Continuing along, here's my cover of Reich-1. As you can see,
@Prometheus_2300 and I have
very different philosophies when approaching these covers. Compared to
his take, I'm taking a pulpier route, without regard for things like plausibility. Why? Because it's clear Steve Jackson Games did not have that intent. After all, look at Reich-5. So, I went with what I thought the text was implying: a Fatherland-like situation. In this world, Germany destroyed the BEF and forced an unequal peace, and then later crushed the Soviet Union. Since the text mentions battles in Siberia, I took that to mean the Germans taking what they wanted from the Soviets, but allowing a rump Soviet state to exist. In this case, said Soviet state is under Zhukov and some weak CPSU underlings; Stalin, Beria and the rest were killed in the Battle of Moscow, or captured and paraded before the people of Welthauptstadt Germania. Meanwhile, the Americans crushed Japan, which I depict here incidentally helping out China and turning the Soviet Union into an American satellite state.
Right now, both powers are fighting a third world war. According to Steve Jackson Games, neither have developed nuclear weapons, which I find implausible, but whatever. Hitler seemed content with what he had, but Himmler, his successor, started the war in 1949 by invading Britain, despite warnings from the military that the Germans were not yet ready to take on the Americans. I depict the Germans succeeding in Sealion II: Sealioner, but they are having a lot of trouble putting down the British resistance. After all, they know what happened to their French and Soviet counterparts. The Germans, on the other hand, aren't willing to use the more draconian methods on the British population...yet. The Americans have blockaded the Atlantic coast, and American jets are equal to their Luftwaffe counterparts. They're also massing an invasion force in Iceland, and the Germans have no idea where it's going.
The Americans are rather determined to put an end to the Nazi regime, and are working on the atomic bomb to do just that. The British are fighting fanatically against the Germans, but Churchill's demands for liberating the British Isles go against the American plan to land somewhere on the mainland. The Soviets are fighting to the last man and the last round, but it's not doing much good; American forces are pouring into the USSR, and the Soviet leadership suspects that whatever autonomy they have left will soon be forfeit. China is being a bad ally, having signed a non-aggression pact with Germany and telling the Americans that they still have a lot of warlords and communists to take care of at home, and that their exhausted, ill-equipped army won't do well against the advanced German war machine anyway. The American OSS is suspicious, citing historic links between the KMT and the Germans, but the military insists that their advisers have their Chinese counterparts under control. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Italians are proving to be a drag once again, and the Spanish are making silly demands like asking for the Philippines in exchange for entering the war on the German side. Himmler grows increasingly paranoid, as he made many enemies on his way to the top, and the OSS is aware of this.
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