Versailles War

Revival of the League of Nations

Emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower

Soviet Union

Hungary

Romania

The Versailles War was a major European conflict that lasted from September 9th, 1939 to October 10th, 1940. Many consider it to be the successor of the Great War of 1914 but in general is dwarfed in scale by both the length and number of causalities of the Great War.

The term Versailles War was coined by British journalists who cited it as the result of discontent stemming from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The Versailles War while short is often recognized for the extreme violence and brutality taken out against the Jewish and Roma populations of Axis countries. This period of violence becomes known as the Tseshterung (Yiddish: צעשטערונג‎, *destruction*) to the Jewish community.

Two major factions emerged during the Versailles War: the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers. The Axis Powers included: Germany, Romania, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. Japan while initially allied Germany suffered a crushing defeat by the Soviets and signed a Non-Aggression Treaty in October, 1939. The Allied Powers included: France, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Many consider the Yugoslav Civil War to be a secondary front of the Versailles War as it occurred concurrently and was manipulated by Axis and Allied Powers alike. As such many Roman Bloc members supported the Allied Powers by proxy as the Balkan Entente was mostly a proxy for the Axis Powers.

## Participants

**Major Allied Powers:**

* Soviet Union: Mikhail Kalinin
* United Kingdom: Neville Chamberlain
* France: Albert François Lebrun

**Minor Allied Powers:**

* Belgium: Hubert Pierlot
* Netherlands: Dirk Jan de Geer
* Free Polish State: Władysław Raczkiewicz
* Slobozîmos Vojska: Vinzenz Rose
* Yidishe Bafreyung Farband: Tuvia Bielski

**Major Axis Powers:**

* Nazi Germany: Adolf Hitler
* Kingdom of Hungary: Ferenc Szálasi
* Kingdom of Romania: Ion Antonescu
* Huzarzy Poland: Władysław Studnicki

**Minor Axis Powers:**

* North France: François Darlan
* Empire of Japan: Hirohito (until October 30th, 1939)
* Kingdom of Serbia: Milan Nedić
* Kingdom of Bulgaria: Aleksandar Tsankov

## Pre-War Events

During the years prior to the Versailles War, Adolf Hitler had been preparing Germany for the war to come. One of his greatest fears came from having to fight a two-front war between the Soviet Union to the east and France and Britain to west. To try and alleviate this he approached General Secretary Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union seeking a Non-Aggression Pact. On August 19th, 1939, the Soviets and Germans signed the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement.

On August 23th, 1939, on their way to the Kremlin to sign the Non-Aggression Pact, the car carrying Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov hits a curb and crashes. Secretary Stalin is killed on impact and Molotov is badly injured (he would pass away from his injuries only two days later). Chairman
of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, Mikhail Kalinin, assumes control of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is thrown into chaos from the sudden death of Stalin and as such all political agreements with Germany are put on immediate hiatus. While Hitler had wanted a Non-Aggression Treaty so he would not have to worry about a two-front war, he assumed that without Stalin, the Soviet Union would quickly collapse and he could quickly move east through Poland and then take Moscow and as such goes forward with his scheduled invasion of Poland.

Many historians coin the term, "the German Mistake" to this very instance. If Hitler had simply waited to see that the Soviet Union would recollect itself only a few weeks later he might have held off on the Polish invasion, instead he went through with it leading to Britain, France and the Soviet Union forming an anti-German Coalition.

## September 1939

-September 1st, 1939: Adolf Hitler, surprised by the death of Stalin assumes
that with Stalin out of the picture, the Soviet Union would quickly crumble and
even without the neutrality pact, the Germans had nothing to fear from a
two-front war and begins the invasion of Poland. They had hoped to quickly move
through Poland and take Moscow before the Soviet government stabilized.

-September 2nd, 1939: France issue an ultimatum to Germany, requiring German troops to evacuate Polish territory but does not declare war as it stood alone
against the Germans without the Anglo-Polish Alliance bringing in the British.
They begin building fortifications along the France-Belgium border as they
feared a repeat of the first World War and Germany attacking through Belgium.

-September
3rd, 1939: Germany annexes the Free City of Danzig.

-September
3rd, 1939: The Bromberg Massacre occurs with many ethnic German
civilians are killed in the Polish city of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) by the Polish
military.

-September
5th, 1939: Mikhail Kalinin is elected by the Politburo as the new
General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s inner circle assumes control of
the USSR divvying up the power that Stalin had consolidated. Kliment Voroshilov
is sworn in as the new Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Georgy Malenkov is sworn in as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Lazar
Kaganovich is appointed as First Deputy Premier.

-September
6th, 1939: Germans capture Krakow putting the Polish Army on the
retreat.

-September
6th, 1939: Mikhail Kalinin re-instates the ex-Soviet Foreign Minister,
Maxim Litvinov as the new Minister of Foreign Affairs replacing Molotov.

-September
7th, 1939: Mikhail Kalinin has Lavrentiy Beria executed and replaces
him as Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union with Sergei Kruglov.

-September
7th, 1939: The USSR ends all formal treaties with Nazi Germany.

-September
9th, 1939: German forces begin sieging the Polish capital of Warsaw.

-September
9th, 1939: Maxim Litvinov, without Stalin’s paranoia controlling him
now had diplomatic freedom and under the support of Kalinin sends Vladimir
Petrovich Potemkin, the Soviet Ambassador to France to Paris to discuss an
alliance with French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet citing the 1935
Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. Georges Bonnet agrees to this and
cites the alliance with the Soviets as “one of necessity, not one of desire” as
the French did not have the military capabilities to fully take on Nazi Germany
and the Soviets were still struggling to solidify the USSR after the death of
Stalin.

-September
10th, 1939: German forces take Brest and Lviv.

