Editing The World Wars (section)

==The Interwar Period==
{{topquote|This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.|Ferdinand Foch, 1919, being spot on}}
Believing that the world could not endure another such war, US President Woodrow Wilson attempted to set the groundwork for long-term peace between whites and "white equivalents" (Wilson was a massively racist cunt even by that era's standards); he set forth what he called the Fourteen Points, a set of foreign policy doctrines that would address many of the underlying issues behind WWI and promote better diplomacy and cooperation between nations, with its biggest selling point being the League of Nations. The Germans thought that this was actually a pretty neat idea, and were hoping to agree to these terms during the upcoming peace conference. Unfortunately, none of Wilson's allies bought into his vague ideas, and slowly he was forced to compromise on all his policies just so he could get the League of Nations established (it was basically an even shittier proto-United Nations, in that at least the UN specialist agencies do important global coordination work). Most significantly, Wilson failed to convince the US to join the League of Nations, partly due to alienating his Republican opponents in Congress, as they weren't convinced that this League wasn't completely useless, or worse, just another military alliance that would suck them into another European war. 

Without the US to back it, and with little power to enforce peace resolutions, the League pretty quickly collapsed in the lead-up to WWII, as the pissed off Germans had been assigned full blame for the war and wanted revenge. Of note also was Wilson's hyper nationalism to the point he believed if everywhere was just like America it would be paradise on Earth, ironically being just as stubborn about forcing democracies and decolonisation as his allies were against the League despite the people involved not knowing a single thing about any of this stuff and nations (like Germany) not being too hot on democracies anyway leading to widespread political instability to the point some say (whether true or not) every issue of the modern day can somehow be traced back to this guy. He was also a huge dick on a personal level as well, the man was an exceptionally vile racist in a time when being racist was the norm. Got crippled by a stroke which precluded him from really doing anything mid-1919 onwards, killed his plans for reelection to a third term, then straight up killed him after his term was over.

Near the end of the First World War, the world was thrown into yet another cataclysm. [[Nurgle|The Spanish Flu]], which got its name because neutral Spain was the only place that paid much attention to it over the ongoing war/didn't actively suppress the news of the epidemic, spread rapidly and killed millions thanks to the conditions caused by the war (overcrowding, especially in transport ships for returning soldiers, malnourishment, etc.). The death toll was horrendous, with the minimum estimate of 50 million being over double the entire war's death toll. After this, Europe needed decades to recover from the horrible destruction the war and flu had caused. Various conflicts continued at the regional level, most famously the Anatolian conflict between Greece, Armenia, French colonial forces, Islamists loyal to the Ottoman Government and the nationalist wings of the Ottoman military that revolted under Mustafa Kemal's regime. 

The latter won after deals with Armenia (which was not ratified as the Soviets nommed them, the new regime made another treaty which was officially ratified and guaranteed by the Soviets) and France, while Greece was rather soundly defeated. After another peace treaty with the Allies at Lausanne and the nationalist regime reforming into a Republic and abolishing the monarchy and the caliphate a year after the end of the monarchy and the Treaty of Lausanne, the local wars pretty much ended barring minor border disputes and posturing, with the only real big scare being the Bosphorus Straits affair with the Soviets, that was resolved through the Montreaux Convention in the 1930s. The rest of the world wasn't so lucky.

Compare this to America, which was having some of its best years. The aftermath of WWI and the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty had seen Britain concede that it could no longer maintain the two-power standard, since: 1. it couldn't afford to keep spending that kind of money and 2. this would have required the Royal Navy to compete with the US Navy, which was a friend and ally as opposed to a potential threat. As a result, the US Navy managed to achieve parity with the Royal Navy fairly quickly during the interwar period. The so called "Roaring Twenties" saw a rapid increase in the standard of living. Presidents Harding and Coolidge lead the country into great economic growth, to the point that most of the world would look to the NYSE as an indicator of economic health. See, unlike the European powers, it hadn't seen the deaths of millions of young men, been forced to reorient itself to the demands of a continental total war, had prime farmland turned into no man's land like France, its economy pushed to the breaking point like Germany, broken up into squabbling states like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or had all of that happen and was taken over by communists after a civil war like Russia (with some like Turkey as aforementioned getting lucky and successfully reforming), while having basically everyone in Europe owe American bankers to pay for the war, meaning that the country was flush with cash.

Coolidge would be followed by Herbert Hoover, who largely rode on his success (justifiably though; Hoover had been Commerce Secretary for 8 years). [[FAIL|Then in October of 1929 the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression.]], officially earning Hoover a place as one of the worst presidents in American history. 

