Before the coming of the Lizards,
history had progressed exactly the same way
it had in the real world. World War II began
on Sept. 1, 1939 with the German invasion
of Poland. France had fallen in May of 1940
and the Battle of Britain had taken place that
fall. Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7,
1941, and Germany had invaded Russia
several months earlier. All of the events,
historical figures, and national/ideological
allegiances existed and occurred exactly as
they did in the real world.
The Race landed in the midst of what Churchill called the crucial fifteen months of the war, as Germany pressed for a final defeat of Russia, Britain began to slowly recover from the effects of the Blitz, and the United States struggled to get its resources online. The entire world waited for one of these juggernauts to buckle, with the future of the planet riding on the outcome.
The arrival of the Lizards changed all that, as nations that had once fought each other now turned their resources towards expelling the invaders. But the delicate balance of power - although shifting along human/nonhuman lines - remains intact. With the nations of the world on a wartime economy, and desperately needed supplies no longer spent in fighting each other, the Earth's resources have been enough to prevent the planet from being overrun. The Lizards' advance was initially unstoppable, but losses have slowly grown larger since the invasion. And while they continue to gain ground against the Terrans, their progress has gradually ground to a halt.
The Race has almost complete control the skies, with their killercraft easily knocking down anything the Terrans send up. Britain and Japan still have functioning air forces (detailed momentarily), but no other nation has been able to maintain more than a handful of planes. This dominance is offset by the Race's almost total ignorance of water-borne forces.
Unused as they are to a planet with so much freestanding water, the Lizards do not consider such forces a threat and have left the world's navies all but untouched. The nations of the Earth can thus move large numbers of supplies over water without suffering the devastating attacks land borne convoys must endure. The Lizards have slowly caught on to this, and attacks on passing ships have begun to increase, but so far no significant damage has been inflicted.
As for land, the Lizards have taken and controlled several large tracts of the Earth's surface. However, for purposes of the war, only three particular areas are of any significance:
America
The central United States has been the site of fierce fighting between U.S. Army units and the forces of The Race. The Lizards threaten to carve the country in half along the Mississippi - gradually strangling the nation into submission. Needless to say, U.S. forces have fought desperately to keep from ceding any further territory. The invaders hold large sections of the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana, most states on the lower Mississippi), and the two forces have seesawed back and forth across Illinois, with Chicago becoming a major point of contention. General Patton turned the Lizards back from the city in the winter of '42, but since then, the aliens have made slow but steady progress against their foes.
The Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago was evacuated when the Race drew close, and relocated to Denver. Progress towards the development of an American nuclear weapon proceeds from there. The Race dropped a tactical nuke on Washington D.C. in an attempt to cow the continent into submission, but the act failed to have any effect (Roosevelt, and the government having long since been evacuated) besides raising the natives' ire.
Europe
Europe is a patchwork of Lizard / human control; the Race carved out a huge foothold along the Russian front, including Poland and large tracts of the Soviet Union. In addition, Spain, Italy and Southern France are are also in Lizard hands, and the southeastern part of the continent has taken a tremendous beating from air raids.
Germany has been forced to cede much of its conquered territory but continues to fight with ferocity. Berlin was the site of nuclear attack. While hundreds of thousands were killed and a significant number of the Nazi Inner Circle incinerated, Hitler himself survived, and has continued to push his beloved Fatherland toward defeating the invaders. Whether this is a good or bad thing has been a matter of some debate among Earth's other inhabitants, but none can deny Der Fuhrer's effectiveness in combating the Lizards. Germany remains the greatest obstacle in the Race's quest for domination.
The Soviets, too, show no signs of giving up, although their situation is much more dire. The Lizards hold much of the western portion of the country, including the fertile farmland of the Ukraine and the industrial areas of the Donet Basin. They continued to make progress towards Moscow throughout 1942-43.
As so many would-be conquerors have learned however, conquering the entire country just isn't that easy. The Soviet army fights with grim determination and Stalin has vowed to let every last man, woman and child die before he capitulates. No one doubts the man's resolve. Large groups of partisans made of combined German/Soviet units continue to harass the enemy along the Russian front (that such previously bitter enemies are willing to join forces is a sign of just how threatening the Race's presence is) ' and the unbelievably harsh winters have taken a toll on the reptilian invaders. While the Soviet Union may be the first major power to fall to the Lizards, they will insure that the hated aliens pay a heavy price.
