Remilitarization of the Rhineland
n October, 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and claimed he had done so because of the failure to reach agreement about disarmament. Hitler argued that under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles Germany was militarily weak. He said that Germany had been willing to keep to this state of affairs if other countries disarmed. As this had not happened, Germany now had to take measures to protect herself.

In the months that followed, Hitler trebled the size of the German Army and completely ignored the restrictions on weapons that had been imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. By 1935, when it was clear that no action was going to be taken against Germany for breaking the terms of the treaty, Hitler felt strong enough to introduce military conscription.

Adolf Hitler knew that both France and Britain were militarily stronger than Germany. However, he became convinced that they were unwilling to go to war. He therefore decided to break another aspect of the Treaty of Versailles by sending German troops into the Rhineland.

Soldiers of the Wehrmacht march into the Rhineland, March 1936

The German generals were very much against the plan, claiming that the French Army would win a victory in the military conflict that was bound to follow this action. Hitler ignored their advice and on 1st March, 1936, three German battalions marched into the Rhineland.

The French government was horrified to find German troops on their border but were unwilling to take action without the support of the British. The British government argued against going to war over the issue and justified its position by claiming that "Germany was only marching into its own back yard."
[German Reich: +3 Morale]
[Allies: -1 Morale]
[+3 Available Contracts Remaining]

MAN finishes construction of two Factories.
Henschel & Son finishes construction of two Factories.

No espionage occurred at this time.

Design manufacturer Porsche--anticipating future orders from the Wehrmacht, institute Streamlining to their development of the Panzer II tank currently being designed and developed to eventually replace the much smaller Panzer I. With compartmentalized production, Porsche workers were able to focus on two or three individual tasks on each tank, letting their coworkers worry about their own task and subsequently increasing workplace efficiency.
- Porsche Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 6 + 2 (Streamlining) = Panzer Effectiveness of 8.

Manufacturer MAN similarly submits a design for a Panzer II utilizing an Improved Gun to a 2 cm KwK 30 L/55. The 2 cm KwK 30 L/55 was a German 2 cm cannon used primarily as the main armament of the German SdKfz.121 Panzerkampfwagen II light tank. It was used during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. The KwK 30 also served as the basis for the 20 mm C/30, an aircraft variant that was mounted experimentally in some Heinkel He 112 fighters and proved to make an excellent ground-attack weapon during the Spanish Civil War. Direct ground-attack was not considered a priority for the Luftwaffe, however, and the cannon was not used on other designs.
- MAN Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 4 + 2 (Improved Gun) = Panzer Effectiveness of 6.

German manufacturers Krupp, Henschel & Son and Porsche spent very little downtime, instead sending their engineers to get to work on developing new technologies to win potential new contracts for the Wehrmacht.


- Krupp receives three Event/Technology (Research + Focused Effort).
- Porsche receives two Event/Technology (Research).
- Henschel & Son receives two Event/Technology (Research).

No banking occurred at this time.

The Spanish Civil War was a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States.

A well-planned military uprising began on July 17, 1936, in garrison towns throughout Spain. By July 21 the rebels had achieved control in Spanish Morocco, the Canary Islands, and the Balearic Islands (except Minorca) and in the part of Spain north of the Guadarrama mountains and the Ebro River, except for Asturias, Santander, and the Basque provinces along the north coast and the region of Catalonia in the northeast. The Republican forces had put down the uprising in other areas, except for some of the larger Andalusian cities, including Sevilla (Seville), Granada, and Córdoba. The Nationalists and Republicans proceeded to organize their respective territories and to repress opposition or suspected opposition. Republican violence occurred primarily during the early stages of the war before the rule of law was restored, but the Nationalist violence was part of a conscious policy of terror. The matter of how many were killed remains highly contentious; however, it is generally believed that the toll of Nationalist violence was higher. In any event, the proliferation of executions, murders, and assassinations on both sides reflects the great passions that the Civil War unleashed.


