Hello everyone, I am so excited to bring you Part II of Making History: The Second World War BetAAR. Part III will also be along Monday, September 25. Where we rejoin the action, the Republic of China has formally annexed Manchukuo, though Japanese forces continue to resist in the region. Emperor Puyi is taken into custody.
In August, the cry for reunification with the Greater German Reich continues in the Sudetenland, with Czechslovak authorities losing control of the situation and crying foul.
Showing sympathy to the plight of the Czechslovakian government and altogether frustrated with the expansionism of the National Socialists, France issues a formal condemnation of their actions.
Talks in Berlin are inconclusive, and as Autumn of 1938 sets in, reports of violence against German nationals in the Sudetenland have Adolf Hitler losing his patience.
The Czechslovaks dare to issue a general mobilization, and the Reich is eager to respond in kind. Naturally, Italy comes out in support of German claims to the Sudetenland. Stormclouds gather over Europe.
The Soviets request to join negotiations but the British are quick to rebuff them, and for that, Germany agrees to talk a little longer before wiping Czechslovakia off the map.
In the Raj, a rebellion in Bengal has swollen to a full-blown war of independence, a further example of the strained relations between the crown and its subjects.
The Czechslovakian government finally caves in November. The Sudetenland is returned to the German State with a suspension of discussions pertaining to all other territorial claims.
In Memelland there has also been a crackdown on pro-Nazi activists trying to get the strategic strip of land returned to Germany. In response, the Reich embargoes Lithuania. The embargo stings enough to convince the Lithuanians to release the territory back to Germany.
Hungary – a state badly depleted following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, is next to make claims on Czechslovakia but without German support, their demands are ignored. This ultimately does Czechslovakia no good, however, as Hungary orders a general mobilization in the first week of 1939 and Catholic priest Josef Tiso immediately proclaims a Slovakian state. Suddenly, Czechslovakia is nothing more than Czechia. Rather than launching a token invasion to annex the territory, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia forms under the German Reich. France and the United Kingdom are aghast.
In February Italy makes its move on Albania, a little nation with a grossly inadequate military to resist the ambitions of Mussolini.
Germany shifts soldiers to the Polish border, where tensions in the Danzig Corridor are starting to rise. Great Britain and France quickly offer an alliance to Poland as means to deter any further German expansion.
All eyes quickly turn eastward, however, as the Soviet Union jumps in the Second Sino-Japanese War meaning to deal a deathblow to Emperor Showa, whose forces are being driven down the Korean Peninsula anyway.
Demands for the return of the Danzig Corridor fall on deaf ears as the Poles are emboldened by their western allies. Eventually, Germany and the Soviet Union begin discussions as to how eastern Europe might be conquered and divided between the two of them, but the Soviet intervention in the east stops the Reich from committing to a pact with them. Finally the ultimatum is issued: surrender the Danzig Corridor or face war. The Poles refuse to comply. On the 10th of August the Wehrmacht crosses the border and the Second Weltkrieg begins.
German soldiers and armored units surge in to Poland, who are completely unprepared for a war with the Reich.
By the first of September less than half of Poland remains in the hands of its government, while a sudden French offensive over the Maginot Line pushes the German forces out of the Palatinate.
The French offensive scares the Reich, who scramble soldiers from the southern border with Yugoslavia and orders a counterattack through the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Nobody can figure out why the Maginot Line wasn't expanded along the French-Belgian border, as that was the exact route the ReichWehr took the last time, but, hey.
The Baltic states declare neutrality in the Polish-German war – and for good reason, as by October 1 Polish resistance has nearly been wiped out.
As if things could get no worse for Japan, a failed coup results in Civil War. In the Low Countries Germany has punched a hole right through Belgium.
France soon finds itself in dire straights with the Wehrmacht closing in on Paris by October 17. Holland hangs on by a thread.
France seemed doomed, but a landing of British soldiers enables the struggle there to persist in to November. The German forces are briefly cut off, and chaos ensues as they fight to break the thin encirclement.
With the full might of Germany and Italy bearing down, the French Republic cannot contend. Philippe Petain signs the armistice in the exact train car that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in two decades prior, and with that, the Battle of France ends. Petain is given leave to form a government in Aquitaine that would become known as Vichy France while the northern and coastal regions remained under control of the Wehrmacht pending the end of the war.
Seeing Japan as essentially defeated, the Soviets offer them a peace treaty that is readily accepted. With the British being beaten back from their little foothold in Belgium, the Reich now extends across the continent. French forces have retreated back to Africa and across the Channel to Britain, and some Poles settle in to being a part of another German State while others vow to resist. As of Christmas 1939, the shame of the first Weltkrieg has been more than vindicated, and no force in the world seems capable of defeating the Greater German Reich – but nobody tells Moscow...