The New Order: The Second West Russian War is a content expansion submod for the Hearts of Iron IV Game Mod The New Order: Last Days of Europe. It adds mechanics and content for the Second West Russian War, the fourth and final conflict between a victorious German Reich and Russia, united once more under several possible factions.
Three decades after World War II began, Adolf Hitler's New Order is on its deathbed. The free people of Russia have united once again under the benevolent — or tyrannical — rule of the mightiest warlord. Soon, Europe will be once more be bathed in the blazing fires of a war — a war of which outcome is yours to decide. Put Germania to the torch and subdue the National Socialist Reich for good, or let hope be torn asunder as Russia is once again put down — Perhaps for good this time.
Originally released in 2020, The Second West Russian War is a full conversion and content expansion submod that has undergone multiple major updates, with several more currently undergoing development. The Dreams of Federation update was released in 2021, introducing new content for Vasily Shukshin's Russian Federation for the extent of the Second West Russian War and its aftermath. The Codetalker update released in December of 2022, containing a rework of Shukshin's content, numerous major gameplay systems, and skeleton content for the United States and Germany into the 1970s. The Global Conflicts update released in August of 2023, finishing loose ends on the development of Shukshin's story as well as introducing new Proxy Wars and other conflicts that will come about in the aftermath of the Second West Russian War. Upcoming content includes Second West Russian War content for Dmitry Yazov's Russian National Reclamation Government, Mikhail Tukhachevsky's Soviet Union, Nikolay Petlin's Russian National Republic, Pavel Batov's Russian People's Union and Mitchell Werbell's United States of Russia.
The New Order: The Second West Russian War can be downloaded here
. On the Hearts of Iron IV launcher, it must be enabled alongside the official The New Order: Last Days of Europe mod in order to function.
The New Order: The Second West Russian War contains examples of:
- All Elections Are Serious Business: Taken quite literally in the Russian Federation. Every election is a chance for the Megacorporations to advance their agendas. Almost every candidate is backed by one, or more, of the firms.
- All Germans Are Nazis: Considering the history of the past several decades between the German and Russian nations, many Russians and other peoples readily believe in this.
- America Takes Over the World:
- Any game where Germany loses the Second West Russian War in its totality, and Japan loses a majority, or all, of the proxy conflicts. While most Russian unifiers will not join the OFN, the reality of a highly impoverished, war torn country trying to build a sphere of influence in the face of America's economic and diplomatic strength highly favors Washington.
- The Russian Federation under Anatoly Koryagin's presidency can align to America and the OFN. At it's greatest extent, the OFN can contain all of North America, Brazil, Southern and Eastern Europe, all of the Middle East, Russia, and the Western portion of China.
- Balkanize Me: If Russia loses the Second West Russian War, Germany will retake the A-A line and the government will collapse. Forces loyal to other warlords will rise up, and the nation will be divided into its pre-1968 borders.
- Capitalism Is Bad: The biggest obstacle to the Russian Federation's efforts to democratize are a small group of Corporate executives who bribe, mudsling, and worse to keep their influence. Even after Shukshin's election, the megacorporations still own most of the Federation's economy, and their employees are treated like dirt.
- Civil War: Willy Brandt's assassination by Nazi remnants (which occurs if Bormann's Germany was totally defeated by Russia) will plunge Germany into a second civil war between the communists and socialists, Nazi loyalists, Freikorps militarists, democrats, and the Wehrmacht remnants. Poland will also collapse into its own civil war between the German-aligned Operationszone Warschau and the Polish Home Army.
- Chummy Commies: In many cases, Soviet soldiers and partisans will choose to work with the Russian unifier against Germany. This is not true for more nationalist and tyrannical unifying factions like the Aryan Brotherhood, Konstantin Rodzaevsky's Russian Fascist Party, or the All-Russian Black League.
- Corporate Conspiracy: Comes into play after President Shukshin's election.
