Weird WWII Redux

I'll relaunch here, for your reading pleasure and free comment, an old TL I started some 3 years ago and left to wither on the vine, before reworking it more in depth in the last days.
There do are, undoubtedly, "gaps" to be filled, but still...

POD: in October, 1918

Adolf Hitler gets killed in battle on the Western Front by an English sniper while stumbling around, blinded by a gas attack.

December 1918

Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as comrade Stalin, is murdered in Tsarytsin (*OTL Stalingrad/Volgograd) by an enraged mother whose son he had shot as saboteur.

1919-1921

France and Britain default or repay only lately and partly the huge US loans received in wartime. In time America gets colder and colder towards the two European Powers, adopting an "anticolonial" stance and a strict interpretation of the Monroe doctrine.
In Russia Soviet forces win the civil war at a high price for the country and brilliantly repulse a Polish invasion, while having in the end to concede Poland vast territories (more or less as per OTL). Trotskij emerges as Lenin's natural right hand and “heir apparent”, alongside several other figures of importance.

1923-1924
In Germany the occupation of the Rhineland cements parts of the left and right; the social-democrats will later split, with a nationalist wing under a former veteran of the trenches, Rudolf Diercks, founder of the Sozialfront.

1924

Trotskij succeeds Lenin. Despite his will to diffuse the revolution westwards, he later understands, after the fizzle of the Saxony revolution in fall, that the moment is not mature and manages to preserve a very tense status quo with the European powers. The Twenties see Soviet meddling that detaches Sinkiang from China and provokes abortive communist revolutions in Iran and, of all places, Afghanistan. Eventually, however, Afghanistan turns into a Soviet satellite/ally because of a 1929 border war with the British.

1925

First unsuccessful communist revolution in China, in Shanghai and Canton, crushed by the Nationalists of Chang-Kai Shek. Mao's followers turn to long-lasting guerrilla.

1929

The Great Depression has devastating effect on the global economy, paralleled in Russia by Trotskij's total failure with his program of collectivizations (brought on with a bit less savagery than OTL).

1930-1931

Germany descends in a brief but nasty civil war: in the end a weird alliance of the Sozialfront (nationalist social democrats), catholics and Junker-conservatives wins the day, liquidating the divided Social-Communist forces who had taken control of the industrial areas of the Rhineland and Palatinate, of Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, and some parts of Berlin itself. A surprising number of WWI veterans had sided with the losing radical Left, leading to long-lasting fighting. France and Britain, gravely hit by the Depression, look with bitter satisfaction the old enemies battling themselves. The US help the "anti-communist" coalition with money and weapons, while the Soviet Union's help proves half-hearted and ineffective, despite part of the German navy siding with the leftists.
Trotskij, humiliated by a string of failures, steps out from the economics and most governmental activities, retaining only his high role in the Party, personal ascendant and ultimate command on the Red Army, his favored creature. Bukharin takes the lead in economics and begins a saner reconstruction based on the NEP principles and a healthy dose of industrialisation, while a careful politics in matter of nationalities and robust repression quell local rebellions (Basmachi in Central Asia, Ukraine, Cossacks, Caucasus banditry, etc). Infighting prevents the political police, now led by the ailing Menzhinski, from becoming too powerful, and the GuLag system remains relatively marginal.
The rift between the US and the Anglo-French widens as a consequence of the crisis, with the failure of Paris and London to repay the war loans of WWI, the rise of trade barriers by the Americans and the Imperial Preference system put in effect by Britain, which is reorganizing the Crown's overseas Dominions in effectively independent states, if strongly integrated.
In Japan, the military begins to flex their muscles and to influence politics heavily; Japan occupies Manchuria to the protests of China (and, on a softer tone, of Russia).

1931-1935

The new German government, led by Diercks, ascendend during the civil war to the indisputed guide of the winners despite the supercilious objections of the Junker caste, sets up its capital at Nuremberg, a town that had been the headquarters of the Reichswehr during the civil war. Diercks and his "emergency" government (elections are congealed for the next years) recall from exile not the Kaiser, but his son and heir, provided he accepts a constitutional monarchy, which he does to the chagrin of most aristocrats. Wilhelm III is crowned officially, against the avowed wish of his father (which actually leads the Western powers to swallow the pill), on the 1st of August, 1934, at Potsdam, and will reside at Berlin, so, at a distance from the government. The Nuremberg regime, or Third Reich, enjoying consistent American and Dutch economic and industrial help, proves quite efficient in rebuilding the country, restoring social peace and beginning a military buildup after denouncing the Versailles Treaty.
Canada suffers from The Troubles, a phase of harsh multi-sided confrontation, particularly from 1933, between supporters of the conservative prime minister Bennett, the pro-American (mostly) Quebecois fascists of Adrien Arcand, admirers of Compton, Diercks and Mussolini, and the organized labour movement, hit hard by the crisis and by Bennett's anti-Communist measures. After several instances of sectarian violence that bring the body count in the hundreds, and the flight of Arcand to the US, a measure of order is newly found with the new liberal government of Mackenzie King.

1932

In the US crippled by the Depression a populist leader and discussed entrepreneur from Chicago, William Nathan Compton, is elected president on the Democratic ticket. He'll be reelected, and in a few years' space the vestiges of democracy will be severely trampled: a racist, bigot, hypocrite and business-oriented regime will take shape in the States, without even bothering to persecute its few opponents. The new president soon relaunches the military.

1932-1933

Japan fights a limited war with China, bombing Shanghai and wresting some provinces on the Manchurian border, and gets expelled from the League of Nations.

1934

In the US, President Compton survives an attempted assassination by a deranged Italian anarchist who manages, however, to kill vice-President Garner and Labor secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt. Compton and his cronies, in alliance witha cabal of some of the most powerful barons of industry, press and banking, tight the screws of their power profiting of a wave of disturbances, racial and political tensions, in part a spillover from the Canadian Troubles, to enact draconian security measures, among which the foundation of the Fatherland Security Department headed by the ambitious and unscupulous J. Edgar Hoover. While seldom translated into practical excesses, these measures are enough to mute most opposition and establish an iron grip upon the country.
Germany, in a cunning diplomatic move promjoted by Foreign Minister Franz von Papen, renounces claims over its former territories annexed by Poland (Warthegau, upper Silesia, the Corridor) in exchange for the recognition of language rights for the Germans living there, and, most of all, the reincorporation of Danzig to Germany (which brings the Franco-British dominated League of Nations to expel the Germans) and free rights of passage over the Corridor for the Germans.
In the Soviet Union Sergej Kirov emerges the victor in the power struggle with Zinoviev and Kamenev for the effective succession to Trotskij at the head of the government; next to him is Bukharin, head of the party.The struggle opens a space of free discussion in the Soviet hierarchy; there will be no purges whatsoever in the Stalinian sense, since also the losers in inner political battle are "recycled" into the several sectors of the mammoth Soviet party-state. A popular and pragmatic leader, Kirov gives impulse to industrialization in earnest, welcoming tens of thousands of sympathizers, workers and technicians from Europe and North America, and curbs the most distasteful aspects of OGPU repression. The GuLag system will never bloat up to the dimensions of OTL and the economy won't be based upon mass slavery, but on incentives, state industry and cooperative agriculture. As for Trotskij, "Comrade Number One, Right Hand of the Great Lenin, Founder of the Red Army and Living Monument of the Revolution", he remains in a sort of detached position, dedicating himself to writing memories and important political and sociological treatises. His contribution to political philosophy parallels that of his friend and correspondant, Antonio Gramsci, a fellow Communist who is prisoner of the Italian Fascist regime. "Persona non grata" throughout the Western world, Trotskij nonetheless enjoys several high-profile friendships and contacts outside the SU and remains esteemed for his analytical insight and sharp pen.
The US, always the "big stick" of the Western Emisphere, ends its direct intervention in Nicaragua after the death of Sandino, only to reoccupy Haiti.

1934-1936
Mexico sees the creeping battle between Jefe Màximo Plutarco Elìas Calles, a quasi-fascists and fierce anti-Catholic strongman, and his former subordinate Làzaro Càrdenas, a well-liked figure of socialist leanings. The latter, once became president wins the day and exiles Calles to the US, inheriting by him the new united ruling party but steering Mexico's politics left, while embarking on a policy of development of the oil industry with British help and trade with the Soviet Union that greatly bothers Washington.

1935

After Pilsudski's death, Germany, Poland, Hungary and the two Baltic countries of Latvia and Estonia sign a military pact of defense, the Treaty of Danzig, with great scandal of France, who screams at the Polish backstabbing and manoeuvers the League of Nations into expelling Poland upon pretexts, at which Germany too leaves the organization. The SU's foreign minister Maksim Litvinov, nicknamed “Lord Soviet”, on the contrary, greatly enhances in the meantime relationships between Kirov's Soviet Union and the Franco-British.
The Chinese Communists, discreetly supported by the Soviets, end their Long March consolidating control over NW China.
Japan establishes Manchuria as the Empire of Manchukuo, ruled by the puppet emperor Pu Yi, the last of the Qing sovereigns of China.

October 1935-April 1936

The Italian army led by Badoglio and Graziani invade and subjugate Ethiopia, whose emperor Hailé Selassié finds refuge in Britain. Germany and the United States ignore the sanctions imposed by the League of Nations. Despite the US' avowed anticolonialism, American protests over Italian aggression to a sovereign country are very bland as the Italian-American lobby, amply corrupted by the Mafia and complacent to Fascism, is powerful and has played a very important part in bringing Compton to power and silencing his enemies.

1936

Belgium and Czechoslovakia, worried by German rearmament, sign a treaty of common defense with France and Britain: the Bruxelles Pact, origin of the Western Alliance.
A fresh military coup in Austria, closing a very tense period which saw the Social Democrats lose power in 1932, in the wake of the German civil war, brings in power a German-friendly government, headed by the aged marshall von Boehm-Ermolli. Italy is less than pleased but, its forces hands full in Ethiopia and relations strained with both France and Britain, has to back down, being reassured of German friendly intentions and of no plans of annexation.
The Spanish Civil war at its beginnings sees the Nationalist side supported covertly by the US, Germany and Portugal and openly by Mussolini's Italy and Trujillo's Dominican "Republic". France, weakly supporting the Republicans, like Mexico, risks crumbling into civil war in its turn over the issue; Britain stays rigidly neutral. The Soviet Union tries its best to help the Republicans, trying to avoid the shameful failure of Germany five years before and reenter the international stage; she manages to stave off a quick defeat of the legitimate government with her modern tanks and planes and military consellors, acting discreetly in Spanish politics because of the very complex situation.
In the US Compton is reelected in a landslide against a discredited Republican ticket lynched by an ever less free press.
In Britain, the major scandal of the relationship between king Edward VIII and the American socialite Wallis Simpson, actually an agent of Compton's newly established Foreign Information Bureau as it came out several decades later, ends with the abdication of the king-emperor in favor of his brother Albert, who'll take the style of George VI, enlarging, if neeeded, what is by now known as the Atlantic Rift between Britain and the US.
The second naval conference in London fails to reach an agreement, leading to a renewed arms race on the seas.
When the Soviets annex Sinkiang as the federal socialist republic of Uighuristan, Nationalist China breaks diplomatic relationships with them, while instead heavily relying on the US and Germany.

March, 21st 1937
In Washington President Compton receives Reichskanzler Diercks: the two sign the Freedom Chart, a non-binding political accord on a “rights of nationalities” base. More importantly, Germany secures steady supply of precious resources and renewed investment in its now booming economy, while the US is still experiencing difficulties in the depressed agricultural Midwest and the poor South.