There had been a series of stock market crashes in the US every decade or so during the the 19th century, each with increasing severity and effects in the US as more people moved into cities and were more dependent on wages. The 1920s saw a rise in consumer culture, payment plans, investment becoming commonplace, loans for buying stock with, a lot of scams and the limits of the real economy which culminated in the biggest crash yet. Moreover, since the US was now linked to a bunch of other countries thanks to improved communications, trade, transportation, and so forth, the crash not only tanked the US economy, but that of basically every other developed country save for the USSR (which had its own Stalin-related problems, and boy were they big problems), which further hindered recovery. 

It also didn't help that large swaths of Europe were still battle-scarred wastelands useless for agriculture, an entire generation of young working men had been killed or crippled, and that the formerly super-productive Germany was now tottering under the weight of an ineffectual government and crippling reparations to pay. It culminated in a French occupation of some of the last profitable land left in Germany, the Ruhr valley, and eventually lead to a renegotiation of the payments that would be more generous to the German economy. Throw in a crushing multi-year drought in the United States that ruined harvests across whole states and the stage is set for chaos.  

The old ways of dealing with things didn't seem to be working and people turned to new ideas. In the US, this was various public works projects and assistance programs, collectively called the New Deal, to get people back working and build confidence in the economy and financial regulations. Similar ideas were tried in England, Australia and the UK. It should be noted that afterwards there was no major economic setbacks until 2008, after New Deal-era financial regulations were pulled. 

===Rise of Authoritarians: Italy ===
See [[Fascist Italy]]. Shortly put though, as the Italians are not entirely to blame, this guy named Mussolini created a new ideology that seemed pretty snazzy, called Fascism<sup>1</sup>, that combined big government and ultra-nationalist militarism into another toxic ideology that advocated the strength and growth of the state. Italian Fascism is found in a manifesto of sorts written by Giovanni Gentile in the seminal work "The Doctrine of Fascism" for those interested in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_98uT1IZs&t=1s&ab_channel=RyanChapman|further research]. He also ruled for far longer than Hitler did, taking over as "Prime Minister" in 1922 until his removal in 1943.

The Italians conquered Ethiopia to reclaim their national honor after getting wrecked by them, and had a general foreign policy of attempting to promote international fascism. By which of course the end result would be an Italian sphere of influence. This is represented in HOI4 by the Albania tree, the attempts at Turkish influence, and their intervention in the Spanish Civil War along with the Germans. For all intents and purposes, Mussolini seemed very genuine in his intent to promote Fascism across the globe to not only promote Italian interests but to correct the "failures of liberalism" and counter those filthy Communists<sup>2</sup>. It also helps that the leader of such a movement could become wealthy and powerful as a result.

<small><sup>1</sup>Fascism with a capital "F" refers specifically to Italian fascism. With a little "f", it is a noun describing a broad ideology. [[Tzeentch|Nazism is fascist, but not "Fascist".]] [[What|Savvy?]]</small>

<small><sup>2</sup>Fascism was a reaction against the Russian Revolution and the chaos of post-war Italy. Mussolini came to power by leading a bunch of nationalist thugs that beat up Socialists and Communists in Northern Italy and eventually the Italian King and the old-school conservatives made him Prime Minister as he seemed to be effective against them.</small>

===Rise of Authoritarians: Germany===
In Germany, the economic and political failures of the Weimar Republic soured people on the whole idea of democracy, which contributed to the rise of authoritarian parties on the left like the Communist KPD, which in turn led to the creation of the Nazi (National Socialists German Workers Party or NSDAP) party to counter them (possibly with help from other Western powers seeking a wall against communism) with a newfound hate of the Allies thanks to the colossal reparations Germany was forced to pay to the rest of Europe by the Treaty of Versailles, which renegotiated or not, still put a perceived blame for the war unjustly upon them along with a variety of other complicated things that can be blamed on the [[Nazi|Nazis]]. Rounding it off was the ''Dolchstosslegende'', or "stab-in-the-back-myth", that was concocted by butthurt imperial generals like Ludendorff and Hindenburg in order to shift the blame for Germany's defeat to the Social Democrats or the [[What|historic enemy of Germany, the Jews.]] 

