Führerreich

Führerreich: Legacy of the Great War, formerly Führerredux, is the official successor to the original Führerreich mod.

Starting out as an expansion on the original, Führerreich: Legacy of the Great War a total overhaul of the original, taking the original setting and developing it further, keeping what worked and leaving what didn’t.

The original Führerreich, released years ago, began as a simple "double-blind" scenario. It was based on a now-defunct event in Kaiserreich referencing a novel written by Winston Churcill, "Our Finest Hour". Referencing a Valkist German People’s Party led by a man named Adam Dressler, the minor flavor event was spun off into a full mod, based on the idea of an Entente victory fully written from the perspective of the Kaiserreich world.

As successor to the original Führerreich, Führerreich: Legacy of the Great War presents this world through totally new eyes. Führerreich is now written and developed as a separate world with its own history.

With the entry of the United States into the Great War in 1916, Theodore Roosevelt led the American people to join France, Britain, and Italy in the war to overcome the indomitable might of the army of the German Kaiser. When Russia signed a peace with Germany in 1918, it seemed for a moment that even the new strength of the United States would not be enough to overcome the Kaiser’s unrelenting might. However, after four years of fighting, the combined might of the Entente vanquished the exhausted German Empire in 1919.

The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1921, left Germany defeated and dismembered as French and American diplomats promised that Germany would never again be able to wage war in Europe. From the newly-divided German Republic an Inter-Allied Rhineland Commission was created, and a Kiel International Zone, dividing Germany’s assets as spoils to the victors. The former Austro-Hungarian Empire was carved up, with Austria and Hungary left rump states. The newly-formed Yugoslavia, however, was far from satisfied as Italy took their share of land from territories promised to the new kingdom of southern Slavs. The British, granted a number of German African colonies, nonetheless left the Paris Peace Conference a fierce critic of their allies’ extreme demands as relations between them and the Franco-Italian axis cooled.

In the east, the defeated Russia rapidly crumbled into revolution and civil war. The Bolsheviks, in a coalition with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, seized the seats of power in Moscow and Petrograd, and over multiple years of war they secured control of the country; but not before an intervention by American and Japanese troops rescued the fledgling White Movement, forming a government-in-exile in the east.

Europe had forever been changed by the Great War.

The defeat of the German Empire and the rise of democracy in Germany gave breath to a new movement on the German right. The men who had fought in the Trenches of Europe returned home, disgusted with the peace and resentful of the old Empire, went on to fight in the revolutions and civil wars of the post-peace years, all the while developing new ultranationalist ideals opposed to old Conservatism, Liberalism, and Marxism. Among these groups, the Valkists rose to the forefront, espousing a new, modern German nationalism which harnessed the youthful energy of the trench-fighting veterans.

In 1932, German democracy was finally defeated when the Valkists took power. Their Führer, Adam Dressler, was elected Reichspräsident, and his movement the Valkist German Front-Fighters’ League secured control over the Reichstag with the help of the broader German right. In the years following, the new president of the Reich began transforming the mechanisms of state, empowering his Valkist allies and building the Reichswehr into an army to reclaim Germany’s lost glory.

In 1936, on the cusp of securing Germany against all challengers from both the left and the right, Adam Dressler sits at the head of a weakening coalition. The Valkists, a movement of reactionary modernists, seek to destroy the old Germany once and for all, sweeping away its religion, its capitalism, and its traditions, leaving a foundation upon which a new Germany will be built. Their allies, the Young German Order and the Völkische German Resistance Union, look on Valkist ambitions anxiously and opportunistically, waiting for any opportunity to seize the reigns of the state.

With the rise of Valkism, Europe once more lives under the shadow of war. From the east, the Soviet Union looks to push the revolution further into Europe, taking advantage of German territorial demands to move in and "protect" the vulnerable states on their borders. As Britain looks onward from the isles, France and Italy sit as the final defenders of liberalism and democracy, and must work to organize the scattered Entente Council into a united faction against tyranny, or else let Europe fall under the German Jackboot.

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Questions? Feedback? Looking to join the Development Team, or talk about the mod? Join our Discord server, or visit our subreddit.

Special thanks to the original Führerreich Team, without whom this mod would not exist. Thank you to the Kaiserreich team and everybody else who has generously allowed our team to use their assets.