December 1941 - June 1942
The Invincible Reich
By Christmas of 1941, Axis forces had marched southward through Italy and were threatening the great capital in Rome as Italian defenders, bolstered by recently-arrived Turkish reinforcements, struggled to hold on to the seat of their nation's power. By February of 1942, Axis troops had advanced to the edges of the city, and the 16.Panzer-Division spearheaded the German assault on Rome.
The battle over the city took almost the entire month, and the casualty toll was heavy on both sides. But on February 23, Rome finally gave way and was occupied by the German Reich. Mussolini and his top advisers fled south, and Pope Pius XII was evacuated from the Vatican and fled to Avignon, France, to seek refuge from the oncoming Nazi occupation. The defeat was the harshest blow yet dealt to Mussolini's New Roman Empire, and as spring came close, the German invasion of Europe seemed unstoppable.
The fall of Rome was accompanied by a renewed counteroffensive in the Balkan region, where Axis troops -- primarily British and Yugoslavian with some German support -- captured Romanian and Bulgarian states under Spanish occupation, incorporating the occupied territory into Yugoslavia. Hitler also engineered a brief invasion of the Netherlands, which took just two weeks to complete in its fullness.
Hitler's Wehrmacht had achieved victory upon victory, and both the Spanish Balkans and the Italian Peninsula seemed to be foregone conclusions. With the battle in both theaters already apparently won, the Führer mobilized another wing of the army to begin a new campaign -- an invasion of France.
The Maginot Line -- which the French had extended up to the Atlantic coast -- succeeded in slowing down the German advance, but even the legendary defensive line could not hold the Wehrmacht at bay for long. As the new Panzer IV tanks pressed into the country on the northern end of the border, German and Swiss troops stormed out of the Alps, capturing Annecy and moving on to occupy large stretches of southern France. The French had thought themselves prepared for war with Hitler, but the rapid loss of territory rattled the army and the government terribly. Within a month, defeat seemed inevitable. As elements of the government fled to the colonies to attempt to reorganize and continue their resistance, the mainland capitulated and France was fully occupied by the German Reich by June 14. Germany now extended from western Poland to the French Atlantic coast and nearly halfway down the Italian Peninsula -- as the invasion of Italy continued and preparations for an attack into Spain and Portugal were made, the total Axis conquest of Europe seemed like an inevitability.
Preparing the Pact for War
With the Synarchist Pact established as the sole dominant political power south of the United States, the influence of Mexico and Falangist Cuba led to both the Dominican Republic and the Third Empire of Haiti joining the Synarchist Pact in early 1942. But with the power base south of Mexico secured, the affairs of Europe and North America became the center of military, economic, and foreign policy.
Long periods of military recruitment had increased the size of the Mexican infantry forces substantially, with the army boasting 90 infantry divisions. These units included a mix of regular army troops and professionalized Cristero units, but all of them had been reordered to conform to a standard organization of line infantry and artillery. However, as the size of the army grew, supplying it became a challenge -- in particular, artillery was in critical demand. The army took to equipping most of its soldiers with captured weapons from the subjugated Central American states, scaling back the production of modern Mexican-manufactured infantry equipment to focus on turning out as much field artillery as possible. With new-model cannons being developed in the spring of 1942, production would remain strained for some time as the army attempted to supply its divisions with the newest artillery.
With supply and manpower concerns facing the infantry, Saturnino Cedillo began to shift his focus toward expanding his mechanized forces. Recognizing that the Mexican army would need a small core of elite assault units for an eventual war with a major world power, Cedillo stepped up the production of the VB-3 Márquez light tank, and also directed the manufacture of a number of VBA-3 Castrillon heavy tank. With these two new-model tanks under heavy production, Cedillo began a project to convert the army's stockpile of outdated VB-2 Melgar light tanks into self-propelled artillery guns. Cedillo's plan was for these three vehicles to form the center of a small, elite corps of heavy offensive troops, supplemented by motorized infantry. While this would demand considerable manufacturing time and oil, Cedillo believed that such divisions could be the key to a successful war against a great world power like the United States.
The navy's first two carriers, the ARM Jalisco and the ARM Oaxaca, were finished and put into active service in May, just as the invasion of France was beginning. These two converted Spanish battleships were the first new capital-sized additions to the Mexican fleet since the Great War era, and they would soon be followed by a new project to construct Mexico's first truly modern capital ship, a heavy cruiser. This would be supported by the continued construction of submarines and destroyers, with an eye toward creating a small but effective naval task force that could defend the coastline from naval invasions.
The production of these ships and weapons was elevated as the top priority of the Mexican economy -- with Hitler's Axis swallowing up Europe at an increasing rate, war would no doubt reach the Americas before long, and Mexico needed to be prepared for it. All the while, Mexican diplomats were increasingly engaging in dialogue with their British and German counterparts -- with Mussolini's alliance falling apart rapidly, many in the Mexican government believed that some degree of cooperation with Hitler and Edward would be necessary to achieve their ambitions north of the border.