The concurrent deeply authoritarian political culture of many German institutions as well as reactionary and monarchist industrialists like Krupp, who all backed Hitler and nationalist and antisemitic parties similar to the NSDAP (like the DNVP) and the lack of people actually willing to give a damn about the Republic itself led to the erosion of the few democratic principles left at this point. From 1930 onward, Hindenburg, who was elected President as the candidate of a coalition of nationalist and conservative parties, reigned over Germany in a dictatorial manner and named Hitler as Chancellor and head of government in January 1933, after two governments under the centrist-conservative Party Zentrum and the Nationalist DNVP failed to stabilize the economy. Responding to the collapse gave the Nazis the political currency to get into power, stimulate the economy by gearing it up for war, and made the UK less willing to intervene to stop them while they were rising due to nobody wanting to be the one to start another war. And ideals of peace and disarmament were certainly somewhat popular in the UK and France after the bloodbath of the Western Front.

To their credit, in the mid '30s the Nazis did appear to be doing good things, even if there was a clear air of racial supremacy about the whole affair. Europe was collectively terrified of Marxism, and a nation that was forcefully rebuilding and modernizing itself without resorting to collectivization was tolerated by the French and British out of fear of the alternative. Between completing the Autobahn, hosting the Olympics, and achieving a number of engineering feats such as the first practical helicopter, Germany appeared to be getting shit done. When the communists tried to launch a revolution in Spain, Germany and Italy sent weapons and eventually troops to curbstomp them and test out their new toys on people with wrong opinions, while Britain looked the other way and pretended not to notice that Germany suddenly had hundreds of tanks that they were legally not supposed to have, and that France and the Soviets were doing the same thing with the communist revolutionaries. So nobody was too concerned when Germany started making noises about reunifying some Germanic peoples in the border regions they'd ceded in the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Then shit started to get real. 

In 1936, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, which was a direct violation of both treaties. Britain and France were concerned, but neither country was ready to go to war again, so they let it slide. Hitler took this as confirmation that they wouldn't do shit to stop him and ramped up his plans for rearmament and conquest. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria more or less peacefully, then walked into Czechoslovakia and took the Sudetenland, home to 3 million ethnic Germans. The rest of the continent was getting increasingly worried, but Hitler super-duper promised that the Sudetenland would be his last territorial acquisition, cross his heart and hope to die. Britain and France were desperate to avoid war, and Hungary and Poland also wanted some of Czechoslovakia's turf, so together they strong-armed Czechoslovakia into signing the Munich Agreement, officially ceding the Sudetenland to Germany. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain famously proclaimed that the Agreement was "peace for our time" when he came home from the negotiations on 30 September 1938. A pissed-off Winston Churchill correctly predicted that Hitler wasn't going to stop at the Sudetenland, and was proven right when Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and then started side-eyeing Poland and the former German territories it now controlled.

===Rise of Authoritarians: Japan===
In the 19th century the Japanese feared the day when the powers of Europe would come by and stomp all over them like they did China and Southeast Asia. During the Tokugawa period, military technology had basically stagnated as there were no pressing internal or external threats that required [[Dakka|shootier guns]] or better tactics to sort out. There was much anxiety in the Tokugawa Shogunate about this (and even a limited attempt at army modernization by at least one Japanese domain) but things came to a head in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbour and ended two centuries of isolation at cannon-point. The end of the Sakoku and bombardments by US and Royal Navy ships drove the necessity of modernization home. The Shogunate bought foreign guns and ships, lifted restrictions on shipbuilding and sent diplomatic missions abroad, but the pace of modernization and Westernization really picked up after the Meiji Restoration. By 1914 Japan had a solid public education system and set of universities, a well-developed rail network, a respectable industrial base and an army and navy which had beaten the Russian Empire. In the Great War they drove the German Empire out of the Pacific. Japan had arrived on the world stage, but despite that they were still concerned about the West and its influence, what with Britain and France being two of the largest and most acquisitive colonial powers on Earth. The Japanese saw what had happened to their neighbors and wanted no part of it. Combine this with a historic ''extreme'' hard on for cultural and political independence that can still be observed to this very day, and you start to get the anxiety faced by Imperial Japan.

Even so while the Meiji Restoration was successful in its general goals, it had its faults. It did end the Tokugawa class system and introduced a parliament, but it was still largely a system set up for the benefit of a small number of well connected oligarchs. The franchise was limited to only 1% of the population, with the prominent lordlings and industrialists who'd backed the Emperor in the Boshin War and their kids being disproportionately prominent in Japanese society. There would be considerable push for reform after the Great War (in particular there was universal male suffrage in 1925), but there would also be strong pushback by conservatives and militarist ultranationalists, especially after a huge earthquake devastated Tokyo in 1926 and the Great Depression came along to wallop the Japanese economy. Unlike their later partners in the Axis, there was no Japanese Hitler or Mussolini figure who masterminded and led a movement which came to dictate authority. Instead Japan had a collection of right-wing cranks and extremists and a military which was off the chain. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were loyal only to the Emperor (and in practice they just did whatever they wanted and asked the Emperor for permission after the fact) and the Diet had very little power over them at the best of times. Technically the Meiji Parliament continued to putter on, but from 1931-45 it was marginalized and subverted. Whenever prominent liberals and socialists who oppose rampant militarism get ganked by radical thugs who are pardoned by judges who are either on board with the militarists or afraid that they'll get ganked themselves, the power and influence of said nationalist militarists will steadily grow until they can more or less do as they please, specifically getting their imperialism on. 

