troops and supplies to break through the front lines.
Germany and the Soviet Union also succeeded in nuclear tests soon after. Japan, with German technical assistance and resources from Manchuria and Korea, produced a small number of nuclear explosive devices, but it lacked long-range delivery systems and a stable production infrastructure.
The nuclear capabilities of each bloc were not a balanced deterrent.
- The United States possessed the largest number of warheads and bombers.
- Germany, though possessing fewer warheads, dispersed its launch sites across Europe.
- The Soviet Union concealed its nuclear capabilities using facilities in the Urals and Siberia.
- Japan, though possessing a very small quantity, had unclear locations and command structures.
The problem was that no country knew the exact scale of the enemy's nuclear arsenal. There was no guarantee that a preemptive strike could destroy all of the enemy's nuclear weapons, and it was uncertain whether actual units would obey orders to use nuclear weapons even if given.
In Germany, the Nazi Party, the SS, and the Wehrmacht all vied for command of nuclear weapons. In the Soviet Union, the Party Central Committee, the secret police, and the military each created separate control networks. Japan divided its nuclear devices between the Army and the Navy. Even the United States experienced severe conflicts between the President and the military over the authority to use nuclear weapons.
In 1951, German forces used tactical nuclear weapons on the Eastern European front. Several Soviet divisions were annihilated, but radioactive fallout spread to German-occupied territories and even friendly lines. The Soviet Union retaliated with nuclear strikes on German rear railway cities, killing hundreds of thousands, but the front lines barely moved.
This incident proved that nuclear weapons did not guarantee victory and could, in fact, undermine the control of regimes.
What was signed in Stockholm in 1952 was not a peace treaty. The four powers did not end the war; they ceased fighting because they had lost the capacity to continue.
The First Wave of Collapse: The Japanese Empire
Of the four powers, Japan was the first to falter.
Japan relied on its maritime transport network to connect its homeland with its colonies, but prolonged blockades depleted its ships and fuel. While industrial facilities in Korea and Manchuria were still operational, transporting their products and food to the homeland became difficult.
The Army insisted on defending Korea and Manchuria to the end. The Navy advocated for reducing overseas territories and defending only the Japanese homeland, Taiwan, and a few bases in Nanyang. Bureaucrats and zaibatsu sought partial negotiations with the United States, while young officers branded this as betrayal.
In 1953, when the Navy secured the Emperor's person and the central government in Tokyo, the Army command stationed in Manchuria and Korea refused to obey orders. Although the Japanese Empire was officially one, it was effectively divided into several military zones.
- The Navy-Bureaucrat Alliance, controlling Tokyo and Kanto
- The Zaibatsu-Industrial Government in Osaka and Kobe
- The Naval Hardliners in Kyushu
- The Army General Headquarters in Korea and Manchuria
- Independent Field Armies in occupied Chinese territories
- The Kodoha (Imperial Way Faction) militias in rural areas
As Japanese military control loosened, uprisings also occurred in the colonies.
In Korea, independence fighters, communist guerrillas, nationalist military organizations, and labor unions seized control of different regions. Officials and military personnel of Manchukuo attempted to create a state independent of Japan, while China's Kuomintang and Communist Party simultaneously advanced into Manchuria. In Taiwan, factions advocating for autonomous negotiations with Japan clashed with those demanding immediate independence.
Even on the Japanese mainland, port laborers in Osaka and Kobe refused to load war materials. Their goal was not an anarchist revolution from the outset. They simply sought to directly manage warehouses and transport networks to prevent urban residents from starving while the military monopolized food.
Some port organizations successfully maintained distribution, but others were suppressed by the Navy. Still others colluded with black marketeers and transformed into new regional powers.
The Second Wave of Collapse: Germany and Europe
Germany had a stronger economic base than Japan but failed in leadership succession.
After Hitler's death, the Nazi Party appointed a nominal successor, but real power was dispersed among various organizations.
- The Party Bureaucratic Government in Berlin
- The Wehrmacht, controlling the Eastern Front
- The SS, controlling northern Germany and parts of the occupied territories
- The Industrial Zaibatsu and Technocrats in the Rhine-Ruhr region
- The Catholic Conservatives in Bavaria and Austria
In 1954, the SS attempted to arrest Wehrmacht generals and failed, triggering a civil war in Germany. German army units, at the corps and division level, supported different command structures. Some units stationed in occupied territories withdrew to the German mainland, while others became independent warlords in situ.
