I had thought about creating a new thread for this then I remembered that I already had a thread that started with the pod so I thought I would put it here. It is more of an overview so it's not very detailed and I have rewritten parts of it several times so it might also be a little choppy but I was hopping to get feedback on where it could be better or I pushed it more than believable.
Europe had been on a slow march to war but it finally came in September of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and was joined by the Soviets and France and Britain declared war on Germany. Poland didn’t resist long and its allies made little attempt to actually help them resist the invasion. In November of that same year the Soviets attacked Finland and by March of 1940 came to terms seeing Finland cede several areas to end the fighting. April saw the Germans invade Denmark and Norway with Denmark putting up very little resistance though the Norwegians had started a full mobilization when the landings were happening. The landing at Narvik was thwarted by the HMS Renown and her destroyer escorts who were laying mines meet them and sank several of the ships before they could escape and the landing at Kristiansand was repulsed by the costal defenses emplaced there. Landings at Trondheim, Bergan and Egersund went much more favorably for the Germans including the fallschrimjagers landing at Sola and Fornebu though they barely drove off the defenders for long enough to be reinforced by air. The fortress at Oscarsborg sank the Blucher and Lutzow taking most of the forces tasked with taking Oslo down with them. The fleet air arm launched an attack on Bergen from Orkney and one on Trondheim from the ships HMS Glorious and Furious though the latter achieved very little. British landings soon took place at to retake Trondheim and Norwegian plans were in motion to retake Bergen. With British and French reinforcement the Norwegians were soon pushing the Germans out of the country and by the end of May the Germans were completely out of Norway which though things were starting to go south in France for the allies.
In early May the Germans invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France and soon the British Expeditionary Force was joining the fighting on the continent. Things had gone so poorly that on May 26 they started large scale evacuation of forces from Dunkirk and seeing the collapse of French resistance and their eventual surrender on June 21. While continental Europe was being occupied by Germany and the collaborationist Vichy government not all in France wanted this French forces that chose to fight against the Germans would become known as the Free French under the command of Charles de Gaulle. The colonies though mostly declared for the Vichy government so de Gaulle would have to fight to get the colonies on his side which became easier when he convinced the forces at Dakar to come under his command soon after that the rest of French West Africa and the other French colonies would join though North Africa would be harder to flip. French forces would join in on Operation Compass while the British were waiting for reinforcements from East Africa once fighting finished there while also sending forces to try and help Greece. Victory in North Africa came about shortly before the collapse of the Greek defenses in April of 1941 and the evacuation of British and Greek troops, along with some of the government and the treasury, to the island of Crete where they would establish a provisional government and coordinate with resistance groups. New Zealand forces who had been stationed on Crete would face an attack by German paratroopers which they managed to repel.
Though they had hoped to have completely knocked Britain and France out of the war entirely the Germans felt secure enough with them in no position to directly interfere and with Hitler’s obsession of attacking the soviets they preceded with operation Barbarossa. The attacks caught the Soviets unprepared and led to large gains and by October they were moving on Moscow though they were starting to come up on the limits of their logistics and would fall short of that target. 1942 saw further gains in the south were they reached Stalingrad and moved to capture the oilfields in the caucus though logistics prevented that from happening and there would be the extent of their advances.
With the invasion of the Soviet Union Stalin would start his almost continuous pressure on the allies to open up a second front on the Germans. The problem was that they lacked the resources to do so. Britain was maximizing and modernizing their own production and was stretching their man power as it was some of which would be going east with new equipment, France was trying to raise units in the colonies while buying equipment from America like the Polish and Greek forces eager to get to their own homelands. Even with the resources stretched thin the British and Greeks would plan for some amphibious landing in the Dodecanese Islands in December of 1941. The Free French Forces following on from the success at Dakar would try to convince the Vichy areas to join them but the North African areas would wait until Hitler decided to fully occupy the remaining areas and seize the few French ships in port there in May of 1942 which would allow staging from there for the invasion of Sicily. The occupation of France and the defection of the last of the colonies, Indochina would remain loyal to Vichy but the Japanese would force them out and create a puppet government there, would finally bring American recognition of de Gaulle’s government. American entry into the war in 1941 would have little effect until late in 1942 as they rushed to train and equip the forces they would need to fight the war and they would push for an immediate invasion of France, which de Gaulle obviously supported, but the British were able to convince them to start smaller so they could build up for the invasion and more thoroughly prepare including spectacularly effective deception operations.
With the fall of Sicily and their Dodecanese islands the cracks in Italy really started to show and negotiations for their surrender started up and shortly before the invasion of France was set to begin they would have to sift forces to Italy since they finally agreed to surrendered. While they now had to pivot the southern France landings to Italy to take them out of the war the landings in the North still took place in June of 43. While Italy had surrendered the German forces there didn’t intend to just let the allies walk into Italy and seized the military fortifications and disarmed their former allies and managed to avoid the initial trap the allies tried to set but they would quickly be forced north of Rome. The invasion of Italy delayed landings in southern France for months until the front lines stabilized in northern Italy but when they did come they meet with huge success with the German army becoming over stretched the allies were once again able to make large gains and quickly linked up with the forces pushing south alleviating their increasing supply problems. Churchill who had been pushing for the soft underbelly approach since the beginning would finally have the ability to try it with German forces being pulled from the Balkans to throw at the advancing Soviets leaving the area vulnerable. Greece would fall quite easily with coordination with the local resistance and British forces would move to the north and wait for the logistics to be available for them to push further.
Fearing all was lost and hoping to improve the situation after the war some in the military managed a coup which would install its own leadership that tried to negotiate surrender with the west that allowed them to keep fighting in the east but they were unable to achieve those goals. The coup also saw the defection of one of Germany’s former ally Bulgaria to the allies, the British having forces stationed in the area were able to move in accept their surrender. Some of the resistance movements would make big moves to try and seize control of their own countries. Yugoslavia managed to do it successfully being more able to receive allied support than Poland who received supplies mostly by air so their attempt to liberate themselves was put down bloodily. The new government in charge of Germany tried to move most of their forces east but large groups would refuse the order and stood and fought slowing the allies march across Germany. After the coup and the advances made in Italy and the liberation of Greece the allies started to push more forces into the Balkans, more at British insistence than anything else, to try and better position for the post war they did manage to largely bypass some of the German forces tied down by partisan forces. The Soviets had made steady progress in the east since the low point of 1942 they had recaptured most of their own territory by 1944 and would meet the allies at various points from Poland to Rumania.