The New Order Last Days Of Europe / Tropes A to D

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#-A

• The '60s: The game's start date is an alternate 1962 where the world is locked in a cold war between America, Germany and Japan. Soon, Germany collapses into civil war after the death of Adolf Hitler causes a Succession Crisis and depending on the route taken, things will change for better or for worse.
• The '70s: When the game's content runs out for most countries that have any.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • The setting of the mod, as with most Axis-victory fiction, takes a great number of liberties with regards to realism. The success of Operation Sea Lion and Nazi Germany getting nuclear weapons first are two such examples, given the logistical limitations of Germany during World War II. However, this can be handwaved as creating a good story. And in any case, reality hits hard going into the 1950s, with the Reich coming to a point of almost being a failed state.
  • The German Reichskommissariat borders in Eastern Europe bear little resemblance to any proposals in real-life. Out-of-universe, the developers didn't know about the post-war plans until after the borders were finalized and it would require too much work to scrap and rebuild everything from the ground-up. In-universe, the changed borders have been justified based on the Nazis changing their plans during the early 50's. The German lead developer admitted it is a lame excuse, but doesn't deem it suspension-breaking enough to harm the game experience.
• Adolf Hitlarious: While mostly portraying them is a very grim light, the mod does on occasion allow itself to mock the insanity of fascist ideologies to offer some comic relief. From the senile Hitler ranting about the players cheating in his nightgown and Himmler shooting Pohl for simply doing his job to Velimir's absolutely nonsensical historical and linguistic "theories", the absurdity of Nazism is often on full display, and made fun of.
• An Aesop: TNO is a game fundamentally about how wrong human society can go, and unlike the base game and mods, takes advantage of being narrative-driven to hold absolutely no punches in getting its needed messages across while denying the player mindless conquests that would undermine it:
  • Hate destroys. The victory of the Axis has enabled the idea that ideologies based on hatred can be successful, with this mentality even infecting those violently opposed to the Nazis, who have come to the conclusion that committing genocide is the only way to solve your problems. The game makes it clear these ideas are not sustainable and can only lead to suffering and collapse.
    • As per the lore of Omsk wishing to avenge the genocide of Russians with their own extermination campaigns against the Germans, the mod makes it clear that responding to oppression with oppression of your own solves nothing.
  • Attempting to appease fascists and other extremists will never work in the long run, as they will never be satisfied with anything other than fully achieving their goals. This is particularly seen in South Africa, where attempting to appease the pro-Nazi, pro-Apartheid hardliners will only make things worse when they try to seize power anyway, and all the government will have accomplished by trying to satisfy them is turning the otherwise-loyal ANC against them too.
  • Tyranny isn't always doomed to failure. Pragmatic totalitarianism, exemplified by leaders like Speer and Balbo, can perpetuate and legitimatize their repressive and supremacist ideologies into the long term, and even nakedly brutal leaders like the IJA in Guangdong or Rodzaevsky can murder their way into stability. It is wishful thinking to believe that totalitarianism and supremacism will always destroy itself.
  • Great sacrifices must be made and great risks must be taken to achieve the dream of liberty, as shown by the temptations of authoritarianism being constantly hang over the heads of Buryatia, Tomsk, and Komi.
  • As noted by Wargamer, TNO makes it clear that Stupid Jetpack Hitler will absolutely not happen in a nation where ideologies inherently based on pseudoscience prevail. The Axis and its focus on ideologically and racially driven crackpot theories, alongside its persecution of intellectuals for political reasons, actually will not be creating a technological powerhouse any time soon. TNO effectively destroys the idea of Repressive, but Efficient, considering the theme of advanced Fascist societies in Science Fiction can essentially be taken as an excuse for the ideologies and an abandonment of ethics in science, and the first thing that the player may notice about the Axis is how its nations are crumbling with all their projects falling on their face as their foundations are based on bunk.
  • Big-tent coalitions between the left and the right in non-extraordinary situations tend to be unstable. As demonstrated by the NPP, such pacts are prone to instability when the first disagreement rears its head, particularly with the Progressive Party and CPUSA's divergent views on race relations in contrast to the Nationalist Party and the American National Vanguard. While it is possible to compromise on key issues, this often involves watering down policies enough to appease the other side and turning a blind eye to their excesses rather than pushing as hard as you can on these issues, with RFK pushing as hard as possible on these issues leading very likely to assassination.
  • At the same time, democracy only works when its participants see those who disagree with them while still sharing their democratic values as "loyal opposition" to be worked with rather than enemies to be shunned at best and purged at worst. Every American president who embraces this logic can succeed or fail on their own merits; those who reject it are doomed to failure. The potential downfall of South African democracy and the Komi Republic begins each time with extremists participating in the democratic political order entirely to undermine and destroy it driving wedges between those acting in good faith. And the perpetual danger to Brazilian democracy is leaders deciding that their enemies are simply too dangerous to be allowed to participate in the democratic system, leading the country down the dark road to military coups and the disintegration of democratic government itself.
• After the End:
  • After the defeat of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Reichskommissariats in much of their former territory, the Soviet government dissolved and civilization broke down. Everything east of Reichskommissariat Moskowien has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland divided between warlords, scavengers, mercenaries and looters.
  • If nuclear war breaks out between nuclear-armed superpowers, the player is treated to some post-apocalyptic flavour events, detailing the reaction of individual characters or groups to the end of the world. The events received vary depending on where in the world the player is.
    • In the American Midwest, the people emerge from bunkers like the one under Cheyenne, Wyoming. From there they embark on a nomadic lifestyle, learning to roam the land and wrangle the free-roaming horses and buffalo. Eventually they come into conflict with other tribes, form tribal federations, and make their own claims over the lands of their ancestors.
    • New York City eventually becomes the seat of the Empire State, with the eponymous building (one of the last left standing in the city) as its throne.
    • A small army of German soldiers and their families find themselves lost and abandoned in central Africa. Under the leadership of one of the last living German generals, they spend nearly two generations fighting their way north through the dense jungles and hostile tribesman who by now view the remnant Nazis as demons. Eventually they find their way up the Nile, only to reach the salt basins of the Mediterranean, with no sight of their German promised land. The grandchild of the original general forges the now mighty band of warriors into a new Kingdom in North Africa, taking the name Desert Fox after the legendary God-King he had heard stories of. This new king's exploits become feared and legendary, and eventually the characters of the old Desert Fox and the new blend together in legend.
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • The tale of Huang Kecheng, who was a high-ranking Red China general in real life, but became a holdout of the Chinese Communist forces who refused to believe that Mao Zedong died in Chongqing and continued his partisan struggle against the Japanese for decades is an obvious allusion to Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who did not believe that Japan surrendered in 1945 and continued to hold out in the Philippines for 29 years.
