World War II
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that spanned from 1939 to 1945, involving numerous powers with fighting taking place on all continents.
The allohistorical outcome of the conflict within the TNO timeline is the foundation of its divergences and the mod itself. The player will frequently see its echoes within gameplay and particularly story, with it having an arguably larger impact on the world than in our timeline.
The War
World War II is generally said to have started on September 1st 1939, although the expansionist actions of the Empire of Japan and the nationalist Kuomintang led Republic of China were already embroiled in war, known as the Second Sino-Japanese War, since the interwar year of 1937. The European front was opened when Germany invaded Poland, quickly overrunning the nation. The United Kingdom and France, having previously issued a guarantee of Poland's independence following the German annexation of Czechoslovakia responded to this action with a declaration of war. The war was slow to reach the west, as in 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure their Iron imports, easily defeating them and scuppering the Allied response and limited intervention in Norway. The German Army then turned west, invading France through the Benelux. The Germans successfully surrounded and destroyed a majority of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk and forced the much-depleted French Army to surrender, thus ending Metropolitan France's involvement in the war.
After the dramatic and rapid Fall of France, the now confident Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the side of the Axis powers, leaving a bulk of the Royal Navy trapped in the Mediterranean after a daring operation by German Fallschirmjäger to capture Gibraltar, leaving the mouth of the Mediterranean closed to British reinforcements. Italian forces, grasping the opportunity, surged in to North Africa successfully overrunning the poorly equipped and trained Egyptians, whilst the British defenders fell in short order thereafter, their meager supplies failing to outlast those of the Italians. Italian forces reached and occupied the Suez in a move to consolidate their iron grip upon the Mediterranean, cutting off already thin British supply lines to and from Asia, effectively cutting the Union of South Africa and other British colonies off from the Home Isles, thereby simultaneously preventing the United Kingdom from using its overseas rubber and oil resources, whilst also limiting the ability of the United Kingdom to supply the forces present in the East African offensive, which had at this stage become a slogging match of constant Italian reinforcements, drawing on to become the larger East Africa campaign until 1943.
The following year in 1941, the ideological war, the so-called 'Crusade against Bolshevism' begun, with Axis forces launching Operation Barbarossa. Given the at-best poor state of the domestic and economic situation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the total collapse of the USSR's Western front was all but a for-gone conclusion. Axis forces, comprising the Kingdom of Hungary, Republic of Slovakia, Kingdom of Romania and Italy quickly overran the Soviet Union in a span of one and a half years. Taking territory up to the eponymously named A-A line, Germany consolidated its new holdings in into four areas of control, creating the Reichskommissariats Ostland, Ukraine, Moskowien, and Kaukasus.
Whilst the German invasion of the USSR plowed on, the Empire of Japan prepared its own operations. hurting for oil and struggling to maintain its campaign in China without it, launched a gamble of its own against the United States of America, to preemptively topple the US and European presence in the Pacific and ensure a new era of Japanese dominance in East Asia. To this end, a surprise attack on the United States Naval Station Pearl Harbor was launched, gambling on eliminating the bulk of the United States battleship and carrier fleets. This gamble produced fantastic results, and in one fell swoop destroyed a large portion of the US Pacific Fleet, including all aircraft carriers attached to the Pacific Fleet, perhaps even more miraculously, or more catastrophically for the United States, destroying the majority of the United States' oil reserves in the Pacific theater, with the destruction of various Oil storage facilities in Hawaii.
With US naval dominance now out of question for the immediate future, the United States found itself in the worst position that could have been presented to it - forced to rebuild a bulk of its navy, prepare for War on short notice and worse still; defend far flung territories it had neither the fleet infrastructure to reach and support nor the ground forces to suitably defend. Thus, as the Swastika was hoisted above the towers of a shelled and gutted Kremlin, the Empire of the Rising Sun planted its flag on Midway, Guam and the Philippines. It soon swallowed the British territories, and all but condemned the French possessions in Asia to a future under Japan's various satellite states, with Japan bolstering and empowering nationalist native movements in defiance of European colonial rule - all the while ensuring the Empire's own colonial ambitions were achieved in spades. The United States was far from vanquished, fighting on in the Pacific and sending what forces it could to reinforce the eroding European front. Whilst Japan's victory was to be brief, being in no position to fight the full industrial might of the United States of America, Japan could console itself that it had certainly blunted the giants ability to effectively hamper and reverse the expansion of the Japanese Empire across the Pacific, with even the Oceania within the grasp of the ever-expanding empire.