-September
10th, 1939: Soviet-Mongolian forces defeat the Japanese army in
their attempted invasion of Mongolia during the Battle of Nomonhan. General
Georgy Zhukov had insisted on expediating the Soviet counterattack as to return
to Moscow faster (following the recent death of Stalin).  He orders an absolute massacre of the
Japanese Army in order to quickly end the battle. General Michitarō Komatsubara
of the Kwangtung Army manages to escape. This left many Japanese calling for
revenge against the USSR for crimes at Nomonhan and began to plot a
counteroffensive due to aid their German allies. The USSR aware of this
and not willing to fight a two-front war between Germany and Japan begins
heavily funding the Communist Party of China. This reignites the Chinese Civil
War which had essentially been placed on hold since 1936 and the Japanese
invasion of China. The USSR begins heavily militarizing their Mongolian allies.
Mao Zedong is replaced with Wang Ming who was a Soviet puppet.

-September
11th, 1939: Japanese Kōdōha supporters call for the death of
Japanese Prime Minister Nobuyuki Abe in response for the massacre at Nomonhan.
Protests and riots explode all over Japan.

-September
11th, 1939: Polish President Ignacy Mościcki is caught and killed by
German forces.

-September
11th, 1939: The new Soviet government recognizing that Stalin’s
paranoia and purges had greatly weakened the Soviet Union begin the Rehabilitation of bringing many Soviet
officials and personals who had been exiled to Siberia or imprisoned in the
Gulags back to Moscow.

-September
15th, 1939: France and the Soviet Union declare war on Germany.
France rallies support for war by citing the brutality Germany has inflicted
against the French People in the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War. While
the French did not want another the war they realized that since they stood
alone once the Germans conquered Poland, France would be next with the phrase,
“L'Alsace est prochaine” or “Alsace is next”. The Soviets rally their people
claiming that Stalin had betrayed the revolution by working with fascists and
they must return the revolutionary spirit to the Soviet Union. While Kalinin
did not have the influence Stalin had, the influx of ex-Gulag prisoners helped
inflate their military.

-September
15th, 1939: Japanese Prime Minister Nobuyuki Abe is assassinated by
Kōdōha forces. Sadao Araki becomes the new Prime Minister.

-September
16th, 1939: The Empire of Japan led by Sadao Araki desiring revenge
for the Battle of Nomonhan declares war on the Soviet Union.

-September
17th, 1939: France begins the Saar Offensive of Germany with full
force.

-September
18th, 1939: Britain not wanting to fully enter the war starts
sending supplies and finances to the French military bolstering their Saar
Offensive. This leads to increasing pressure and criticism of British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain who was viewed as weak and indecisive for his
appeasement of Germany.

-September
19th, 1939: While the Soviets were still reeling from Stalin’s death
and were in no way shape or form organized, with the German Wehrmacht at their
border they begin rapidly dispatching their armies often ill equipped to the
front line.

-September
21st, 1939: Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated
by the Iron Guard, an ultra-nationalistic group in Romania. Hitler who
desperately needed allies begins funding the Iron Guard and sending troops to
support the Romanian fascists. Ion Antonescu would oust King Carol II of
Romania and his followers by September 30th and made a public
alliance with Germany joining the Axis Powers. The Germans would now get their
oil from Romania. Romania begins attacking and committing antisemitic violence
against its Jewish population leading to many Romanian Jews fleeing north into
Soviet Ukraine and joining the Soviet army. The Romanian government starts
deporting its Romani population to Transnistria.

-September
22nd, 1939: German forces captures the rest of Poland.

-September
24th, 1939: Hitler learns from his intelligence networks that the
Soviet government had elected a new General Secretary only two weeks after
Stalin’s death, worried that he had overestimated the value of Stalin to the
Soviet Union halted his invasion of Poland. Hitler signs the Danzig Pact with
Pro-German Polish Politician Władysław Studnicki alongside General Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The Danzig Pact was a peace treaty and treaty of
mutual assistance between Poland and Germany, citing their common goal of
“Jewish removal”, expansionism and anti-communism. In exchange for withdrawing
all claims to Poland (except for the Polish Corridor and Posen Province),
Germany would supply Poland with arms to fight the Soviet Union with and push
back the “Judeo-Bolshevik forces”. Hitler also ceded the Cieszyn Silesia or Zaolzie
region of the Czech Republic to Poland as a concession. Studnicki is joined Bolesław
Piasecki (a Polish fascist who becomes known as the “Himmler of Poland”) and Adam
Ignacy Koc. Piasecki establishes the Huzarzy Party (Poland during this time is
known as Huzarzy Poland). Hitler reluctantly declares that since Poles are the
ancestors of the Wendish People/Wends like other West Slavic people they are considered
partially Germanic due to contact between Western Slavs and Germanic tribes
over the centuries. The Western Slavs are described as native peoples who were
corrupted by Eastern Slavic influence over the centuries as well. However, the
Eastern Slavs remain non-German as such were treated as a lesser race than
Western Slavs and Germans. While not equal to Aryan Germans, Western Slavs were
above Jews, Roma and Eastern Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, Belarussians).

The
Huzarzy Party sought to expel Jews and Eastern Slavs from Polish territory
while also rebuilding the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a purely ethnically
Polish state. As tensions were already great between Poland and the USSR before
the war due to the Polish-Soviet War of the 1920’s, many Poles would side with Władysław Studnicki
seeing him and the Germans as a better chance for Polish survival than the
Soviets. Studnicki had drawn support from antisemitic Poles and supporters of
Roman Dmowski, a notable Polish nationalist that had died only months earlier. While
Hitler had capitulated to some Poles out of necessity this was a blow to his
pride and he would then order Alfred Rosenberg to begin Operation Schäfer, the
systematic deportation (and seizure of their property) of all Jews from Axis
territory to the Lublin Reservation. As the Nazis did not have the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact they wanted with the Soviets to get the resources they
needed, they decided that using the Jews as slave labor rather than just
massacring them was more helpful. As such Jews from all over would be deported
at gun-point to smaller ghettoes which from there they would be transferred to
Lublin (which had been evacuated of all ethnic Poles) where they would be
imprisoned and forced to work in factories to feed the growing Axis war
machine. While Studnicki protested to this being on Polish territory he
lamented seeing as how it was on the front-lines and would be needed to produce
arms for the war effect. German Nazi Odilo Globocnik and Polish Huzarzy Bolesław
Piasecki were put in charge of managing the Lublin Reservation. This mass
deportation of Jews would become known as the Mizrekh Marts as the Jews were
forced in a death march to the Lublin Reservation.

