Krasnacht: Twilight of the Gods is a Hearts of Iron IV Game Mod and a sequel to Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg set during the ensuing Cold War.
The year is 1950. It has been nearly 7 years since the end of the Second Weltkrieg, and the collapse of both the Reichspakt and the remnants of the Entente at the hands of the Third Internationale and the Russian State. The liberal capitalist world order had utterly disintegrated in the face of new ideological radicalism, with only a few small pockets of the old world left remaining.
In its place, three geopolitical blocs dominated the new world: the International Workers' Armed Forces (INFOR), the Japanese lead Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia and its client states in Africa and Latin America, a military alliance of Western European socialist republics created to facilitate the rise of socialism around the world, and the Saratov Pact (SARPAC), a sphere in Eastern Europe carved out by the Russian National Republic to defend Russia's interests and stem the growing tide of socialism. As dust settles over Europe, INFOR, the CPS, and SARPAC have turned their gaze to each other as threats to their ideological dominance over the world, leading to the start of a new kind of war, a Cold War.
The old world may lie shattered and broken, but three new ones yet struggle against each other to be born. Will the world rise up in Revolution, embrace the new rising sun of Tokyo, heed the call of National Republicanism, or stick steadfastly to the dreams of a past no longer present? Only time will tell what the day at the end of the Red Night will bring.
Compare another popular Cold-War sequel to Kaiserreich: Kalterkrieg: Shadow of the Weltkrieg, where the cold war is between the Reichspakt and the restored Entente.
This Game Mod provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Earl Browder, who in Kaiserreich is a Joseph Stalin Expy who goes From Nobody to Nightmare, is a far more reasonable potential leader of the Commonwealth of America, who simply suffers from Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! in regards to the decentralized syndicalist economy.
- The Alliance: INFOR are an alliance of socialist nations opposed to the far-right dictatorships in SARPAC propped up by Russia.
- Allohistorical Allusion:
- The Cold War, fought between the victors of the Second Weltkrieg, in general is a mirror of the OTL Cold War, only with the ideologies swapped. Instead of liberal democracies in the west and the Soviet Union with its allies in the east, the socialist governments are in the west and Russia and her allies are right-wing. The other big change is that Japan and its sphere of influence are their own, third side.
- East Germany is run by a far-right government who claim that Germany was "stabbed in the back" by Jews and homosexuals. Sound familiar?
- Alternate History: Beyond being an unofficial sequel to Kaiserreich where Germany won the first world war, Krasnacht is an alternate history to the OTL Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with the factions flipped and with a strong, independent third side in Japan.
- Atomic Hate: Interestingly, neither INFOR nor SARPAC are nuclear powers; nuclear development is still in its infancy for both superpowers.
- Balkanise Me: Just like in real life, after its defeat in the Second Weltkrieg, the German Empire was divided in two by their victorious allies, though West Germany is left-wing and East Germany is right-wing this time, in contrast to real life.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Elizabeth Flynn is the First Secretary of the Commonwealth of America, though she's set to retire at the beginning of the game.
- Chummy Commies: INFOR and its aligned nations are the bastion of socialism in the world and the main opponents of SARPAC on the global stage.
- Demoted to Extra: Played with in regards to syndicalism. It still exists but rather than being its own ideology, it has been split into various ideologies though libertarianism is the one closest to the main game's concept of syndicalism. Played straight with Totalism, which has completely vanished into irrelevance by 1950 (the game starting date).
- Japan Takes Over the World: Japan is one of the last liberal powers in the world, and those nations that aren't either socialist or reactionary prefer to align with it. As such, Tokyo is the new global center of finance and Japanese influence has been quickly growing throughout Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, particularly in the Entente remnants.
- Mêlée à Trois: Between the INFOR, Co-Prosperity Sphere, and SARPAC.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Technically this the role of Social Nationalists and National Republicans, however as they each represent socialism and far-right nationalism respectively, they only want the right sort of people in power.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Much like in the home game, the far-right Saratov Pact, led by Boris Savinkov's Russian National Republic, is the closest analogue to Nazi Germany in terms of political relevance, though its actual state ideology, National Republicanism, is quite different from OTL National Socialism (Savinkov himself is somewhere between Franco and Mussolini rather than Hitler).
- Portmanteau: "Krasnacht" is a combination of the Russian word "красный" ("red") and the German word "nacht" ("night").
- The Remnant: The remnants of the British, German, and Portuguese Empires in Westralia, New Zealand, and their Southern African colonies have banded together into a single, isolated faction, trying to hold on to what they have.
- Space Cold War: After the end of the Second Weltkrieg and the defeat of the old capitalist empires, the world entered a Cold War between two major power blocs: the socialist International Workers' Armed Forces and the far-right Saratov Pact.