May 1937
Germany and Italy, in a series of diplomatic meetings held at Rapallo and Konstanz, build the bases of a secret alliance, with strong economic and military exchanges, and divide the Balkans among them in matter of influence, with Italy being acknowledged as interested in the SW (Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece) and Germany in the NE (Hungary, Romania). Austria is to remain independent, at least formally, not to touch Italian susceptibility. Inconclusive talks are held regarding the South Tyrolean question.
Lithuania, under strong pressure from Germany to cede back the coastal town of Memel/Klaipeda, and in turn always bent on recovering Vilnius from Poland, signs its participation into the Bruxelles Pact, thinking it good guarantee against German strong-arming.
Thanks to the efforts of foreign minister Litvinov, the Soviet Union is eventually admitted to the League of Nations. Despite strong British objections the French found the move conducive to a cautious cooperation in the Spanish issue, on which the Soviets seem well disposed.

July, 7th 1937
Marco Polo Bridge Incident: the Japanese start a massive invasion of Nationalist China, at first with crushing success.

August 8th, 1937
Nippo-Soviet non-aggression pact and territory swap. The Soviet Union cedes some marginal disputed territory along the Amur river and in easternmost Mongolia in exchange for the two northernmost Kurile islands. The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia is acknowledged as "neutral" territory to be left to its own warlords. Furthermore, the Japanese and the Chinese Communists are supposed not to fight each other; a rule that will hold, save in local bloody “incidents” due to local reaction to the invaders' brutality. That will limit Japanese advance no further than the Huang He in NW China.

August-September, 1937
In the first battle for Saragossa the Spanish Nationalist rebels get a morale-boosting defensive victory.
The US grant formal independence to the Philippines, while at the same time building up there a military presence, mainly naval, to confront the aggressive expansionism of Japan and keep on helping the Chinese in their desperate struggle.

December, 12th 1937
The Panay incident irrevocably wounds Japanese-American relationships. Japan apologizes, but refuses to pay a high indemnity and to punish those involved as requested in strong terms by the US government. President Compton has by now characterized his foreign politics as aimed to stem the “yellow peril” (Japan), the “red menace” (the Soviets and Republican Spain) and the “imperialist warmongers” (Britain, France).

December 1937-January 1938
The fierce Battle of Teruel, fought in unusual winter frost, ends in another Nationalist success, albeit to a heavy cost. Soviet help to the Republican side of the Spanish conflict is hampered by Italian submarine "black operations" in the Mediterranean, quietly ignored by most countries involved.
The US enact an oil embargo against Japan. The Japanese react by concluding favorable trade accords with the Soviets, at the price of withdrawing part of their Kwangtung Army from Manchukuo and formally recognizing (Outer) Mongolia.

March-April 1938
The Spanish Nationalist army sweeps Aragon in a successful offensive, helped by American and German war materials and Italian "volunteer" (read: regular) troops and airplanes: they actually cut the surviving Republican territory in two, reaching the Mediterranean. The Italian air force (Regia Aeronautica) devastates Barcelona in wave after wave of purely terroristic attacks that kill hundreds. Worried, the conservative French government reopens the border to the influx of weapons for the Republican side and dispatches a small "surveillance" fleet to protect the Republican ports from Italian aggression.
About 4,000 American volunteers who are fighting for the Republicans are deprived of US citizenship by executive order of President Compton, only to be made Spanish citizens by the Republic – and for the first time in the US someone begins noticing how much the political climate has degraded, but it's way too late to counteract.
In China the Japanese, after taking and horrendously "raping" Nanking, are stopped cold in their advance: the Chinese receive help from a number of American volunteer pilots and are relatively better equipped then OTL, if always quite incompetent and corrupt. Public opinion in Europe and North America is shocked by the horrors of Nanking and Japan suffers diplomatic isolation.

May 14th, 1938
The Italian submarine Vettor Pisani doesn't return from a ("secret") mission in the waters off Valencia, supposedly attacked and sunk while surfacing as per the last radio message. A few hours after that, aircraft from the Italian bases at Maiorca hit the French cruiser Pluton, who is watching local shipping lanes for the Spanish Republicans. The ship burns fiercely for hours, then explodes and sinks with the loss of more than 200 men.

May-June 1938
France asks for immediate withdrawal of all Italian forces from Spain. Mussolini won't back down. Both countries, public opinions in flames, partially mobilize their armed forces, withdraw their ambassadors and close their common border, while remaining still short of war. The crisis is grave and remains on the first pages of the world's newspapers.

June 7th, 1938
Without consulting the British, French regular forces cross into Catalonia and the Basque Country "to protect French interests and Spanish sovereignity" and to fight the Italians. This is considered the beginning of the Second World War.

June-July, 1938
About 100,000 men are dispatched to Spain by France; the rest of the French Army vigilates on the Maginot Line and the Alps, as the Germans mobilize a screening force along the Karl der Grosse Stellung (*OTL Siegfrid Line) and mass their still limited tank forces around Czechoslovakia and the Italians hastily prepare for war behind their mountains. Actually the Germans calculate that the Western Allies won't attack before spring 1939, with Britain still largely at peacetime level – a correct assumption, compounded by the political thorn of the unilateral French intervention in Spain. The Soviets, sensing the dangers of the situation, extract their “military counsellors” from the country, leaving in place only the war materials and a few pilots; they also get part of the Spanish gold reserves in payment of their substantial help and take with them thousands of war orphans from several regions. Their ships now avoid the Med for the safer Atlantic route to and from Murmansk and Archangel'sk. The Italians don't budge, but withdraw their men well beyond the Ebro river.

June, 27th 1938
The US destroyer Gwin, while taking part in an aggressive sweep to chase Jap subs operating against traffic in the South China Sea, is gravely hit, with the loss of 36 lives, by the Japanese cruiser Tenryu. Once again the government of Tokyo refuse to compensate, and this time also refuse to apologize.
Diplomatic relationships are broken a few days later as America escalates military and economic help to China.

July 7th, 1938
After a full month of frantic negotiations, with good-faith efforts to mediate especially by Sweden and, discreetly, by the Netherlands, and an ignored three-day ultimatum to withdraw from Spain, Italy and Germany declare war on France. This implies war with all of France's allies in the Bruxelles Pact: a painfully surprised Britain, to the last desiring a peaceful resolution of the Spanish issue; a frightened Belgium; beleaguered Czechoslovakia and Lithuania. For the moment, Germany's other allies, including puppet Austria, won't enter the fray, at least formally.
By now in Spain the French have steamrolled in the Basque Country, crushing Nationalist positions there in conjunction with a partisan revolt, cleared the Aragon section of the Pyrenees from the enemy and crossed Catalonia to the Ebro. They had sometimes to fight with anarchist militias not too happy with their presence, and sporadically fought against Italian Blackshirt rearguards on the Saragossa front, where they still haven't pressed an offensive in a last hope to avoid open war.

July, 8th, 1938
The Spanish government (the legitimate Republican one, that is) declares war on Germany and Italy... automatically involving Germany's allies (Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia) as per the Danzig Treaty (which is defensive in nature). These countries, however, are NOT at war with the Franco-British Alliance, and have no men in Spain – or better, the only ones they have... are fighting with the International Brigades on the Republican side!
The US mobilize their fleet(s) and, partly, the National Guard. Mexico, friendly to the Soviets, declares armed neutrality but begins mobilization. So does Switzerland, its Parliament appointing Henri Guisan as General of the army.

July, 9-10th, 1938
Italy attacks the French fleet by air with two fierce, spectacular raids on Toulon, sinking two cruisers and three destroyers in port with the loss of more than 800 seaman and dozens of civilians. The French answer by swiftly bombing Genoa, Savona and other targets of opportunity in Liguria by air and sea: a slap in the face for Mussolini, whose troops begin an all-out attack along the rugged Alpine range, with little hope of decisive successes in front of the modern French fortifications and artillery. The Italian Alpine front is under the overall nominal command of Umberto, the heir to the throne, assisted by the aged and expert Marshall of Italy, Enrico Caviglia, and under the supervision of Chief of Staff Badoglio (whom Caviglia personally loathes after certain... misunderstandins at Caporetto and Fiume years before).
The French government issues orders for the internment of tens of thousands of alien residents and immigrants of Italian and German ethnicity, plus of thousands of French nationals suspected of sympathies for Italy and Germany in the Nice area and Alsace. In all, about 50,000 will be subject to several degrees of restriction of their freedom.
Prague is targeted by diving bombers in the first terror attacks of the war, with limited loss of life but great panic and widespread damage to its artistic heritage.
The Germans are having a hard time overcoming the Sudeten fortified area, but are helped by the armed insurgency of the ethnic Germans in the area and by the indirect menace maintained in the south by the Austrian army, technically still at peace but fully mobilized and ready.
The British, reluctantly, recognize the existence of a state of war, mobilize their forces and reintroduce conscription after a last pitiful diplomatic attempt to induce the Germans to withdraw from their invasion of Czechoslovakia. The government of sir Neville Chamberlain falls right after having declared the war to leave place to an emergency cabinet of national unity led by the conservative stalwart Lord Halifax, but for the first time including also noted Laburists, some of which are highly sympathetic to Soviet Russia.

July, 11th, 1938
The Italians enter the bilingual French border town of Mentone, but cannot secure the high ground to the west.
The French bomb Karlsruhe and Mannheim, to moderate damage and a handful of civilians killed, in revenge for the attacks upon Prague. The German Luftwaffe is therefore ordered from the HROK (Highest Imperial Oberkommando) to abstain, at least for now, from further attacks on cities, and the order is quietly passed to the enemy through neutral channels (Switzerland) in the following days.
The Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica attack Gibraltar with dive and level bombers, causing relevant damage and the sinking of the cruiser Arethusa and the destroyer Faulknor.
In Italian Libya, Governor Balbo, foremost Fascist leader and noted Anglophile, orders the strictest defensive: forces are insufficient to mount any attack on French, or, for that, British positions, with any security.
The governments of Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany, Italy and their allies, while their possible contribution is limited due other, more pressing concerns in the Pacific. Canada and South Africa do not to follow suit, much to the wrath of Britain, due to local concerns - namely and respectively, fear of the US and of another round of civil disturbances after The Troubles, and concern over the possibile pro-German feelings of the Boers.

July, 14th, 1938
The French evacuate the border town of Sospel, but the Italians cannot occupy it, finding themselves under a veritable rain of artillery shells from the moutain forts.
A French naval division of destroyers sailed from Bizerte bombs the harbor and city of Tripoli, Libya, sinking a merchant ship and fishing vessels and killing 44.
French fighters reinforce the air wing of Malta, threatened by a possibile Italian landing and subject to daily bombing from Sicily.
On the Czech front, after the first days of slow grinding in the north by the Army Group A (von Leeb) with combined operaton by mountain troops, regulars and dive bombers, the true German attack led by Army Group B (von Rundstedt), Unternehmen Eisenhammer, unleashes from Bavaria heading into the Klattau-Strakonitz area, south of Pilsen, with two armored spearheads (Guderian and Kleist), advancing fast despite the difficult woody and hilly terrain and catching the Czech defenders by surprise.
Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart is named as the overall commander of the British expedition corps on the continent (more on political than military reasons): he'll set up command at Ypres, Belgium, arriving with the first British troops. The Belgian army still hasn't fired as shot against Germany, apart some minor patrol skirmishes at the border. An attack against Aachen was considered, and rejected out of hand as suicidal.