-September
25th, 1939: In response to the anti-Semitic Nazi Operation Schäfer,
the Soviets begin Operation Svoboda which granted free asylum in the Soviet
Union for Jewish intellectuals and scientists in Germany. They begin evacuating
many Jewish engineers to increase their own scientific research and
development. Many Jews would flee to the Soviet Union seeking refuge from the
Germans in exchange for their service in the Red Army.

-September
26th, 1939: The Polish resistance forces led by General Władysław
Sikorski meet up with Soviet forces along the Polish-Soviet Border. Sikorski
was joined by the Poles who were against the Huzarzy State alongside a
coalition of Polish communists and Polish democrats. While many Poles despised
the Soviets (being both Russians and Communists) some viewed them as a
necessary temporary ally to maintain their independence in the face of German
invasion. This group of Poles would become known as the Free Polish Army.

-September
30th, 1939: Joint Soviet-Polish forces invade German occupied Poland
and while the Germans were still dealing with the French invasion to the west
they were much more prepared than the hastily thrown together Red Army and
Polish resistance and managed to hold the Soviet-Polish forces at the Bug
River.

-September
30th, 1939: Japanese Army forces begin the land invasion of the
Soviet Primorsky Krai looking to annex the city of Vladivostok. Japanese Naval
forces launched from Japanese controlled Korea begin shelling the port city.

## October 1939

-October 1st, 1939: Hitler calls a secret meeting with his advisers and generals in Germany to discuss the issue of Poland. They call for a seeming non-aggression with Western Slavs but hoped to force the Poles to become economically reliant on Germany so after the Soviets were defeated they could turn on the Poles and ethnically cleanse their land for settlement of ethnic Germans. They likewise called for the Germanization of France (due to its mixed German roots), Hungary (for its historical relations with Austria) and Romania (simply for their valuable resources and oil). This would become known as the Teutonic Speech.

-October
1st, 1939: Stunned by the sudden attack on Vladivostok, Soviet
forces branch off from the Polish Front and are sent to the far-east to
reinforce Vladivostok. This however leads to a stalemate along the border
between East Poland and West Poland. The Soviets declare war on Imperial Japan.

-October
1st, 1939: The French army annexes the heavily industrialized German
province of Saarland.

-October
2nd, 1939: Soviets begin Operation Sosed “Neighbor”, an Anti-Nazi
Partisan organization aimed at arming and training Anti-Nazi and Pro-Communist
Partisan fighters. Sosed would help arm the Polish Partisans as well as Jewish
and Roma Partisans later in the war. Partisans were often referred to as
“neighbors” as a code-word. They had hoped to use local resistance as their
fighting forces until they could reorganize the Army.

-October
2nd, 1939: Germany now having to deal with a two-front war asks for
its ally, Italy to send troops to deal with France but Benito Mussolini who had
wanted to delay the war and did not have the resources to do so and with
manipulations by Italo Balbo blatantly refuses seeing this as an inevitable
loss and declares its neutrality.

-October
3rd, 1939: Mussolini sends an ambassador to Portugal and Spain where
he offers an alliance against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to Francisco
Franco and António de Oliveira Salazar. They all shared a more corporatist
fascist ideology than the Germans and were pro-Catholic nationalists. This
would become known as the Latin Bloc among Portugal, Spain and Italy. Their
ideology would become known as Totalism as it differed from German
Fascism/National Socialism. Totalism espoused the unity between people, land,
culture and state moving as one and authoritarian rulership guiding the masses
and vied away from the ideological fanaticism of Fascism. It stood as a more
moderate, pro-Capitalist form of Fascism though still far-right wing.

-October
6th, 1939: The Germans fund a fascist coup by the Hungarian Arrow
Cross Party led by Ferenc Szálasi against the
Hungarian government. They take control almost immediately given Hungary’s
nationalist culture and joins the Axis Powers. The Hungarian government starts
expelling its Romani and Jewish population.

-October
7th, 1939: The combined Huzarzy Army, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks
and Romanian forces create Chișinău Line (better known as the Kishinev Line)
following the border from Romanian Chișinău, along Hungary and merging with the
Polish Line to Konigsberg in East Prussia against the Soviet Army. The Germans
finally having the breathing room to send divisions west to retake Saarland
from France.

-October
8th, 1939: The Germans banked on their tank’s superiority in
contrast to the French’s Maginot Line and recaptures Saarland.

-October 9th, 1939: A Soviet backed power-struggle begins amongst the
Free Polish Army which results in the Polish communist, Bolesław
Bierut, taking control of the Free Polish Army as a communist aligned
organization. This new force would be known as the Polish Liberation Front.
This led many Poles who disagreed with communism to flee to the fascist Huzarzy
Army or flee to France to form the Armia Krajowa led by Władysław Sikorski which was
loyal to the Polish government-in-exile. The Polish government led by Władysław
Raczkiewicz establishes a government-in-exile in the French city of Paris.

-October
10th, 1939: Polish Jews among the socialist Polish Liberation Front
form their own militia known as the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband (Yiddish: ייִדישע באַפרייונג פאַרבאַנד‎, *Jewish Liberation Union*), a Jewish socialist paramilitary force. Jewish partisan,
Tuvia Bielski, assumes control of this militia. While many Soviets were
suspicious of this they saw it as an opportunity to radicalize the Jewish
populations of Axis countries against their governments. Many of the Romanian
Jews who had fled earlier joined the YBF. The YBF’s forces now included a
couple hundred Jewish soldiers, united by their faith and hatred for the Nazis.

-October
10th, 1939: Japanese forces finally manage to capture the Soviet
city of Vladivostok after only a 10-day siege. Ethnic Russians are massacred in
the city in what would become known as the Vladivostok Massacre. The Japanese
rename it Hokubutoshi or “Northern City”.

