The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War 2–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun.
Interwar Years
Benito Mussolini Seizes Italy (1924)
Fascism had already taken root in Europe in the aftermath of World War I but has had considerable time to spread since then, with several governments having their own fascist parties and politicians. The first major sign of a true fascist government, however, did not come from Germany, but from the Kingdom of Italy, with the Italian Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini taking control of the government with him as the leader. His totalitarian example would inspire Adolf Hitler later on. The Brotherhood of Kylar, whose territory lay within Italy, was angered by the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles, as many promises made by it were not upheld.
In this timeline, Italy proved itself slightly more capable with Mussolini understanding how his vision of restoring the Roman Empire requires a modern Italy, so he emphasized the importance of shifting gears to urbanization and encouraged studying abroad for further development of the country. Mines were also dug in the Alps to harness the mountains’ rich natural resources.
Adolf Hitler Takes Over Germany (1933)
Adolf Hitler, an Austrian veteran of World War 1, had already made his mark on the German people with the publishing of Mein Kampf, allowing the National Socialist Party to mop up support from the angered populace who had suffered a severe economic depression ever since the stock market collapsed. The party won the vote and the German parliament later passed the Enabling Act. Employment in public works projects and armament industries pieced Germany back together in a matter of months.
Remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 1936)
On March 7, 1936, German military forces were stationed in the Rhineland, along the borders of Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. This was in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, and the first time that the Rhineland held any type of military presence since 1929 when German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann announced that they would not ratify the 1928 Young Plan until Allied forces were removed from there.
Spanish Civil War (July 1936)
In July 1936, the Second Spanish Republic collapsed into a bloody civil war. The Spanish Republican Armed Forces had announced their opposition to the government, led by a group of generals, with General Emilio Mola as the primary planner and leader and General José Sanjurjo as a figurehead. The Falangists, Carlists, conservatives, and Catholics rallied under them and wanted to topple the Republic. The Republicans and Anarchists formed an uneasy alliance to combat them. Nationalist Spain received foreign aid from the German Reich and the Kingdom of Italy, while Republican Spain received aid from the Soviet Union.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937)
This conflict was the result of rising tensions between China and Japan and could be seen as the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Military forces from both sides reinforced the Marco Polo Bridge and opened fire. Later, the Chinese agreed to apologize for the conflict but the Japanese garrisoning forces initially rejected the truce. Further attempts to de-escalate the conflict failed, likely due to the actions of Chinese Communists and ignorant Japanese garrison army commanders. The assassination of a Japanese naval officer in Shanghai ultimately turned this incident into a full-scale war.
Eventually, Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communists, called on the KMT to join them in expelling the Japanese from mainland China. Chiang ignored this plea for help at first, but after being kidnapped by soldiers loyal to the warlords Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, he caved into Zedong and the warlords’ demands, and a second Chinese United Front was established between the nationalists and communists.
Anschluss of Austria (March 1938)
Increasing demands from Germany and growing support for the National Socialist Party pressured Austria to cave into German demands. The German military crossed the border into Austria virtually unopposed and was instead greeted with a cheering populace. Hitler himself had traveled with the army into Austria as well and appealed to much of the crowds.
The Munich Agreement (September 1938)
The Sudetenland held a substantial German minority in possession of Czechoslovakia. The Allies, at this time, were attempting to appease Hitler, and so this conference ended in their favor. Czechoslovakia was not invited to talks with Germany and the Allies regarding the arrangement, and would be forced to cede the Sudeten territories to Germany and the Zaolzie territories to Poland. Prime Minister Chamberlain was unfortunate not to see that appeasement does more harm than it does good.
