Downer Ending / The New Order: Last Days of Europe

In The New Order Last Days Of Europe, several of the playable countries have bad endings, known as "failstates" which can be reached by following specific routes. They can be distinguished between "regional" failstates, which cause horrific outcomes for the country itself; and "global" failstates, which puts you on a one-way track towards thermonuclear war and a Nonstandard Game Over.

Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

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Current Failstates

Großgermanisches Reich

• An Idiosyncratic National Socialist Speer sees Speer being puppeted under Theodor Oberländer, and unlike the Gang of Four headed by Helmut Schmidt who can puppet Speer to provide the best possible path for Germany as a whole, Oberländer successfully launching a coup against Speer and undoing whatever reforms Speer made that would have made National Socialism lose its self-destructive tendencies dooms the Reich into collapse.
• Failing to stop the June of Deceit as Martin Bormann results in Baldur von Schirach taking over after Bormann is deposed by the Reichstag, leaving the Reich to be vulnerable to yet another civil war. While Bormann will develop cancer after the Second Night of the Long Knives, it's possible for the Reich to survive without him, but Schirach taking over effectively dooms the Reich's chances of existing in the future.

"Situation very serious... Disloyalty seems to gain the upper hand everywhere... Reichskanzlei a heap of rubble."

— Martin Bormann, in his Final Telegram

• Regardless of who emerges victorious in the Himmler-Heydrich struggle, if Heydrich destroys Burgundy and kills Himmler, he commits suicide due to his crisis of faith. Immediately afterwards, Germany collapses into another Civil War between Herbert Otto Gille and Hans Speidel; the player doesn't get to play it and is forced into observation mode, and over time this civil war collapses into anarchy, wiping Germany from the map. As then-head dev Pacifica states, the total victory and subsequent total collapse of SS Germany will cause a massive humanitarian crisis and thoroughly destabilize Europe, with untold numbers of nuclear warheads now leaking out into rogue states and the underworld. And if Heydrich fails to destroy Burgundy? Well, Himmler can then execute his nuclear plot and kill untold numbers of people anyway.

United States of America

• The developers consider a Yockey presidency to be the worst possible path America can take. In his first 100 days in the Oval Office, Yockey moves quickly to flood America with lies and misinformation, while letting the Ku Klux Klan off the leash to cause huge problems through riots in the South... all before he introduces the SAFE Act to try to snip the wings off American journalism and media.

Dai-Nippon Teikoku

• Should the Prime Minister fail to fully uncover the Dai Li conspiracy before the military's paranoia reaches 100%, this will result in both the IJA and the IJN declaring Gekokujō, resulting in a massive political crisis. The following happens depending on if Nishi Takeichi was pardoned or not:
  • Higashikuni Naruhiko's Jushin coup is one of the two bad endings Japan can find itself in if Nishi Takeichi is pardoned for his role in the Dai Li Conspiracy. With furious protests rising up against this decision, Naruhiko, Kido, and the Jushin coup the Yokusankai to restore the Constitutional Order over the Empire of Japan, effectively regressing the country's democracy into a dictatorial oligarchy.
  • Muto Akira's military coup is one of the two bad endings Japan can find itself in if it fails the Dai Li Conspiracy. With Japan under his heel, the civilian leadership of the Yokusankai is rendered powerless and Mutō calls back colonial Japanese troops to police his authoritarian rule over the isles, all the while the Sphere's puppets begin to assert themselves and may very well spell the end of Japan's empire when they rebel.

Iberian Union

• Should Iberia's stability reach a critical level or if the Iberian Council's authoritarianism levels are high, this sparks the Iberian Wars in which several Spanish and Portuguese states violently break off from the Union, alongside their African colonies as well. It gets worse if the Iberian Wars drag on for long enough, as more extremist factions such as the National Redemption Front or the Government of National Salvation prop up, potentially putting Iberia down a darker path if they reunite the continent (if at all).

"In a war there are no winners or losers: only victims."

— Michel del Castillo

Africa

• Should the OFN completely botch their mandates in Africa, this results in the African Crisis, which has multiple mandates becoming the very thing that they sought to oppose and committing various war crimes in various African regions. Not only this will severely hurt the current U.S. President's standing, but this can also indirectly lead into another failstate if Yockey gets elected later down the line.
• If the Großafrikanischer Reichsstaat reaches Stage 3 of control over Africa, then when it inevitably collapses, this results in the African Devastation, completely destroying Africa's chance of healing permanently, as the damage is too severe to rebuild, as well as much of what's left consisting of fanatical and insane warlords from the collapse.

The horror! The h-

• If the Second South African Civil War breaks out (which requires a total Afrika-Schild victory in the South African War, which is already not a good outcome for South Africa) and Oberkommando Südafrika triumphs, it will collapse when the Großafrikanischer Reichsstaat also collapses, plunging South Africa into a third civil war in less than a decade, with many unsavoury factions including the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and the Kapa Bokone African State, with extensive use of chemical weapons and a litany of heinous war crimes destroying any hope the country has of healing from the previous two civil wars, dooming it to the same fate as most of the warlord states that emerge from the Reichstaat's collapse.