-October
11th, 1939: In Poland, Polish resistance fighters would begin building
defenses along the Bug River and Polish Line against the German forces in the
west. This would lead to a military stalemate and mimic conditions from the
Great War as both sides constructed trenches. However, the trenches proved
ineffective to tanks as such many Soviets started developed more powerful
anti-tank mines and anti-tank weaponry. Polish soldiers known as Górniczy
(Miners in Polish) would travel into no-man’s land in the dead of night and
risk their lives to plant anti-tank mines in urban chokepoints. The border
between East and West Poland was a scorched battlefield. Many would construct
“Dragon’s Teeth” and “Czech Hedgehogs” notable anti-tank barriers as well as
employ landmines and barbed wire.

-October
12th, 1939: The British Airforce begins bombing German cities.

-October
13th, 1939: Canada, Australia, British India, and New Zealand join
the Democratic Alliance and declare war on Germany following Britain’s
declaration.

-October
14th, 1939: The British Navy begins a total naval blockade of
Germany blocking all trade ships through the Channel.

-October
14th, 1939: German forces in Saarland manages to push through the
Maginot Line to take French Alsace-Lorraine. Britain who had remained neutral
up until this point declares war on Germany. Britain forms the Democratic
Alliance with France (but not with the Soviet Union who they did not trust).
Chamberlain would be harshly criticized for his reluctance to enter the war up
until the point in which France was actually evaded. This would lead to
tensions between Britain and France as France believed that the British had
abandoned them

-October
15th, 1939: Bronisława Wajs, a
Polish-Romani poet inspired by the actions of the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband
calls for Romani to unite under the red flag and founds the Romani Resistance
force known as the Slobozîmos Vojska (Kalderaš Romani for “Liberation Army”).
She was joined by Alfreda Markowska and Vinzenz
Rose and Romani who had fled Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Romania and
Poland. They advocated for a Źungadol or “awakening” of the Roma community in
modernizing their culture and gaining class consciousness.

-October
17th, 1939: Nazi Germany sends an ultimatum to Regent Prince Paul of
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia demanding they support Germany. With Italy now neutral,
Germany needed the ports of Croatia to gain access to the Mediterranean as they
hoped to potential stage a naval invasion of the southern coast of France which
remained relatively unprotected. This would lead into the Yugoslav Civil War.

-October
20th, 1939: Germans in Alsace-Lorraine push further into France and
takes the Region of Grand Est. Fearing further German incursion, the French
government moves to Marseille.

-October
20th, 1939: Nazi Germany begins an invasion of Belgium and the
Netherlands. They desired these territories as buffer zones against Britain.

-October
24th, 1939: Regent Prince Paul of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis Powers due to his pro-German history and a hope to use the war as a
unifying force for Yugoslavia. This proved to be extremely unpopular with the
Croatian population of Yugoslavia who began rioting against this ethnic Serbian
prince dragging Yugoslavia into the war. This begins the Yugoslav Civil War.

-October
30th, 1939: Only 20 days after the Japanese capture of Vladivostok,
Russian forces finally arrive in the far-east and liberate the city, leader of
the Japanese Army, Hideki Tojo who had happened to be in Vladivostok at the
time is killed during the fighting. Tojo is replaced by Hajime Sugiyama as
commander of the Imperial Japanese Army. Sugiyama recognizing Japan’s inability
to fight the entire Soviet Army (despite the Soviets fighting a two-front war
with Germany) and signs a cease-fire with Soviet forces, recognizing Russian
sovereignty over Vladivostok. He would receive extreme criticism for this from
his superiors. Sugiyama calls for refocusing on mainland China and Southeast
Asia. The Soviets agreed to this ceasefire due to their desire to not fight a
two-front war with Japan and Germany but continued funding the Chinese
communists allowing the Communists to shift from just guerrilla warfare to
actual conventional warfare. Vladivostok becomes heavily militarized and all civilian
population is evacuated to Siberia. Japan would continue leading guerrilla
strikes on far-eastern Russian causing many of the Russian forces to be spread
thin. However tensions would remain extremely high between the two powers and conflict would reignite on January 10th, 1941 in the Pacific War.

## November 1939

-November
1st, 1939: The Kingdom of Serbia forms the Pro-German Balkan Entente but does not officially join the Axis Powers.

-November 5th, 1939: While Germany
had wanted to personally invade Italy for its betrayal they were already stretched
too thin in France, Scandinavia and Poland and were cut off by the Alps between
Austria and Northern Italy as such they ordered their ally’s Romania and
Hungary to send troops to support the Kingdom of Serbia. This alliance of
Romania, Hungary and Serbia would be known as the Balkan Entente. Hitler hoped
the Balkan Entente would be able to rapidly defeat Croatia and then take
northern Italy where a majority of Italy’s industry resided essentially
preventing them from ever entering the war. Ironically the Balkan Entente would
take precious resources away from fighting the Soviets as they both attempted
to hold the line as well as defeat the Italians and their allies. Hungary and
Romania were hesitant about supporting Serbia as they both desired land currently
held by the Serbians, the Hungarians desiring the Vojvodina region of Serbia
and the Romanians desiring the Banat region of Serbia. Tensions were also high
between Romania and Hungary as Hungary desired the Szeklerlands of Romania as
such there was great infighting between Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian forces.

-November 7th, 1939: Nazi forces
capture Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Luxembourg is directly
annexed into Germany, Belgium is partitioned with the Netherlands annexing
Flanders and North France annexing Wallonia. The Netherlands is designated as Reichskommissariat
Niederlande. Dutch fascist, Anton Mussert, is appointed as the Reichskommissar
of Niederlande.

-November 8th, 1939: Hoping to
bolster their Navy against the British Navy, Nazi Germany delivers an ultimatum
of the Danish government’s surrender to Nazi Germany or invasion. The Danish
government surrenders within six hours, an act that would haunt the Danes for
years to come. Denmark is designated as Reichskommissariat Dänemark.
Danish politician, Erik Scavenius, is appointed as the Reichskommissar of Dänemark.

