Impossible Peace

After WWI ends, Versailles reshapes Europe. Germany and Austria-Hungary are defeated. Russia’s Bolshevik civil war rages, dismantling old empires and redrawing borders.

America rejects the peace deal and isolates itself. Europe struggles with debt and inflation. Extremes on left and right create violence and unrest in Germany’s unstable streets.

The US thrives in the Jazz Age—Prohibition, radios, talkies, and stock market optimism. Icons like Lindbergh and Babe Ruth define a fleeting era of exuberance before the crash.

The fragile recovery shatters into global depression. Unemployment, hyperinflation, and despair rise. Dictators emerge; Britain and France struggle to maintain fading empires.

New leaders emerge: Hitler in Germany, Roosevelt in the US, and militarism in Japan. Hitler gains absolute power constitutionally, merging chancellor and president roles.

Stalin’s USSR enforces brutal repression with gulags, collectivization, and Five-Year plans. The human cost under his rule begins to mount amid fierce state control.

Little more than 20 years after the guns fell silent, they roar back into life. Hitler annexes all of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France respond with promises to Poland.