Major Events of the War
German Invasion of Poland (September 1939)
After World War II, Danzig was widely considered 'the most dangerous city in Europe,' and for good reason; It was a flashpoint in German-Polish relations that could ignite a war at any moment. The German Reich would continuously demand the return of Danzig due to its substantial German majority and its current status with the Polish Corridor, standing as an affront to their beliefs in uniting all Germans. After rejecting their demands several times over, German forces invaded western Poland, officially beginning World War II. While the Poles fought bravely, the Wehrmacht had an ace up their sleeve: A new military doctrine focused on speed, aggression, and overwhelming force concentration, called the "Blitzkrieg." The Soviet Union would also launch an invasion of their own following an under-the-table agreement with Germany. Eastern and western Poland would be split between the two, and they would sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to ensure that no further aggression would take place.
The Brotherhood-Italian Decree (April 1940)
Following the limited Saar Offensive, tensions reached a high point between Mussolini’s Italy and the Brotherhood of Kylar. Since the Brotherhood of Kylar was technically an independent nation that was not at war with the Allies, Italian forces couldn’t cross the border into France and so their generals were planning for a theoretical war with the Brotherhood. A diplomatic meeting in Bologna between Kylar, Mussolini, and their respective cabinets decreed that Italian forces were allowed to freely move throughout their territory, this being effective throughout the ongoing war with France.
German Invasion of France (Early May 1940)
France had already declared war on Germany since the invasion of Poland and launched the Saar Offensive before the Allied forces were ordered back to the Maginot Line. However, the Wehrmacht knew that this defensive perimeter was concentrated in Alsace-Lorraine and other French territories bordering Germany. They would launch a surprise offensive through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley, known as Case Yellow. The attack would cut off the Allied forces that had advanced into Belgium and allowed them to enter Paris virtually unopposed. By late May, the British Expeditionary Force, Belgian, and French forces were trapped in and around Dunkirk. Over the course of eight days, over 300,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated by the British, though they would be forced to leave tanks and other military equipment behind in the retreat.
By June, the French government had been thrown into disarray and was forced to surrender via an armistice in the Compiègne Wagon. This was the same train carriage where the armistice to end the previous war was signed. Under the terms of the armistice, Germany would annex much of northern France, Italy would annex Nice and Corsica, and Vichy France would be established in the unoccupied southern territories.
Battle of the Mediterranean Sea (June 1940)
The Regia Marina was, without a shadow of a doubt, the largest navy in the Mediterranean, and dictator Benito Mussolini knew this, describing it as mare nostrum (Our Sea). The British Royal Navy was outnumbered, so their plan was to hold control over three strategic points: Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal. This allowed the Mediterranean Fleet to maintain an open supply system as well as a needed stop for Allied convoys.
Control over the Mediterranean would be indecisive until the Italian armistice in 1943, but it introduced entirely new tactics to naval warfare abroad. The battle of Taranto in particular was the first of its kind in history, where Swordfish bombers launched from the HMS Illustrious would attack the Regia Marina still at anchor. The Italians were very much not finished, however, as they were able to confront the Mediterranean Fleet again in just five days.
Battle of Britain (July 10, 1940)
By this point, Britain remains as the last allied power in Europe. Desperate to defend their homeland, the Royal Air Force clashed with the German Luftwaffe over provinces that bordered the English Channel, including their capital in London. By many, this was considered the first military operation fought entirely by air forces. At its starting point, the RAF was equipped with the Hawker Hurricanes and early iterations of the Supermarine Spitfires to defend, while the Luftwaffe came in force with bombers such as the Ju-88 Stuka, Do-17, and He-111. Others included Bf-109 fighters and Bf-110 heavy fighters.
The deployment of better British aircraft, especially later versions of the Spitfire, whittled down Germany’s air superiority over the English Channel. Operation Sea Lion, which was supposed to be launched after Germany had asserted its air superiority, would no longer be an option. Hawker Hurricanes still managed to achieve the majority of enemy aircraft destroyed, especially bombers. Spitfires were better at distracting and shooting down their fighter escorts.