A crude German missile launched early in the invasion managed to destroy a Lizard ship in the Ukraine. The ship had a large number of nuclear weapons on board, and as a result, huge amounts of plutonium have falled into human hands. The supplies were distributed among five powers, with Germany and Russia receiving the lion's share.
While the Nazis used it to further their nuclear program, the Soviets had enough to construct a single bomb, which Stalin is holdin g in reserve in case the Lizards come too close to Moscow.
Asia
The Lizards have seized a large segment of mainland China away from the Japanese who previously held it, and also parts of Siberia (where Russian resistance is as tenacious as it is in the west). Japan has struggled fiercely to regain its lost territory, and has become an ever-present nuisance to the Race forces occupied there.
The pressing battles in Europe and America, however, has kept the invaders from concentrating more fully on that nuisance. Within the occupied territory, resistance is mostly covert. Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang (Nationalist) forces and Mao TseTung's Communist forces fight a constant guerrilla war against the invaders, just as they did against Japan. Despite the professed unity of the human race, both the Communists and KMT are loath to work with their former enemies, and all three forces act more or less independently of each other. The Chinese peasantry, caught in the middle of it all as they have been for centuries, are, merely content to survive and contribute passively when and where they can.
The two great powers left most unaffected by the Race are England and Japan. Though the targets of numerous air raids, the Lizards did not consider such (relatively) tiny islands strategically viable, and have concentrated their forces elsewhere. 'Thus, the two countries have strength and freedom that their allies lack: both still have a functioning air force, neither has territory held by the Lizards, and their technological capacity has been steadily increasing as time goes on. These "insignificant" island nations are rapidly becoming a nuisance the Race can no longer afford to ignore.
In addition to these areas, the Race controls most of Africa and South America. But with the brunt of fighting occurring elsewhere, their final impact on the war is questionable. (Mohandas Gandhi is, however, said to be organizing a passive resistance campaign in India. Only time will tell what sort of effect his unique form of warfare will have on the Race).
Politics
Needless to say, Terran politics has undergone a major transition since the coming of the Lizards. Despite animosity and at times outright contempt, the five world powers managed to set their differences aside and concentrate on the common foe.
The scope of the Lizard attack has helped matters some. With the alien knife pressed so close to the respective throats of Germany, the U.S., etc., the great powers have neither the means or the resources to continue fighting each other. Besides this, however, all of the major powers have agreed to cooperate in certain ways. Captured alien technology is to be shared among the "Big Five" (and was, in fact, in the case of the aliens' plutonium), and it is understood that should any country permanently throw off the yoke of the invaders, it will immediately come to the aid of its allies.
Certain countries, however have been forced to capitulate to the Race. Italy fell relatively rapidly, and although Mussolini managed to escape to Germany, the remaining government has settled under the Lizards' thumb. Many parts of the Third World are also under Race control, their governments lacking the resources and industrial capacity to effectively resist. The most complicated tangle of allegiances, however, lies in Poland. The Jewish population of that occupied state was on the verge of the Holocaust; the Lizards' arrival spared them from a fate worse than death, and the aliens were welcomed as liberators when they first arrived. The leader of the Warsaw Jews, Moishe Russie, broadcast Lizard-endorsed propaganda on the radio, telling the world of the atrocities his people suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The remainder of the world has had a hard time believing such claims, however, and the near-victims of the Holocaust have quickly become reviled as traitors to the human race.
As war continues, the Polish Jews have come to realize that the Race is a scant improvement over the Nazis who came before them. Certainly, they are no longer starving, nor are they under threat of genocidal annihilation, but they remain slaves beneath the thumb of an inhuman oppressor. Resistance cells have sprung up, unrest is growing, and Moishe Russie and his family managed to escape to England, where he now speaks out against the Lizards over the BBC.
Regardless of their intentions for our planet, the Lizards' invasion prevented once of the most horrifying crimes in human history. Few can believe anyone was capable of such genocide, and with Hitter's Nazis in the thick of the fray against the Lizards, Germany's murderous intentions may quickly be lost within the tide of history.
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