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With the collapse of order in the Confederation of Unitarian States, Turkey was left alone to resist the German advance in Europe - an advance which kept on showing that Germania was not to be underestimated. The same cannot be said for The Union, however.

At the end of Operation Schwarzburg and the collapse of the CUS, the new front line settled along the Carpathians and through Serbia - along mountain ranges in both cases, impeding offensive movement for both sides and thus stabilizing the front for the time being. The German Army, bolstered by conscripted "volunteer units" across Visegrad, as well as the Polish nationalist forces, may have been much better equipped than the Turks and contained more personnel - 2 million against 1 and a half million on the Unitarian side - but despite these advantages, the commanders at the front were wary of attacking through the mountains and potentially squandering this superiority. Instead, a meeting of the German General Staff was called, and commander Bertolt Brecht was presented with the precarious situation.

Brecht advised the high command to wait until summer, or at least late spring, when the conditions for an offensive against the Turks are more in Germania's favor, as for the plan itself, he presented an idea ripped straight from the experience in the Russo-Lithuanian War - airborne assault. By using focused and concentrated airborne infantry landings, it is possible to take down the enemy's supply lines and block escape routes, then use the narrow terrain of the Carpathians and their mountain passes against the Turks - pretty much by using them as natural encirclements.

While this ambitious idea found some approval among the German general staff, an immediate problem with it was found - Germania had no airborne infantry corps. While German espionage had extensively studied the glider usage in Lithuania and the effectiveness of glider infantry in the Russo-Lithuanian War, neither the German government nor much of the generals were interested in applying these strategies earlier. However, what Germania did have was an extensive, mobilized industrial complex, and a civilian government so deeply affected by the horrors of the war that they were willing to throw as much money to the military as they wanted, only if it meant defeating the Unitarians sooner. In this situation, Brecht approved the formation of the German Glider Corps, assembled throughout the winter and spring of 1941. Interestingly enough, the formation of the Glider Corps was also one of the first tangible signs of Franco-German cooperation - after some debates, the French government, who had a small airborne regiment of their own, agreed to help Germania out with technical knowledge in the field. Other preparation was also being done at this time - the destroyed Visegradian infrastructure was hastily being repaired and converted to the German rail gouge, most infantry units were outfitted with mountaineer brigades and converted vehicles fit for rough terrain.

At the same time, the Germans reorganized the territories occupied after Operation Schwarzburg. While Hungary, Bohemia and Slavonia were left under military occupation for the time being, the first important steps were taken for the establishment of post-war order in former Visegrad - republican governments "in exile" for Hungary and Bohemia were formed, while Germania recognized the independence of Romani State, their authority over Szekely Land and some surrounding territory. A few headaches for the German administration instantly popped up. The Balkans were a mesh of cultures, spread out across one mountainous region, and the initial stages of the War of the Danube showed that the Visegradian strategy of uniting all South Slavs into one federal state has failed. Silesia was in a similar cultural conflux, divided between Germans, Bohemians and Poles. As it was a wealthy and industrialized region, many politicians in Germania hoped to incorporate it to their nation, but even the idea of such an act through protests from the Bohemian authorities, who feared losing such an important industrial region, and Polish allies, who sought to gain at least a part of Silesia for themselves. For now, Prime Minister Sternberg decided to put the fate of the region on hold, hoping for a better political climate after the war, and instead pressed the government to focus on the war.

And there was a lot to focus about, because Operation Barbarossa, named after the famous Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, leader of the Third Crusade, was executed in late May. Massive battles took place across the Carpathians and Serbia, the multinational German forces clashing with the Unitarian defenders - and from the very beginning, superior German preparedness showed. No matter what way you look at it, Turkey was only a freshly modernized nation, and despite all the forced labor and oil-funded crash industrialization not too dissimilar from the Nijasurist great leaps forward, they paled in comparison to the economic dreadnought that Germania had become after the Great European War. German materiel production eclipsed the Turks three-fold, the invading German army had twice the number of airplanes and five times the number of Landships at it's disposal, and - this is important - unlike the Germans, the Turks could not swiftly repair their losses. Tevfik Rustu Aras, the leader of The Union, hoped to nullify this disadvantage by acquiring materiel from India - after all, the Indians were sitting around and twiddling their thumbs at the moment - but this plan found difficulties. Entirely new railways had to be built across Baluchistan and Persia to connect the two countries, and for some reason,the Indians were hesitant to send so much support to their western ally. While train upon train of guns, ammunition and artillery pieces were being shipped to Turkey regardless, it couldn't make up for the losses in the front.

With all this in mind, is it all that surprising that after about a month of resistance, after losing upwards of 350 000 men to encirclements, the Turks began a steady retreat from the front? The Germans stepped to Belgrade in June 5th, greeted by cheering, but exhausted Serbs, and Bucharest in early July, met with a tepid welcome from the local Romanians. With each step back the Turks took, more and more Balkan resistance began to crop up against them, too - Greece was now in an open rebellion, the fighters there using the mountainous peninsular geography to their advantage, while sporadic protests were breaking out in Bulgaria and Albania. And, of course, much like seen plenty of times in human history, when a nation is pushed towards defeat, it starts to grow insane - and that certainly was becoming the case in Turkey. The Aras government was rapidly losing power to a shadowy cabal of generals, secret police chiefs and influential radical politicians, the "deep state" if you will, which, by the time German forces took Bucharest, had practically turned the civilian government into their puppet, through anything from intimidation to assassinations to soft influence. The "deep state" acknowledged no surrender and hoped for Indian help, while at the same time tightening the strings of oppression back home. Food rationing and requisitions of all agricultural surplus were enacted to help feed the Army, work hours were extended to 14 per day for all citizens, and total mobilization was enacted.

The question was whether it could save the Union - because, as spectators could easily tell, the Commonwealth was now rapidly losing the war. Turkey getting defeated and Japan on the brink of collapse from starvation. If not for India, people would already be chiseling gravestones for the Unitarian ideology.

An another major offensive was taking place. With the Lithuanians exhausted after the failures of Operation Pacas, the coalition of Russians and Volgaks opted to use this opportunity to regain some lost land in the form of the Winter Sword Campaign. Despite the official name, however, it was not a single organized offensive or a campaign. Instead, a large number of disjointed attacks were executed against the Lithuanian ranks under the orders of the field commanders throughout January, February and March. The unorganized nature of the campaign and the harsh weather during it meant that most of the attacks either failed, gained very little ground or ended up losing it against Lithuanian counterattacks - however, some ended up succeeding, and the Lithuanian 2nd Army was forced to retreat from Nizhny Novgorod, saving the city from an another attempt at a capture. The skirmishes up north also gave the Volga time to prepare a powerful army, which, by July, was composed of up to 300 000 men.

While Winter Sword ended up fizzling away, the campaign was used well for propaganda value in Russia and the Volga, as "the first step for the reclamation of the motherland". The Lithuanians did not find their back broken by the offensive, however, unlike the Turks in the War of the Danube - and as the Russo-Lithuanian War rears its head to the third year since the beginning, the Vadas was presented with a plan to fulfill the idea "third time's the charm"...