  • In one possible post-nuclear war event, anthropologists consider the apocalypse, to them called the Post Antediluvian Collapse, as a mysterious, sudden collapse of human civilization, with many differing theories on why it happened, similar to the Bronze Age collapse. None of the locales and university terminologies however, make sense to a man from our time.
  • In the early 1970s, the "Oil Crisis" manifests as the result of several civil wars in the Middle East, the death of Italian oil giant ENI's leader Enrico Mattei, and the subsequent crash of ENI's stock prices. This leads to a major hike in oil prices, which in turn causes the superpowers to shift their geopolitical attention to the Middle East in order to re-stabilize their oil supplies, setting the stage for a new decade of conflicts in the 1970s. This alludes to the 1973 oil crisis in real life, though the severity of the crisis is much greater, causing political upheaval worldwide, and the spike in prices is simply due to everything going wrong rather than the deliberate actions of any OPEC-like price cartel.
  • While Ian Smith is assassinated early in-game, there are a number of references to Rhodesia when it comes to anything involving Africa. Whether it's the potential rise of the Italian-run Republic of Correntia, or how there are nods to Rhodesian War songs like "What a Time it Was" in the focus trees for South Africa ("Votes for all the Folks") and Iberia's handling of its portion of Algeria ("Talks about the Talks").
  • When the states of Russia participate in the 1968 Olympics under a single team, they do so under a "United Team" similar to what happened in the 1992 Olympics after the the breakup of the Soviet Union in our world.
  • In OTL, Novokuznetsk was renamed to "Stalinsk" after Joseph Stalin. Since Bukharin took over the Soviet Union in this timeline, the city was renamed to "Bukharinsk".
  • Britain and America conducted a joint invasion of Morocco, which developed into a new campaign in the Maghreb region in North Africa in 1944. This campaign parallels the IRL Operation Torch but here takes the name of Operation Market Garden, which in OTL was a separate campaign conducted in the Netherlands. The campaign proved to be a Hope Spot for the Allied forces as it offered the first glimpse of victory after years of successive defeat, but the forces used for the campaign left Britain itself vulnerable, which was exploited for a successful Operation Sea Lion in March 1945. Once Britain fell, the Allies would be subsequently pushed out of North Africa for the second time by the Italians and Germans, sealing the Allies' defeat.
• The Alliance:
  • The Organization of Free Nations is the reformed remnants of the old Allies of World War 2, initially formed by the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, and Iceland. The OFN is also supposed to be this timeline's version of NATO.
  • If the Levant peacefully decolonizes after the Jerusalem Conference, the newly independent nations will form the Levantine Union, a mutual alliance where its members can coordinate their foreign policy and build their economies together.
  • When Long Yun initiates his insurrection against the Sphere, he can gather allies from across East Asia who would also want to see the Japanese leave, forming the Third United Front.
  • There are three potential factions that can be created in West Africa.
    • The Pan-African Liberation Front is a faction led by Cameroon and forms in every scenario of the West African War. Banding pan-African countries across the continent, they strive for the independence and unity of all Africans, adopting an anti-imperialist stance against colonial powers, like Free France.
    • The West African Alliance is an anti-PALF front that is formed, if Cameroon didn't invade Yorubaland. United under the leadership of Wolofia, their members only work together out of necessity and combined defense against their mutual, pan-African enemies. Free France can potentially join them, if they didn't aggressively invade Mossiland.
    • The French Military Alliance is a defense pact that is created if they are rejected by the West African Alliance or Cameroon invades Yorubaland. It's largely made up of African nations who are in Free France's sphere of influence and oppose the PALF, but their long-term goal is to eventually reclaim the French mainland when the chance arises.
  • If Cameroon wins the West African War, Sierra Leone and Liberia will form the Mano River Pact out of fear that they will become the PALF's next targets, combining their resources and reaching out for OFN aid in preparation.
  • As the Ba'athists revolt against the Italian client states in the Middle East, they join forces in the United Arab States, which is committed to advancing the pan-Arab cause and fighting against foreign imperialism.
  • Communist Russian unifiers can form a Communist International, where they can rally nations of similar ideology to help each other, such as forming the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) to send economic aid.
• Alternate History: The general timeline is as follows:
  • The Point of Divergence involves the Russian Civil War lasting longer than OTL and Nikolay Bukharin becoming the leader of the Soviet Union in the 20s, which leads to a weak Soviet Union and an isolationist United States.
  • During WWII, without the Soviet Union and the United States, the Axis easily defeats the Allies in Europe. The Soviet Union completely collapses: Bukharin was ousted from power, a civil war erupted, and German terror bombing reduced its territory into a wasteland.
  • In the Pacific, Japan still attacks Pearl Harbor and brings an unprepared (though still powerful) USA into the war. As the USA plans for a counteroffensive in Australia, Germany develops the atomic bomb first (in some ways another Point of Divergence) and nukes Pearl Harbor in 1945, defeating the US. Without the rest of the Allies, Japan also defeats China and Southeast Asia. The Allies were completely defeated.
  • In the 50s, Germany suffers a massive economic crash. The Axis disbands, the remnants of the Soviets almost recapture Moscow in the West Russian War, and Himmler attempts a failed coup and is made leader of Burgundy. In the United States, new political parties coalesce under the National Progressive Pact, incentivizing the Democratic and Republican parties unite into the Republican-Democratic Coalition.
  • In the 60s, when the game starts, Richard Nixon is the current US president. America forms the OFN to counteract Japan and Germany. Japan's global ambitions grow, leading to them putting nukes in Hawaii and starting the Hawaii Missile Crisis (which is resolved at the start of 1962). Germany is increasingly unstable, with a young generation beginning to protest against the failures of Germany.
• Alternate-History Nazi Victory: The entire premise of the mod. Germany wins the Second World War, but has a hard time taking advantage of their victory and is heading straight into a three-way Cold War and a German Civil War.
• Alternate History Wank: Zigzagged. The mod creators acknowledge the many logistical implausibilities of an Axis victory, playing the trope straight as far as the war is concerned because it's about the only way to get a crushing Axis victory that would allow for the game's premise. However, as soon as the war ends, the timeline stops giving them breaks: the Nazis' corrupt and overextended system almost completely collapses and the rest of the Axis powers don't fare much better, preventing them from doing something completely ridiculous like conquering the entire world.
• America Takes Over the World: While it can't literally take over the entire world, the US has the easiest way to become the sole superpower in the world, since their system is not nearly as dysfunctional as those of the Nazis and Japanese.
• Anarchy Is Chaos:
  • After the Thermonuclear War superevent, you can watch the rapid deterioration of every state on the map into anarchic zones, until the whole map turns black.
  • Downplayed by Orenburg, where organisation can be maintained at the village or township level but they have a hard time communicating with each other and the central city.