-November
10th, 1939: Nazi Germany invades Norway from the recently annexed
Denmark. They would finally take Norway on November 24th, 1939 and
the Norwegian Royal Family would go into exile in the UK.

-November
18th, 1939: The Soviet Union fearing a Nazi invasion of Leningrad
via the Baltic Sea begins the Baltic Campaign to reinforce its Baltic coastal
borders and fight back the Nazis in Scandinavia.

-November 24th, 1939: Nazi
Germany seizes Norway and establishes the Reichskommissariat Norwegen.
Norwegian fascist, Vidkun Quisling, is appointed as the Reichskommissar of
Norwegen.

-November
30th, 1939: The Soviet Union begins the invasion of Finland citing
its desired protection of Leningrad and to halt the Nazi spread from Norway and
Sweden. In our timeline the Winter War had been extremely muddled due to the
instability of the post-purge Stalinist government but now with powers balanced
and with general Georgy Zhukov leading the invasion, the invasion goes much
smoother and is over by January 5th, 1940. The Finnish use of
gasoline firebombs is noted and with Molotov dead in this timeline, Molotov
Cocktails are known as Finnish Cocktails.

## December 1939

-December
1st, 1939: Nazi Germany begins the invasion of Sweden. Stockholm
would be invaded from the west by the German aligned Norwegian forces and South
by German aligned Danish forces and German naval fleets from the east.
Stockholm and Sweden are taken by December 15th.

-December
4th, 1939: Hitler officially declares war on Italy. Mussolini sends
an ambassador to Portugal and Spain, asking them to ally with the Italians
against the Germans. Mussolini recognized Italy was nowhere near ready to fight
a full war and as such called upon support from Spain who Italy had aided
during the Spanish Civil War and Portugal who were hesitant to join the war but
accepted after Mussolini agreeing to help Portugal expands its colonial
possessions after the war. Spain and Portugal begin sending resources, troops
and resources to Italy. These troops would become known as the Iberian
Volunteer Corps. Illyria joins the Latin Bloc now renamed to the Roman Bloc as
it contained the territory of the Roman Empire.

-December
10th, 1939: Italian Ambassador to France, Raffaele Guariglia is sent
by Benito Mussolini to Marseille to meet with President Albert François Lebrun
of France. Guariglia offers a war time treaty between the Italians and French
allowing French access to Italian ports in exchange for free access through the
Suez Canal until the war was over. France accepts and while they still
distrusted the Italians and the Roman Bloc for their Totalist authoritarian
ideologies they recognized that Italy would be keeping Germany’s allies busy,
so France would deal with Germany alone. This would become known as the
Guariglia Agreement.

-December 15th, 1939: Serbian
forces quickly take Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria while Romanian forces take
Varna. They establish a puppet fascist government with Bulgarian fascist,
Aleksandar Tsankov as its leader. Roma living in Bulgaria flee to East Poland
to join up with the Slobozîmos Vojska.

-December 15th, 1939: Nazi Germany
defeats Sweden and the Reichskommissariat Schweden. Swedish fascist, Sven Olov
Lindholm, is appointed as the Reichskommissar of Schweden.

-December
19th, 1939: German forces capture Paris and establish the fascist
puppet government of North France with the intention of later on converting it
into Reichskommissariat Nordfrankreich and Germanizing the French populace. German
Collaborator François Darlan is appointed as the Prime Minister of North France.
North France consists of the French Regions of Grand Est, Hauts-de-France and
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre Val de Loire, Île-de-France, Normandy, Burgundy
and Pays de la Loire.

-December
20th, 1939: Commander Bolesław Piasecki of Huzarzy Poland,
emboldened by the German capture of Paris begins the mass internment of
Ukrainians and other Eastern Slavs in factory-prisons like the Lublin
Reservation. Chancellor Władysław Studnicki  who had been helping rebuild and
re-arm the Polish Huzarzy Army with German aid calls for the invasion of
Lithuania. The Polish-Soviet Front had been a stalemate since the initial
Soviet push into eastern Poland due to the heavy armaments lining the front.

-December
24th, 1939: The Kingdom of Greece declares war on the Balkan Entente and joins the Roman Bloc.

-December
30th, 1939: With France split in two fighting the German occupiers
in the north, the Empire of Japan invades French Indochina.

-December
31st, 1939: The Polish Huzarzy Army led by General Lucjan Żeligowski
(who had led Żeligowski's Mutiny only 19 years earlier) begins the invasion of
Lithuania.

## January 1940

-January
1st, 1940: President Antanas Smetona of Lithuania sends an
ambassador to Mikhail Kalinin reasserting their Mutual Assistance Treaty and asking
for aid to fight back the invading Huzarzy soldiers.

-January
5th, 1940: The Soviets take Helsinki and establishes the Democratic
Republic of Finland as a Soviet Satellite State.

-January
10th, 1940: The Soviets in Finland come into conflict with the
German Winterabteilung (Winter Division) composed of Germans, Danes, Swedes,
Norwegians and Finns who defected to Germany.

-January
15th, 1940: The British begin an air bombing campaign of strategic
oil fields, factories and mines in Denmark and Norway to try and cut off the
German resources.

-January
17th, 1940: Huzarzy forces capture the capital of Lithuania, Kaunas.
Lithuanian Jews flee eastward to the Soviet Union.

-January
27th, 1940: Polish Huzarzy forces push east into the northern
section of the Kresy capturing Vilnius.

## February 1940

-February
5th, 1940: Soviet forces begin amassing in Minsk pulling forces from
their southern defenses. German forces use this as a means to strike eastward
into the Soviet occupied Kresy and take western Ukraine.

-February
7th, 1940: Axis forces manage to push the Soviets out of the Polish
Kresy region.

-February
10th, 1940: The British begin an occupation of the Danish Faroe
Islands.

-February
15th, 1940: British troops make landfall Harstad, near Narvik,
Norway.

-February
16th, 1940: British troops make landfall on Namsos, north of
Trondheim in Norway.

-February
19th, 1940: Soviet forces invade Huzarzy controlled Lithuania, they
are bolstered by Lithuanian communists and pro-democracy Lithuanian forces.