July, 14th-August, 2nd, 1938
The hard-fought Battle of Castillon Pass ends in a French defensive success: the Italian advance in the south is stalled on the mountains just a few miles inside France.
The French occupy Spanish Morocco in a short fierce campaign. On the 31 st of July, a battalion of US Marines occupies the international city of Tangiers before the French can reach it, moving the surviving Spanish "African" units to the mainland; a tense Franco-American standoff ensues.
The British reinforce their Gibraltar garrison, put under the command of sir Edmund Ironside; while keeping in port a squadron of destroyers, major units are redirected to Malta, Haifa and Alexandria to avoid the worst from the frequent attacks of the Italian and German planes stationed in rebel Spain. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Lord Gort, and First Sea Lord Alfred Chatfield, together with their French counerparts generalissmo Gamelin and admiral Darlan, hurriedly plan an operation against Nationalist-held Andalusia to secure the Rock once and for all: it's a run against time as the Italians, partly tied by the French in the north, try to redeploy assets south for a joint assault together with Franco's crack troops.
French forces repeatedly bomb Nationalist Maiorca (an Italian base) by air and sea, losing a couple destroyers to sub and air attacks in the process.

July, 16-19th, 1938
The battle of Horaschdowitz sees the functional destruction of the Third Czech army by the armored and motorized German units, with the capture of over 20,000 prisoner and great amounts of precious war materiel.
A squadron of the British Home Fleet reaches San Sebastiàn in Spain.
Repeated Italian air attack target the port of Bizerte, damaging the city and killing dozens of civilians but with little result on the ships.

July, 17th-30th, 1938
The French army, now almost fully mobilized, tries an abortive limited invasion of the Saarland, only to renounce it and retreat after marginal gains and considerable casualties against the German fortified positions.
Italian colonial forces advance in a pincher movement against the French port of Djibouti, from Assab along the coast, and from the Harar region. The column on the coast is hampered by the joint effort of British and French vessels, who in a series of sharp engagements deny the Italians control over the all-important Bab el Mandeb strait, key to the Red Sea and the Suez canal. The Italians lose to accidents and to fighting four "oceanic" submarines, a couple destroyers and a handful of their few and precious airplanes; the British lament the sinking of a destroyer, the French the loss of some minor craft. Djibouti comes however under close menace by the inland column led by general Maletti.

July 18th, 1938
The Italians take the important position of the col de Brouis in the Maritime Alps, de facto isolating from easy access the powerful enemy fortifications in Val Roya. The French, trying to preserve their forces for the true battle against Germany, cannot but contain the Fascist advance, aimed to control the Sospel basin in the Bevera valley and cut Nice from the Roya valley. The French command, under general Olry, tries to stop the Italians along a line from Roquebrune/Roccabruna to Sospel/Sospello and Breil/Breglio.

July-August 1938
The Franco-British establish a renewed naval blockade around Germany, in the hope it will starve once again the country into defeat in the long run.
Poor tiny Lithuania finds herself in a terrible quagmire, surrounded by formal (Germany) or theoretical (Poland, Latvia) enemies and carefully avoiding any provocation. Neither Germany, its hands full in Czechoslovakia and shoulders dangerously exposed in the West, nor her allies bother to attack Lithuania, hoping instead to undermine her government and replace it with a pro-German one. In the meantime German naval units blockade the ports of Libau and Memel.
In Spain the second battle of Saragossa proves a carnage, razing the city: the French give artillery, air and tank support, the Spanish Republicans the greater part of the cannon fodder, mostly from the disposable International Brigades. The same happens with Italians and Nationalists on the other side, only this time it's almost always Spaniards who go over the top first, and six feet under later.
The Republicans try to get back Cantabria and Santander, but their attempt, despite the support of the French navy and of partisans in the mountains, is defeated.
Generalissimo Franco flatly refuses to detach his crack troops to assault Gibraltar, fearing direct confrontation with the British and decrying, to the rage of his German and Italian allies, involvement into a wider war to the expense of his feud with the "red" Spaniards, not to say the devastating loss of his beloved Spanish Morocco as a consequence.
Portugal is intimidated by Franco-British naval "demonstrations" into reducing its help to the Nationalists. Salazar's government begin secret negotiations with the United States.
In the Mediterranean Mussolini's admirals do not dare for the moment being to confront the French, let alone the British: for all purposes the Italian forces in Spain, numbering some 50,000 men, are isolated, but well protected American convoys now regularly ship fuel, food and small weapons to the Nationalist side.
On the Italo-French front, hamhanded Italian attempts to break out in the highest sectors of the Western Alps, often from very high passes, cost good men among the elite Alpini mountain infantry and bring little result. Patrol fights happen even on the high glaciers of Mont Blanc. Overall, the Italians manage to descend into the upper Arc valley from the Mont Cenise, taking Lanslebourg and menacing Modane, which holds, and to occupy the highest Isère valley, while the Piccolo San Bernardo pass and nearby Bourg-Saint Maurice remain impregnable. They also manage to occupy the upper Vésubie, with the little town of Saint-Martin. The French in their turn manage to occupy the upper Varaita and Maira valleys, only to be soon chased beyond the crest; they also, after a prolonged hard contest, wrench control over the easy Maddalena/Larche col and plateau, securing the upper Ubaye, and of the Vallone d'Orgials and the sanctuary of Sant'Anna, indirectly menacing the Stura di Demonte valley.
In Lybia a war of fast patrols, both meharists and motorized, is fought on the Franco-Italian colonial border, with the French menacing to cut the Tripoli-Nalut road. Along the Egyptian border, the Italians lose, to heavy casualties, the border post of Fort Capuzzo, but successfully repel a raid against Giarabub (al-Jaghbub). Repeated Italian air attacks on Alexandria force the British to move part of the fleet in safer waters, to Suez and Haifa. Both parts refrain fro major operations, apparently impossibile in the unsufferable climate and harsh Saharan environment without special logistic preparation.
In China, Japan (with its army) and the US (with its volunteer pilots and hundreds of "counsellors" attached to fighting units from regiment to army group) fight by now an undeclared war, with a “no prisoners” policy on both parts. The facade of diplomatic relations is however strangely maintained, despite the recall of the respective ambassadors for neverending “consultations”. In their mainland, the Americans prepare a small expedition corps to directly bolster Chiang's forces in the south.

July 22th, 1938
The fall of Pribram signals the unhingement of the Czech southern front and sparks a panic in Prague, where the government begins making preparations to abandon the city, while desperately appealing to the Allies for any move which may relieve the situation. But neither the cautious French, the frightened Belgians or the titubating British can really help Czechoslovakia. The French have sent some fifty fighters in nightly flights through the gauntlet of the Luftwaffe, and a handful have been sent by the English, but it's a drop in the ocean against the 2,000 modern airplanes of the Luftwaffe dominating the skies and terrorizing soldiers and civilians alike.

July 23th, 1938
The old marshall von Boehm-Ermolli, who has tried to avoid involvement in the conflict for Austria, on pressure from Diercks is replaced by Engelbert Dollfuss, a rightist Catholic and admirer of Mussolini, more pliant to the desires of Germany and Italy.

July, 24th, 1938
The first German units reach the defensive perimeter of Prague from the south. The Fitst Czech army is hurriedly recalled back from its commitment in the north, where its fighting withdrawal has bloodied the nose of two german armies; several forts in the Sudeten are still successfully defying the invaders and have to be abandoned to their doom. The Czech government and president Benes relocate in chaos to Brno.
The Italian forces manage, with heavy losses, to surround the French mountain fortress of Monte Grosso between Sospel and the Brouis col.
After a short, bloody fight and a convincing demonstrative bombardment by a couple cruisers, a landing party of the French Navy receives the surrender of the Italian island of Lampedusa, in the center of the Mediterranean.

July 27th, 1938
The Royal Air Force Spanish Squadron, about 60 fighter and bomber plane strong, is formed in northern France, whence it will quickly reach first the area of Bilbao, then that of Valencia, on the Mediterranean.

July 28th-August 1st, 1938
The battle of Mlada Boleslav sees the crushing of the corridor around Prague, which is now under siege, and made the target of long-range artillery.
The Italians manage to take Monte Grosso.

July 29th, 1938
Austria and Hungary enter the fray, sealing the agony of Czechoslovakia with a simultaneous invasion Moravia, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia which cost them a declaration of war from the Bruxelles Alliance, and politically moves neutral Romania closer to the Franco-British field – also to counter Soviet designs over Bessarabia. The Austrian launch their spearhead towards Brno, in conjunction with a German paratroop operation that nearly fails the objective of capturing the Czech government, once again forced to flee, this time to Olomouc. The Hungarians drive towards Bratislava, Kassa/Kosice, Munkacs/Mukachevo. While the Austrians do not encounter much resistance, the Hungarians do; they'll commit some brutal reprisals against captured prisoners and hostages in several Slovak towns.

July 30th, 1938
British Swordfish torpedo bombers sink the Italian anti-aircraft cruiser San Giorgio off Tobruk, Libya, to the loss of a couple airplanes.

July 31st, 1938
In Spain, the Republican and French forces unleash the Ebro offensive in a surprise attack without any artillery preparation, and supported with tanks.
In Africa, Italian colonial forces from Ethiopia occupy the Sudanese border town of Kassala and Gallabat against light resistance, but get no further, being too weak and cumbersome for major operations.

August 1st, 1938
Polish forces in turn occupy part of Czech Silesia, entering in force the towns of Cieszyn and Ostrava. After repulsing the German paratrooper units, Brno falls to the 1st Austrian motorized division.
Austrian forces occupy Bratislava without a fight, anticipating the Hungarians: a thorny issue for the signatories of the Treaty of Danzig.
In the Horn of Africa, the British decide to evacuate their possession of British Somalia just as the Italians seem ready to attack through it, joining their small colonial force, mostly Indian, to the beleaguered French garrison of Djibouti.

August 3rd, 1938
France and Great Britain break diplomatic relations with Poland, declining to declare war on yet another enemy. Especially for France this is a humiliation, in the light of the long and close relationship between the French and Polish armies from 1920 to 1934.
The Czech president Benes, the government (save the prime minister) and part of the higher command abandon the country by plane, taking refuge at first in Romania whence they'll reach first Egypt, then France.
The Italians manage to take the town of Sospel/Sospello, controlling the middle Bevera valley, and the Mangiabo mountain; the French resist in the Agaisen fort of their Alpine line, directly overlooking the town, and south of the city at the Castillon forts.

August 6th, 1938
By employing their air wing to keep the dominant Franco-British ships' artillery at bay, and pounding with light camel-trained guns, the Italians manage to force the surrender of Djibouti, in what is now their most notable success. The Duce is elated.
The British, after easily repulsing Italian patrols, confirm their decision to evacuate Somaliland, this time directly to Aden.

August 8th, 1938
The Italians overrun the Roccabruna fort west of Mentone, putting their gun sights on neutral French-occupied Monaco; but they remain under the enemy guns of Sainte-Agnés and Mont Agel, unable to advance further.
German Fall Gelb, the plan to invade Belgium, Luxemburg and northern France, is given the green light by the HROK. It is scheduled for the 1st of April, 1939, barring bad weather or other intervening factors. The higher German command, while elated by the brilliant success against Czechoslovakia, is however still daunted at the idea of tackling France. The plan of the General Staff aims to attract north the mobile part of the Anglo-French armies to smash them through a battle of movement with active and superior air support and tank tactics, gaining the leverage to impose a favorable peace. The option of invading the Netherlands to gain air bases against England has been evaluated, and rejected out of political, rather than military, considerations. The Dutch have strong economic connections with both Britain and the US, and could be more useful as neutral ground, buffer and provider of colonial goods; they were invaluable, furthermore, in the years following the civil war.

