Thank you for your replies!
The alternate paths that you mentioned would require a lot of changes to be implemented into the main campaign (editing the events anche the AI files for all the main countries of the game!) I think that any deviation from history made after the Second Abyssinian War would be too far-fetched. The turning point was the collapse of the Stresa Front after the Anglo-German Naval Treaty and the invasion of Abyssinia, which precluded an unified European front against Germany. Had the agreement lasted, there would have been an alliance between Italy, Austria and Hungary, plus the usual French-British alliance and the Little Entente, all against Germany. I couldn't figure out the effects of that set-up on the Abyssinian war, the Spanish Civil War and even a possible alliance between Germany and the Soviets. As you can see, it's all very Kaiserreich-style and far beyond the scope of this mod (and my capability!) In OTL, by the start of the 1936 main campaign, the alliances were pretty consolidated and the various leaderships were not in discussion.
Unfortunately, DH is a great simulator of historical WW2 with almost zero sandbox features (those in HoI2 have been progressively neutered). Any alternate path to war would require a massive amount of changes with dozens of new events.
Smaller what-ifs could be considered for battlescenarios. In particular, I explored the feasibility of a Germany against Italy (and Hungary?) scenario following the 1934 or the 1938 Austrian crisises. However, while these scenarios would be extremely interesting from a historical point of view, I couldn't figure out how to properly represent them in the game. In 1934 the Nazis were essentially unarmed, so that Hitler avoided any open conflict, thus a battlescenario would be a stroll for Italy and Austria. In 1938, Mussolini had no intention to wage war against his only powerful European ally, thus the battlescenario would be a stroll for the Wermacht into Austria, much like the Fall Grun scenario in the original HoI2.
What do you think about this?
Meanwhile, you can download the latest version of the mod. The new content is very limited, but I added some new pictures including some outstanding and never seen before photos of generals who operated in North Africa, taken from the book Rommel's Italian Generals In North Africa 1941-1943 by Di Zinno and D'Angelo.
MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.
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