1938-1950 (The Lusitania Lives)

The Second Great War: Opening Engagements (1938-1940)
November 14th, 1938 saw the world come to an end or so many thought. After years of beating around the bush and open threats the newly formed Entente and German lead E.E.C. finally had had enough of each other.Kaiser Fredrich Wilhelm III with approval of the Reichstag and followed shortly after by his fellow head of states declared a state of war on the Entente members. German Imperial Forces would begin preparing to launch pre-emptive attacks on the nation's enemies. As Germany and its allies prepared to attack Russia would attack in a coordinated move with Turkey, Italy and Romania the Eastern Bloc from the South and East hitting a surprised but not unprepared E.E.C.army, Meanwhile France would attempt to strike Western Germany in a move similar to Germany's own 1914 offensive in the previous war aimed at outflanking and taking the German Industrial heartland through Belguim (a member of the new Entente), however their forces would swiftly bog down as Germany had been preparing to do a similar move and the german forces would prove much better prepared then then France and the Entente initially though. The Imperial Army would begin a heavy defence while sending armored divisions lead by Erwin Rommel to try and outflank the French-Belgian initiative. This would have mild success pushing the french back into Belguim however further south the french would prove determined to take the Rhineland at all cost and a stalemate would quickly ensue.

The Eastern Front would prove less successful in holding back the initial russian onslaught which was able to push Ukrainian royal forces back to past Dnipropetrov and to the outskirts of Kiev while the Baltic States fell almost at once with their armed forces retreating into eastern Prussia and western Poland, Eastern Poland faired little better then its balltic allies. However the joint E.E.C: forces would prove capable of holding onto the areas they still controled by the start of 1939, this wasin no small part thanks to the fact that Russia had stopped the charge west due to the start of Winter, and the Germans helping reorganize the allied defences.

Turkey and Greece would begin shooting at each other almost right off the bat with the Turkish invasion of Constantinople were the turikish populace welcomed them as liberators while the greek populace resisted with all their might the turkish incursion, the Greek efforts would be aided a little by Bulgarian troops who came into to try and alliaviate te Greek problems however they also had to fight a Romanian invasion from the north.

Italy and Russia would preassure Yugoslavia into joining the war by early 1939 when Italy threatened to invade them and Russia promised them a peice of Hungary and Austria for their help, though Italy had its own designs on the region. Italy would itself launch two seperate invasions one into Austria which would prove harder then Mussolini had promised  and another one this time naval against Greece which held several areas Italy claimed. The Greeks currently defending Thrace from the Turkish forces wuold be unable to prevent a landing of Italian troops in Epirus, the Ionion Islands and Peloponnese.

Japan which had been fighting China since the year before was bound by a treaty they had signed with Germany to come to Germany's aid in its war with Russia, was contemplating a greater war with the enemies of its european ally, with many in the diet proposing backing out of the allaince,others in the diet and the army proposing focusing on China and also invading the Russian far east to secure their northern flank, secure much needed raw material for what they saw as a long war, and to cut of russian aid to the Chinese nationalists. The navy and more imperialistic/less realistic members of the government proposed an attack similar to OTL japanese war efforts to take without provocation the rich European colonies in South East Asia to fuel the jaapnese war machine, though well recieved by many in the war department it was greatly resisted by the army and the members of the Diet who felt such a move would alienate their friendss in the U.S.A. and possibly provoke negative effects. All the factions would continue fighting over the best course of action when a border skirmish along the Manchurian-Mongolian border occured, the skirmish was largely fought by Russian and Japanese troops rather then by Manchu and mongolian soldiers. The skirmish would swiftly brin most of the previosuly neutral and pro-naval thinkers into backing the northern plan, and on February 19th 1939 Japan declared war on Russia in the defence of both its allies Manchukuo and Germany, however it didn't declare war on Russia's allies. The declaration of war would be followed by a general mobolization and deployment of more troops from the homeland into Korea, Manchukuo and Japanese Occupied North eastern China to help fight a now broader war, thus bringing Japan and the Second Sino-Japanese war into the Second great War.