  • Outright defied by the Siberian Black Army, who are practically Anarchy is Order: their communes are very well-organized, able to provide an excellent standard of living (for post-Soviet Russia anyway) and even build a first-rate military to contend with other powers. There is a nice event which shows a Wartime Wedding between two women from different anarchist communes that devolves into a punch-up between the two families, but it does not go all the way into a massacre even though everyone present is armed - because they know they are all allies in anarchism at the end of the day and need to present a unified front. Which said, their description notes with humorous defensiveness they are definitely still anarchy and not a universal democracy, even though they have things like a central legislative committee that votes on things!
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Most countries that are not aligned to Nazi Germany celebrate Hitler's death with glee, for instance in Brazil, most political factions put their differences aside to celebrate his passing, with the only person who's not happy about it is Passos.
• Apocalyptic Log: Fittingly, one post-apocalyptic event describes a Siberian hunter going about his daily routine. Being so remote, he does not even notice that the world has ended. The most he notices is that the clouds look a bit darker and that all the radio stations have gone silent...
• Artistic License – Politics: In the USA, after RFK and William Guy are assassinated, Strom Thurmond blackmails the speaker of the house into declining the presidency, leaving it to him. This chain of events assumes that Strom Thurmond is the pro tempore of the Senate. However, there are several problems with this:
  • First, to be pro tempore, you traditionally have to be the longest serving member of the majority party in the Senate. The above events occur even if the States' Rights is the minority party in the Senate or if Thurmond isn't even a senator should the R-Ds get his seat.
  • Second, Strom Thurmond isn't even the longest serving NPP senator, and so he almost certainly would not be Pro Tempore even if the NPP holds the Senate. ^note  The NPP senators at game start that served before Thurmond, assuming their Senate careers were the same as in OTL, are John Sparkman (1937), James Eastland (1943), Margaret Chase Smith (1949), and Henry M. Jackson (1953). Thurmond ascended to the Senate in 1954.
• Asshole Victim: If the Guangdong Riots get out of control and Komai is Chief Executive, he will be brutally killed by the Chinese rioters, a fate which he deserves considering he treats them more as cattle than people.
• Athens and Sparta: In Russia, there are Tomsk and Omsk. Tomsk is a beacon of democracy in Siberia, one of the last refuges of the Russian cultural and scientific tradition, ruled by a Wide-Eyed Idealist caste of intellectuals and artisans who prefer diplomacy to unify Russia (but won't back down if threatened by force) and seek to spread the fruits of the democratic enlightenment to every corner of Russia (fittingly enough, Tomsk was called "the Siberian Athens" in real life). Meanwhile, Omsk is a highly-militarized, barrack-type Citadel City that is fully committed to the forceful unification of Russia and the destruction of Germany and is led by highly cynical and Ultranationalist generals who believe that absolutely nothing short of the total obliteration of Germany is needed to ensure Russia's prosperity.

B

• Back from the Brink: Russia, ravaged by the Germans occupants and internal struggles for 20 years, can be reunited by one of their warlords through warfare and diplomacy and become a power in her own right once again.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The worst historical bad guys, in fact. And this is before the game even starts in earnest. Depending on how things go, you can create a timeline where Yockey wins the Presidency of the United States, Russia is reunified under an insane neopagan Evil Luddite, and Hans Hüttig manages to dominate sub-Saharan Africa and give the "Dark Continent" a new terrifying meaning .This mod is Hearts of Iron turned into a horror game and chillingly showcases how cruel and monstrous human beings can be to each other.
• Balkanize Me:
  • In the aftermath of the USSR's fall, the Russian SFSR (not including the parts annexed by Finland, Germany as part of RK Moskowien and Kaukasien, or Japan as part of Manchuria) was divided into four successors: the West Russian Revolutionary Front in European Russia, the West Siberian People's Republic in Western Siberia, the Central Siberian Republic in Central Siberia, and the rump USSR in the Far East. These states later succumbed to infighting and conflicts (including the West Russian War and the Siberian War), and by 1962, Russia is divided into around 40 warlord states. Although most of the time this is a temporary state of affairs until one of these warlords can reunify Russia, it is possible for Russia to be divided for good if all four regional de-unifiers emerge victorious (resulting in the division of each region into new warlord states with no ability to expand):
    • In West Russia, if Finland and Onega defeat the region's unifier in their war to reclaim Eastern Karelia, then Onega will take over the northern half of West Russia and divide the southern half into 8 friendly client states. If they get invaded by the West Siberian unifier and manages to defeat them too, they will also shatter Western Siberia while taking over Vorkuta; this time however the resultant states are missing many content and only have generic leaders and names.
    • In Western Siberia, if Zlatoust defeats all three unifiers in defensive wars, then they will annex some Ural territories and release four puppet states covering the rest of Western Siberia; while if Omsk unifies the region but fails to deal with Pavel Batov's insurgency, it will lose control over all territories outside Omsk itself and Vorkuta to three other warlords.
    • In Central Siberia, the Siberian Workers' Federation rises up if Central Siberia is not unified by the Siberian Black Army. If their revolution succeeds, parts of the SWF will break into three more socialist countries.
    • On top of that, if the Siberian Black Army does reunify but leans too heavily on Stepanov's influence, it will collapse into even more fragmentary warlords and statelets that the new Black Army Junta then has to reconquer, seriously hamstringing their reunification efforts.
    • In the Far East, the Father's Divine Mandate of Siberia, after initially unifying the region, can collapse into four independent countries if Pavel Sudoplatov launches a failed coup that accidentally kills the Father.
  • Iberia's breakup is so extreme that it makes the real-life Yugoslav Wars look simple in comparison. The new independent territories that can break away from Iberia includes Spain, Portugal, Basque, Catalonia, Asturias, Galicia, and even Andalusia. The North African territories of Iberia also breaks away into Morocco and Rif Republic, who are also at war with each other (while Trarza invades to liberate Mauritania). Even the Gibraltar Dam declares independence as a Protectorate under an Admiral. In a worst case scenario, the civil wars that break out alongside the balkanization can fight themselves into a stalemate, leaving behind even more states on the map.
  • The Republic of China de jure governs all Chinese territory excluding the Japanese-controlled Manchuria and Guangdong. In practice, the ROC only governs the Eastern parts of China; the rest of China is divided between lots of warlord states and Japanese-occupied areas that are de facto independent.
  • The total collapse of Fascist colonial governments will often result in large amounts of new nations being spewed out of their remnants, with the African colonies being the most notable ones, such as Italian East Africa or Hans Hüttig's empire.