August 10th, 1938
The French withdraw their units from Val Roya (Breglio and Saorgio), after destroying their border forts, to the strong Alpine Line fortress network of the Authion massif, with an advanced strongpoint at Colla Bassa.
In Spain, after some of the hardest fighting of the civil war, the French and Republicans manage to chase the Nationalists from the coast between Valencia and Barcelona, in a brilliant if costly success that gives new hope to the Republic. The real losers are however, strategically and politically, the Italians, almost absent from the battlefield, apart as air support.
Marshall of Czechoslovakia Jan Syrovy, the war cabinet's prime minister and only member of the government to remain, surrenders Prague and its 100,000 defenders to the German besiegers, seeing no hope whatsover in the continuation of the struggle.

August 12th-13th, 1938
A pro-German coup attempt, led by the brothers Ignas and Edvardas Adamkavicius, fails spectacularly at Kaunas, Lithuania. They manage to free from jail Augustinas Voldemaras, leader of the fascist Iron Wolves movement and author of another failed coup in 1934, but president Antanas Smetona manages to flee to safety and a general strike proclaimed by the (undergound) socialist trade unions paralizes the capital's services. When loyal army units march upon Kaunas and the populace takes up arms against the coup plotters, the brothers are captured and summarily shot. Voldemaras instead manges to flee to Sweden, and later to Germany, by boat, together with a handful of followers. The German army, uninformed of the details of the coup attempt despite it being organized under the auspices of the RND (the German secret service, headed by Rudolf Diels), doesn't move immediately from its border positions along the Niemen river; frantic consultations are held with Poland for a common action.

August 12th-23rd, 1938
A harsh battle is fought on the Mangiabo mountain, soon rebaptized "Mangiauomini" (Maneater) by the Italians, and around Fort Agaisen, as the French Chasseur des Alpes counterattack to deny the enemy control over the Sospel basin, key position to menace the Nice hinterland. The Italians lament important losses and have to end any offensive operation.

August 14th, 1938
German and Polish troops cross the Lithuanian border at dawn against strong resistance. The Germans lack armor, employing an infantry and cavalry army corps, and very little air cover; the Poles send their two best divisions of the army, and almost no aviation. German cruisers shell the port of Libau, which is then occupied by a detachment of marine infantry after a sharp engagement with the coastal forts.
A desperate treaty of military assistance is signed between the reshuffled Lithuanian government of president Smetona, now including socialist elements, and the Soviet Union. The accord explicitly recognized and confirms Lithuania's independence. Lithuania, while till now vehemently anti-Communist, is literally surrounded: now invaded by both Germany and Poland, it cannot even count on its sister nation Latvia, strictly allied to the Germans. In the evening, hundreds of lightly armed Soviet paratroopers are dropped around Kaunas military airport, in what is the first instance of use of such troops, and from the night several Soviet transports fly in to bolster the defences of the capital.

August 15th, 1938
The second battle of Saragossa ends, after some 30,000 fatalities between military and civilian, the ruined city falling to the French-Republican assailants. For the elated Republicans this is another major success, still, hardly the decisive one.
The Italians, after receiving some bombers from Germany, under air coverage land troops on the eastern shore of Corsica in three points, namely around Aleria, Solenzara and Porto-Vecchio. The last attempt is a bloody failure and is recalled with losses of men and material, whereas the first two are easy successes. Fascist propaganda roars appeals for the Corsicans, Italian-speakers, to rebel against the secular oppressor, but to little avail. Italian bombers hammer Bastia and Toulon as Italian subs draw a “ring of death” around the Isle of Beauty who gave birth to the genius of Napoleon.
The last fighting units of the Czechoslovakian army surrender to the Hungarians at Banska Bystrica. In little more than a month, to the cost of less than 15,000 fallen soldiers for the enemy, Czechoslovakia is no more. About 20,000 men from its army and some dozen planes from the air force managed to take refuge in neutral Romania, whence they'll be readily dispatched to France by ship to avoid further embarrassment.
 
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Indeed, I should have published only the part till the Lithuanian quagmire burst, so I've cut the rest out.
 
Update - hope it won't need any retcon.


August 16th, 1938
Great Britain, France and Belgium, plus the exiled Czechoslovakian government, declare war on Poland, thus involving all the Danzig Treaty signatories.
The concentric German-Polish advance almost surrounds Kaunas, whence the Lithuanian government and president Smetona evacuate to safer Panevezys. An extremely complex situation develops, as attacking the city would mean war with the Soviet Union - a development that the Polish fire-eaters would welcome, much less the Germans, only now suddenly worried by the perspective of a renewed two-front war.
The government of Latvia strongly protests the violation of its airspace by Soviet military aircraft shuttling to and from Lithuania.

August 17th, 1938
The German force around Kaunas, on orders from above, stops its advance and digs in, subject to no counterattack. It's the Poles instead who attack en masse towards the Lithuanian forts and the airfield held by hundreds of Soviet troops: an armored car battalion sweep is followed by a regular cavalry charge sabre in hand. The subsequent bloodbath of man and horses does little to improve Polish-Soviet relations, but the city's defenses hold and the attack is called back.
In Vilnius/Wilno local ethnic Lithuanians aligned stage an insurrection targeting prominent Poles and the Jews in general; they're however caught in the passage of army units who return fire. A massacre with hundreds of victims will happen in the following days.
Sweden reaffirms its sincere commitment to neutrality and desire for peace in secret talks with the Soviets and the Anglo-French, both eager to have the Scandinavians on their side for strategic reasons.

August 18th, 1938
In Moscow the Soviet government, while closing the border with Poland and eventually beginning mobilization, decides to stop the flow of reinforcements by air into Lithuania rather than risk open war with Germany. The only option remaining is an invasion of eastern Latvia to open a land corridor. That would be feasible, as would be a limited conflict with Poland; much less a war with Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Germany - plus, likely, Finland. The situation requires, after showing a strong hand, the utmost tact, so Kirov decides to swallow the bitter pill and open talks for a possibile neutralization/demilitarization of Lithuania.

August 20th, 1938
The Conference of Nuremberg, attended by Diercks, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Horthy and the polish foreign minister Beck, carves Czechoslovakia among its victors and deals with the almost intractable Lithuanian issue. Germany and Austria annex the Sudetenland, the areas (mostly) inhabited by ethnic Germans; Poland takes Cieszyn and Ostrava; Hungary, still bitter over the Austrian occupation of Bratislava, receives Subcarpathian Ruthenia in its entirety and several border districts of Slovakia inhabited by the numerous Magyar minority. Slovakia is erected into an "independent" national state, for the first time in history; it is actually a German puppet. Central and eastern Bohemia and most of Moravia remain occupied by the German and Austrian armies, under an administration based at Prague. The invaders' rule is severe, if tolerable. Mussolini takes note of the Hungarians' bitterness to take them to his own side, and requests for more German assistance in natural resources, aviation motors, more of the effective Stuka dive bombers and, to the insistence of marshal Badoglio, the army Chief of Staff, present with his German colleague Ludwig Beck, a small motorized colonial expedition corps to help defend Lybia from the Franco-British and eventually attack either Tunisia or Egypt. About Lithuania, where fighting has subsided around the embattled Kaunas, Germany's allies are discreetly informed about the Soviet's overture for a neutralized Lithuania, to be evacuated by all parts involved and stripped of most of its army and heavy weapons. It is now to Germany and Poland to decide what to do, with the former exerting heavy pressure on the excited Poles to avoid open war in the east. At least for now.
In Corsica, the Italian force landed at Solenzara has slowly worked its way to defensive positions at Bavella Pass in the mountain, while advancing south to Porto-Vecchio; the Aleria-based one, reinforced steadily as per the logistical possibilities of the Italian navy, is advancing on the route to Corte, the island's ancient capital in the mountainous interior. French resistance is strong but episodic; reinforcements are being sent piecemeal from Marseille and Toulon to Ajaccio and Calvi to counter the invasion, while submarines are charged with hampering the Italians' sea lanes.

August 24th, 1938
An improvised Italian landing in the south of Corsica ends in the surrender of the ancient fortress town of Bonifacio, under the guns of the convoy's destroyers.
The British leave Berbera, the capital of Somaliland, in an impeccable, uncontrasted evacuation towards Aden. The Italians receive the keys of the city and a note of the British commander with a sarcastic request to preserve his house's furniture in good order for when he's back.

August 25th, 1938
After some very tense days and renewed bouts of fighting, not made more pleasant by the first news about Vilnius' revolt, an agreement is reached between the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany on the Lithuanian issue.
Maksim Litvinov resigns from his post as Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, being replaced with Karl Radek.

August 27th, 1938
The naval battle of Punta Spano, Corsica: in a chance encounter at dawn, the big guns of the still uncomplete reconstructed Italian battleship Caio Duilio sink the French cruiser La Motte-Picquet, the destroyer Volta and a troop transport that had just discharged soldiers to Calvi, with the loss of more than 400 sailors and officers. An Italian destroyer is damaged; another, the Espero, explodes later in the day in the waters off Livorno when torpedoed by a French submarine, with the loss of all hands.
Inland, the Italians manage to capture Corte after sharp fighting, effectively cutting in two the defense of the island. The Italian command decides to concentrate its about 15,000 men, under the leadership of general Annibale "Barba Elettrica" Bergonzoni, recently recalled from Spain, for the conquest of the southern part of Corsica, to be preceded by an attack against the capital, Ajaccio.

August 28th, 1938
The Treaty of Varna, known to Lithuanians as "Judas' Treaty", is signed in the Bulgarian resort town on the Black Sea between representants of Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union. According to the terms, the three powers are to withdraw their armed forces from Lithuanian territory, except Memel, finally recognized as German by the Soviets (as they recognize Vilnius/Wilno as Polish), before October 1st, 1938; the Lithuanian army is to be reduced to 5,000 men and is bound to leave most of its heavy weaponry (beyond 20mm caliber) and military aircraft to a neutral power (Sweden is chosen). In particular, the city of Kaunas and the port of Libau will be completely demilitarized, and the respective forts stripped of their weapons. No provisions are made for the government of the country, where president Smetona can go on ruling; Lithuania's allegiance to the Bruxelles Pact is declared to be "null and void" (a bit too late, since Poland is now technically at war with France, Britain & Co.). The three signatory powers pledge not to interfere anymore into Lithuanian politics, and to respect the independence of the country.
The price paid especially by the Soviet Union is high, but avoiding a war to be fought in unfavorable conditions, in the eyes of Kirov and Radek, was worth it, while the Red Army with Tukhachevsky, and Trotskij himself, are fuming. Franco-British reaction to the treaty is predictably harsh and a veil of frost again descends over diplomatic relations between Moscow and the Western powers.

August 29th, 1938
The two remaining destroyers of the Italian Red Sea flotilla end as coral reef for the fish after an ill-fated attempt to transfer from Massaua to Djibouti gets intercepted by aeronaval British surveillance in the Bab el Mandeb strait. The Italian fleet in the area is now vastly reduced, having only a cople of submarines, some minor craft and a dozen or so MAS (torpedo boats). The local command in Massaua will decide therefore to mine the strait to hamper the enemy's movement, while, a cople thousand kilometers north, no mines have still been deployed into the Suez canal.

August 30th, 1938
In Corsica, Porto-Vecchio falls to the Italians. On the eastern coast, only the old fortress town of Bastia remains in French hands.

August 31st, 1938
French and British landing on the island of Maiorca, with two battalions of French marine infantry and one of Royal Marines supported by a fleet of two cruisers and four destroyers with strong air support. The Italian air wing, having been much reduced in on-and-off fighting and little supported from the continent because of other needs elsewhere, can't prevent the enemy from closing in. The Balearic islands are secured, in a clear strategic success for the Bruxelles Pact.
A French submarine sinks a US tanker off Cadice, in Nationalist-held Andalusia, with the loss of a dozen lives in the subsequent explosion.