-February
22nd, 1940: British troops take Trondheim, Norway.

-February
26th, 1940: Soviet forces manage to recapture Vilnius.

## March 1940

-March
1st, 1940: Axis forces capture Kiev in an attempt to encircle Soviet
forces concentrated in the north. Polish Huzarzy forces stationed in Kiev
massacre the Ukrainian population.

-March
10th, 1940: The USSR hoping to use Latvia and Estonia as a jump-off
point to invade Lithuania and Sweden respectively accuses the Latvian and Estonian
government of conspiring with the Germans and of attacking Soviet soldiers.

-March
20th, 1940: As the temperature started to warm up, British forces in
Trondheim, Norway begins moving south and takes Oslo by April 10th.
With the British success in Norway, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain never
abdicates.

-March
30th, 1940: Eight-hour ultimatum to surrender is given to Latvia and
Estonia by the Soviets. Soviet troops enter Estonia and Latvia.

## April 1940

-April
2nd, 1940: With Soviet troops stationed in Vilnius and now in
Daugavpils, they begin a two-pronged invasion of Lithuania from the east and
the north.

-April
3rd, 1940: Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi of Hungary declares war on
the Kingdom of Serbia and invades the Serbian region of Vojvodina which had a
predominant ethnic Hungarian minority. This came as a large surprise to both
Axis and Allies alike and highlighted the problem of the Balkan Entente as
fascism emboldens revanchist ideals which is problematic when your supposed
allies control land you view as rightfully yours.

-April
10th, 1940: British forces take Oslo and liberates Norway.

-April
12th, 1940: Soviet forces capture Kaunas and push the Polish out of
Lithuania.

-April
16th, 1940: German forces stationed in Kiev push north into Belarus.

-April
18th, 1940: The Soviet Union begins an invasion of German occupied
Sweden via the Aland Islands. This would end up being one of the largest naval
battles seen in the war as the German Kriegsmarine and Soviet Red Navy and
British Navy battled around the Baltic Sea.

-April
30th, 1940: The Soviet Union enters the Swedish capital of Stockholm
and Sweden surrenders. With the fall of Stockholm, the Northern Front had been
won by the Allied Forces. The Soviets install a communist government into
Sweden with Sven Linderot as its leader. It becomes known as the Swedish
Democratic Republic.

## May 1940

-May
7th, 1940: With the capture of Sweden and Norway, the main oil and
metal suppliers for Germany, the Soviets decide to go after Romania, the
German’s secondary source of oil. Soviet forces in Lithuania and Belarus are diverted
south around the German occupation of western Ukraine.

-May
10th, 1940: With the impending Soviet invasion of Romania, Hitler
concocts a plan to break the Soviet Offensive, they have Romanian forces sent
east to besiege Crimea to lure the Soviet forces eastward, away from the Polish
Line and Romanian oil fields. He then has Hungarian forces pushed to the
Dnieper River to reinforce Western Ukraine.

-May
14th, 1940: Hitler’s gamble pays off as the Soviets who had been
coming south to were diverted to protect Crimea.

-May
17th, 1940: British Navy begins a siege of German occupied Denmark.
They have the British Royal Airforce bomb the main bridges connecting the
islands.

-May
26th, 1940: German forces manage to capture Minsk, Belarus.

-May
29th, 1940: The significantly smaller Romanian forces (who had
pretty much only served as decoys) are smashed into by the much larger Soviet
forces before they even reached Crimea.

-May
30th, 1940: Romani Slobozîmos Vojska forces begin a full uprising in
the Bessarabia region of the Kingdom of Romania in an attempt to liberate the
Roma Concentration Camps in Transnistria. Commander Vinzenz Rose leads a
partisan effort in destroying railroads, supply lines and extremely important
Romanian oil refineries. He would be awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Award
by the USSR after the war. This immediately cripples the Romanian supply line
causing their forces near Crimea to be cut off and flanked.

## June 1940

-June
1st, 1940: Germany seeing the Allied Forces close around them begins
a last chance Blitzkrieg assault on London and Marseille telling their officers
to aim specifically for civilian centers to break the British and French spirit
and in hopes of making French and British forces withdraw to their respective
capitals to protect them. Hitler also initiates Operation Warägergarde
“Varangian Guard” as a last-ditch effort to break the spirit of the British and
French. He recruits fanatically loyal soldiers to pilot their planes into
French or British buildings in Kamikaze like strikes. They developed specific
missile planes based on the Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka known as the
Eisenblitz. Hitler also began use special gas bombs with a mixture of different
poisons to drop onto civilian centers.

-June
3rd, 1940: The Germans take advantage of the chaos with the
Romanians and push the Soviets to east of the Dnieper River.

-June
5th, 1940: Britain captures Copenhagen and liberates German occupied
Denmark.

-June
5th, 1940: Allied forces capture Belgrade and defeat the Kingdom of
Serbia thus ending the Yugoslav Civil War.

-June
9th, 1940: Milan Nedić is executed by Illyrian-Italian forces.

-June
10th, 1940: Huzarzy soldiers seeing the Soviets closing in and under
order from begin liquidating the Ukrainian and Jewish Camps and massacre
thousands of ethnic Ukrainians and Jews.

-June
10th, 1940: With a majority of the Romanian fascist army destroyed
and their supply lines crippled by Slobozîmos Vojska forces and the Hungarian
army being stretched thin between Poland, Ukraine, Romania and its own borders,
the Soviets meet up with Roma forces in Odessa and begin and invasion of
Romania.

-June
12th, 1940: The Tiraspol Concentration Camp is liberated by
Slobozîmos Vojska forces, most of its prisoners were Roma who quickly joined
the brigade.

-June
15th, 1940: Joint Soviet-Slobozîmos Vojska forces capture Chișinău
in Romania.

-June
13th, 1940: Britain recalls the Royal Air Force from Denmark to
handle the Luftwaffe attacks on London.

-June
15th, 1940: Soviet forces retake Kiev from Germany. They begin
moving northwest to push back the German line.