• Being Good Sucks: Doing the right thing is hard to do in this game. This is represented by the "good paths" for certain factions either being subjected to an Early Game Hell (such as Sablin's revolution against Yagoda), or having to constantly juggle reform proposals with concessions to other political parties (such as the Gang of Four's attempts to reform Germany getting them targeted by Albert Speer, who attempts to purge them after considering their reforms antithetical to National Socialism, and either succeeds in the Reformed National Socialist path or fails in the Paternalist path, or RFK trying to pass the Civil Rights Act and Universal Healthcare in the United States and running a high risk of being assassinated if he doesn't attempt to pass his laws through moderate tactics, which would result in Strom Thurmond undoing whatever reforms RFK had passed while accelerating racial tensions in the United States), but rewarding success despite these odds with the closest things the game has to a Golden Ending (such as Sablin establishing a democratic socialist USSR, the Gang of Four ensuring Germany's eventual transformation into a democracy after reducing Speer to a powerless pen-pusher, ensuring the legacy of Nazism will die with him, and RFK managing to honor JFK's legacy by passing Civil Rights while avoiding the Kennedy Curse himself).
  • The very premise of the mod centers around this. Unlike OTL, Stalin's attempts to suppress Lenin's Testament - which critiqued many factionalistic leaders in the Communist Party but contained ire for Stalin in particular - failed and Lenin's wishes for him to be kept out of power were kept, leading to Nikolai Bukharin being made his successor upon his death. While still authoritarian and repressive, TNOTL Bukharin proved to be far less of a dictator than Stalin in our universe, and relinquished state control of the lower levels of the economy to less chaotically bring about the requisite conditions for socialism, in accordance with Lenin's New Economic Plan. Ultimately, however, the conduct of the NEP led to the USSR being badly unprepared for World War II, leading to victory for the Axis thanks to Germany experiencing less difficulty during the invasion of Russia and the collapse of the Russian nation.
• Big Bad: The Führer of Nazi Germany, whoever that is at any given moment - this is an Alternate-History Nazi Victory, they did turn the world into the Crapsack World that it is. When the game starts the Führer is Adolf Hitler himself, but he dies in a Plot-Triggering Death, leaving it up for the AI (or player should you play as Germany) to pick his successor. Potential heirs include the militarist Hermann Göring, the reformist Albert Speer, the conservative Martin Bormann, and the secretive Reinhard Heydrich.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lysenko's Magnitogorsk and Dirlewanger's Brigade, in cases where they make an alliance, become an existential threat for all other factions in the Southern Urals.
• Big Good: Whoever the U.S. President is, as leader of the OFN... for a given definition of "good" (see Black-and-Grey Morality below). The president may loose this status should Francis Yockey or Phyllis Schlafly get elected.
• Bile Fascination: In-Universe, an alternate history book called the The Greatest Story Never Told◊ was published by an pseudonymous Neo-Cofederate about a history where George Lincoln Rockwell was never assassinated. The book is basically inane rambling that espouses insane ideas, like the idea that the Nazis are actually controlled by the Jews, and ends up selling just because people want to find out if the book is really that bad.
• Bilingual Bonus: Three Russian unifiers use the song March of the Siberian Riflemen in the Superevent where they reunify Russia, but each of the three uses different sections of the song and have different lyrics that reflect different meanings:
  • Magadan under Matkovsky:
  No tiredness nor fear,
  They fight for night and day,
  Only the grey papakha
  Fell on one side.
  Only the grey papakha
  Fell on one side.
  • Magadan under Petlin:
  Freedom of Rus is bound to rise
  Blazed by our faith
  And this song will hear
  Walls of ancient Kremlin.
  And this song will hear
  Walls of ancient Kremlin.
  • Chita under Mikhail II:
  Just remember, Siberia, in the dark times
  As an ode to old glory
  The honor of gorgeous folk
  Your sons will defend.
  The honor of gorgeous folk
  Your sons will defend.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Weirdly, the post-apocalypse events turn the Non-Standard Game Over into one, as humanity survives and rebuilds to a spacefaring civilization that has no idea the Nazis ever existed or destroyed the old world.
  • If Himmler carries out his final solution, the ones that come out of it are tolerant to everyone, as they believe that since all of the inferiors were purged by the nukes, all of the survivors are aryans, and thus, equals.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Many conflicts in the setting stand out as such, including:
  • The United States of America does various morally questionable things at best and outright villainous things in their own light at worst during the Cold War-in addition to having supplanted the Icelandic government and replaced it with an oppressive puppet military dictatorship out of fear of them possibly being drawn to the Reich's influence, they have been stated to simply not care about African democracy or the well-being of the native Africans if the OFN liberates them from the Nazi Reichskommissariats, as they attack Angola if it is released, and in the wake of a total OFN victory in South Africa, establish puppet dictatorships that are only concerned about extracting wealth from the land at the Africans' expense rather than worrying about pesky things like "democracy" and "human rights". They are heavily condescending to the liberated Africans at best, and outright hostile and openly racist against them at worst if the Africans don't simply bow down to America's imperialism, all of which easily turns Africa into just as much of a mess as it was prior to their arrival. The developers have stated that the United States could've easily been the Big Bads if it weren't for the fact that they're going up against literal Nazis, brutal Japanese imperialists, and a madman who wants to nuke the world.
    • The Cold War with Germany and Japan can become outright Evil Versus Evil if Wallace or Yockey takes over the presidency. Alternatively America can become a A Lighter Shade of Grey if they push for a negotiated ceasefire rather than enforce neocolonialism (even through they will still overrun Angola if Schenck's plans succeed) in the South African War, and elect either the C-NPP or a far-reaching Lyndon Johnson presidency to enact Civil Rights for all and a social democratic economic system, with the LBJ presidency being followed up by a Harrington presidency reducing poverty in America.
  • The conflict between Amur and Magadan. On one hand you have a extremely repressive Russian Warlord state run by Russian Nazis that's willing to work with Imperial Japan and even the Reich itself to reunify Russia. On the other hand you have a Fascist state willing to work with the OFN.....that's also extremely repressive.
  • The German Civil War, which crosses over into outright Evil Versus Evil since all of the factions are Nazis. On one hand you have Speer, who leads the reformers and is somewhat remorseful for his role in the slave system but is still willing to deny his culpability in some of Nazism's worse crimes and is not willing to go as far as possible with the reforms. His opponents are various Nazis far more willing to reinforce a horrific system. It ultimately turns out that Speer is just as bad; the real Grey here is the Gang of Four, who end up betraying him and effectively silently corrupting the government from within through underhanded means to create a true democracy, which in the Paternalist path ultimately works.
• Book Burning: One post-apocalyptic event titled "The Cursed Book"◊ has scribes tasked with recording pre-apocalypse knowledge obtain a "Book of Danger, one tied to the great horror of the Fire itself," filled with "magicks and demonic utterances". The scribes proceed to burn it in a pyre in their hamlet's ceremonial public square reserved for executing murderers. As the book is incinerated in the event's final line, it is revealed that it is none other than Mein Kampf.
  "Ancient evil must be handled with extreme prejudice."
• Book Ends: One of the first events of the game involves the Nazis successfully landing on the moon. In the post-nuclear war ending, more men are able to land on the moon many years after civilization recovers. The astronauts on the moon find a bleached white flag, likely the Nazi one, and take it down. Their lack of knowledge of what the former flag means symbolizes humanity finally overcoming the horrors of the Nazi victory, and the cruel world it created.