September 1st, 1938
Just when the Franco-British were secretly beginning to hope to localize the war in Spain and the Mediterranean and "congeal" somehow the situation with Germany, in Washington DC, President Compton fumes at the news of the Cadice Incident: the US break diplomatic relationships with France loudly denouncing French “meddling” in Spain. (Italian and German meddling had been conveniently forgotten/forgiven). Compton also orders a task force to be sent to southern Spain by convoy. The command of the land force, calculated to about 6,000 strong and made up of a cavalry regiment and a motorized one, will be entrusted to a recently promoted gung-ho brigade general, a veteran of WWI, George Patton. A second marine battalion is to be sent to reinforce the garrison already in the "international city" of Tangiers. The aim is to help the Spanish Nationalists in the general area of Cadice-Gibraltar and secure access to at least SW Spain.
The French higher command authorizes the draft of an autumn operation, Plan D14, to chase back the Italians from the few high valleys and headwaters they occupied in the summer, being thenceon mostly incapable of advancing. The objective of this move is not so much the liberation of little populated border areas of limited importance in the rugged Alpine sector, but the capture of some of the best Italian mountain troops and a blow to the enemy's self-confidence.

September 2nd, 1938
In Corsica, the Italians invest and capture the high Col de Vizzavona and the nearby heights of Monte d'Oro and Pic l'Uriente on the route to Ajaccio.

September 4th, 1938
The Royal Navy agrees in principle to help in an operation to provide help, transport troops and, in case, cover a retreat from Corsica, provided the French put some of their Mediterranean ports at disposal. The means to help the French keep the island, however, are very limited.

September 6th, 1938
In a meeting at Guadalajara, Spanish Republican generalissimo Miaja and his right hand Vicente Rojo work out with the French commander of the Spanish front, general Doumenc, the plan for a limited joint offensive against Navarre. The objective is to completely clear the Pyrenees of Nationalists, deny air bases to Germans and Italians and most of all reestablish territorial continuity between the the rest of the Republic and the Basque Lands, where lehendakari Aguirre, back from exile, has established an independence de facto much to the annoyance of both Paris and Madrid.
In Corsica, the French improvised defense of the Monte Renosu-Tavera linea falls by encircling from the north, forcing a withdrawal into Ajaccio's fortified camp under the hammering of Italian and German planes. French efforts to provide air cover to the defenders are half-hearted at best, the air force being mustered for the future clash with the worrying might of the German Luftwaffe.

September 10th, 1938
An Italian column from southern Ethiopia occupies the border town of Moyale, Kenya; another one from Somalia conquers the fort of El Wak, cutting the base of the Mandera Triangle.

September 12th, 1938
Almost disobeying to governor Balbo, the military commander of the Italian tenth Army, Rodolfo Graziani, occupies the Egyptian border town of Sollum, abandoned by the British, after heavy air bombardment and an artillery barrage worth well other war aims. "It's like using a grenade to break an egg" comments dryly the British theater commander fo the Middle East, sir William Dobbie. The Italians, after this show of force, won't advance further.

September 14th, 1938
Bergonzoli's "colonna celere" enters Ajaccio, Corsica, after some days of sporadic but sharp fighting. The British Royal Marine force formerly at Maiorca, some 1200 strong, lands at Calvi, in the north of the island, together with a French regular and a Foreign Legion battalion, despite ineffective air and sub attacks against the convoy.

September 14th-18th, 1938
A French attempt to regain the border town of Mentone is frustrated by fierce Italian resistance, despite the support of naval gunfire on hillside positions. The Italians, supported also by German aircraft in "training" mission, dominate the air.

September 15th, 1938
The Italians occupy the little town of Mandera in the extreme NE corner of Kenya, already abandoned by colonial British forces.

September 16th, 1938
An unescorted Mexican tanker is stopped and sunk by the Italian submarine Alagi while heading for Valencia to refuel Republican forces.
Baron Kantaro Suzuki, head of the "dove" party in Japan, is murdered by fanatics after the stall in the fighting in China had polarized Japanese politics among those who suggested negotiation, like Suzuki, and the hardliners. Emperor Hirohito, while ordering the punishment of those involved, has to cede further power to the militarist faction.

September 17th, 1938
A US convoy, protected by a cruiser and two destroyers, reaches Canton bringing some forty fighters for air defense, light tanks and armored cars, and about a thousands officers and NCOs, all officially "on leave" from the army, to form the cadres of US-led Nationalist Chinese army corps.

September 19th, 1938
Mexico's government, having received no answer to its strong protest, breaks diplomatic relations with Italy.

September 20th, 1938
In Corsica, the Franco-British forces take up defensive positions between Porto and Col de Vergio, checking the northward march of the Italians.

September 22th, 1938
French and Republican Spanish forces attack from Guipuzcoa and Aragon in the general direction of Pamplona, a stronghold of the Nationalist rebels defended by the fearsome Carlist requetès. Both attacking column employ tanks against an enemy which mostly lacks them, relying on anti-tanks rifles, trenches and artillery.
In Corsica, Italian forces land in the northern Capo Corso peninsula, in an indirect menace to the garrison of Bastia.
In eastern Africa, Somali bands led by Italian officers and supported by light armored cars occupy the provincial town of Wajir after skirmishing with enemy colonial troops. The British begin to worry: Kenya is still lightly defended, and the only things preventing the Italians, who have some 200,000 men in Ethiopia, to pick it up as a ripe fruit are logistics and desert.

September 23rd-24th, 1938
After the Nationalist lines get ruptured by the Republican armor at Torres del Bayo, the Italian expedition corps in Spain reluctanty sends one of its "volunteer" divisions beyond the Ebro to help the Navarrese.
A colonial French column of camels and "autochenilles" with recon airplanes support advances from Chad in a daring Saharan raid, attacking and conquering the capital of Italian Fezzan, Murzuk, and capturing about 500 enemy troops to the loss of some 30 men. At Tripoli, governor Balbo is always asking for more resources, in particular aircraft; while still excluding any move against Egypt, he would attack Tunisia if only his lines of communication weren't half-cut by the gauntlet ships have to cross between French-held Tunisia and Lampedusa and British Malta, where the Franco-British have concentrated their few torpedo bombers.

September-October, 1938
As the British begin fortifying a line along the Meuse river, Lord Gort and generalissimo Gamelin reluctantly work out the details of the operational plan for a limited invasion of Germany aimed to the Ruhr from Belgium and Luxembourg, Operation Sword. It is not to be enacted before April, 1939. Their naval colleagues, Lord Chatfield and admiral Darlan, put the final touches on their plan for the invasion of Andalusia, Operation Bolero, and begin planning for a future invasion of Sicily, codenamed Hat Trick. A sharp struggle for the dominance of the Sicily Channel is developing in the central Mediterranean, where Italian aircraft from the major island and from the growing fortified base of Pantelleria contends with the French based in Tunisia and the British holding Malta.
Secret overtures for peace are made by the Nuremberg regime to the Western Allies of the Bruxelles Pact in exchange for acceptance of the status quo regarding Czechoslovakia and a partial restitution of former German colonies (Kamerun and Namibia). The Franco-British, after considerable embarrassment, do not answer but quietly pass the news through the Swiss to the uninformed Italians, much to the irritation of the Duce.
In China the Japanese renew their offensive striking east along the Huai river from Hung-tse lake, trying to outflank from the north Chinese lines west of Nanking.
In Ethiopia the ongoing patriotic rebellion against Italian rules gains new momentum. Viceroy Amedeo d'Aosta has forbidden use of gas and the massacres and reprisals which had been the norm under Graziani till the year before, relying on small-scale air attacks and active defense of the main communication nodes to contain the insurgents. Nonetheless, large swathes of the country are de facto free from foreign rule, especially now that Italian weapons are pointed outside, against the British, rather than inside, against the Ethiopians. The Italians receive new airplanes and limited strategic materials through a secret airlift organized by Balbo from bases deep into the Libyan Sahara. The Italian airforce also considers the use of dirigibles for this kind of long-distance communication.
In Kenya, the Italian advance, actually a grand feint conducted with minimal forces, mostly recon and colonial cavalry, reaches its maximum extent, from lake Turkana southeast to a line through Samburu and Garissa, getting to little more than a hundred miles from Nairobi.
Mexico welcomes a Soviet military mission with a cargo of some dozen tanks and aircraft, originally destined to Republican Spain, which is by now mostly armed with French weaponry. The news raises alarm in Washington.

September 25th-27th, 1938
The Italians suddenly counterattack on a limited sector of the Maritime Alps, the most menaced, from the Stura di Demonte valley up from Vinadio where the French had dented the crest border line gaining the upper valley of Sant'Anna. From a labyrinth of caves quickly built inside the Maladecia mountain, the Alpini swarm out, recapturing the old Sanctuary of St. Anna, and, to heavy losses, capturing the crest and the col of Lausfer to countermenace the Isola valley on the enemy side. The French are forced to abandon Italian territory, clinging to their highest surviving positions and leaving hundreds of prisoners; they lose also control over the high Col de la Lombarde.

September 26th-28th, 1938
The battle of Olite y Tafalla marks a heavy Italian defeat, on the scale of the early Guadalajara, against the Republicans and what remains of the International Brigades after the many losses of Saragossa. The Italian attempt to help save Navarra, led by general Roatta, is thwarted to the cost of over 1,000 POWs, soon to be traded to the French, and much materiel lost. The northern pincher had a more difficult task, with the Basques being stemmed on the Gamboa and Balerdi-Ardaon mountains, and the motorized French force having a hard time before Lekunberri against dogged Nationalist defense.

September 30th, 1938
France is shocked when a lightning raid by a band of Spanish Nationalist irregulars savages the border town of St.Jean-Pied-de-Port, killing 38 and torching many houses.
"Pamplona serà nuestra Madrid" (Pamplona will be our Madrid), declares Franco at the Nationalist radio from his headquarters in Salamanca (Burgos was by now a bit too close to the French) as Republican and French inch closer and closer to the embattled provincial town and what started as a fast moving operation begins to bog down.
 
The government of sir Neville Chamberlain falls right after having declared the war to leave place to an emergency cabinet of national unity led by the conservative stalwart Lord Halifax, but for the first time including also noted Laburists, some of which are highly sympathetic to Soviet Russia.

I don't see quite what you're driving at with 'for the first time' here. Labour folks like Arthur Henderson did participate in the 1st World War war cabinet.
 
I don't see quite what you're driving at with 'for the first time' here. Labour folks like Arthur Henderson did participate in the 1st World War war cabinet.

Gotcha. I meant that for the first time THE PARTY officially is in a government (there was no Prime Minister McDonald *here* in the late Twenties, due to even more anti-Communism).
 
update

October 1st, 1938
The British expedition corps in Spain (BECS) begins landing at Alicante. A limited force, intended to be no more than a single brigade, it is composed by mixed Scottish, Indian and West African units under liutenant-general Alan Cunningham.
In Berlin, Franco's representatives and Diercks agree upon the creation of a limited German land force to be sent to Spain and landed at night by utilizing merchant raiders under false neutral flags, to be reunited only in the last lag of the dangerous trip and escorted by German and Spanish nationalist war units to break the Franco-British blockade (which is somewhat leaky anyway, due to the many commitments elsewhere, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean). The fast-moving, hard-hitting land unit composed mostly of mechanized cavalry (light tanks, anti-tank motorized guns, sidecar and motorcycle recon) will be entrusted to the command of a brilliant Prussian officer, already noted in the civil war and the Bohemian campaign: liutenant-colonel baron Hasso von Manteuffel.
Lithuania's enforced neutralization and disarmament become effective at midnight as per the Treaty of Varna. That same day, the authoritarian president Smetona ungratefully reshuffles his cabinet, dumping the few unionist-socialist members and jailing them, "like it or not the damned Soviets".

