The War Spreads

South America offers a more pressing threat. An Axis-backed coup in Argentina makes Colonel Juan Peron president of his nation. The Germans have invested heavily in Argentina, sending top aircraft designers to essentially re-create the Luftwaffe in South America. In 1945, Argentina becomes a member of the Axis, polarizing the entire South American continent. Some countries, like Chile, throw their lot in with Brazil, already a member of the Allied camp. Paraguay, seeking to reclaim territories lost to Bolivia in 1935, makes an alliance with Argentina for that express purpose, driving Bolivia into alliance with Brazil and the Allies. Similar border disputes cause Ecuador and Peru to join the Allies and Axis respectively in hopes of expanding their own territories. Others, like Columbia and Venezuela, try their best to remain neutral in the fragile hope that their wishes to stay out of the war will be respected. In Mexico, Axis agents successfully encourage right-wing elements of the ruling PRI party to stage a revolution against President Camacho, plunging Mexico into another bloody and brutal civil war. With the prospect of an Axis nation on his very doorstep, MacArthur lends his full support to the Allied government of Mexico.

In Africa, the battles for Eritrea, Abyssinia, Libya, Tunisia and Madagascar may be over, but the spectre of war has not forgotten these lands either. Franco’s forces in Spanish Morocco prepare for conquest in French held Morocco and Tunisia, hoping to open yet another front and stretch Allied resources still further. The fortress of Gibraltar is besieged from both sides of the Mediterranean and Spanish artillery relentlessly pounds the British bastion. At the very tip of the continent, South Africa has declared its independence from the British Empire, adopting a tentatively neutral position in the war, trading with Axis and Allied nations in equal measure, allowing the ships of both camps to use South African ports. But will the former colony remain neutral for long? There is great concern in London and Washington as intelligence operatives report German military advisors helping train the South African army, echoing the activities of the Condor Legion which helped Franco’s Nationalists prevail in the Spanish Civil War. Can it be long before the Germans incite South Africa’s government into a pattern of conquest and aggression?

Finally, in the icy reaches of Antarctica, a secret war is fought, not between vast armies, but between small groups of highly trained operatives. Throughout the 1930’s, the Germans made extensive explorations of the South Pole, claiming a vast swathe of land for the Third Reich, naming this frozen territory ‘Neu Schwabenland’. Rumours of secret bases and sinister experiments have long filtered through the intelligence communities of Germany’s enemies, and her allies. Now there is evidence that such rumours are something more. What strange mystery have the Germans discovered? What hidden secret that they will not share even with their closest allies? What is it that the Germans fight so fanatically to protect? Mystics and prophets have long spoken of the lost civilization of Thule and its forgotten, arcane arts. Is this the power that causes Hitler to send his best agents into the icy Antarctic wastes, and if so, what does he think such power will bring him?

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