• But What About the Astronauts?: One of post-apocalyptic events talks about astronauts who slowly watched the nuclear destruction from their spacecraft. As they see the first signs of restored civilization, they die with sad smiles on their faces, destined to float in their tomb forever.

C

• Central Theme: Hatred leads to destruction, but love and compassion lead to strength and renewal. This is especially apparent after the post-apocalypse when nearly all of the events are about humanity rebuilding and overcoming hatred, with everyone looking out for one another and completely shedding any hatred or racist views.
• Child Soldiers: Speer doesn't shy from assembling children for his army during the Civil War.
• Civil War: An absolutely astounding number of countries can collapse into big multi-sided civil wars:
  • The German Civil War is guaranteed to break out between Speer, Bormann, Göring, and Heydrich upon Hitler's death.
  • Reichskommissariat Ostland is united almost entirely by the existence of Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse. When he dies as the German Civil War breaks out, his ambitious underlings seize power, causing a 6-way Ostland Civil War to break out. The war is fought between Stahlecker's government forces, Kovner's United Partisan Organization, Vituska's Central European Council (the UPO and the CEC are initially not at war, though their relations can easily break down due to Kovner and Vituska), Drechsler's Generalbezirk Lettland, Meyer-Landrut's Vereinigte Ostlandliga (United Ostland League), and Jeckeln's SS-Oberabschnitt Ostland. Depending on the circumstances, this 6-way civil war can then escalate up to a 12-way civil war.
  • The South African War inevitably breaks out between the central government, Nazi-backed Boer rebels, and, depending on circumstances, the African National Congress. The Civil War quickly becomes a proxy war between the Afrika-Schild and the OFN.
  • If the Afrika-Schild totally wins the South African War, Hans Huettig of Ostafrika will try to take over the entire continent and form the Grossafrikaner Reichstaat. However, when he tries to annex the Afrikaner Volkstaat, General Magnus Malan launches a coup against the weak Boer government and declares that they are no longer working with Germans, and the situation soon unravels into a Second South African Civil War.
  • The Iberian Wars is a comination of a series of separatist wars and two civil wars. The Iberian Union first collapses into Spain, Portugal, Basque, Catalonia, and Galicia, and then, the Government of National Salvation revolts in Portugal, while Republicans and Falanigists rise up in Spain. If the war drags on, and the War Exhaustion for several of the factions rise really high, then additional factions will spawn; these new factions include Portuguese Democrats and Socialists, the Fundamentalist National Redemption Front, and even Catalonia can even collapse into a civil war with Socialists (several factions also get couped by radicals should they drag on for too long). Depending on who the faction is, their final objective in the Iberian Wars may be to take over their own ethnic territories, take over Spain or Portugal, or take over the entire Iberian peninsula.
  • During the Iberian Wars, Iberian North Africa also collapses into its own separate sub-civil war between the Kingdom of Morocco, Rif Republic, and Trarza (Mauritania).
  • Egypt can collapse into its own multi-sided civil war, with Nasser's revolutionaries and Qutb's Islamists duking it out with the government. Egyptian Sudan collapses into a three-sided civil war between Sudanese Nasserists, Sudanese democrats, and the Sudan Defense Force, while Egyptian Southern Sudan collapses into a two-sided civil war between Anyanya and Azania Liberation Front.
  • French Madagascar will collapse in 1963 into a civil war between the remnants of the colony (now entirely controlled by the German garrison) and native rebels.
  • Free Britain, the resistance in the UK, starts a British Civil War against the collaborationist regime.
  • Mongolia is in a civil war between the Mongolian People's Front and Mengjiang at start.
  • Pan-Arab revolutionaries in Northern Yemen can revolt against King Muhammad Al-Badr.
  • Oman can fall into a two or three sided civil war between the Sultanate and revolutionaries in Dhofar, and sometimes the Imamate too.
  • Indonesia will inevitably fall to a civil war between Sukarno's government forces and Hatta's alliance of democrats, communists, Islamists, and disgruntled generals.
  • Serbia will have a civil war between the German garrison and the Yugoslav partisans in Serbia.
  • Iraq, after the assassination of its president Qasim, will collapse into a civil war between an Italian emergency government in Baghdad, Iraqi Republicans, moderate Islamists, Ba'athists, and Kurdistan.
  • In the late 60s/early 70s, Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi will be assassinated, and a coalition of Iranian revolutionaries rise up in Iran, only for the alliance to then quickly collapse, causing a multi-sided Iranian Civil War.
  • In Italian East Africa, the colony will collapse into multi-sided civil wars/anti-colonial rebellions after a certain point in time.
• Cliffhanger: As the initial verison of the New Order was released with the first ten years playable out of planned twenty, it features events that set the ground for the next decade and give a look at changes ahead.
  • Germany:
    • For Paternalistic Speer, the Gang of Four takes the reins of power in the Reich, debilitating the NSDAP and reducing Speer to a little more than a puppet, implying that he won't last long in this world. For the first time in history, it appears that democracy can truly flourish in Germany and Nazism can be outlived by the reforms, but the struggle has not yet ended.
    The NSDAP has been given a mortal blow and Speer himself, bitter and increasingly more withdrawn at his loss of influence, is not long for the world. The Gang of Four emerged victorious from the battle with their Führer. Whatever the future may grant, it will be a struggle - but should the right people prevail, it will be one of hope.
    • For Reformed National Socialist Speer, Speer overcomes the influence of the Gang of Four and now reigns unfettered in his new Reich, implenting his own vision of National Socialism, purged of its undermining flaws.
    It seems that some things never die, as the NSDAP under Speer was shaken but appears to be on the path to recovery. The Gang of Four, however, is being put under the heel by the Führer. Whatever the future may grant, it will be a struggle - but should the right people prevail, it will be one of National Socialism.
    • For Bormann, his seemingly unchallenged dominance over Europe is shaken when the RAF emerge from the shadows and begun conducting terrorist attacks, while student protests increase in frequency. Meanwhile, Bormann himself is diagnosed with cancer and estimated to only have two years left, making this chaotic period of "Herbst" an uncertain time for Germany's future, especially with the looming Russian threat in the east.
  • In the United States, it is the the 1972 Presidential election and the Presidential inaguration, indicating the change of policy for America in the growingly turbulent and chaotic world. Moreso if it is Gus Hall or Francis Parker Yockey who are elected, signaling that Nothing Is the Same Anymore for the strongest democracy in the world.
  • For Russia, it is the total reunification of the non-occupied Russian territories under a single warlord and preparation for the final conflict with Germany.
  • For the democratic Italy, it is the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by an unknown force, coming as the culmination of political violence has that has been growing since the Piazza Fontana bombing.