October 2nd, 1938
The French finally secure the Roncesvalles Pass, while ragefully chasing the Nationalist from the mountains west of Pamplona. Attempts to close the ring around the town by reaching the Republicans are less than successful, though.
The Italians push north along the eastern shore of Corsica, towards Bastia.

October 6th-10th, 1938
At the battle of Ponte Leccia the Italians unhinge the last coherent enemy front in inland Corsica, severing the Franco-British defenses in two separate pockets.

October 7th, 1938
The Portuguese government, bowing to Anglo-French pressure, closes its border with Spain, even informally recalling its handful of "volunteers" from Nationalist forces.

October 11th-14th, 1938
Relaunched under Rojo's guidance, the encirclement operation against Pamplona this time is completed, with the Basques and the International brigades shaking hands at Puente la Reina. About 10,000 defenders are trapped in the capital of Navarra.

October 15th, 1938
A determined counterattack by British, Indian and African units is launched in Kenya in the Samburu area. The Italian (mostly Somali and Erithrean) light column scouring the area is quickly dispersed, its men resorting to quasi-banditry (shifta') and guerrilla in the northeast, trying to stir up the local Somali tribes, as per Italian plans.

October 17th, 1938
Bastia, the second city of Corsica, falls to the Italian army after the wholesale destruction of any military installation by the French.

October 18th-24th, 1938
A powerful Nationalist counterattack from Calahorra towards Pamplona, led by the valiant Carlist general Varela (and comprising, ironically, the best remaining Moroccan "tabores") with supporting Italian armor and aircraft and what little remains of the German Condor Legion, severely tests Rojo's "ring of steel" around the capital of Navarra. After a seesaw bloody corrida in the arid plains, largely thanks to French artillery and fighter aircraft the assault is repelled, and with that the last hope for the defenders.

October 24th, 1938
A successful Franco-British evacuation from the ports of Calvi and l'Ile-Rousse concludes the Corsican campaign. The island, lightly defended, cost the Italian invaders two months and about 3,000 losses between dead, wounded and prisoners.
Turkey signs a Treay of mutual assistance with France and Great Britain. The treaty does not entail any form of military alliance, rather can be seen as a conciliating move and a guarantee of neutrality. Turkey has a claim over the province of Hatay, part of the French mandate of Syria since the end of WWI, which the French seem now well disposed to recognize.

October 26th, 1938
A US convoy heading to southern Spain reunites quietly in the waters off Savannah, Georgia. Accompanied by the aircraft carrier Ranger, the cruiser Trenton and three destroyers, a dozen ships, ostensibly bound into the Caribbean for a fleet exercise, transport about 6,000 men of the Santiago Force, under the command of George Smith Patton, Jr, with war materials, oil and some twenty fighter aircraft. They are due into Càdiz to directly bolster the failing Nationalist force and contain Anglo-French "meddling" in the south of Spain, in what as been named accordingly Operation Santiago; they're, however, preferably not to confront French or British troops. With them is a battalion of Marines heading to Tangiers to reinforce the local American garrison "protecting" the "international city" surrounded by French-occupied Spanish Morocco.

October 27th, 1938
After a well-publicized visit of generalissimo Miaja to the local front, the Spanish Republican army unleashes an offensive from Jaèn towards Còrdoba, employing the first contingents from the British expedition corps (BECS) and making sure the enemy notes their presence. While being soon contained, the attack is nothing more than an elaborate feint to induce the Nationalists to concentrate their forces around the Còrdoba.
After a daring flight from Italian Rhodes, five Italian officers with good command of the Arab language are parachuted into the Jordan valley. They are to serve as liaision officers and coordinators of the ongoing Arab revolt agains the British and the militant Zionist Jews in the Palestine mandate.

October 28th, 1938
In the sixteenth anniversary of the Fascists March on Rome, as Mussolini boastfully proclaims the "reincorporation" of Corsica into Italy, the Italians launch several separate offensive operations in the Mediterranean and Africa.
The naval Battle of Lampedusa is fought between a an Italian screening force, with a couple cruisers and four destroyers accompanying a small convoy of troops heading for the reconquest of the tiny Mediterranean island, and a French naval squadron from Bizerte. The intervention of Italian level bombers leads to the break of contact by the French, who lament the loss of a destroyer and damage to a cruiser. The Italians will have to scuttle the cruiser Armando Diaz due to battle damage, after attempt to tow it to Sicily; a couple destroyers will have to be repaired. Diversive action and smoke screen use by the Italians allow the convoy to safely reach Lampedusa (whose population has been deported to Algeria by the French invaders) and land the troops with the support of a single destroyer. After some hours of fighting, the French garrison surrenders.
In Africa Graziani, urged by Mussolini and Balbo alike now that his army has been sufficiently reinforced with surprisingly little losses to Franco-british naval interdiction in the Mediterranean, moves against French Tunisia after weeks of mutual cross-border raiding. His Tenth army will have to get to the French fortified Mareth Line, and try to break or outflank it.
Thousands of miles southeast, as the British muster forces to wipe the invaders' "phantom" forces off large swathes of Kenya and suppress Somali unrest, the Italians hit in just another direction, from Erithrea along the Red Sea coast and beyond the mountains to severe contacts with the interior, into an extremely inospitable area that required extensive logistical preparation. By now deprived of a real naval force, the Italians aim to capture Suakin and Port Sudan, thus denying the British this relevant staging area. The entire Italian position in Africa is at stake in the operation, appropriately called Aida, to which Amedeo d'Aosta, the Italian commander, setting his command post in Asmara, commits his best troops and resources, despite the gaping holes of defences and the large swathes of Ethiopia in the hands of fierce Amhara and Tigray patriotic guerrillas.

October 29th, 1938
The sinking of an Italian civilian ferry from Napoli to Palermo by a French submarine's torpedoes, due to a mistaken identification as an auxiliary cruiser, sparks fierce outrage in Italy, especially since many of the 299 victims were children.

October 29th-November 7th, 1938
Plan D14 is enacted by the French Armèe des Alpes to chase the Italian advance parties back from their side of the mountain range in the few places where they managed to descend to the upper valleys. The three main objective are: the upper Arc and Isère, where the Italians have solidified their hold from the Iseran pass to the outskirts of Modane and successfully resist the French counterattack losing limited terrain and about a thousands men in total; Maddalena/Larche pass, where an attempt to descend the Stura valley through the crest is in the end repusled with losses; and the upper Vèsubie, where the French recapture the town of Saint-Martin and proceed on, also capturing the long evacuated Italian hamlet of Mollières and its isolated valley, to be stalled only at the border fortifications of Colle delle Finestre, netting anyway more than 2,000 prisoners in a brilliant local victory.

October 30th, 1938
The Carlist-Francoist garrison of Pamplona surrenders, to the French only, under guarantee of life, and marches to prisony beyond the Pyrenees. Almost all of Spain north of the Ebro river is in Republican and French hands. The defeat is heavy for the Nationalist front, whose cabal of rebel generals begins doubting not only the military competence and will to fight of Germans and Italians, but also their very Jefe (chief), Francisco Franco Bahamonde, and the sense itself of continuing the struggle when the country has long become the playground of foreigners.
Answering to the French request for an offensive, general Dobbie from his command in Cairo authorizes a limited attack into Italian Cyrenaica, its objective being the border garrisoned town of Bardia; but with part of his forces redeploying southwest to Sudan it will need some time to actually move, and will have to call for an additional division from troubled Palestine, weakening the repression of the Arab revolt.

October-November, 1938
French colonial forces from Morocco and Cameroon occupy respectively the Rio de Oro and Rio Muni territories, held by garrisons loyal to the National (rebel) side, against light resistance. After that, the island of Fernando Poo surrenders without a fight to a detachment of the British Royal Navy.
Among the Spanish rebels, Franco has a hard time defending his own authority as Jefe Supremo among colleagues/accomplices. On the Republican side, prime minister Juan Negrìn is now working hard to regain control of the improvised jail and judiciary system from hardliners bent on killing as many of the hated bourgeoisie, priests and so on as they can, as a conciliating move to the far more conservative governments of France and Britain. He knows there's little time before Franco-British direct engagement will turn to a mere trickle, if something moves on the German front.
In Tunisia, unrest and local uprising among the numerous Italian (mostly Sicilian) emigrated community leads to the killing of dozens, to local curfews and to hundreds of arrests and deportations to Morocco among the alleged ringleaders, often Fascist sympathizers of an "Italian Tunisia".
The British ultimate the evacuation of about 15,000 civilians, mostly women and children, from Malta, in Red Cross ships duly examinated by Italian ships at sea. The civilians are mostly sent to Cyprus, with only a couple thousand sent to Port Said.

October 31st, 1938
More than 150 Italian bombers attack Marseille in several waves as a reprisal for the sunk ferry incident; while here are some losses to the attackers, more than 300 die in the city and the port is damaged.
The British commander in Sudan, major general William "the Kaid" Platt, reacts swiftly to the Italian moves. While having only very modest forces to contain the Italian attack in the north, where he calls for help from Egypt, he acts hundreds of miles south, attacking Gallabat and Metemma on the Ethiopian border. While the first attack is a costly failure as the Italian garrison fights bravely, the second one is a relatively easy success and isolates Gallabat. Through the gap into the border Platt sends ahead the so-called Gideon Force, a ragtag army of Ethiopian exiles and insurgents, led by one young officer expert in guerrilla and with good experience in both Sudan and Palestine: major Orde Wingate. Their mission is to create as much trouble as possibile behind enemy lines. Platt also calls for a quick return of the Negus Haile Selassie from London to Sudan, to personally "lead" the insurrection.
 
November rain (of bombs)

October 1938-March 1939
Working together, Germans Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann and Otto Robert Frisch, Dane Niels Bohr and Austrian Lise Meitner (living in Sweden since 1936) develop and publish on scientific papers the core discoveries about nuclear fission. Soon their French colleagues led by Irène and Frèderic Joliot-Curie validate their work recognizing it as a nuclear chain reaction, a concept already advanced by the Hungarian-born naturalized German Leo Szilard (who came back from the US to Germany in 1937).
In the Soviet Union, a powerful increase of the military is in order, with new tank, aircraft and personal weaponry projects, and a ready civil defense organization. Increased readiness for the case of war is the tacit password of the day.

November 2nd, 1938
Operation Bolero, the landing of French and British troops on the Atlantic side of Nationalist-held Andalusia, commenced at dawn, is largely successful, with minimal losses, even resulting in a strategic surprise despite early Italian detection of the move. A powerful joint naval force, screened by four battleships and the aircraft carrier Courageous, and comprising the Spanish Republican cruiser Libertad (formerly principe Alfonso) and the destroyer Lepanto, cover the convoy, built around the modern mega-liners Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Normandie, that lands more than 20,000 men, mostly infantry, around Cape Trafalgar, in a lightly defended area some 30 km SE of the main enemy base of Càdiz. Immediate air attacks by Nationalist and Italian aircraft come to nothing; most of the Nationalist navy does not intervene, being moored at La Corunna and very reluctant to engage the British. Unfortunately, the landing party has soon to split, as the Brits have first of all to break Gibraltar's encirclement from behind without endangering general Ironside's garrison, under practical land siege since the start of the war, whereas the French, who employ some of their best Foreign Legion units, are to fan north and northwest to wreak chaos and menace Càdiz from the land side. The plan is to later use the ports of Gibraltar and Càdiz to add a second echelon of French light armor and British motorized units to the expedition corps, and push inland, hopefully against light resistance.
In Africa, the Italian offensive into Tunisia conquers the border post of Ben Gardane after a sharp fight with the French.