Operation Barbarossa (June 1941)
With most of Europe under Axis control, Germany planned to break the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and invade the USSR. Romania would be a key contributor to this operation with their industrial and military support because Germany was particularly low on oil to fuel their vehicles. An invasion of Lithuania and refusal to guarantee the independence of Soviet-occupied countries (such as Ukraine), however, most likely doomed the operation in the first place.
The Soviet Union, whose leader was suspicious of Germany since the pact, was caught off-guard and had already sustained 5 million casualties by December, but the Red Army continued to resist. In August 1941, senior members of the Wehrmacht had become uneasy saying that they had underestimated the Russian colossus, having 200 encountered divisions before and already encountered 360 of them.
Attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941)
On the morning of Sunday, December 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. The assault began at 7:48 AM (Hawaiian time) and continued for around 2 hours. Of the 8 battleships present, 4 were sunk, as well as 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, an anti-air training ship, and a minelayer were either damaged or sunk. Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States at the time, declared December 7, 1941 “a day that will live on in infamy."
This preemptive military strike on Pearl Harbor commenced before Japan had officially declared war on the United States. The sleeping giant had been awakened and filled with a most terrible resolve, according to Isoroku Yamamoto, and the United States would take on a much more active role in World War 2. The lack of any formal warning or declaration of war later decided that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a war crime during the Tokyo Trials.
The Doolittle Raid (April 1942)
The Doolittle Raid, named after Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, was the first successful attack on the Japanese mainland. Sixteen B-25B Mitchell bombers without fighter escorts were launched from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier to bomb military targets and continue eastward to China. The attack was mostly successful and had psychological effects on both ends, namely a morale boost for the Americans and doubt in Japanese leadership to defend the home islands. Fifteen B-25’s reached China but all of them crashed, while one landed in Vladivostok and was confiscated by the Soviet Union.
Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942)
The battle of the Coral Sea was significant as it symbolized the dawn of aircraft carriers and the dusk of battleships. On May 7, the two opposing carrier forces launched air strikes, both mistakenly believed they were attacking each other's carriers, but were instead attacking other targets. The US Navy sank the Japanese light carrier Shōhō, while the IJN sank an American destroyer and heavily damaged a fleet oiler on that day.
The following day, they had finally located each other’s fleet carriers and continued fighting, with the Japanese carrier Shōkaku damaged. The US Navy’s fleet carrier, the Lexington, was critically damaged and later scuttled, while the Yorktown also received damage. Both sides withdrew from the Coral Sea since they had sustained heavy losses on both ends.
Battle of Stalingrad (November 1942)
In October, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Typhoon, an effort to take Moscow and end the war by Christmas. But as the weather grew bitterly cold, the German offensive ground to a halt, and was then pushed back by a Soviet counteroffensive. The front line froze in place some two hundred kilometers west of Moscow – and 1400 kilometers east of Berlin.
This was the coldest winter on record in Stalingrad, and German forces, unprepared with no winter clothing, were quite literally freezing to death. For the first time since the Napoleonic Wars, the weather had proven that invading Russia in the winter was a death sentence. In addition, Order No. 227 issued by Joseph Stalin ruled that the Red Army would stop retreating with the famous slogan “Not one step back!”
On the snowy, foggy morning of November 19, the Soviets struck. 1.2 million Soviet soldiers drove into the weakly guarded flanks of the German Sixth Army. Within four days, they had encircled 300,000 Axis soldiers, trapped in a frozen wasteland in and around Stalingrad. German attempts to break into the pocket failed. Over the next three months, the Red Army began to squeeze the life out of them. Efforts at supplying the Kessel (cauldron) via air proved beyond the Luftwaffe’s declining capabilities.
Operation Citadel (July 5, 1943)
By the summer of 1943, the Axis's situation was starting to look grim. The Soviets had defended Stalingrad, the Allies were on Italy's doorstep, and the Japanese were not faring much better in the Pacific. Now, the Soviets were pushing back, and Operation Citadel would prove to be Germany's last offensive. The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off and enveloping the forces that they anticipated would be in the Kursk salient. British Tunny intercepts provided valuable intel to Soviet forces, and so they built a defense-in-depth to weather the German spearhead.
