In July of 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War began. Though largely ignored in the western press due to rising tensions in Europe 🌍, Africa 🌄 and West Asia 🌴, this war ignited tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, for every independent nation there knew that a period of generalised war unlike anything they had seen was approaching. However, in Cestlep, political tensions were of a different nature. The Oceanykan Council found itself under fire from the Oceanykan right wing, spearheaded by the Natalist Home Front due to the rising dominance of foreign capital, and with it, the destruction of Oceanyka's traditional society. While the ideas of feudalism and rule by divine right had been on a steady decline since at least the Early Revolutionary Age, the rise of The Oceanykan Federation as a capitalist nation on the western model had accelerated this decline exponentially. Oceanyka's right-wing was, and is still, dominated by the idea of national anarchism, which favours traditional social relationships, decentralisation and isolationist policies.
On the 5th of March 1938, the 31st anniversary of Oceanyka's victory in the Oceanykan War of Independence, the Natalist Home Front held a rally in Cestlep advocating for the expulsion of all foreign interests from the nation and for numerous reforms to The Oceanykan Constitution which would see plutocratic and democratic powers' rights curtailed. A misunderstanding occurred between the Federal Army troops sent to ensure order and the protesters, ending in a day-long shootout. On the 6th of March, the Natalist Home Front announced over radio to the entire nation that it would declare war on the Oceanykan Council in order to restore the Oceanykan nation to its days of glory, with its seat of power being held in Edelia. So began the Oceanykan Civil War.
The first two years of conflict were hard on the Federal Army because its conventional methods of war were effective in the frontline, but they were constantly harassed and skirmished through a brilliant guerrilla campaign orchestrated by the Edelian government, to such a degree that the front would often become paralysed from lack of resupply and reinforcements. Additionally, the Natalist Home Front was receiving covert military aid from The State of Japan, bolstering their ad-hoc armed forces with modern military equipment.
During this period, there had been an unstable alliance between the Oceanykan centre, led by the Constitutional Party, and the Oceanykan left-wing, represented by the Trotskyist Revolutionary Party. Developments in Europe 🌍, however, did not favour Cestlep. World War II had now erupted, and throughout the world, communist movements saw the period as their last opportunity to take the reins of any nation in which they had any significant presence. While the war against the Edelian rebels grew decisively in favour of Cestlep, the Revolutionary Party planned a coup d'etat against their allies, amassing power in the coastal city of Melbourne. In August 1940, communist guerrillas stormed all of Cestlep Centre, but were defeated after a week of bloody urban combat. With their winning play unsuccessful, the Revolutionary Party was forced to retreat to Melbourne and declared war against both governments. Because of their openly anti-western and pro-eastern stance, they received ample military aid from the Eastern Bloc ⚒️.
Cestlep was now in a very precarious situation, because while in theory all three governments were at war with each other, the geographic realities of Oceanyka meant it was forced to fight both rebel groups, in full strength, at the same time. Edelia, sitting on the western coast of Oceanyka, and Melbourne, sitting in the south-east, were impervious to large-scale attacks from each other, and hostilities never went beyond skirmishes and naval raids.
The third calamity to hit Cestlep came on the 7th of December, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a massive surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, a territory of The United States of America, and headquarters of their Pacific Fleet. Shortly after, Japanese forces launched an all-out invasion of south-east Asia 🌏, particularly targeting the resource-rich colonies of The Imperial Domain of Indochina, The Imperial Domain of Kaiser-Willhelmsland, Dutch Indonesia and the independent nations of Malaysia and Thailand. On the 23rd of January, 1942, Japanese troops invaded northern Oceanyka, seeking to fuel their war economy with northern Oceanyka's treasure trove of raw materials and fossil fuels, beginning Operation Minamikaze.
The Oceanykan government was now fighting a three-way war against the Natalist Home Front, the Revolutionary Party and a world-renowned military power in The State of Japan. Caught in such a precarious situation, it was decided in the halls of Cestlep that Oceanyka had to abandon its traditional posture of political neutrality, and The Oceanykan Federation joined the United Nations (UN), better known as the Allied Powers, declaring war on the Fourth Eurasian Communist International (COMINTERN). This allowed them to activate Article 5 of The Oceanykan Constitution, the Collective Defence clause, with which Cestlep geared up for total war. A total mobilisation of the Oceanykan citizenry and economy followed in which automobile factories were converted to produce tanks, steelworks were retooled to produce rifles, universal conscription was re-activated, and new state-owned industries such as the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation or the Lithgow Arsenal were founded. Additionally, Cestlep began to receive massive quantities of military aid from The United States of America, and to a lesser degree, from the Kaiserliche Eisenpakt.
For the next five years, the Oceanykan continent lived in a state of general warfare characterised by major naval battles, urban bombing raids, and depending on the terrain, either mechanised or trench warfare. However, the economic superiority of the Cestlep government, backed up by the major industrial powers of the era, was indisputable, and all three of its opponents steadily lost ground. This was especially true of The State of Japan, for whom the situation in the Pacific Theatre did not develop necessarily to their advantage, and whose troops retreated from Oceanyka in August of 1943.
Oceanykan forces participated in numerous engagements outside of the continent itself. A small, elite naval squadron attached to the US Pacific Fleet saw action in the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa. Thousands of Oceanykan marine infantry troops fought in the Battles of New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal, Burma, Saipan, Peleliu, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Borneo. They also landed alongside American troops in the Battle of Kyushu, the Battle of Shikoku and the Battle of Tokyo, providing first-hand accounts of the atomic bombings of Operation Downfall.
By late 1944, both Edelia and Melbourne had been captured, and the Oceanykan Civil War itself regressed into a series of guerrilla campaigns deep in the bush or in the Outback. From this point onwards, most of the Federation's resources were spent fighting the Comintern in the Pacific War. Both rebel governments laid down their arms immediately following the Second Treaty of Versailles, seeing no hope for victory against a Cestlep that had decisively won the loyalty and the support of the world's western powers.
However, the social contradictions and tensions that had given birth to the Civil War were never fully solved. Many historians believe that the right-wing's resentment with Cestlep are responsible for the rise of multiple Fascist Guerrillas in the mid-1960s, and the few who know of their existence, the secession of the Australian Emergency Committee. On the other hand, the Oceanykan left-wing was ultimately successful, as the more moderate Oceanykan Peoples' Party gained power in 1961 during the Oceanykan Revolution.
The period that followed the Oceanykan Civil War is known as the Late Republican Age, and it is remembered as one of general social, moral and political decline.