November 2nd-7th, 1938
The parading of 8,000 Spanish Nationalist prisoners from Pamplona at St.Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, recently ravaged by a Carlist cross-border incursion, sparks further outrage in the German-Italian alliance. Also the British press protest the move as humiliating.
In Rome, Mussolini will answer a few days later by parading at gunpoint a hundred captured French officers, without sidearms or sabres, on the Fori Imperiali avenue, much to the amusement of onlookers.
In the meantime, in southern Spain British espionage is working hard on Queipo de Llano, the violent, eccentric and Anglophile Nationalist commander in Andalusia, autor of a wholesale extermination of real and alleged Republicans in his own territory and nicknamed "el Virrey" (the Viceroy) for his almost total independence from Franco.
The American Santiago convoy, navigating in strict radio silence and still undetected apart by a few uninterested neutral merchantmen, is informed of the Anglo-British landing in Andalusia and subsequent developments. Anticipated, in Washington President Compton, who has just de facto rigged mid-term elections to his advantage, fumes ragefully once again, and has to quickly decide what to do. Admiral Leahy, the Chief of Naval operations, suggests a diversion to the Canary islands to secure them from the Europeans; other propose to land in La Corunna, which could be vey risky. It is in the end decided for both options. The Marine battalion intended for Tangiers is to land at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, whereas the Santiago Force will debark at Corunna if possibile, otherwise in Vigo, Ferrol, Gijon or wherever a friendly nationalist port can be reach without having to phisically fight the Royal Navy or French ships. According orders are code-messaged to the convoy as it crosses between the Azores and Madera.
The British counterattack in Kenya stalls around the border city of Moyale, where strong Italian resistance, also in the form of commando raids by indigenous bands, is first encountered.

November 3rd, 1938
After negotiating through some of the most terrible desert terrain, all rocky plateaus and wadis, totally waterless, advanced Italian colonial recon forces (mostly Erythrean and Yemeni meharists) led by the young and brave cavalry lieutenant Amedeo Guillet plunge at night on the key railway junction at Hayya, assaulting the station sabre in hand and slaying the small Indian garrison, surprised literally in its sleep despite the Italian columns having been already seen and targeted by British recon aircraft. They then sabotage the railway to their best, before heading due west for a raid deep into Nubia, possibily to the Nile itself, while stirring up the Beja desert nomads. In the meantime the coastal column from Karora occupies the hamlet of Tokar afther skirsmishing with light Indian forces. By now the British are in full alarm.

November 4th, 1938
The French renew the naval bombing of Genoa in a night operation with a couple fast cruisers and some destroyers, killing more than 50 civilians. During withdrawal, the French encounter and sink an Italian patrol craft that bravely launched torpedo, to no avail. Minor damage to a destroyer is done by a bomber attack on the route back to Toulon, by now endowed with the best anti-air gun defense in the country.
At dawn, a squadron of British Blenheim bombers based in the Lyon area hit Turin's industrial area, killing dozens, to no losses.
Italian bombers from Erythrea suddenly attack Khartoum in a daylight raid, hitting the city and the adjacent airfield. Scores are killed, a handful of British planes are destroyed and fuel depots burns, but a couple of the precious Italian bombers won't be back.

November 5th-7th, 1938
At Càdiz, French troops assault and quickly conquer the Trocadero and the Arsenal with modest losses. The Nationalist guns under the menace of the Royal Navy units, Càdiz has no choice but capitulate to avoid a useless massacre. While the city surrenders orderly, an insurgency spreads in the surrounding countryside, as the survivors of the rebels' extermination of any anarchist-communist-socialist-republican-liberal-freemason-freethinker-whatsoever take personal revenge against civil and military officers, but also churchmen and nuns. The French will mostly adopt a lassez faire stance, some Spaniard legionaries even deserting to participate in executions, rapes, extortion and ransacking.
Nationalist forces hastily recalled from the north take position north of the Guadalquivir's mouth, as the French establish a new airfield near Conil de la Frontera to proect the beachhead.
The British encounter instead strong Nationalist resistance and several Italian air attacks on the La Pena hills near Tarifa, their immediate objective together with Algeciras, and have to lament losses oin front of some of the best troops Franco still has.
In Africa, general Dobbie postpones any sustained effort from Egypt into Cyrenaica, leaving fast patrols to pinprick the Italian rearguard, harass the Sollum and Giarabub garrisons and cut the border wire wherever possibile. Forces are redirected south into Nubia to secure the area, as per request from Platt.
In northern Africa, the fall of Tatauoine to the Italian inland column from Nalut weakens the first French line in the Medenine area, opening it to flanking moves.

November 7th, 1938
In what is the first noted success of German submarines, until now used very sparingly for training (in the Baltic), blockade running (in the Atlantic) and occasional raiding (in the North and Norway Seas), U-13 sinks British destroyer Verdun about 50 miles NW of Esbjerg, Denmark.

November 8th, 1938
Italian forces arrive outside of the semiabandoned port town of Suakin, some 40 miles south of Port Sudan: here they meet the first serious resistance not opposed by nature itself. The British (actually Indian) garrison fights tooth and nail will all it has, from kukris to anti-tank rifles, but it's only naval gunfire support from the haven's inlet that holds the attackers back.

November 9th, 1938
US Marines land at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after some tension with the Nationalist authorities, since the convoy wasn't expected and communications from the Francoist headquarters in Salamanca hadn't been very clear. The British, while sensing that something was happening from the other side of the Atlantic, are taken by complete surprise and their reaction is muted.

November 10th-11th, 1938
With most of their naval force south in the Gibraltar-Càdiz area, the Franco-British cannot oppose the US flotilla when it is eventually signalled off Galicia, steaming full power in rough sea towards Corunna. In the night, the convoy enters the Nationalist port welcomed with joy and a profusion of Stars and Stripe banners. Francisco Franco himself is there to welcome Patton and his men, in a clever political-military move to strengthen his shaky position among his fellow rebel generals.
After a daring raid, during which they also assaulted a troop transport train (!) and sabotaged the railway behind it, Guillet's Devils are eventually repulsed some 30 miles from Atbara, withdrawing east with their lightly wounded leader. Their cover mission was brilliantly accomplished; the follow-up outer (and stronger) Italian column indeed solidified its hold oin the railway junction at Hayya and advanced to Sinkat, anorther 50 miles NE as the crow flies, before encountering a line of defense and breaking it.
The French secure their right flank in southern Spain wrenching Medina Sidonia from the dogged Nationalist defenders.

November 11th, 1938
Only after the intervention of the big naval guns the British are able to break the enemy resistance and enter Tarifa; the Nationalists, undaunted, fortify a new line around Pelayo before Algeciras, while the British Gibraltar garrison remains in its shelters, ready to attack later.
The threat on Port Sudan is immediate enough to force general Dobbie to subtract a division from Palestine, as he feared, to be immediate sent south by railway and, partly, by ship.
Reciprocal bombing continues on the Franco-Italian front as the British bomb Milan, aiming for the industries, and the Italians hit St.Etienne.

November 12th, 1938
In eastern Sudan the Italians manage to break another British position at Gebeit, caturing some hundred prisoners and, most important, some guns and vehicles.

November 13th, 1938
To considerable losses, the Italian Tenth Army takes Medenine, securing Tripoli's western flank. The French, who have suffered on the whole modest losses by keeping a prudent defensive posture, decide to withdraw on the still parly incomplete fortified Mareth line, while keeping a strong presence in the island of Djerba to threaten the Italian right flank and into the Matmata hills to prevent enemy flanking manoeuvers.

November 14th, 1938
Corrupted with a considerable sum and the perspective of a comfortable exile in a place of his choice in South America, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano "surrenders" the entire Andalusian front to the Franco-British, just as his men are heroically resisting near Algeciras, and flees from Seville to Càdiz under guarantee of life and no prosecution for the crimes committed in the civil war. The blow to the bando Nacional is potentially devastating. Franco now has the excuse to sideline or arrest some of his most intractable officers, chiefly the staunch monarchist generals Orgaz and Kindelàn (the latter being a noted Anglophile), condemns to death in absentia the traitorous Queipo and swiftly sends general Andrès Saliquet to Sevilla with orders to refuse the surrender order and rally the men to at least defend the Guadalquivir valley, only in the worst case withdrawing along the Portuguese border.
The British embassy in Washington formally requests an explanation from the US government about its action in the Canaries and Galicia. The American answer by Secretary of State Joseph Kennedy is sharp: Britain "has no more right of the US to interfere in the inner affairs of Spain".
The Italians manage to take Suakin, all the while remaining under the fire of British destroyers, and answering with what little light artillery and precious ammunition they have.

November 14th-17th, 1938
A powerful concentration of naval and land artillery and a breakout of the reinforced Gibraltar garrison allow the British to eventually take Algeciras, successfully reaching the minimum aims of Operation Bolero. North of the Guadalquivir, the Nationalists stagger, but hold on, as general Saliquet rallies his men. Queipo de Llano, now a golden prisoner in French hands, is forced at gunpoint to make radio appeals for the National army of Andalusia to surrender and to smear Franco's conduct of war and reliance upon foreigners, but to no avail.

November 15th, 1938
Guillet's Devils, given chase by British aircraft and desert patrols, literally "disappear" by dividing and posing as common caravans. Their rally point is near Suakin. The Italian advance is now stalled at some 50 kms from Port Sudan by increasing resistance and difficult terrain and logistical constraints, as support units from Erythrea are consolidating the rearguard.
"On the other side of the hill", that is several hundred miles south, Wingate's Gideon Force reaches the Begemder region around Gondar, finding support among the Ethiopian insurgents but also strong reaction by the Italian garrison forces. A long cat-and-mouse play begins.
As his troops reach the Mareth line, being soon repulsed by the French forts, Mussolini can boast the advance of his troops in Africa in a colourful speech in Parliament.

November 18th, 1938
The first reinforcement battalions from Palestine reach Port Sudan by ship, accompanied by the big guns of the old battleship Ramillies, that welcome the first Italian recon units with their roar.
The Italian fort at Ghadamès, just south of the extreme point of Tunisia, gets under siege by French motorized units.

November 20th, 1938
General Ironside, while maintaining the governorship of Gibraltar, is named overall commander of British land forces in Spain, as a trickle of further reinforcements arrives. After the fall of Algeciras it is decided to proceed east along the coast, objective being the city of Màlaga.
The French, under general Giraud, are instead to press from Càdiz north, securing the Gudalquivir's mouth and threatening Seville.

November 21st-24th, 1938
Resolute British counterattacks around Port Sudan and the devastating fire from the Ramillies' 381mm guns push the Italians slowly back from their besieging position.
From Aswan to Atbara fresh Commonwealth troops secure Nubia. The cooperation of the small Egyptian army is requested at least for policing Sudan, despite the doubltful reliability of its officers, many of which are eager to rid their country from British presence.

