In 1914, a few shots in Sarajevo would change the fate of the continent. The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand would soon draw all of Europe into the most disastrous war the conflict has seen. For years on end, a static frontline in the west and a huge mobile front in the east stressed the German Reich to a near-breaking point, when suddenly the Russian revolution ended the eastern front. Millions of German and Austrian soldiers rushed west and in the Summer of 1918 made huge breakthroughs in the Balkans, where the Salonika front was crushed. The Italian and French armies were defeated and by 1919, peace had returned to a burnt up Europe. After two years of naval skirmishes and island grabs, the Reich makes peace with Great Britain, Japan, and Portugal under which pre-war boundaries on all continents were respected. Very limited involvement in Russia tipped the scales in favour of the Whites, and left a strong German foothold in China. Peace, however, did not bring stability. From Flanders to Ukraine Berlin's new European pact dominated Europe, but outside of there revolutions struck France and Britain, causing the old order to flee to Algeria and Canada respectively as a wild collection of leftists took over. The Germans did not hesitate to claim their place in the sun and took over most of Africa worth taking and strenghtened its presence in the pacific.

Slowly but surely the world recovered. The roaring 20s hit Germany as much as the United States, until the disastrous stock market crashes in New York in 1933 and Berlin in 1934 shook the world to its core. Businesses went bankrupt, unemployment soared, and it was seen as a failure of capitalism in contrast to socialist values carrying Britain and France to heights they had not dreamed of 20 years earlier. With that economic destabilisation came social destabilisation. Austria-Hungary was becoming dangerously unstable, the Ottoman Empire was worsening again, the United States was undergoing a social and political earthquake with Huey Long's America First movement and the Industrial Workers of the World competing with the Democratic and Republican parties until the second Civil War broke out. All the while Germany's Polish minorities became restive, and the poor resented the rich even more than they did before, and the SPD took a leap to the left as a result. Germany was weakened, and the French preyed on her weakened lands.

In the winter of 1939 the French Commune started exerting pressure on the Swiss Confederation and threatened it in an attempt to claim the Romandie. While the Swiss were not going to give in to the French anytime soon, the Germans stuck up for them which led the French to raise the stakes dramatically. On Christmas eve of 1939 the French army crossed the border into Alsace and Lorraine, provoking the Second Weltkrieg.