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| - The United States of America is a large nation on the continent of North America and a relatively influential power in the Western Hemisphere. Founded as thirteen colonies by the British throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, the United States was declared by disgruntled colonists on July 4, 1776 with a Declaration of Independence and won that independence from Britain during the American Revolutionary War, becoming officially recognized after its victory in that conflict in 1783. For the next eight decades the nation grew rapidly, expanding westward all the way to the Pacific Ocean and establishing itself as a regional and minor world power. Regional tensions grew, however, as the slaveholding South refused to conform with the abolitionist North. While compromises were made throughout the first half of the 19th century that staved off conflict, tensions eventually boiled over and culminated in the First American Civil War of 1861-1864 with the secession of several Southern states. Although initially considered a hopeless rebellion, the Southern insurgents benefited from having superior leadership and several decisive tactical blunders by their Union opponents. Through sheer will and determination as well as good fortune, the calcitrant Confederates managed to fight their Federal enemies to a stalemate throughout the first two years of the war, eventually turning the tide with a victory at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863. This decisive victory convinced the sympathetic governments of France and Britain to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy. While their European benefactors provided little actual military support to the effort, they did fund the cash-strapped Confederate cause with considerable loans that allowed the rebels to consolidate their gains and force an armistice by mid-1864. The US was hence roughly halved in area. Although significantly diminished in size and power, the United States still remained a powerful and influential country. Throughout the next several decades it became an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse, as its cities grew rapidly with an influx of immigrant labor. No longer having to entertain the concerns of the agrarian and reactionary South, the American political spectrum shifted in a decidedly progressive direction, with the Republican Party merging with smaller progressive movements to form the Socialist Party in 1890 and relegating the conservative Democratic Party to the status of regional token opposition for decades to come. The Socialist leadership worked to largely mend ties with their estranged European allies in Britain and France, especially as the Confederacy continued to unrepentantly practice slavery into the 20th century, a practice largely considered abhorrent in Europe and throughout much of the Western world by that time. Still, transatlantic relations remained cordial at best as Socialist President Eugene Debs refused to intervene in World War I on behalf of the Entente Powers despite British and French pleas for assistance. Things turned sour for the United States and the Socialists following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression, with the Democratic Party being restored to the White House for just the second time in sixty years with the election of Charles Dawes in 1932. While running on his financial credentials and promises of fiscal responsibility, the economy lagged throughout the 1930s. Although Dawes won a narrow re-election in 1936, Socialist Franklin D. Roosevelt reclaimed the presidency for his party the following election amidst fears of the escalating war in Europe. Roosevelt had little time to celebrate his victory as the Ribbentrop Telegram, a secret communicate from the Nazi German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to the Confederate Secretary of State Ezekiel "Zeke" Tenpenny, was intercepted by American intelligence. The telegram outlined in particular detail a planned Confederate invasion of the United States with the tacit support of the Third Reich (by then allies of the CSA) in an attempt to neutralize the United States, which had increasingly been supplying financial and material aid to the French and British through a Lend-Lease program. Days after the exposure of the telegram, Confederate forces launched a surprise assault on their poorly-prepared Federal counterparts, driving them far north and seizing valuable mineral deposits in the West and fertile land in the Plains States. The tactic did put an end to American support to the Western allies as all resources were diverted into the North American war front, but the Union military and American resolve proved far stronger than the powerful Confederates had presumed. Within a year the Confederate advance into Union territory had been halted and turned back, resulting in vicious stalemate. With both sides having remained neutral during World War I, neither had abandoned the concept of trench warfare or adopted the devastatingly effective blitzkrieg tactics that the Germans were using to overwhelm their opponents across the sea. The bloody stalemate raged for the next three years, remaining confined largely to the border states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri as neither side invested many troops or resources West of the Mississippi (although the small city of Los Angeles was burned to the ground by Confederate Mexican conscripts and remains largely un-rebuilt to this day; the American capital of Washington suffered the same fate). While both sides contributed small expeditionary forces to their respective allies in Europe, most US and CS troops remained in North America to fight each other. The Confederates were heartened upon the German victory in Europe and the signing of the conditional surrender by British, French, and Russian leadership in October of 1945 at the Treaty of Brussels, hoping that with their European enemies dispatched the mighty Third Reich would turn its sights against the United States and come to the aid of the CSA. Hitler, however, had won his victory at an appalling price and his Reich had largely been stretched thin in both resources and manpower. Although still at war with the US in name, the threat they posed had been neutralized early on in the war and the weary Germans had little interest in fighting a new enemy in earnest after their brutally taxing European campaigns. Although minor naval skirmishes between the US Navy and Kriegsmarine took place off the East Coast of the United States and New York and Boston were shelled lightly in December of 1945, the Germans pressed for an armistice in early 1946 and urged their Confederate allies to do the same, much to their chagrin. Hostilities in North America officially ceased with the signing of the Treaty of Arlington in March of 1946, ending five long years of brutal war. No territory changed hands. Economically crippled from the war and largely financially isolated in the new Axis-dominated world, The United States spiraled into even deeper economic depression. While this was offset somewhat by its entry into political and economic alliances with the last few democratic nations left on Earth (Canada, the free nations of South America, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and a severely weakened Britain joined with the US to form the Allied States in 1950), the US still faced dire times for the next three decades. Agricultural production was halted by the war and famine raged across the country for years following the Armistice while Axis nations refused to purchase American-made goods, stifling the US' once robust manufacturing sector. Americans fled impoverished rural areas and crowded into urban centers where the last few meager job opportunities existed, causing a spike in crime, homelessness, and disease associated with excessive overcrowding. The American capital was moved to New York City, as Washington was burned to the ground following repeated battles and Confederate firebombing raids and never rebuilt due to lack of funding and the impracticality of its geographical location, being in such close proximity to the Confederate border. To this day the few notable mounments and historic buildings of the city that survived the war exist in a state of decay and disrepair, defaced by both the elements and pro-Confederate vandals, and the ruins of the city remain a ghost town populated only by vagrants and skells. The United States faded into obscurity throughout the 1960s and 70s, being largely eclipsed by its southern neighbor in terms of prominence and global power. It did, however, achieve something of a renaissance by the 1980s as it produced several innovators of technological firsts during the computer age like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. As computers and computer technology became sought-after commodoties on the global market, the fledgling enterprises of such entrepreneurs catapulted the US into the forefront of the world's economic psyche. Coinciding with the rule of the pragmatic, finance-minded reformist Führer Kurt Waldheim, this economic boom led to a lifting of the 45-year old German boycott on American goods in 1986, followed in suit closely by most of the other fascist powers by the decade's end (although the CSA still refuses to trade with her northern neighbor to this day). Today the United States seems poised to climb out of its long economic malaise and reaffirm its status a world power. Although not as prominent or powerful as her Southern counterpart, the US does pride itself on its strong military, robust technology sector, and healthy manufacturing industry. If nothing else the nation has emerged as by far the most prominent non-Axis nation on Earth, eclipsing anemic Britain and the struggling democratic nations of the Commonwealth as the best and perhaps last hope for democracy as the 21st century dawns.
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