  • For China, it is the Conference with several leading administrators to decide on domestic policy, military policy, and the creation of a new United Front to oppose Japan.
• Commie Nazis:
  • The American Nationalist Progressive Pact. Though it started as a pact of former New Dealers and Dixiecrats, it was quickly infiltrated by Fascists ("Yockeys") and radical Socialists and now has a loud minority of both a far-left wing espousing Communist ideals and a far-right wing espousing Fascist ideals. The latter group is being directly funded by the Reich, and seeks to take revenge on the Japanese for their defeat in World War II through an alliance with Germany. Depending on player or AI actions either the Communist Party of USA or the American National Vanguard of the NPP may end up in power and impose Marxist or Fascist ideals upon the American populace.
  • The Ordosocialist Movement of Komi, led by Ivan Serov, blends Marxism-Leninism, radical Russian nationalism, and a degree of nationalist corporatism. Serov maintains some Marxist-Leninist goals and policies, but also suppresses the rights of minorities (and outright persecuting some of them), and depending on choices in the focus tree, can institute a borderline class collaborationist fascist-styled corporatist rule.
• Cool Shades: A large number of characters wear shades in their portraits.
• The Coup: Brazil can suffer from several types of coups, be they military coups, Lacerda's imperial presidency and Goulart's countercoup.
• Crapsack World: As a result of total Axis victory, fascist governments are commonplace in TNO, with brutal and oppressive leaders becoming the new norm across the world. Internal political tensions are higher than ever, with multiple countries across the globe on the verge of civil wars and conflicts with each other. With a three-way Cold War occurring between three nuclear-equipped superpowers, the threat of a nuclear holocaust looms over the horizon. In this world, some of the more notable crapsack places include:
  • The former Soviet Union has become a massive bandit country, with numerous insane tyrants, bandits, mad scientists, or just regional warlords all clawing at each other's throats. The civilians meanwhile are stuck between the bloody wars waged by the mad warlords, the rampant deaths caused by starvation and disease, and the endless and indiscriminate Luftwaffe terror bombing campaign, which involves civilian structures being used for target practice.
  • Reichskommissariat Kaukasia is an oppressive state under the leadership of Nazi Reichskommissar Josias, and his unrestricted industrial development has absolutely decimated the environment, causing endless smog that makes life unbearable.
  • Ordensstaat Burgund (Burgundy) is a country so oppressive that even the Reich finds them insane. Burgundy is under the total control of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who has come to believe that the German Reich grew too complacent and decadent, and created his own purist version of National Socialism built on the extremely brutal Sparta, which he calls the Burgundian System. Germany gave Himmler Burgundy after his attempted coup against the Führer failed, giving him a state to implement his brand of insanity. Burgundy is a Nineteen Eighty-Four-style dystopia where the SS maintains a tight grip on the lifestyle of every citizen through mass surveillance and extreme punishment, the Spartanist lifestyle enforces total militarization and prohibits all leisures as degenerate excess, and the Nazi tenets of racism and slavery are taken to even greater extremes. Worse, the Burgundian System has spread across the SS, and some of their officers can take control of countries (like the aforementioned Josias), meaning that a significant portion of Europe may come under the Burgundian System depending on who takes power.
  • A large section of Africa is under a Nazi-instigated decades-long aerial bombing campaign (like in the Soviet Union) to extinguish the remnants of Free France.
  • Much of Central Africa is ruled by three colonialist German Reichskommissariats, who exploit the locals as slave labor and profit off of their suffering. Hans Hüttig's Ostafrika is the most brutal of the three RKs, and runs his RK like a massive concentration camp - he actually has the National Idea "Just Another Camp." In the long run, he might take over all of the RKs in Africa and head straight down the path of Burgundian Spartanism.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: During the German Civil War, Burgundy's invasion of the French State counts as this. France's military is forced to be nothing more than a small and disorganized militia thanks to German treaty stipulations, they have no real air force or navy, oversights in their treaties with Germany mean they are not even able to militarize their border with Burgundy, their capital is on said border, the government is widely disliked and incompetent and has no means to manage such a crisis, the French resistance still fights to disable what little military forces the nation can maintain, the economy is dead in the water, and if that wasn't enough, Brittany invades as well. This doesn't even consider the fact that Burgundy starts the game with the 4th strongest military in the world, nearly on par with Germany, gets a healthy amount of modifiers during the war, and has a couple of nuclear weapons on top of that. To make it even worse, the mod isn't set up to handle France managing to hold off Burgundy, so if/when a player manages to pull it off it breaks things in the mod.

D

• Darker and Edgier: It goes without saying that due to this being set in an Axis victory scenario, the game is darker than the main game and other popular mods such as Kaiserreich and Fuhrerreich. Since it's also centered around a Cold War, the hope of conventional warfare ending the Fascist great powers is next to zero, since nukes will be involved. Also quite literally too since the game uses darker colors and filters for its map compared to the other mods and base game.
• Dark Horse Victory: Out of all candidates for Hitler's successor, few people expect that Heydrich, widely hated and feared for being exceptionally brutal even by Nazi standards and believed to be Himmler's puppet, can actually win Hitler's favor. If he does, hardly anyone outside of the SS will support the Führer's will and even the Reichstag confirms Hitler's decision by a margin of a few votes, instead of the unconditional support which other candidates receive.
• Deadpan Snarker: The leader description of Hans Frank is very snarky in regards to the Governor-General.
  ''Hans Frank has no found solution to this, instead ruling from Krakow with methods described as 'borne with panic' and 'showing utter incompetence'. Thankfully, Hans at least has the power to shoot those who say it in public, truly the sign of political brilliance".
• Deconstruction: According to a Reddit post by the lead developer, The New Order deliberately tries to subvert the common gameplay elements of Hearts of Iron and tries to depict the consequences of the endless militaristic ventures in normal Hearts of Iron gameplay. Mindless military conquest (or "map painting") naturally leads to extremely oppressive and dysfunctional societies, the threat of nuclear war means that attempting to conquer the world can be a global death sentence, and conquest as a whole is a precedent to extreme bloodshed and brutality.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you use the focus autocomplete command to finish any focus of the initial German focus tree beyond the first (which is usually impossible as an attempt on Hitler's life changes the focus tree before any other focuses can be completed), the game acknowledges you've done so with a joke event◊.
  • Russian states that cannot unify Russia are completely outmatched by the unifiers, and, if they go to war with them, usually quickly lose. Nonetheless, if the non-unifiers of Onega and Zlatoust manage to conquer their regions, a unique situation happens; the regions "unified" by the non-unifiers are split up back into several states, including a stronger version of the non-unifier. They don't do anything until a unifier of a different region comes knocking.