Allied Invasion of Italy (July 9, 1943)
The Regia Marina was but a shadow of its former self by 1943, and could hardly put up much more resistance. Joseph Stalin had been pressing Churchill and Roosevelt to open a "second front" in Europe, which would lessen the German Army's focus on the Eastern Front, where the bulk of its forces were fighting in the largest armed conflict in history against the Soviet Red Army. When it became clear that no cross-channel invasion of occupied France could be undertaken in 1943, both parties agreed to an invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky with no commitment made to follow-up operations. After the highly successful outcome of the Sicilian campaign had become clear, both Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the necessity of continuing to engage the Axis in the interval before the start of the campaign in northwest Europe.
Operation Overlord (June 6, 1944)
Following the capture of Rome and the surrender of Italian forces, all the pieces were falling into place. With news of the Soviet Union pushing west and the resounding success of the Italian campaign, the Allies launched the largest amphibious assault in military history. American forces would land at beaches codenamed "Utah" and "Omaha," British forces would land at beaches codenamed "Gold" and "Sword," and Canadian forces would land at a beach codenamed "Juno." All of them were heavily fortified by the Germans, though some more than others. Omaha Beach, for instance, was home to 100-foot high bluffs that made perfect spots for German bunkers and trench lines. Even after being heavily shelled prior to and during the attack, Allied forces faced stiff resistance from German defenders.
Against all odds, however, the Allies would manage to overwhelm the German forces and establish improvised airfields to bring their planes further inland. It would only be two months until they liberated Paris from German control, and the Vichy puppet government would flee into exile.
Fall of the Axis
The war against the Third Reich concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler, and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on July 15, 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on September 29, 1945, and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 8th and 11th of December respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan formally surrendered on January 5, 1946.
Now the only Axis Power to remain was the fanatical Brotherhood of Kylar who had holdouts in secret locations within Northern Italy. Kylar knew that staying in Europe was idiotic and that his people needed to gain a foothold somewhere else fast. Brotherhood forces mounted a final all-out invasion on the icy shores of WLR-controlled Antarctica. The Brotherhood would expend most of its manpower on this Invasion and it would ultimately last a few months. They were surprisingly able to make solid ground despite being underprepared for the Antarctician climate and short on supplies. Kylar's forces were able to reach multiple high-level targets destroying them until they finally reached the headquarters of WolvesLandian military operations, the leader of the Republic, Brendan Wolves, was on site and assassinated during this battle, but his heir of the same name took his place with a fiery wrath and would regroup the remaining WolvesLandian forces to show the BOK the full might of the WLR. Within a few weeks, the Wolves were able to push the Brotherhood all the way back to the shores of Antarctica and pushed them back to Italy.
The final battle of the war occurred in August of 1946 when Allied intelligence discovered and then led a massive combined assault against Kylar's heavily defended Stronghold. Allied intelligence gathered that the compound was too far inland for naval bombardment and too heavily defended with anti-air emplacements for an air invasion so allied forces would have to fight and storm the fortress on foot. The outer walls with hundreds of gun emplacements made it incredibly tough to breach and thousands of lives were lost during this battle. The Allies did manage to enter the facility after deeming artillery was much more effective and bombarded the surrounding area for several days. After they deemed the fortress was no longer a substantial threat, they sent soldiers to clean up what was left. The Allies finally reigned victorious over the Axis powers on August 23rd, ending the Second World War once and for all. After the Brotherhood had fallen and the Stronghold was in ruins, Kylar was nowhere to be found. It was concluded that Kylar had a similar fate to Adolf Hitler. In reality, Kylar alongside his inner circle retreated into his old secret subterranean tunnel system that they emerged from back in 1868.