Even though the Japanese had managed to modernize rapidly in a short span of time and kicked the shit out of the Russians, they were still often seen as inferiors by white people, [[Imperial Japanese Equipment|"yellow monkeys who could only copy what white folk invented" and other such nonsense]]. Some people like Wilhelm II and some nativist shitheads in the US, Canada and Australia saw the Japanese and East Asians in general as still being lesser, but still capable enough to be a threat ("The Yellow Peril"). When the League of Nations was founded, the Japanese had a seat at the table and the Japanese Ambassador requested that its charter have a non-binding statement on human equality<small><sup>3</sup></small>, which got some support, but Woodrow Wilson vehemently shot it down, mostly because this would require him to see [[Tyranids|minorities as anything other than evil cockroaches trying to devour the white man]], and GOLLY GEE WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE? This sort of thing breeds animosity at the best of times, and these times were anything but. 

Things got worse with the Washington Naval Conference in 1921-22, which was called by the Allied powers in an effort to prevent another naval arms race like the one that had led into the war. The practical result of the conference and its treaty was to impose strict limits on the size and firepower of capital ships and aircraft carriers and downsize the British, American, and Japanese fleets by scrapping obsolete or unfinished ships. It also saw the dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance that had been signed in 1902, since the American delegates made it clear that the US felt threatened by this alliance and the British themselves weren't too sure about it anymore. Japan took both of these actions as an insult, especially the tonnage ratio imposed by the treaty, which was 5:5:3 UK/US/Japan. This meant that for every five tons of capital ship that the British and Americans built, the Japanese were only allowed to have 3 tons. The Japanese militarists and ultranationalists who'd demanded naval parity with the UK and US saw this as an insult, though a number of Japanese Navy officers, including Isoroku Yamamoto, actually supported the treaty, since they knew that Japan could never outproduce the United States. He and the "Treaty Faction" were largely ignored, and when Japan couldn't get better results at the London Naval Treaties in the 1930s, they flipped everyone the bird and started building ships that ignored the treaty limitations. 

From the Meiji period onward some prominent Japanese people came to the idea that the best way to fend off imperialism was to become imperialists themselves<small><sup>4</sup></small>, and they began gobbling up their neighbors from the late 19th century onward. Their first steps were pretty humble, taking back some of the Kuril Islands, Okinawa, etc. Then they stomped into Korea, renamed Taiwan "Formosa" because fuck your local names, and then logically jumped into trying to conquer all of China. 

Imperialism and colonialism? No, we're doing this in the name of Asian liberation, friend! A "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" if you will. Pay no mind to the [[Grimdark|atrocious war crimes we're about to be committing]]. The Japanese kept this going into the 20th century when this sort of behavior was finally falling out of fashion among the Western powers, especially after 1931, by which time the military more or less dictated the course of Japanese politics. In 1931, they invaded Manchuria and made it into a puppet state under the deposed Qing emperor, then invaded China in 1937, killing millions as they went (around four times the death toll of the Holocaust to be precise, something that is largely ignored in light of the Holocaust itself and Japan's contemporary PR efforts). Japanese forces in China occasionally attacked [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident foreign shipping], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kweilin_incident airliners], and property. Despite this, international reactions were fairly limited — the European powers were too busy worrying about Herr Hitler and Nazi Germany and America had profitable trade agreements with Japan.

Not that Japan was in any way shape or form having a good time. Entire books can be written on all the crap that went down, but before they invaded China things had gotten to the point that there were no real political parties but Army and Navy whose officers near openly murdered each other.

* <small><sup>3</sup>Yes, there was an element of hypocrisy in the Empire of Japan making this statement. But Wilson was probably too racist to understand this or care.</small>
* <small><sup>4</sup>See previous footnote, the Japanese were very racist towards Koreans and Chinese, especially during the height of militarism. They just wanted to be the ones who were conquering all of Asia, not the Western powers.</small>