Chronology
Most important facts about the War of Wonders
1883
April 30th: birth of Aaron Spiegelmann, the future Dr. Hope.
1888
August 31st: presumed date of the foundation of the Council of the Nameless; according to Jesper St. Clare and his Observers, those Dark Mages – heirs to the original Council of Thirteen – are to be considered the inspiration and the puppeteers behind every major Masonic and exoteric association flowering at the time, particularly in Victorian England.
1889
April 20th: birth of Adolf Hitler.
1902
December 21st: birth of Jesper St. Clare, a future member of the Western Observers.
1908
March, unknown date: Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels founds in Germany the Ordo Novi Templi, the New Templars; he also founds the exoteric/racist magazine Ostara, that will heavily influence Hitler’s ideology.
1912
June 21st: after facing his initiation tests, Jesper St. Clare is allowed to join the Western Observers; he is the youngest person to be allowed in the order in over a century.
1919
June 28th: Germany is forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Versailles due to which, amongst other things, its army is limited to 100,000 men and Alsace passes into French hands.
1920
February 24th: in Munich, Adolf Hitler presents the 25 points that form the program of the political movement that two months later will be called Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) – the future Nazi party. Secretly, the first steps for the creation of the Ahnenerbe are also taken.
1921
November: Adolf Hitler gains absolute power in his party (Führerprinzip) and founds SA (Sturmabteilung, literally “Assault Battalions”).
1923
May 10th: Jesper St. Clare, a brilliant member of the Order of the Western Observers, is chastised by the Grand Master Ismael Ritzak for his refusal to totally relinquish his profane life; his theories about a conspiracy by an unidentified group of dark mages are ridiculed and banished.
November 8th/9th: in Munich, the Beer Hall Putsch led by Hitler and General Ludendorff fails. In this occasion, Hitler gets noticed by some emissaries of the Council of the Nameless; in a private meeting, he is made aware of the fact that in some human beings there are latent abilities that may be able to turn them into a superior being (übermenschlich or Meta-Human). His own condition of Meta-Human able to manipulate other people’s minds is not revealed to him.
1924
October, unknown date: Winston Churchill, who has an interest in the effect of exoteric thought in traditional English society, meets Jesper St. Clare and is interested in his theories about a secret conspiracy supporting the growing Nazi movement.
1925
Adolf Hitler, free from incarceration, rebuilds the Nazi Party that had been disbanded after the failed Beer Hall Putsch and creates SS. In secret, he also founds the Wundersprojekt under the leadership and with the support of some experts of the occult sent by the Council of the Nameless.
1928
May: 12 representatives of the Nazi Party are elected to the Reichstag.
1930
March: the Catholic centrist Heinrich Brüning becomes Chancellor of Germany.
September: 107 representatives of the Nazi Party are elected to the Reichistag; 77 are the Communists, while the Social-Democrats lose ground.
1931
Nazi paramilitary groups increase their rate of aggression against their political opponents. The Nazis form an alliance with Alfred Hugenberg’s German National People’s Party, called the Harzburg Front.
December 13th: during an official visit to the USA, the future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill secretly takes part in a meeting in New York between experts in the field of exoteric studies. While leaving the theatre on 5th Avenue in which such meeting took place, he is hit by a taxi and is saved only by the prompt intervention of Jesper St. Clare, who had been a speaker at the meeting. What initially seemed a simple accident is found out to have been a murder attempt, but all investigations on who may have commissioned it fail.
1932
April: Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected as the President of Germany with 19.3 million votes (53%) defeating Adolf Hitler (13.4 million votes, 36.8%).
May: Chancellor Brüning, who had been trying to put an end to Nazi violence, is replaced by Franz von Papen.
July: the crisis of the Weimar Republic and a general discontent bring the Nazi Party to power with 230 seats in the Reichstag and over 37% of the vote.
1933
January 30th: Adolf Hitler becomes the Chancellor of Germany.
February 27th: the Reichstag burns due to an arsonist’s attack; this gives Hitler the occasion to emanate a “law for the defence of the German people” that effectively suspend most constitutional rights.
March 5th: the Nazi Party achieves the 43.9% of the vote in the general election; along with their allies of the German National People’s Party, they gain the absolute majority in Parliament.
March 23rd: the Parliament gives full powers to Adolf Hitler; the only opposition comes from the Social-Democrats. Thanks to this, the Wundersprojekt obtains unlimited founding and is free of any control from the Parliament; the best international scientists are involved in the project and the experiments aimed to create the first Meta-Humans begin. At the same time, the Arischer Sturm project begins: it is aimed to study the best way to employ the newly created Meta-Humans in a war.
April: creation of the Gestapo (Secret State Police), that systematically eliminates any opponent of the Nazi Party. In Dachau, the first concentration camp is opened. From there, the people on which the Wundersprojekt is experimented are forcibly taken.
May/June: the Social-Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany are disbanded, and so are all trade/labour unions. The books considered to be “unfit” for Germans start being burned in the major cities.
July: any political party in Germany is declared illegal, with the only exception of the Nazi Party.