The captaincy of the Nationalists was gradually assumed by General Franco, leading forces he had brought from Morocco. On October 1, 1936, he was named head of state and set up a government in Burgos. The Republican government, beginning in September 1936, was headed by the socialist leader Francisco Largo Caballero. He was followed in May 1937 by Juan Negrín, also a socialist, who remained premier throughout the remainder of the war and served as premier in exile until 1945. The president of the Spanish Republic until nearly the end of the war was Manuel Azaña, an anticlerical liberal. Internecine conflict compromised the Republican effort from the outset. On one side were the anarchists and militant socialists, who viewed the war as a revolutionary struggle and spearheaded widespread collectivization of agriculture, industry, and services; on the other were the more moderate socialists and republicans, whose objective was the preservation of the Republic. Seeking allies against the threat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union had embraced a Popular Front strategy, and, as a result, the Comintern directed Spanish communists to support the Republicans.

Both the Nationalist and Republican sides, seeing themselves as too weak to win a quick victory, turned abroad for help. Germany and Italy sent troops, tanks, and planes to aid the Nationalists. The Soviet Union contributed equipment and supplies to the Republicans, who also received help from the Mexican government. During the first weeks of the war, the Popular Front government of France also supported the Republicans, but internal opposition forced a change of policy. In August 1936, France joined Britain, the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy in signing a nonintervention agreement that would be ignored by the Germans, Italians, and Soviets. About 40,000 foreigners fought on the Republican side in the International Brigades largely under the command of the Comintern, and 20,000 others served in medical or auxiliary units.

German involvement in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 commenced with the outbreak of war in July 1936, with Adolf Hitler immediately sending in powerful air and armored units to assist General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist forces. The Soviet Union sent in smaller forces to assist the Republican government, while Britain and France and two dozen other countries set up an embargo on any munitions or soldiers into Spain. Germany also signed the embargo but simply ignored it. The war provided combat experience with the latest technology for the German military. However, the intervention also posed the risk of escalating into a world war for which Hitler was not ready. He therefore limited his aid, and instead encouraged Mussolini to send in large Italian units. Franco's Nationalists were victorious; he remained officially neutral in the Second World War, but helped the Axis in various ways from 1940 to 1943, even offering to join the war on 19 June 1940 in exchange for help building Spain's colonial empire. The Spanish episode lasted three years and was a smaller-scale prelude to the world war which broke out in 1939.



German support for General Franco was motivated by several factors, including as a distraction from Hitler's central European strategy, and the creation of a Spanish state friendly to Germany to threaten France. It further provided an opportunity to train men and test equipment and tactics.

[German Reich: +1 Morale]
[Allies: -1 Morale]
[+1 Maximum Contracts]

The firm Porsche builds two Factories.

The design manufacturer Henschel & Son decides to build the Panzer II Ausf B., adding nearly a quarter centimeter of armor on the front end with Armor Plating.
- Henschel & Son Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 4 + 2 (Armor Plating) = Panzer Effectiveness of 6.

The Panzer II Ausf C never saw the light of day however, as Henschel & Son immediately took a page out of Porsche's book and implemented streamlining to their factory lines, ensuring higher quality without sacrificing quantity.
- Henschel & Son Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 3 + 4 (Armor Plating, Streamlining) = Panzer Effectiveness of 7.



Similarly, Krupp worked on their own version of the Panzer II, inserting a 260 hp Krupp licensed built Daimler-Benz engine to increase both speed and range of their own Panzer II, already nicknamed Panzer II Kruppen.
- Krupp Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 6 + 2 (Better Engine) = Panzer Effectiveness of 8.

Only days later, Krupp followed Henschel & Son's decision to up armor the Panzer II, dding nearly a quarter centimeter of armor on the front end with Armor Plating.
- Krupp Rolls for Effectiveness: Die Roll of 5 + 4 (Better Engine, Armor Plating) = Panzer Effectiveness of 9.

