Baja California

Baja California is a Mexican state bordering upon the US state of California and the Confederate state of Sonora. A long desert peninsula with few resources and baking sun, it is anchored at the northern end by the city of Tijuana and at the southern end by Cabo San Lucas. Following the Confederate purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua in 1881, it became the only Mexican territory bordering directly on the US. Due to the subsequent Mexican alliance with the Confederacy in the Great War, as well as its physical isolation from the rest of Mexico, Baja California found itself invaded by the US in 1915. This invasion, indifferently supplied and poorly executed, resulted in many US casualties to the dug-in Mexican Army and their Confederate advisers. The US withdrew to the pre-war border and no territory changed hands at the end of the war.

During the Mexican civil war of the 1920s, many Mexicans fled to the US through Baja, seeking political asylum or simply work in the more prosperous USA. After the Mexicans once again allied with the Confederates during the Second Great War, fighting was slow to begin in the West. The first major blow fell in March 1942, when a US navy task force steamed south from San Diego and bombarded Tijuana to discourage any Mexican or Confederate operations into California.

Baja California was the target of an amphibious invasion by the United States Marine Corps in 1943.