Civil War on Third Reich

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Flag of the Third Reich

The POD
On March 13, 1943 Operation Spark -a plan designed by German anti-Nazis officers Colonel Henning von Tresckow and Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff- succeeds and Adolf Hitler dies when a bomb destroys his aircraft. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, second in command and Hitler's nominal sucessor, becomes the new Führer. He wants to reach an armistice with the Allies, but when he knows the notice SS-Obergruppenführer and Bohemia-Moravia Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich -who has survived his 1942 assassination in Czechoslovakia in this timeline- wants to continue the war "until the last breath", and claims Göring is a traitor.

A civil war in the Third Reich is coming.

1943
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Hermann Göring - Führer of the Third Reich

March 14, 1943 - In a radio speech broadcasted to all Germany, Führer Hermann Göring announces a suspension of hostilities. At the same time, Wehrmacht troops assault the SS and Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, arresting or killing most of its officers.

March 16, 1943 - Three days after Hitler's death the Bohemia-Moravia Reichsprotektorat, led with iron fist by Heydrich, the General Government --which includes the part of occupied polish territories separated from Great Germany--, the nazi occupied Baltic States, Norway, Sweden, Belarus and Ukraine declares its independence from the German Third Reich and becomes a new country: the Fourth Reich.

After the Berlin incident Heydrich SS troops replies with a series of bloody skirmishes in the Sudetenland border. This causes the Third Reich declares war to the Fourth Reich. In the Russian front the Red Army launches Operation Siegfried, the invasion of all nazi occupied eastern territories.

March 17, 1943 - After breaking their relationships with Germany, Italy and Japan formally recognise the Fourth Reich as a sovereign state and legal heir of the Third Reich in wich respect to its treaties with the rest of Axis powers.

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Reinhard Heydrich - Führer of the Fourth Reich

March 27, 1943 - Guernsey conference - A German delegation led by Germany foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop comes to the island of Guernsey, in the coast of Normandy, to initiate peace conversations with representatives of the United Kingdom --former british Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who is still alive in this timeline-- and the United States governments --former United States ambassador to Britain, Joseph  P. Kennedy--. The Göring's plan is manage to prevent and Allied invasion of western Europe in order to reunite his forces to defeat the Fourth Reich 2th and 3th SS Panzercorps, wich are concentrating in the German South and East borders. The 4th SS Panzercorps are deployed by Heydrich along the polish border to stop the Soviet advance.

March 31, 1943 - Pact of Guernsey - The United Kingdom, the United States and Germany reaches a peace agreement. Germany agrees to return to 1938 borders. The National-Socialist party is banned and all its representatives are expulsed of the Reichstag. All the prisoners of the concentration camps must be returned to their respective countries. An international tribunal is stablished to judge the responsables of the Final Solution. In the following months the German government must celebrate free elections and begin the return of German troops stationed in France, Italy and all the occupied territories formerly under the control of the Third Reich. Now, without the restraints of a two-front war and with the Allies appeased, Göring can send his army to Germany South and East borders, where Fourth Reich forces are concentrated.

April 15, 1943 - German troops begin withdrawal from occupied France, Luxemburg, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands.

April 19, 1943 - Warsaw ghetto uprising

April 20, 1943 - Pétain arrested - Marshal Pétain, former Chief of State of Vichy France, is arrested by a French resistance patrol as he tries to cross the border into Spain at the Pyrenees.

April 23, 1943 - The Hague Trials - The International Tribunal for War Crimes (ITWC) is opened in the Hague to trial over 300 German war criminals. This included some of the attendees at Wannsee Conference, where the plans for the Final Solution were approved.

May 9, 1943 - A surprise massive air attack realized by Luftwaffe bombers against the oil fields of Romania causes a serious fuel shortage to the Fourth Reich troops.

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Anthony Eden - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

May 11, 1943 - Churchill dies - Following a plan designed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny, an IRA terrorist infiltrates in the tunnels beneath British House of Parliament to hide a large amount of explosives the night before Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives and speech in the House of Lords. The bomb explodes when Churchill has finished his speech, destroying the House of Lords and killing him and most of the Parliament members who were in the building at that moment. He is replaced by his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden.

May 17, 1943 - The situation in the Russian Front becomes clearly insostenible for the Fourth Reich. Without fuel, the major part of its panzer units and supplies convoys are unable to advance. The shortage of food causes that some SS troops recur, in their desperation, to canibalism. Heydrich launches Operation Gertrude, a plan originally designed by Adolf Hitler to invade Turkey and, trough Siria and Egypt, gain control of the Suez Channel and the rich oil fields of Arabia. The first step of the plan consists in the invasion of the estrategic island of Malta, the principal british enclave in the Mediterranean.

May 28, 1943 - A Japanese naval force under the command of admiral Boshiro Hosogaya attacks and destroys an american air base in Adak Island --Japanese forces are stationed in Attu and Kiska, the most western Aleutian Islands, since were invaded in June 3, 1942, and in this timeline never were recaptured by the US forces--. His orders are to use Adak as a bridgehead to invade Alaska and seize its vasts reserves of oil and coal.

May 30, 1943 - Eichmann dies - SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, one of the major responsables of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German occupied Europe, is shot in the courtroom by a Holocaust survivor when he's declaring at the ITWC, and dies while is transported to a hospital. The German government protests energically, because Eichmann has died under Allied custody.

