List of alternate issues that start WW2

I want to create a list of potential starting points for WW 2, with a POD of 1933, based on real history and nearly happened history that could have set off WW 2 earlier than 1939, around the same time and a little later.

The biggies,
1) No Munich conference, WW 2 starts in Sept 38, with Poland and Hungary in from the start on Germany's side vs Britain, France and Czechoslovakia.
2) Italian British war over Ethiopia leads to a general war in 35-36.
3) Spanish Civil war spread to world war. Here we might want some incident to get out of hand and spread, or maybe Franco's forces are about to lose and things escalate from there, with Germans and Italians desperate to shore him up.
4) British and French response to remilitarization of the Rhineland.

Some other ones.
Austria. I can think of a few intriguing cases. Germans had a contingency plan for an immediate invasion of Austria if the Austrian government invited the Hapsburgs back into power.
Also, if the coup against Dollfuss was a little more sucessful and resulted in a low level civil war, with Austrian Nazis taking Carinthia and Styria, for instance, and this leading to a German military involvement on some level.
A messier Anschluss. Say there had been no Schusnig attempt at a referendum in March 1938, and Germany decides an Anschluss at some later point in time, and it gets messy and faces armed Austrian opposition, against a Schusnigg regime which has appealed for support to the Austrian Social Democrats and has a broader base.
A Polish-Lithuanian war over the Vilnius region breaks out and Germany uses the opportunity to intervene and arbitrate (giving itself Danzig and much of the corridor as an arbitration fee).
In 1935, the German Sudeten Party under Henlein decides to forge a working majority in the parliament with Czech right wing forces, the Slovak and Hungarian nationalists and a new right wing regime emerges. This leads to political destablization and out of this emerges an earlier and grander German intervention, in 1936 or 1937 which escalates into war with France and Britain.
Italy gets protectorate fever and after annexing Albania, invades Yugoslavia in the late spring of 39 with the goal of setting up a Croatian protectorate. The ensuing Italian Yugoslav war gradually spreads.
At some point in the 1930's, maybe soon after Hungary has reannexed southern Slovakia, Regent Horthy decides to make a move for Transylvania, in early 1939, and this leads to and Rumanian Hungarian war that leads to a Soviet move, that in turn leads to a German intervention.
Anyway, those are a few ideas.
 
2 more, the failed anschluss of 1934, Italy goes to war with Germany and probaly drag France in

1938 Anschluss, I could see France fighting over it saying it goes aganist Versaille and possibly Italy if Mussolini thinks Germanys threat and there something in it for him and if relationship can be repaired between France and the UK
 
The German war machine is pretty paltry when you go back that far, the French alone could have crushed them in the early-mid 1930's.

The Spanish Civil War would be an effective flashpoint with a high visibility central country that many of the Allies and Axis were visibly or covertly intervening in. A supply ship gets sunk, wrong side's winning so uniformed troops/armor/aircraft are poured in triggering a similar reaction, it's somewhat surprising it didn't start there and then.

What about China, Manchuria, and Korea in the 1930's? The Japanese had invaded and there's the Rape of Nanking, major international ports (and assets) changing hands or threatened. The Soviets were covertly supplying both Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung's forces and Zhukov's defeat of the Japanese attack in Siberia should have triggered war. The U.S. was at least as interested in China, where the "D" in FDR had made the family fortune smuggling opium in, and obviously Great Britain had great interest with Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Rangoon, etc. proximate to the fighting to varying degrees. A clash of the major powers intervening in China on any side could easily have happened, like the Japanese sinking of a U.S. Navy ship/gunboat in 1937(?) OTL.

Persia would be a logical flashpoint although more ahistorical. A Nazi Anschluss there to secure it's petroleum and threaten the whole Med as a sub and aircraft base would make some sense and it was a friendly regime I vaguely recall at the time. The Italian Navy and Army sent there or based there instead of Ethiopia would be a major threat. British Iraq and Afghanistan to the South, Russia's own best oil fields to the North at Baku, and Turkey a German ally in World War I would make that a tinderbox worth fighting for.
 
Something starting over the sinking of Panay in '37 could be good.

It does need a stronger China Lobby, less isolationism, & (almost certainly) no FDR, possibly all 3.
 
Paul V McNutt said:
What possible 1937 president would be more internationalist than FDR?
It seems to want a greater focus on China than Europe. FDR was looking at Europe AFAICT.
 
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