-June
17th, 1940: Joint Soviet-Slobozîmos Vojska forces capture Bucharest.
Romania had been greatly weakened by its conflict in the Yugoslav Civil War,
the work of Romani partisans and being stretching too thinly. The fascist
leader of Romania, Ion Antonescu, is executed and the Romanian communist,
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, is installed as the new leader of the Socialist
Republic of Romania. Many Roma living in Romania would go on to join the
Slobozîmos Vojska and join with the Soviets.

-June
18th, 1940: As Adolf Hitler hears of the fall of Romania, its last
main supplier of oil he is faced with extreme backlash and public outcry. He
begins espousing even greater nationalism and White-Aryan Supremacy to try and
boost the morale of his populace. Germany lowers the conscription age to
include members of the Hitler Youth (ages 14 to 18) to bolster their military.

June
19th, 1940: Adolf Hitler calls for the total extermination of all
non-Aryan Germans, ironically, this would lead to many Poles, Hungarians and
Danes who had sided with Hitler to begin to doubt him and many began to defect
or even join the Soviets.

-June
20th, 1940: The British Royal Air Force defeats the German Luftwaffe
over the skies of London during the infamous Battle of London.

-June
20th, 1940: The Nazis up to this point had been deporting their
entire Jewish population ghettos to the Lublin Reservation in the Polish City
of Lublin which had become essentially a “mega-ghetto”. Multiple ghettos were
built around Lublin as the Jewish prisoners increased as multiple Jewish
ghettos around Nazi Germany had their population deported to Lublin. With the
rising fanaticism among the Germans they call for an extermination of its
entire population. The Nazis began the liquidation of the entire Jewish
population of Lublin (at the point around 1 million who had expanded well past
the city’s walls and had simply been fenced in and left to fight over what
little food there was).

-June
21st, 1940: The Lublin Uprising occurs with the Yidishe Bafreyung
Farband arming the Jewish prisoners of the Lublin Reservation against the Nazi
government. The YBF’s commander, Tuvia Bielski, had managed to receive backing
from the Soviet military and had been smuggling weapons into Lublin to prepare
for this. Around 1,000 Jewish partisan soldiers storm the Polish-Soviet border
to aid in the uprising. They quickly arm thousands of Jewish prisoners who
revolt against the Nazi military and while bloody manage to retake the city of
Lublin. Now with around 2,500 Jewish soldiers they manage to push back fascist
Polish forces until reinforcements from the Soviets arrived. This would become
known as the Battle of Lublin and is lauded as one of the truly greatest
moments in Jewish history. They manage to liberate Lublin, Lviv, Rzeszow,
Bialystok and Brest.

-June
22nd, 1940: Soviet forces recapture Minsk.

-June
25th, 1940: British forces assault the German puppet North France
and with support from French forces overthrows the German control by July 30th.

-June
26th, 1940: Soviet forces invade Hungary which had already been
greatly weakened by the Yugoslav Civil War.

-June
30th, 1940: Soviet forces finally manage to take Konigsberg and
annex German East Prussia. Many Germans are prevented from fleeing East
Prussia.

## July 1940

-July
1st, 1940: Soviet forces take Budapest and liberate Hungary. Ferenc
Szálasi, the fascist leader of Hungary commits suicide in a Hungarian bunker.

-July
5th, 1940: Prime Minister Shefqet Vërlaci of the Kingdom of Albania
is deposed for subordination to the Kingdom of Italy and the more loyal Mustafa
Merlika-Kruja is appointed as the new Prime Minister.

-July
7th, 1940: Soviet forces in the south invade Slovakia.

-July
10th, 1940: During the Battle of Marseille, the British Royal
Airforce and French Airforce defeat the German Luftwaffe.

-July
15th, 1940: Soviet forces storm Bratislava and liberate Slovakia.

-July
30th, 1940: British and French forces defeat the fascist North
France. Fascist French collaborator, François Darlan, is captured and
imprisoned back in Marseille.

## August 1940

-August
5th, 1940: British and French forces begin the liberation of the
Netherlands.

-August
17th, 1940: The Soviet Union begins the invasion of Huzarzy Poland
where they meet up with the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband and use the city of
Lublin as a mid-point. Two sections break off, one goes north to Warsaw while
the other goes south to Krakow.

-August
20th, 1940: British and French forces liberate Belgium, Luxembourg
and the Netherlands from German occupation.

-August
21st, 1940: Soviets capture the Polish city of Krakow.

-August
30th, 1940: Soviets capture the Polish city of Warsaw. During the
Battle of Warsaw much of the city would be destroyed and nearly burnt to the
ground by the sheer violence and most of its population driven out as battles
took place on city streets.

## September 1940

-September
5th, 1940: Members of the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband capture Polish
fascist leader, Commander Bolesław Piasecki who is imprisoned back in Moscow. Chancellor Władysław Studnicki  is captured as well but he quickly commits suicide.

-September
10th, 1940: The Soviet fully liberates Poland. Many Poles living in
eastern Poland flee to the West to escape being under Soviet control. Polish
Nationalists who served in the Huzarzy Army would go into hiding and join the
Polish nationalist organization known as the Mieszko Front formed later.

-September
15th, 1940: Polish Huzarzy soldiers are executed en masse by Soviet
forces. Around 6,000 Huzarzy soldiers and officers are executed in the
neighboring town of Bolimów. This would become known as the Bolimów Massacre
despite its victims being primarily fascist sympathizers.

-September
20th, 1940: The Soviet Union begins pushing west into Germany
annexing the German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse Line.

-September
20th, 1940: British and French forces invade Germany from the west
and north.

-September
21st, 1940: Friedrich Fromm, a Nazi
officer, upon meeting Adolf Hitler detonates an explosive device killing
himself and Hitler. This was a part of a coup to overthrow Hitler and retake
control of Germany. Fromm had originally heard of the plot from his officers
and while initially opposed realized that if Germany was occupied by the
Democratic Alliance it would be a thousand times worse than the Treaty of
Versailles and so sought peace by forcing Hitler out of the picture.