As the USSR collapsed in on itself, whilst Asia smoldered and Africa burned, by 1944 their remained one focal point against the Axis powers in Europe that seemed unwilling to yield and bend the knee - the defiant United Kingdom. Entrenched on their island, surrounded by the remnants of Norwegian, Danish, French, Polish and Dutch armies, now soon to be joined by a newly engaged United States of America and her full-throated backing, the chances of crushing and vanquishing this thorn in Germany's side seemed nigh impossible. Yet all it took was a tragedy and a knife in the back, from of all nations - the Republic of Ireland. Whilst Germany launched what seemed an impossible gamble, Operation Sea Lion, to finally knock the British and their remaining Empire and Commonwealth allies out of the war, Ireland seemed to accept the inevitability of the Reich's victory, invading and occupying Northern Ireland, ensuring the loss of the Irish Sea and granting the Germans the ability to choke Atlantic convoys, the flow of US supplies and reinforcements to the beleaguered United Kingdom now severely throttled. Unable to mount a response in the face of Germany's own invasion of British soil, consolidating the bulk of the Allies efforts now on repelling the invasion of the isles proper, surrendering the island of Ireland to the Republic.
Whilst the Kriegsmarine smashed their way through the much diminished Royal Navy, the Luftwaffe threw the Royal Air Force from the skies in spectacular fashion. The loss of runways, dockyards and rapid reinforcements through ever widening bridgeheads in the British Isles painted an ever worsening picture to any who could bare to see it. Despite a spirited resistance, no matter how fierce and no matter how badly bloodied the Wehrmacht might have been on the ground, the doctrines that had failed to save Poland, France, Norway, Denmark and even the long suffering East Africa campaign; failed now to save the United Kingdom. With the final retreat in to Scotland for the last remnants of whatever remaining US and free forces that had fought to hold the last bastion of 'Free Europe', the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, capitulated and shortly thereafter, Surrendered entirely to the German Reich. With this, the isle fragmented in to the independent states of Wales and Scotland, seizing the opportunity to declare independence and spare themselves the fate of a now fallen England. What was left of the Free governments, those that had been in exile since 1939 onwards, fled again to the United States, or to the the distant and relatively safe shores of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, joined now by the latest government in exile, the United Kingdom's Government in Exile, even as they defiantly roared to fight on from these, the last of the Empire's domains. In truth, this marked the end of much of the Commonwealth's participation in the war in any tangible and material manner, with Australia declaring herself a Republic to spare herself in the Pacific, whilst Canada and New Zealand now assumed defensive postures with what was left of the British and Commonwealth forces, the Empire itself collapsing in short order, the British Raj of India, already in tumult as of 1943 fragmenting in to ever unruly and disparate forces, whilst its African possessions were swallowed by Italian, German and even Native populations, as the resent of years of colonial rule saw the collapse of even the Free French, bar their last, meager hold-out in West Africa and across other smaller island territories.
Pearl Harbor, still damaged from the initial Japanese attack, was faced with another attack once again, this time one it would not recover from. On July 4th 1945, the people of of Hawaii were forever blinded by the second sun which suddenly rose in the early morning sky. An atomic bomb had been dropped on the island, carried by a long-range German bomber in the single greatest flight for the Luftwaffe, flying from Europe to Japanese territories in the pacific. Fifty thousand people were killed in an instant, and the US Pacific Fleet was put to rest for good, if not sunk then irradiated to the point of being fatal to any who dared board. Many more would die in the ensuing days from radiation poisoning, initial blast injuries and the resulting disintegration of any and all services. The USA quickly opted out of the war, in fear of further nuclear attacks. The UK quickly fell after with the evacuation of US troops. Following the conquest of the Axis's sworn enemies and the conditional surrender of the United States, multiple peace treaties were signed which diced up former Allied territories between the Axis Powers. British and French African territories were split up between Germany and Italy, with Japan gaining control of eastern China and most of the Pacific Islands. France was placed under a German-sympathizer regime. Spain gained pieces of former French colonies such as Morocco. The Akagi Accords also allowed Japan to gain access to some American ports on the Pacific Coast. After WWII, the Axis Powers would break up into different spheres, setting the stage for the strained relations of the post-war era.