As the German occupation system collapsed, uprisings erupted across Europe, with varying outcomes depending on the region.
In northern France, republican and communist resistance fighters, after driving out the German army, immediately began fighting each other. For a time, three governments coexisted in Paris. Labor committees in Belgian port cities maintained distribution and security for months but were disbanded by the provisional government army supported by Britain.
In the Czech industrial zone, technicians and workers jointly operated factories, creating a relatively stable autonomous system. In contrast, in some parts of eastern Poland, militias indiscriminately executed German residents and collaborators, leading to large-scale retaliatory massacres.
In Barcelona and southern France, old anarchist and syndicalist organizations re-emerged, but they too failed to unite. Labor unions advocated for factory control, while rural communities feared that cities would forcibly requisition grain again.
The European uprisings were not a single revolution. In the space left by the disappearance of central governments, different forms of order emerged, many of which did not last for more than a few months.
The Third Wave of Collapse: The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union maintained central control the longest among the four powers.
The Party leadership propagandized the collapse of Germany and Japan as the inevitable downfall of capitalism and fascism. However, discontent had been accumulating within the Soviet Union over wartime mobilization and rationing, forced resettlement, and secret police rule.
From the mid-1950s, leaders of the republics in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia began to defy Moscow's orders. Initially, this was closer to refusing food and troop conscription than an independence movement.
In Leningrad, workers expelled factory managers and Party committees and formed production councils. They did not demand privatization but argued for an end to the structure where the Communist Party exercised power on behalf of the workers.
The Moscow government branded them as counter-revolutionaries, but refusals of orders also occurred within the suppression forces. Soldiers could not comprehend why they had to attack workers' councils.
Subsequently, the Soviet Union fragmented into multiple centers of power.
- The Party Bureaucratic Government in Moscow
- The Military-Industrial Administrative Union in the Urals
- The Leningrad Workers' Council
- The National-Communist Government of Ukraine
- The National Liberation Front of the Caucasus
- Socialist-Islamic Autonomous Forces in Central Asia
- Military Districts controlling the Siberian railway and resource areas
- The Naval-Army Allied Government of the Far East
Not all councils were free and democratic. Some workers' councils in the Urals maintained forced labor under the guise of military production. Some peasant autonomous regions in Ukraine expelled Russian residents. In the Caucasus, national liberation turned into ethnic retribution.
The Soviet Union collapsed due to workers demanding power, but the outcome did not necessarily lead to workers' freedom.
The Fourth Wave of Collapse: The Maritime Alliance
The United States and Britain did not collapse as immediately as the other powers.
Most administrative bodies and industrial facilities on the U.S. mainland remained intact, and the federal government still possessed a powerful military and nuclear arsenal. However, nearly two decades of war, overseas deployments, conscription, and a rationing economy had severely divided society.
The collapse of the Maritime Alliance manifested not as a direct dissolution of states but as a loss of control over colonies and provinces.
Britain could not prevent the independence of its colonies in India, the Middle East, and Africa. Independence movements grew in Scotland and Wales, and in the coal mines and industrial cities of northern England, workers' councils intervened in production and food distribution.
In the United States, West Coast longshoremen unions refused to ship weapons to the military governments of Europe and Asia. Labor organizations in Detroit and Chicago demanded public disclosure of military contractor production plans and worker control. In the South, Black autonomous organizations clashed with white supremacist militias.
However, the United States as a whole did not collapse. A state of dual power emerged, with the federal government, state governments, and local autonomous organizations coexisting.
Some workers' councils negotiated with local governments and became legitimate autonomous bodies. Some were suppressed by the federal army, and others transformed into armed militias, coercively controlling surrounding areas.
The Birth of Order Without States
Most of the early autonomous organizations did not call themselves anarchists.
They were not formed to oppose the state to realize a grand ideology, but to fill the functions that the state could no longer provide.
- Port laborers managed the unloading of food and fuel.
- Railway workers repaired lines and transported refugees and supplies.
- Peasant unions jointly managed land and grain.
- Soldier committees reorganized deserters and returning soldiers into local defense forces.
- Urban resident committees were responsible for distribution and security.
- Medical personnel and technicians operated hospitals and power plants independently.
Many of these organizations failed.
Some regions were paralyzed by indecision due to the inability to elect representatives. Some militias were seized by charismatic commanders and became warlord factions. There were cases where labor unions monopolized factories and excluded non-union members and the unemployed. Rural communities, fearing that cities would forcibly take their grain, cut off supplies, leading to retaliatory requisitions in the cities.