• The Dictatorship: Most members of the Einheitspakt adhere to National Socialism or another form of Fascism, automatically qualifying as a totalitarian dictatorship. But Ordenstaat Burgundy takes the cake as it is an isolated, closed state run by the SS that practices an extreme form of Nazism known as the Burgundian System, which emphasizes outright cruelty to make the German people "stronger", ethnic cleansing of non-Aryan groups and outright subjugation, especially if Himmler's plans for nuclear war go through.
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • Captain America was largely forgotten after the US suffered a humiliating defeat in World War II, but Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revive the First Avenger in the 60s for the young American generation, featuring him in stories that involve enemies of America as the main villains, like the Nazis and Japan. However, some parts of the NPP criticize Captain America comics for having racist caricatures of the Japanese.
  • Astro Boy still gets released both in anime and manga format, with the main focus being on Astro Boy protecting the Japanese overseas territories from foreign invaders.
  • Similarly, Mobile Suit Gundam still exists, but is named Space Defender Zaku and is focused on the Principality of Zeon's fight against the corrupt democratic Earth Federation. The show is so successful, it spawns a series of plastic models known as Zakpla, similar to how Gundam led to Gunpla IOTL.
  • The Beach Boys exist in America, but after Charles Manson kills Brian and Dennis Wilson, Mike Love breaks up the band.
• Disaster Democracy: In spite of societal collapse and anarchy following the defeat in WWII, several states emerged as democracies in the ruins of the Soviet Union and can maintain their ideals in the face of challenges, sometimes even going on to unite all of Russia.
  • Tomsk is one of the largest states in the region and starts as a Social Conservative democratic state led by Boris Pasternak.
  • The Komi Republic managed to establish a representative democracy under former Soviet bureaucrat Nikolai Voznesensky, but it stands on a very fragile foundation, as the numerous enemies of the democracy are more than willing to use the democratic institutions of the republic. Should the democracy falter, the power vacuum in Komi will be left to be filled by extremists of every shade.
• Distant Finale: So a nuclear war broke out despite (or perhaps because of?) your actions and the world was destroyed, was it? Try waiting around for a couple of minutes to find out what happened to mankind After the End.
• Doorstopper: TNO is easily the largest HOI4 mod ever created in terms of sheer volume of text. Single Russian warlord states often have more localization than superpowers from the base game.
• Double-Blind What-If: A number of authors write alternate history novels that imagine different timelines caused by a single historical event changing. Public reception to them varies, depending on the work.
  • At some point, Kaganovich commissions a book which describes an alternate history in which Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union instead of Bukharin. The book follows almost exactly the same direction as real life (The Soviet Union wins against Germany, forms the "Budapest Pact" against the alliance of Western powers called "North Atlantic Treaty Coalition", the British Empire decolonizes, the Soviet Union itself lasts until the 80s when Stalinist orthodoxy loses against the free market, and post-communist Russia invades Ukraine decades later). The novel is universally panned outside of Kaganovich's Russia, with critics considering its events utterly implausible.
  • George Orwell (living in exile in Canada) wrote a series of Alternate History novels titled Legacy of the Weltkrieg, based on Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg and with its latest volume, The Red Twilight, set in the Sixties. It's premises centers around a Central Powers victory in World War 1, resulting in the British Empire and France undergoing a socialist revolution, while Russia turns into a fascist dictatorship by Boris Savinkov. Together, they invade and defeat the German Empire and the Entente remnants before their alliance inevitably falls apart and creates a Crapsack World more akin to TNO. The syndicalist Commune of Franco and Mosleyite Union of Britain turn on each other and engage in an apocalyptic nuclear war, while Russia and Japan engage in a similarly destructive conflict. By 1962, most of the world is devastated by nuclear fallout and the four sides are in a tense armistice that could end civilization through a second nuclear war. By the end of "The Red Twilight", the American Commonwealth falls into a Third American Civil War from a white supremacist revolt in the South. Upon release, the novel is beloved by most for its complex parallels to TNOTL conflicts, though some deride it as implausible, something that Orwell responds by claiming that their own universe is no less strange than his story.
  • Another such story is "Heirs of Babylon" by Cornish author Antony Beevor. Here, the divergence is Hitler being killed in 1935, which eventually leads to a three-sided Cold War between the Imperial Dominion of Britannia (which claims the thrones of France and Germany), the United American Federation (which controls all of the Americas) and the Pan-Eurasian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The actual plot follows a James Bond-esque character who seeks his missing wife in Red Europe, leading him to Gibraltar in the middle of a political crisis between Britannians and Soviets (who apparently control Spain). Much like other similar stories, the answer is "What a childish fantasy."
  • An unknown author by the pen name "Bodean Clefton Dixie" writes "The Greatest Story Never Told", which imagines if George Lincoln Rockwell was never assassinated. The novel has open far-right sympathies, imagining Rockwell as a hero and blaming his death on Jews. It also espouses blatantly anti-Semitic and ridiculous conspiracy theories, like how Nazi Germany is controlled by a Judeo-Bolshevik cabal. The only reason the book finds any kind of success is people wanting to find out how bonkers it is in an in-universe case of Bile Fascination.
  • A version of The Man in the High Castle exists in this timeline as "The Man in the Iron Fortress", also written by Phillip K. Dick.
    • As can be imagined, the novel in question centers around an Allied victory in World War II that leaves communism as the dominant political ideology. It starts when American socialist Eugene Debs remains with the Democrats. As a result, he becomes elected President and supports the Soviet Union and May Fourth movement in China, until he dies and passes the reins to Robert La Follette, who pursues an isolationist foreign policy. Meanwhile, Felix Dzerzhinsky takes over the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong unifies China in time to repel the Japanese invasion. After the two communist countries join forces to crush the Nazis and the other countries they invaded, they then launch a surprise 1947 invasion of America, dividing the country north-south. Despite receiving some criticism of its unrealistic premise, like the Soviet Union draining the Baltic Sea for farmland, the novel becomes a bestseller and gets nominated for a Hugo reward.
    • "The Man in the Iron Fortress" delves into a Third-Blind What-If called "The Beast Among the Reeds", which centers around the downfall of both Nazism and communism when Dzerzhinsky is succeeded by the even more cruel Lavrentiy Beria, leading to a decay of Sino-Soviet relations and putting the world in danger of nuclear war. According to the news event, this novel is central to the plot "The Man in the Iron Fortress".
  • Hunter S. Thompson throws his own hat into the ring with "Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles," a satire on both alternate history works and 1970's American culture, as well as a stand-in for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The novel features multiple divergence points that ultimately change the fate of the world, usually detailing absurd premises, like a Unit 731 doctor trying to create a hallucinogenic drug and incidentally creating an army of ghouls who attack Tokyo. Together, these insane chronicles create an alternate Los Angeles that is serves as a blatant allegory for American society, such as a street gang based on the Yockeys attacking a demonstration of "old yuppie bigots" (Nixon supporters). To the public, the novel is an in-universe Broken Base, as some enjoy it as a breath of fresh air in the alt-history novel market and other have a more tepid reaction to its odd premise.