-September
22nd, 1940: Hermann Göring is appointed as the new Chancellor of
Nazi Germany with Joseph Goebbels being appointed as the new President of Nazi
Germany.

-September
30th, 1940: The newly formed German Resistance overthrows the Nazi
Government and Ludwig Beck is instated as the new President and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler is instated as the new
Chancellor. The Nazi Flag is lowered from the Reichstag and the new German flag
is raised instead and the German Republic is declared. Hermann Göring and
Joseph Goebbels are captured, shot and killed. Heinrich Himmler and the Nazi SS
go into hiding and initiate Operation Werwolf.

## October 1940

-October
10th, 1940: Chancellor Goerdeler of the German Republic surrenders
to the Democratic Alliance. The new German government feared Soviet occupation
and would rather be under Allied democratic control than communist control.
This officially ended the Versailles War.

-October
11th, 1940, 4:00 PM: Soviet forces on the Western Front enter Berlin
under the command of Soviet General Ivan Konev.
While word of the German’s surrender had not reached Moscow yet, Konev felt
cheated by the Democratic Alliance “stealing” Germany from the Soviet Union.
Germany had long been considered a “prize” of the Soviet Union who longed to
bring the German industry and agriculture into a socialist union with Russia.
This begins the Four-Hour War as Soviet forces clash with French, British and
Allied Germans forces in Berlin.

-October
11th, 1940, 8:00 PM: Word of Germany’s surrender and Konev’s
subordination finally reaches Mikhail Kalinin who orders a ceasefire from
Soviet troops and has Konev court-martialed. Thus, ending the Four-Hour War.

## Aftermath

Mikhail Kalinin of the USSR, Neville Chamberlain of the
UK, Albert François Lebrun of France and Carl
Goerdeler of the German Republic meet in Berlin on October 22nd, 1940 to discuss the post-war peace
and reconstruction of Europe. Carl Goerdeler held no real power but was there
to show that the new German government was willing to cooperate with the Allied
Forces. Benito Mussolini of the Kingdom of Italy attends as well as a
representative of the Roman Bloc. This meeting would become known as the Berlin
Conference.

While officially conflict had ceased between the Soviet Union and Japan due to the October 30th, 1939 Ceasefire, tensions would remain extremely high between the two powers and would eventually boil over into the Pacific War on January 10th, 1941.

## Terms of the Berlin Conference

-The German Republic will be partitioned with the Czech Republic being granted
independence and Austria being separated from the German Republic as the
Austrian Republic. Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg would be granted independence
from the German Republic as the Bavarian Republic. While the Germans had
surrendered, the Democratic Alliance did not trust Germany after fighting two
wars against them and as such partitioned Germany to prevent it from happening
again. They only managed this by promising that Germany and Bavaria could
reunify 25 years after the Berlin Conference (October 22nd, 1965).

-Germany would undergo denazification but not demilitarization as to work as a buffer
against the Soviets to east.

-Finland will remain within the Soviet Sphere and Sweden shall be designated as a
neutral buffer zone between democratic Norway and communist Finland.

The Democratic Alliance recognizes Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, East Prussia and
Poland as a part of the Soviet Sphere and in return the Soviets recognize the
Democratic control over Germany, Czech Republic and Austria.

-All German Provinces east of the Oder-Neisse Line will be ceded to the Polish
Democratic Republic and all ethnic Germans living there will be deported to the
Prussian Democratic Republic. However, since Germany had surrendered to the
Democratic Alliance and held a greater sway during the discussion it was
outraged by the loss of historically German land as such it demanded concessions
in response to this loss of land, while the committee was unwilling to grant
these concessions they greatly reduced the reparations Germany had to pay
allowing Germany to recover much quicker.

-The Free City of Danzig will be partitioned between the Polish Democratic Republic and
the Prussian Democratic Republic. Land west of the Vistula will be ceded to the
Polish Democratic Republic and land east of the Vistula will be ceded to the
Prussian Democratic Republic.

-East Prussia will be rebuilt as a German Communist State as a Soviet Satellite State
known as the Prussian Democratic State. Ethnic Germans in Poland and in the
newly acquired eastern provinces of Germany will be transferred to the Prussian
Democratic Republic, however many fled to Germany or Austria fearing Soviet
control. This mass exodus would be exacerbated by violence enacted against the
civilian population of these provinces by Soviet forces.

-Nazi war criminals were to be found and put on trial. Goerdeler fully agreed to this and
to help facilitate flushing out staunch Nazi supporters from his new German
Republic.

-Ethnic Germans within the Czech Republic would be repatriated to the German Republic.

-Ethnic Germans within France would be repatriated to the German Republic.

-Ethnic Germans within Italy, specifically in the province of South Tyrol/Trentino-Alto
Adige would be repatriated to the Austrian Republic.

-The German Republic, Bavarian Republic, Austrian Republic and the Czech Republic
would join the League of Nations.

-The League of Nations should be reformed to guarantee Collective Security for all.

-In exchange for joining the League of Nations, the Democratic Alliance would
recognize them Montenegrin Free State, Serbian Free State, Bosnian Free State,
Macedonian Free State, Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Illyrian Republic that were established following the Yugoslav Civil War as
legitimate governments. However they remain as Italian puppet states with a
stronger Italian presence in Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Illyria rather
than Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

-Established the Kuzma Pact (named after the town of Kuzma at the tri-point border between Slovenia, Hungary and Austria) defining the Socialist Union, Democratic Alliance and Roman Bloc Spheres of Influence. They also signed a Non-Aggression treaty between the three factions.

-The Democratic Alliance would
begrudgingly accept Italian control over French Djibouti as a form of placation
for Mussolini who stood as a bulwark against communism. Although Italy was
forced to allow French bases and trade ports to remain in these colonies and
allow unrestricted British and French access through the Bab-el-Mandeb or
Mandeb Strait.

-A defensive line and militarized
border known as the Europa Line will be established along the eastern borders
of France, Belgium and the Netherlands against potential future German
invasion.

-Luxembourg will be ceded to Belgium
in order to protect the populace against future German threats. They became an
autonomous province of Belgium.