Mainland China & Oceania

• If the State of Manchuria gets couped under Katakura Tadashi, Katakura's obsession with military might and defense will cripple the Manchurian economy, guaranteeing that they will lose their economic competition to Guangdong. The only saving grace is that his ascension causes Morita Akio's vision for Guangdong to be further validated.
• Speaking of Guangdong, if the Chief Executive fails to stop the Guangdong Riots when Japanese intervention risk reaches 100%, the Prime Minister of Japan will authorize the IJA to put down the riots, allowing Nagano Shigeto to repeat the horrors of the Rape of Nanking to subjugate the rioters, with the most of the Legislative Council sentenced to prison or executed, with the atrocities greatly increasing the chances of the Great Asian War between China and Japan. It's even worse if Komai Kenichirō was Chief Executive at the time, since his death by Lee Chun causes the IJA to crack down even harder, where in addition to targeting Lee Chun's family in the aftermath of Komai's death, it's also mentioned that women suffered "indignities" at the hands of the IJA.
• Should Joh Bjelke-Petersen be elected as the Head of State of Australia, he will turn it into an oppressive police state where all opposition media and speech is silenced, and the Australian Constitution is destroyed when he realizes that the Australian political system is beyond repair and embraces his image as an dictator.

Storm clouds have broken over Australia. Whatever emerges into the sunlight will be truly unrecognisable.

Southeast Asia

• If the Second Philippine Republic falls to the Balintawak Blitz but gets taken over by the Firipin Gunseibu, they are once again dragged back into Japan's sphere of control and brutalized under a military regime far more violent than the Second Republic.

Central Asia

• During the Oil Crisis, should the Turkmen and Uzbek Territories have their supply chains decimated under extensive Afghan and Japanese suppression, modern civilization in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan completely collapses, as every settlement is broken down and reverts back to a local tribal economy.

Northern & Western Europe

• A Colin Jordan-led Britain is the worst path that the collaborationist government can go down if the United Kingdom has accumulated at least 95% chaos, and his rule will see Britain shackled under the Reich forever, with his psychopathic rule being opposed by fascists.
• Meanwhile, William Joyce being put in power following Operation Sealion II if the Channel Crisis results in the United States withdrawing from Britain if Germany's readiness level is in the red and Britain is not is the worst outcome for HMMLR, as Britain falls under an oppressive Nazi government, once again subservient to the Reich.

Eastern Europe

• If Germany somehow is failing to retake an newly-independent Ukraine, then it will launch a nuke on Kyiv, much to the world's horror.

South America

• If Aguerrondo's coup fails, but Perón returns to Argentina and instigates the Platinean Blitz, Ribas will initiate the Death Squad coup, installing an Totalitarian regime worse than any other Military Junta in Uruguay.
  The Dream is dead, perhaps forever.
• Should Paraguay successfully invade Bolivia along with Santa Cruz and establish the Camba Nation, all authority in Bolivia will collapse, being one humiliation too many for the country to deal with.
• Should Martínez depose Guido and the Frente Nacional win the subsequent elections while under Vicente Solano Lima, this results in Lima being elected and Juan Domingo Perón being re-installed and returning Peronism to Argentina. Even if his regime falls, it's made clear that he prepared for such cases, ensuring that Peronism will live on in Argentina for a long time.