June 21, 1943 - Projekt Madagaskar

July 1, 1943 - Turkish Front - The Allies begins to support Kurdish and Armenians partisans by weapons and supplies to overthrow the nazi puppet regime in Ankara.

July 4, 1943 - Battle of Kursk

July 9, 1943 - Operation Husky - The Allies begins Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.

July 18, 1943 - Operation Tannenbaum - One of the primary objectives in Heydrich's campaign against Germany is the occupation of Switzerland. When the invasion of Turkey succeeds he orders to reactivate Operation Tannenbaum. In 1940, after France surrendered, the Wehrmacht drawn up several plans to invade the Swiss Confederation. Operation Tannenbaum was the name gived to the third and most detailed of these plans. Although Hitler's military staff had planned the invasion, he never gave his aprobation by unclear reasons. Apparently, Hitler didn't consider Switzerland as a threat. Other reason could be he hasn't the effectives Operation Tannenbaum needed, because in June 1940 a large number of troops were moved to the West to support the inminent invasion of Britain, and to the East to reinforce the Russian Front.

Heydrich doesn't want to make Hitler's same mistakes. He orders a massive production of assault rifles to equip his infantry, specially Sturmgewehr MP 43 rifles (one of the reasons why Hitler didn't invade Switzerland in 1940 was his troops would have had to cop with a well trained militia formed in its major part by Swiss civilians, equiped with the Schmidt-Rubin repeating rifle, at that time a firearm as good as the best German automatic weapons).

August 1, 1943 - Japan invade Siberia

August 2, 1943 - Kennedy dies - Commander John F. Kennedy dies when his ship, the torpedo boat PT 109, is fired upon by the Japanese navy near the Solomon Islands. After the de death of his son, Joseph P. Kennedy leaves the Democrats an joins to the Republican party.

September 17, 1943 - Mussolini dies - Riots in Rome. The Duce Benito Mussolini and his wife are killed by italian partisans when they are trying to escape trough the albanese border before the american troops arrives.

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Flag of the British Union of Fascists

November 1943 - Mosley released - After he's diagnosed with phlebitis Oswald Mosley, former MP and leader of British Union of Fascists (BUF), is released of Holloway prison. The BUF is an anti-semite and anti-communist movement, inspired by Italian fascism. At the beginning of war he led a campaign for a negotiated peace with Germany, but after the invasion of Norway he was accused of sympathize with the Nazism and condemned to ostracism.

November 28 - December 1, 1943 - Tehran Conference - Joseph Stalin, the Premier of the Soviet Union; Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the United States; General Charles de Gaulle, the President of the French Republic and Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, meet together in the Soviet embassy in Tehran, Iran, to design a joint strategy for the war against the Fourth Reich and its ally, Japan.

December 7, 1943 - After the liberation of Italy, the Allied advance is stopped in the Alps by heavily armed SS troops.

December 9, 1943 - Roosevelt dies - President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a stroke when is working in the Oval Office. Vice president Harry S. Truman becomes the new President.

December 25, 1943 - Japan open its offensive towards India

1944
January 1, 1944 - Operation Kismet - Russian invasion of Turkey.

April 20, 1944 - Failed assassination attempt on Göring's life

April 24, 1944 - The Purge - Following the failed assassination attempt, Göring orders the arrest and imprison of hundreds of army officers, journalists and politics, under the suspect of being involved in a plot to kill him and give a coup d'etate to replace the newborn German democracy by another fascist regime like Nazi's dictatorship. His critics claim that this is just an excuse to eliminate the free press and other opposition groups.

May 7, 1944 - The second Reichstag fire

May 11, 1944 - Stalin begins to deport thousands of Kurds and Armenians to Siberia in order to be used as forced workers.

June 26 - June 28, 1944 - In the Chicago Republican National Convention Joseph P. Kennedy wins the nomination defeating the favorite, the Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey --the man everyone expected to received the nomination--, and becomes Republican party's candidate for President of the United States. The convention also approves his vice presidential nominee, Joseph R. McCarthy, to run with him in the same ticket.

19 July - 21 July, 1944 - Chicago Satdium. Democratic National Convention. Harry S. Truman wins the nomination. In an attempt to silent MacCarthy's accusations of sympathize with the reds, and to attract the votes of the hesitants he chooses General George S. Patton, a renown anti communist, as vice presidential candidate.

Unexpectedly, the catchphrase "A vote for Truman is a vote for reds", which McCarthy uses for first time in one of his speechs, is a success and becomes the slogan of the Republican's party campaign. Kennedy promises a thougher policy towards the USSR if he is elected President.

December 6, 1944 - Battle of Anchorage

1945
February 2, 1945 - The Horten 229 first test flight begins in Oranienburg. The Ho 229 is a stealth jet fighter plane, able to avoid the radar and inflige serious loses in enemy air forces. Heydrich plans to use widely in Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain.

March 1, 1945 - Due the shortage of oil and raw materials caused by the Fourth Reich air and naval blockade, Prime Minister Eden approves the nationalization of all banks and major industries in Britain. Riots in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham. BUF black-uniformed paramilitary corps, nicknamed Blackshirts, attacks sinagogues and communist union locals in London.

June 1, 1945 - Operation Daedalus - The allied invasion of western Europe.