  • The novel "Another Plant's Hell", written by Aldous Huxley, is set in a timeline where Adolf Hitler died in his attempted 1923 putsch, contributing to the NSDAP's downfall, and rise of Alfred Hugenberg and the monarchist DNVP. This results in the creation of a German military junta named the Deutsche Ordensstaat, backed by the Kaiser and led by a triumvirate of Hugenberg, Erwin Rommel, and Erich Ludendorff. Simultaneously, Joseph Stalin deposes Nikolai Bukharin as leader of the Soviet Union, creating a nightmarishly totalitarian dictatorship in its place. Eventually, the Second World War takes place, with the Ordensstaat briefly occupying France. By the end of the conflict, a Cold War takes place between the Imperial Entente (led by a reactionary United Kingdom and Bonapartist France), the Alliance of Soviets (led by a communist Russia), and the Pacific Joint-Defense Group (led by the United States and a democratic Japan). At the end of the novel, Dresden is destroyed in a nuclear bombing that leaves the world in an uncertain future where the end of civilization could be realized. When released, the book gets criticized for being overly pessimistic and focused on details, which Huxley counters by commenting "as miserable as things are, we can at least be thankful for what could never happen".
  • One of the more interesting premises is "The Blue Order', written under the pen name "Miles Lloyd". It is set in a world where an unnamed president revives the Bull Moose Party and runs for the presidency in 1932. When he gets his wish, the president turns dictatorial and militarizes the economy, which comes in handy when he declares war on Germany for the Anschluss of Austria, proclaiming that he is "safeguarding liberty". However, the Second World War breaks out anyway after two decades, with Russia falling into anarchy after Eastern Siberia is taken by the United States and Bukharin dies, while Japan ends up occupied by the Americans. The British Isles, Iberia, and Italy are the last major regions not under the American sphere of influence, united in alliance against their common foe. Despite the United States' seemingly emerging victorious, the novel ends with the president's assassination and leaves the story on an uncertain note in the aftermath.
  • An extremely controversial alt-history novel is "The Occupation", where the Allies win World War II. Prior to the aforementioned conflict, Japan falls into civil war with the communists and loses their major holdings in mainland Asia. Though the loyalists win, they decide to focus on reconstruction rather than invade East Asia, which allows the United States to focus all of its efforts toward defeating Germany in Europe. In the aftermath, Germany is divided between the German People's Republic/North Germany and the Republic of Germany/South Germany, a Soviet and Allied occupational zone, respectively. In the latter, a nationalist government akin to the Nazis rises again, which provokes an Allied intervention that topples the regime and begins unjustly persecuting the native Germans. Building on its themes of the cycle of violence, the novel hints that something similar is happening in Japan. The book's premise gets savaged by critics as Nazi apologia and an unrealistic story involving the Japanese communists somehow kickstarting a civil war. The author counters that this criticism misses the point of the work and the story is more about the message than the setting.
  • British author Len Deighton publishes his own alternate history novel, ""SSR-Ostpreussen", where Mikhail Tukhachevsky launches a coup against Nikolai Bukharin and turns the Soviet Union into a military powerhouse, similarly to Napoleon Bonaparte. With the Soviet Union mightier than ever, Tukhachevsky invades Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, while the rest of the world is distracted by the Great Depression. As a result, Germany's war with the Soviet Union is much tougher and lasts for many years, until the cities of Königsberg and Kiev are wiped out in an atomic bombing and convinces the two sides to sue for peace. The novel follows a Red Army commissar who gets involved in a series of conspiracies involving the reconstruction of Königsberg and discovers a Soviet plot to launch an all-out war with the Reich, while the rest of the world reels from German and Russian intrusions into foreign countries. Though the work receives some criticism for whitewashing certain German figures, it is praised for its uniquely gritty, noir setting and has a good number of sales upon its release.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: While both the OFN and Afrika Schild can, respectively, totally conquer the Reichkommisariats or South Africa in the South African War, the best outcome for both sides is to merely extend their territory without fully defeating the other side, as controlling the entire turf of the former enemy will be very difficult and fraught with unforeseen consequences.
• Downer Ending: Lots of them.
• The Dreaded: Even without knowing about his ultimate agenda, the Germans treat Himmler and the SS with fear, suspicion (more often justified than not) and undisguised hatred. Same goes for Heydrich, as his unbounded brutality (so much that it horrifies even the most hardcore Nazis) and ties to Himmler are widely known.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: The four major contestants of the German Civil War all wear different uniforms in their portraits that give hints to their allegiances.
  • Speer wears a civilian suit, showing his reformist leanings.
  • Bormann wears a brown NSDAP uniform, showing his commitment to conservatives in the Nazi Party.
  • Goering wears a grey military uniform, showing that his allegiance lies in the militarists in the German military.
  • Heydrich wears a pitch-black SS uniform, and is clearly the leader of the Burgundian-allied Schutzstaffel.
• Driven to Suicide: The reveal of the grand corruption scheme between the Zaibatsu-controlled Yasuda and Minezaka banks and the branches of the Japanese military by the end of the Japan investigation chain event causes mass suicides among the employees of the said enterprises.
• Due to the Dead: Lenin's mummified remains are held in a city in the Urals. Capturing the place unlocks a decision about out to treat his mummy, depending on the player's nation or ruling ideology (socialists are able to give Lenin a ceremonious burial, while non-socialists can choose to desecrate his corpse).
• Dystopia: While Nazi states and Ultranationalists states can still have some sensibility amidst their rampant oppression, the states under Esoteric Nazism, especially the ones following Burgundy and the SS's line of Spartanism, embrace openly insane all-oppressive governmental policies.
• Dystopia Is Hard: Another one of the mod's central themes alongside hate being unable to do anything but corrupt and lead to ruin. Many of the unhinged and genocidal regimes that exist at the start of the mod are clearly at their death bed as a state based on constant hatred, paranoia and oppression is unsustainable in the long run as people demand freedoms and rights. Their only way out of collapse are reform (even though the mod also points out that an evil state that hides is dystopian excesses can be just as unnerving as an outright one as in the case with Speer) or falling to hardliners that will usually accelerate the demise of their nation. Dystopian regimes that can often come to power later on in the mod also tend to result in Downer Ending failstates which cripple a nation or have its hardliners do something to end the world rather than give into reform.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means:
  • Followers of the Burgundian System, described by one of the developers as the people who want more gas chambers than houses, believe that the Reich grew too soft and tolerant, and as such seek to rebuild society on total state control of power, extreme racial oppression, and enforcement of militarism, purism, and Spartanism on all aspects of civilian life. Even the Aryans in the Burgundian System live like prisoners and work like slaves.
  • In Himmler's case, in addition to creating and adhering to the Burgundian System, he also aims to obliterate the Earth in nuclear fire, leaving the surviving Aryans to rebuild civilization on the ruins of the old world.

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