Russia

• Of all the possible warlords to unify Russia with, the development team considers Sergey Taboritsky the worst one by several lengths. Taboritsky is, put simply, an utter lunatic driven by a delusion that Alexei Romanov is still alive somewhere and will return to rule Russia when it is "purified". Under Taboritsky, dropping your tools at work becomes punishable by death, genocidal ethnic cleansing causes a whopping population growth penalty, chemical weapons are mandated to be used against the enemies of the state, and religious insanity, draconian political oppression, and slave-like working conditions are all enforced. Then Taboritsky dies suddenly of shock when he drops his delusions and realizes Alexei is dead and never coming back, and his entire Holy Russian Empire collapses into a state of utter anarchy and dysfunction that it is represented by the same state as what happens in the aftermath of thermonuclear warfare; it is stated by the developers that what Taboritsky did was so damaging in terms of casualties, widespread destruction, and ideological insanity that it forever destroyed any chance for Russia to be a unified nation ever again. The entire country effectively becomes a lawless, gigantic charnel house full of dead forests, ruined towns and cities, poisonous swampland, and roving bands of indoctrinated fanatics who have become utterly desensitized to endless killing (a la Heart of Darkness) with access to flamethrowers, state-of-the-art small arms, and grisly chemical weapons (there's one called "Taborite" which is noted to melt people's flesh into slurry on contact).
  "God save Russia, for nobody else can."
• If the Ultranationalist Black League of Omsk unifies Russia, it results in a downer ending for the entire world. Whereas the Holy Russian Empire and other bad Russian paths result in rampant internal oppression and few problems for the outside world, the Black League intends to train and prepare Russia for the Great Trial, a final genocidal clash with nuclear-equipped Nazi Germany while developing their own nuclear and chemical weapon arsenal, to utterly annihilate the very concept of Germany and avenge twenty years of brutal atrocities and humiliation against the Russian people. The showdown inevitably ends in a nuclear apocalypse that destroys human civilization. They are fully aware of what their vision entails, and indeed the Great Trial hinges on it, but consider the extinction of humanity a small price to pay as long as Germany is destroyed as a concept forever.
• Another terrifying outcome for Russia and the wider world results from the nation being reunified under the Aryan Brotherhood headed by the Ax-Crazy Zigfrid Schultz (Valery Yemelyanov). While the Aryan Brotherhood's Russkiy Reykh under Gutrum Vagner is bad enough in its mad "anti-nationalism" and violent rejection of the Russian land and culture it came from, Schultz renames himself Velimir, and imposes an even more batshit insane, neo-pagan and Slavo-Aryan-supremacist theocracy modelled on mythical Hyperborea as its High Priest. Velimir's Hyperborea can start Project SVETOVID to build a nuclear weapons program and invade the spheres of all three superpowers - Germany, to destroy "false Aryanism"; Japanese-dominated Asia, to subjugate the Asian "subhumans"; and the USA, to depose the "Jewish citadel" from the world, and also reclaim the "Aryan homeland" of Palestine. The regime is just as much a danger to the world as the Black League of Omsk, and the event declares that Velimir's deranged ramblings and vows to wage war on the world are "cause for significant alarm internationally".
• For a less horrifying yet also terrible fate, it's possible for Mikhail Oktan of Samara to unify Russia. Not only does he discards Samara's previous reasons to collaborate with Germany, but he also turns it into a massive neo-feudal kleptocracy, where the lower castes of society are constantly squeezed of their funds to benefit their local provincial rulers, who are all regularly waging conflict against one another.

Non-Canon/Former Failstates

These failstates were featured in either previous versions of the mod or part of non-canon content featured as Easter Eggs. Nonetheless, they will be featured here, with reasoning of removal if they were once part of the mod's content.

Großgermanisches Reich

• Befitting that of a deconstruction of various "world conquest" playthroughs, if Göring decides to instigate Fall Rockwell, Fall Schwarz or Fall Dämmerung, it would inevitably end in a nuclear exchange that destroys the entire world. Even if that wasn't the case, upon attempting to dethrone Schörner, another civil war erupts immediately, and even if he comes on top, it's clear that Germany's days as a world power is no more. (Removed due to contradicting his real-life personality)

Dai-Nippon Teikoku

• Should the Prime Minister fail to fully uncover the Dai Li conspiracy before the military's paranoia reaches 100%, this will result in both the IJA and the IJN declaring Gekokujō, resulting in a massive political crisis. If Nishi Takeichi was pardoned, Nobusuke Kishi would proceed with his coup and instigate Order 44, brutally purging the government and importing his Manchurian system to Japan and is a sign that something went horribly wrong. (Removed due to being a over-the-top portrayal of Kishi even by the mod's standards).
  The Devil of Showa rises from hell.

British Isles (Most were removed due to implementing The Fallen Lion submod)

• If the player drags out the English Civil War for too long and most of the collaborationist government's focus tree was completed, Arthur Kenneth Chesterton will take over Britain and install Fascism, effectively putting the entire country under the jackboot once more.
• If David Stirling takes over Britain, he will completely destroy democracy in the name of making England an superpower once more.
• The English Catastrophe would have been the result of HMMLR taking too much aid from Burgundy, triggering another civil war in England, between three (later four) different factions. (Removed due to major retcons in the lore)
• If Douglas Wimberley gets too paranoid and overthrows the Scottish government, he will transform Scotland into an anti-German military dictatorship, extinguishing the last light of true democracy in the British Isles.
• If Julian Cayo-Evans's Free Wales Army coups the Unionist government of Wales, he will install an anti-English dictatorship, with heavy social and legal discrimination against English people in Wales, and he will likely lead Wales into a hopeless war against England if/when it comes knocking to re-unify the United Kingdom.

Equestria At War April Fool's

• Failing to strike a balance during the Crisis of Harmony will produce the following results:
  • If the ponies gain too much influence, the party hardliners will demand that Buckharin recognize ponies as the only legitimate citizens of Russia. When Buckharin refuses, he's arrested and the radicals seize control over the country. Without any leader, the Presidium falls into paralysis, while the pony and human citizens isolate themselves from each other, ending the dream of a harmonic union.
  • If the humans gain too much influence, Alexander Men's message will gain traction and he leads a march into the Presidium to force Buckharin to resign. With him out of the way, Men and his radical human faction can begin banning the use of crystals and launching attacks against the pony population, creating a refugee crisis as more ponies flee from Russia.