- Corrupt Politician: The All-Russian Patriotic Party is nothing but a thinly-veiled appendage of the Megacorporations. The members know this, and don't care.
- The Coup: If a Gang of Four-influenced Reich wins the Second West Russian War, a discreet one is launched amidst the festivities, with Albert Speer forced to step down as Fuhrer and open up Germany's first proper elections since the Weimar Republic.
- Crapsack World: Downplayed. By the time the content of the submod begins, the German colonies in Africa have either collapsed or been replaced by American provisional governments, Japan's hold over China is moments away from breaking, and Russia is preparing to destroy Germany's empire. Played Straight if the Nazis win.
- Disappeared Dad: Bukharin to Bukharina. The former Soviet Premier abandoned his family in Moscow during the evacuation, albeit after Genrikh Yagoda promised to go back for them. In Shukshin’s path Bukharina can reunite with her estranged father.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Europe can't be freed unless the Russian unifiers march to war against the Nazis, beginning a conflict that will at minimum kill hundreds of thousands, and in the worst case scenario will destroy everything the player has fought for over fifteen years.
- The End of the World as We Know It: If you use nuclear warheads in the Second Russian War should you complete the Russian nuclear program, the Germans will retaliate and things will descend into utter hell.
- Heel–Face Turn: Alexander Pokryshkin rekindles his friendship with President Shukshin and eventually turns against the Megacorporations.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The generic 2WRW trees for the Russian unifers are split between Authoritarian, Communist, Democratic, and Fascist flavors. Problem is, the Communist tree is explicitly about Soviet unifers, causing a strange situation of the Russan Free Territory or Divine Mandate (explictely non-Leninist socialist unifers) talking about the Red Army in their tree. note Comrade Siberian Soviet/Alexander Men disagrees.
- La Résistance: The partisans in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Moskowien, who are still fighting after thirty years of German occupation.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: The logic behind many of the Russian warlord states, but particularly Stratocratic Communism. Grand Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky's interpretation is that, as the Party failed to safeguard the Russian Revolution, the Red Army is not only the best but the only right way to continue the struggle for socialism.
- Recursive Fanfiction: The Second West Russian War is an unofficial sub-Game Mod to a Hearts of Iron IV Game Mod, and the stories contained in it are thus completely non-canon to the timeline of The Last Days of Europe.
- Russian Guy Suffers Most: As with The Last Days of Europe, the 20th century has not been kind to the Russian people, or to the other peoples of Eastern Europe. After a cataclysmic Curb-Stomp Battle inflicted by Nazi Germany, the remaining parts of Russia not conquered by the Germans or Japanese immediately spirals into anarchy, as The Holocaust and Generalplan Ost brutally ground to dust any prospect of freedom in German Eastern Europe. The West Russian Revolutionary Front came the closest to actually defeating the Nazis, but internal political divisions led to a near collapse of the Front and allowing Germany's empire to survive another day. That being said, however, The Second West Russian War aims to give the myriad of potential reunifiers of Russia the opportunity to defy this trope to take on Germany once more, and if they should win, end Russia's endless suffering and ensure a better tomorrow for all of Eastern Europe.
- Shmuck Bait: If the Russians succeed in completing their nuclear program, they can have the option to deploy warheads against the Reich. Which goes about as well as you'd expect.
- To Win Without Fighting: It's possible for President Shukshin, and more than a few Russian unifiers, to not only reclaim chunks of Outer Manchuria from the Japanese through negotiations. But if lucky, this could also lead to the former Primorsky Krai, including Vladivostok, being ceded back without firing a single shot. That said, the region is placed under a provisional reconstruction authority to facilitate the resettlement of ethnic Russians prior to full integration.
- War Is Hell: In Shukshin's path, a Central Siberian widow learns her only son has been drafted into the All-Russian Army. Depending on which side wins the Second West Russian War, her son is either killed during the Battle for Moscow, or returns safely during the Russian Army's retreat with severe PTSD.