November-December, 1938
In Spain, Republicans and Franco-British have some difficulty in coordinating their plans. Rojo at first thought about an offensive from the upper Ebro towards Burgos, then changed and pushed for a winter offensive into Extremadura to cut the Nationalist north from the south, as the Western Allies had their Andalusian detour; in the meantime, on British suggestion, he begins working plans for guerrilla war in the remaining Nationalist territory, where a ferocious "limpieza" (read: mass executions) continues apace against whomever is perceived as pro-Republican. It is encouraging the rise of military production in Republican Catalonia, now that the power plants in the central Pyrenees are secure, restored and working.
In four separate voyages, to great peril and sailing north up to just below Iceland, six German merchant raiders transport to northern Spain the small German expedition corps led by Manteuffel, rebaptized BlitzKommando, to no losses. The voyages are covered by German cruisers Nuernberg and Koenigsberg that engage in a quick raiding campaing in the Atlantic where they wreak havoc and sink a dozen British and French ships and an old destroyer before heading, in the utmost radio silence, to Norfolk in the United States (where they'll enter by night, camouflaged as US cruisers) as the British frantically search for them on the route back to Germany.
As Patton's Santiago Force stands still in Galicia awaiting orders, the presence of American navy and army officers in Portugal is first noted by the British, and duly but discreetly lamented to the Portuguese government.
Only now that it is almost too late the Italian Navy agrees to sending four submarines beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, in a risky mission, to base them in Spanish Nationalist Galicia (El Ferrol). The US too are considering such a deployment; for the moment being they send some blimps (helium balloons) for anti-air and anti-sub defense of La Corunna, and, through "neutral" ships with flags of convenience, manage to slip into some anti-air guns and light artillery for the rebels, now desperate for weapons - since the Italians can't send much anymore, except by submarine and occasionally by air transport, and the same applies to the Germans.
On the Franco-Italian front, all is quiet except occasional air raids and the southern sector, near the Ligurian Sea, where gigantic and useless artillery duels and occasional air raids redesign the landscape, reducing merry vacation towns as Mentone or Monaco to pitiful Belle Epoque ruins. Only patrol exchanges are otherwise to be registered.
Italy and Germany step up their cooperation, to this point relatively limited. In Lombardy the Italians organize the Armata Italiana del Reno (AIR), a 120,000 expedition corps to be deployed along the Rhine by the end of March, in front of Alsace. The Germans for their part are training a 30,000-strong Alpenkorps (the Austrians declined to participate) to be sent to the southern sector of the Italo-French Alpine front as soon as spring comes. Another smaller expedition corps is training instead for desert warfare: it's the Afrika Korps, entrusted to the brilliant general, Erwin Rommel, also as a way to get rid of him by envious colleagues with little love of his outspoken personality.
Italy, its hands already full with the Franco-British, has quietly reduced its forces on the Yugoslavian border area (where a decade long fierce police repression of Slavs and Communists is ongoing), while probing the Germans on a possibile future joint campaign in the western Balkans, which would necessarily see, this time, Austrians and Hungarians as participants. Mussolini also pleads the Germans to resume air attacks against France, but the HROK (German Higher Imperial Command) is unmoved and keeps on mustering and producing aircraft, tanks and divisions for the likely showdown on the Western front. Not too soon, but also not too late: Franco-British rearming is in full swing by now, to the detriment of German possibilities, which rely on tactics, enthusiasm and professionalism, more than sheer numbers. A trickle of crucial war materials (tires, raw caoutchuc, oil) is still provided to Germany by the US, whose ships are now effectively barred from entering the Mediterranean and the North Sea, through the northern Finnish port of Petsamo. The Finns, for their part, have received some fifty American fighters for air defense and ask more to rearm against the theoretical but ever-present Soviet threat, and are adamant in their reaction to British pressures against allowing US ships, contrary to the more pliant Norwegians and Swedes.
In the meantime, the HROK in Zossen begins to plan a possibile spring operation into Scandinavia, which would be extremely risky but could theoretically prove necessary.
In Africa, the Italian Empire is in full defensive. Everything is lacking: from artillery ammunitions to tires and fuel.
In India, the British hold renewed talks with the Congress Party, agreeing in principle to an extension of the dominion's autonomy in exchange for an increase of recruitment and industrial war effort. London knows very well that with hostile US and France not always cooperative the situation can quickly become frighteningly difficult, and needs any help from any corner of its global empire.

November 25th-27th, 1938
Moving slowly, the French advance into Andalusia only to be soon stopped at the Guadalete river, south of Jerez, where the Nationalists and Italians have entrenched. In the meantime, in the liberated area Republican authorities find almost no cooperation among the either hostile or terrorized populace, fearing the return of the Nationalists. As control of the Strait of Gibraltar is firmly Franco-British, Miaja and Rojo agree to the allied request to move into the area by sea a division of the Republican army.

November 27th-28th, 1938
A lucky couple of torpedoes by the Italian submarine Galileo Ferraris, in a risky night mission, sink the British cruiser Southampton less than 30 miles due east of Gibraltar, as she protected the squadron that provided fire support to the land units marching on Màlaga. Less lucky is the submarine: mercilessly chased by destroyers for hours and hours, the vessel has to surface with damage and losses on board and has to be scuttled by the crew, which is captured.

November 30th-December 5th, 1938
While advancing towards Màlaga, the British are stopped at the Los Reales-Estepona line. Atop the Sierra de Bermejo the Italians have posted artillery and observers. The British resort to a Gurkha regiment to try and dislodge the enemy, but the attempt is a bloody failure.
 
December 1938

December 3rd-7th, 1938
In Sudan, a series of British counterattacks supported by naval gun fire break the Italian line north of Suakin, forcing also the inland column of general Maletti to withdraw south. The direct threat on Port Sudan is thus brought to an end.

December 6th, 1938
Secret US-Portuguese talks in Tangiers result in an agreement on the expedition of strategic materials to the Spanish nationalists, and obviously to Portugal, through neutral Brazilian ships that are to stop at Bissau, in Portuguese Guinea, to load... special cargo of American origin (oil, weapons, vehicles) concealed under the original, more innocent goods transported. Brazilian President Getulio Vargas agreed to the project, but only in exchange for hefty sums and the promise to cede to the Brazilian armed forces enough tanks to equip an armored division, plus a cruiser and a half dozen old destroyers from WWI.

December 6th-11th, 1938
A French attempt to ouflank the Nationalist and Italian position at Jerez east through San José del Valle towards Arcos de la Frontera is frustrated after a promising start by obstinate resistance. The Western Allies, while still reinforcing the beachhead which by now counts more than 30,000 of them, have to bide their time.
A Republican division is transferred by ship from Alicante to Càdiz. A Nationalist attempt to intercept the convoy ends with the sinking of one of their few destroyers under the firepower of British cruisers, and minor damage from near misses of plane bombs to some ships.

December 8th, 1938
The British retake Suakin on the Red Sea from the Italians, capturing their depot and more than 1,500 prisoners.

December 8th-20th, 1938
After moving forces south from Jaén, Alan Cunningham's 54th Brigade, the original founding unit of the British expedition corps in Spain (BECS), with its hodgpodge of Scots, Rajputs and Nigerians serves as spearhead for a renewed Spanish Republican offensive, aimed to break the stalemate of the front around the Nationalist-held town of Alcalà la Real and threaten Granada. While managing to conquer Alcalà, long an enemy frontline stronghold, and the cold surrounding plateau, the attackers soon run out of steam far short of the ancient and fabulous Moorish capital and the offensive is called off.

December 9th, 1938
The capture in Norwegian territorial waters of a German blockade runner, effected by the Royal Navy, is met with strong protests by the government in Oslo.

December 11-17th, 1938
In sharp fighting, general Maletti's column, now more than a full division strong, successfully resists British and Indian attacks around Gebeit and Sinkat, west of Suakin, Sudan. The Italian resort again to raiding and guerrilla in eastern Sudan, with Guillet and his Devils (mostly Erythrean and Yemeni cavalry) scouring the Atbara valley, harassing British posts and raiding isolated Egyptian army posts (often complacent) for arms, water and victuals.

December 15th, 1938
After a week of siege, William Platt's Sudan Defence Force gains a significant victory with the surrender of the Italian garrison at Gallabat. 3,000 men, hundreds of beasts of burden and a dozen guns are the booty.

December 17-18th, 1938
One of the two surviving Italian submarines based in the Red Sea torpedoes the old battleship Ramillies about a hundred miles east of Port Sudan. The big vessel, hit twice, limps towards port, but the crew has to ground it on a sandbar near the coast to prevent its sinking.

December 20th, 1938
The Spanish Republican army launches a powerful offensive into Extremadura. The strategic aim is to cut the Nationalist north from the south, liberating towns as Mèrida and Badajoz, in nationalist hands since August 1936.
After considerable Turkish (and British) pressure, the French allow the Turkish army into the claimed sanjak of Alexandretta, or Hatay province, which becomes "independent". A swift "ethnic cleansing" will ensue, with thousands of Arabs and Armenians expelled in short order to Syria and Lebanon respectively, to be replaced by Anatolian Turks. Turkey will annex this border land in March, always with the grudging consent of the French.

December 23, 1938
The Dominion crisis brings down Lord Halifax's war cabinet in London. Despite having improved relations with India and secured crucial supplies from both Canada and South Africa, he couldn't convince the latter two countries to declare war on Germany, Italy and their allies, due to their local concerns (Canada is actually again sliding into turmoil, with instances of violence even in Parliament in Ottawa). The Prime Minister resigns, and a renewed war cabinet is formed, headed by Arthur Neville Chamberlain.
In Spain Plan P, the Republican offensive towards Extremadura, led by general Antonio Escobar Huerta, a career officer ironically of Catholic leanings, proceeds quite well. From the staging area at Pozoblanco it breaks Nationalist lines around Hinojosa del Duque and Valsequillo, capturing hundreds of prisoners and cutting the road to Còrdoba at Penarroya and Fuente Obejuna before proceeding west through Azuaga, in the general direction of Zafra.
Manteuffel's BlitzKommando, about 3,000 strong, moves from its first camp near Gijòn south, on urgent request from Franco. Also the Italian small divisions Frecce Nere, Frecce Azzurre and Frecce Verdi are redirected north from the Seville area.

December 25th, 1938
The Spanish Nationalist manage to create a first line of defense at Llerena. The Republicans advanced almost a hundred kms in five days, employing the best of their armor, mostly Soviet leftover with some French tank. In a gesture of grandeur, Mussolini begins a difficult airlift from Sardinia to Seville with long-distance transports, sending limited but precious reinforcements in men and material.
In Andalusia, the French, having retaken the initiative and eventually crossed the lower Guadalete, take Jerez de la Frontera.

December 27th-29th, 1938
In Spain, the British manage to conquer the Sierra de Bermejo, breaking the Estepona line, and resume a slow advance towards Màlaga.
The French counterattack in Tunisia from the Matmata Hills towards Medenine. What started as local operation brings Graziani's army in disarray, forcing it back from the Mareth Line, "la Maginot du désert", to a Medenine-Tataouine alignment substantially more open to manoeuver.
The isolated Italian fort of Ghadamès, on the Lybian-Algerian border, falls to the French Foreign Legion after a month-long siege and a heroic resistance much lauded by Fascist propaganda.

December 28-31th, 1938
The battle of El Raposo stems the Republican onslaught west. Crucial was the arrival of Manteuffel's BlitzKommando Spanien after more than 800 kms of difficult roads. With little rest, the Germans counterattack bravely, detaining the enemy's superior armor and allowing the entrenchment of defenders and posting of artillery; also the Italian "Frecce" mini-divisions fight well. Behind El Raposo is Zafra, whose fall would mean the severing of the last meaningful link between the southern and northern zones of Nationalist control in Spain. Despite impassioned pleas from Franco, Patton's Americans remain in Galicia.
 
basileus said:
March-April 1938
the Chinese receive help from a number of American volunteer pilots and are relatively better equipped then OTL, if always quite incompetent and corrupt.
Incompetent & corrupt? Since when? And where is the International Squadron?
basileus said:
June, 27th 1938
The US destroyer Gwin
This Gwin? Which unlikely, because she was stricken 1937, & hulked & scrapped 1939...& this Gwin wasn't even launched until 1940...
basileus said:
:rolleyes:
basileus said:
operating against traffic in the South China Sea
When did IJN doctrine change?
basileus said:
US mobilize their fleet(s) and, partly, the National Guard.
When did the U.S. cease being isolationist?:rolleyes:
basileus said:
Canada do[es] not to follow suit,...due to...fear of the US and of another round of civil disturbances after The Troubles
I am very dubious of this. (Even moreso than of the fascists.)
 
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