Central Powers

The Central Powers is the common name used for one of the two major alliance systems vying for world dominance; its formal name is the Austro-Prussian Alliance. Its founding members are Germany, the United States and Austria-Hungary--countries whose fortunes were at a low ebb in the late nineteenth century, largely because of the policies of their Entente rivals. Minor allies include or have at different points included Chile, Paraguay, Haiti, Bulgaria, Liberia, Turkey, Poland, Ireland, Quebec, Brazil, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Norway, and Finland. Italy was a formal member of the alliance but remained neutral in the Great War.

The Central Powers fought the Great War against the Entente and won at high cost. They imposed harsh peaces on their defeated enemies but soon lost the will to continue enforcing them. Relations between the two largest nations cooled. In the United States, the Socialist Party ended a period of dominance by the Democratic Party, and maintaining a strong military was a much lower priority for the Socialists. In Germany, political turmoil as Kaiser Wilhelm II aged and ailed had a similar effect. The United States supported an anti-Hapsburg rebellion in the Mexican Civil War, and Germany supported a Monarchist government in the Spanish Civil War. Both were defeated.

In 1941, upon the death of the Kaiser, the Entente launched a coordinated assault on Germany and the United States, beginning the Second Great War. Both Central Powers countries fell back early on before (mostly) stabilizing their fronts. In the Great War there was a great amount of cooperation between the two major allies, but in the latter war this is not the case--at most they occasionally cooperate on minor naval operations in the Atlantic.