In some areas, after anti-organizationalists branded administrators and technicians as a new ruling class and expelled them, power plants and water supply facilities stopped functioning. In many instances, resident tribunals tasked with punishing war criminals devolved into public revenge killings.
Conversely, some regions survived for years.
These did not abolish all power but distributed it among various organizations, making it recallable at any time. Factory committees, resident assemblies, rural unions, and militias, while independent, formed joint representative councils for necessary matters.
These regions learned of each other's existence through sailors, railway workers, exiles, and shortwave radio broadcasts. However, not all regions adopted the same ideology.
It was not until the late 1950s that intellectuals and activists began to describe the scattered autonomous movements as a single global trend.
Later historians referred to the uneven uprisings and autonomous movements between 1957 and 1966 collectively as the 'Black Spring.' However, to the people of that era, it was neither a spring nor a single revolution. In some regions, it was liberation; in others, it was the beginning of famine, massacre, anarchy, and warlordism.
The Diversification of the Anarchist Movement
The anarchist movement, as soon as it grew, split into several branches.
- Syndicalists argued that industry and transportation should be operated by labor unions.
- Communalists viewed urban and village resident assemblies as the most important power.
- Council communists pursued a planned economy based on workers' councils.
- Agrarian autonomists prioritized the independence of land and rural communities.
- Anti-organizationalists suspected continuous representation and administrative structures themselves as seeds of new power.
- Military federalists argued for a unified command structure and standing forces to defend the revolution.
While all criticized the state and one-party dictatorship, they suspected each other as new ruling forces.
Industrial workers criticized peasants for monopolizing food, while peasants retorted that urban labor unions exploited the countryside like the old state. The military federation demanded conscription and rationing to defend free territories, which the communalists saw as the revival of the state.
Even in regions where anarchism succeeded in overthrowing the existing state, it divided when it came to creating a new order.
The World After Nuclear Weapons
Even though states collapsed, nuclear weapons did not disappear.
In fact, as central command structures disintegrated, nuclear weapons became more dangerous.
- Some of Germany's nuclear facilities were seized by remnants of the SS and the Wehrmacht, respectively.
- Soviet nuclear bases were controlled by regional military districts and technician committees.
- Some of Japan's nuclear devices were held by the Army in Manchuria and the Navy in Kyushu.
- While the U.S. nuclear arsenal was maintained by the federal government, some overseas bases exercised independent command.
The free regions were divided on whether to dismantle nuclear weapons immediately. Some argued for handing over all nuclear facilities to an international technical committee. Others believed nuclear deterrence was necessary to defend against invasions by state armies and warlords.
At some nuclear facilities, soldiers and technicians formed joint committees to seal launch mechanisms. However, some bases refused external verification. Rumors of possessing nuclear warheads alone led to mass evacuations from surrounding cities and communities.
The core issue in the world was no longer which country possessed nuclear weapons.
It was about who could issue launch orders, who could stop those orders, and whether new powers would emerge under the guise of controlling nuclear weapons.
The World of the 1960s
By the mid-1960s, the world map could no longer be explained by state borders alone.
- Regions effectively governed by central governments
- Regions dominated by military forces and warlords
- Nationalist independent governments
- People's Republics affiliated with Communist parties
- Industrial cities controlled by corporations and zaibatsu
- Workers' councils
- Peasant communes
- Free cities and port alliances
- Isolated military bases maintaining nuclear armament
- Conflict zones not continuously controlled by any power
Multiple powers coexisted even within a single city. It was common for railway stations to be operated by workers' councils, government buildings occupied by remnants of the old government army, surrounding rural areas controlled by peasant unions, and ports managed by sailors' unions.
States did not disappear. Instead, smaller states, military governments, and revolutionary regimes constantly emerged. Simultaneously, autonomous organizations that rejected them also continued to appear.
This world is not one where anarchism has triumphed.
It is a world where, after the state destroyed the world, people have been testing for decades whether they can live without states. Some communities preserved freedom, others starved, and some militias became the very powers they had overthrown.
Those who dream of a World Federation of Free Nations believe that all regions can voluntarily connect. However, the question remains whether, the moment a free federation adopts a stronger central organization to withstand war, famine, and the threat of nuclear weapons, it does not become another state.
The history of this world is not a history of revolutionary victory.
It is a history that records how, after the unfinished world war shattered states, people on the ruins chose between freedom and survival, and at what moments the two values clashed.