German design firms Krupp and MAN conducted research at the tail end of 1936.

No banking occurred at this time.

Porsche: Kama Tank School: Add two to your Panzer Effectiveness. The Kama tank school was a secret training school for tank commanders operated by the German Reichswehr at Kazan, Soviet Union. It operated from 1929 to 1933. The school was established in order to allow the German military to circumvent the military restrictions on tank research spelled out in the Treaty of Versailles.

The Great Purge
Purge trials, also called Great Purge, three widely publicized show trials and a series of closed, unpublicized trials held in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, in which many prominent Old Bolsheviks were found guilty of treason and executed or imprisoned. All the evidence presented in court was derived from preliminary examinations of the defendants and from their confessions. It was subsequently established that the accused were innocent, that the cases were fabricated by the secret police (NKVD), and that the confessions were made under pressure of intensive torture and intimidation.

The trials successfully eliminated the major real and potential political rivals and critics of Stalin. The trials were the public aspect of the widespread purge that sent millions of alleged “enemies of the people” to prison camps in the 1930s.

The first trial opened in August 1936, while Genrikh G. Yagoda was head of the secret police. The main defendants were Grigory Yevseyevich Zinovyev, Lev Borisovich Kamenev, and Ivan Smirnov, all of whom had been prominent Bolsheviks at the time of the October Revolution (1917) and during the early years of the Soviet regime. With 13 codefendants they were accused of having joined Leon Trotsky in 1932 to form a terrorist organization in order to remove Stalin from power. The prosecution blamed the group for the assassination of Sergey Mironovich Kirov (December 1934) and suggested that it planned to murder Stalin and his close political associates. On August 24, 1936, the court found the defendants guilty and ordered their executions.

The second trial opened in January 1937, after N.I. Yezhov had replaced Yagoda as chief of the NKVD. The major defendants were G.L. Pyatakov, G.Y. Sokolnikov, L.P. Serebryakov, and Karl Radek, all prominent figures in the Soviet regime. They and their 17 codefendants were accused of forming an “anti-Soviet Trotskyite centre,” which had allegedly collaborated with Trotsky to conduct sabotage, wrecking, and terrorist activities that would ruin the Soviet economy and reduce the defensive capability of the Soviet Union. They were accused of working for Germany and Japan and of intending to overthrow the Soviet government and restore capitalism. They were found guilty on January 30, 1937; Sokolnikov, Radek, and two others were given 10-year sentences, and the rest were executed.

At the third trial (March 1938), the prosecution suggested that the Zinovyev–Trotsky conspiracy also included Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin and Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov, the leaders of the right-wing opposition to Stalin that had been prominent in the late 1920s. Yagoda was also accused of being a member of the conspiracy, as were three prominent doctors who had attended leading government officials. A total of 21 defendants were accused of performing numerous acts of sabotage and espionage with the intent to destroy the Soviet regime, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore the capitalist system. They were also charged with responsibility for Kirov’s death, and it was alleged that Yagoda had ordered the three doctors to murder the former secret police chief V.R. Menzhinsky, the author Maxim Gorky, and a member of the Politburo, V.V. Kuibyshev. Bukharin was accused of having plotted to murder Lenin in 1918. Although one defendant, N.N. Krestinsky, retracted his guilty plea, and Bukharin and Yagoda skillfully responded to the prosecutor Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky’s questions to demonstrate their innocence, all the defendants except three were sentenced to death on March 13, 1938.


In addition to the so-called show trials, a series of closed trials of top Soviet military leaders was held in 1937–38, in which a number of prominent military leaders were eliminated; the closed trials were accompanied by a massive purge throughout the Soviet armed forces. Stalin’s liquidation of experienced military leadership during this purge was one of the major factors contributing to the poor performance of Soviet forces in the initial phase of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
[Soviets: -3 Morale]
[+1 Maximum Contracts]