October: Germany leaves the League of Nations; Hitler’s advisors start planning a Blitzkrieg (a rapid invasion of Europe).
November: the Nazi Party, the only one allowed to present candidates, obtains 92% of the votes at the general election.
1934
June 30th/July 1st: the “Night of the Long Knives”, during which Hitler orders the assassination of all SA leaders.
July 25th: the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is murdered; failed Nazi Putsch in Vienna.
August 2nd: German President Paul von Hindenburg dies; Adolf Hitler takes the role for himself.
1935
January: after a plebiscite, Saar rejoins Germany.
March: Adolf Hitler denounces the Treaty of Versailles as unfair and restarts a mandatory military service.
July 1st: Heinrich Himmler founds the Ahnenerbe, an institute for the research and the teaching of the ancient traditions and cultural inheritance. The official aim of the Ahnenerbe is to trace the origins of the Aryan race, but its real objective is to track down any exoteric items whose powers could be employed to support the Blitzkrieg Nazi Germany has been plotting for years. The Council of the Nameless uses the Ahnenerbe to retrieve the Crystal Skulls necessary to make the Prophecy come true.
September: the Nuremberg Laws are introduced. With them, the “non-Aryans” lose all their rights.
September: alarmed by the Nazi’s frantic research for exoteric items, during an audience with the Order of the Western Observers, Jesper St. Clare denounces the return of the Council of the Thirteen and asks for a direct intervention by the Order, to stop their work. His theories are met with widespread scepticism. Frustrated, St. Clare decides to act individually, joining forces with as many allies he can find.
1936
March: going against the existing peace treaties, Germany remilitarises Rheinland. The Wundersprojekt experiments carry on, despite the deaths of the test subjects (all prisoners from concentration camps) can be counted in the thousands. The procedure hasn’t reached the needed stability yet, but the first artificial Meta-Humans start appearing. They are, however, little more than useless aberrations.
July/August: in Spain, some cities in the south and the centre-north of the Country, led by Francisco Franco, rebel against the Republican government. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany send military help to the rebels. The Spanish Civil War begins.
October: the German and the Italian governments sign an agreement that will later grow into the Axis.
November: Germany and Japan sign the Antikomintern Pact.
1937
March: during the Spanish Civil War, international volunteers report that “beings with supernatural powers” have assisted the Axis troops in battle. Such news are considered laughable by British and U.S. politician, however Winston Churchill meets in secret with Jesper St. Clare to discuss the issue.
1938
March 12th/13th: German troops occupy Austria, that is annexed to Germany (Anschluss). A few weeks later, near Linz, the Mauthausen concentration camp opens. It is from there that the Nazis will lift Aaron Spiegelmann, a Jew with Polish origins who studied under Max Planck, who will become the first perfectly stable artificially created Meta-Human produced by the Wundersprojekt.
April: after the mutation, Spiegelmann’s intellectual abilities grow indefinitely; later, he is forced to help perfect the Wundersprojekt. He will be responsible for the building of further Wunderkammern.
July: thanks to Spiegelmann’s ingenuity, the Wunderammern are finally stable; this brings to the creation of the first fully Meta-Human squad, the Arischer Sturm.
September 26th: Adolf Hitler gives Czechoslovakia an ultimatum concerning the situation in Sudetenland, an area of that country mainly inhabited by Germans.
September 20th/30th: due to the Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia is forced to allow Sudetenland to become a part of Germany.
November 9th/10th: Kristallnacht: in Germany, an anti-Jewish pogrom takes place.
1939
March: Bohemia and Moravia, occupied by Nazi troops, become a German protectorate; an extermination camp is established in Terezìn, near Prague.
March 21st: Germany reclaims the Danzig territory and right of passage on Polish land.
March 28th: the capitulation of Madrid marks the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Rumours about the presence of superhuman beings assisting Franco’s soldiers and the Axis forces in battle are widespread, but there is no proof.
March 31st: Poland rejects the German demands; the French and British governments confirm its territorial rights.
May 22nd: Italy and Germany sign the “Pact of Steel”, that practically subordinates Italy to the German plans. In the same context, the Grand Council of Fascism is made aware of the existence of the Wundersprojekt and of the German plan to employ the Arischer Sturm in battle.
August 23rd: Germany and the USSR sign a non aggression pact; Adolf Hitler obtains the USSR’s approval for his invasion of Poland.
September 1st: at 4:45am, German troops cross the Polish border directed towards Warsaw. Leading the Wehrmacht are Todes Maske, Richtofen and Seelenjäger. The British secret services also report the presence of a gigantic “mechanical spider” that allegedly exterminated a whole Polish battalion during the night. World War Two officially starts. Italy declares its neutrality.
September 3rd: after failed attempts at negotiating, France and the United Kingdom declare war against Germany.
September 17th: the USSR attacks Poland from the east.
September 27th/28th: Warsaw capitulates; Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland between them. The German news celebrate that victory underscoring the importance of the Arischer Sturm, the new symbol of the German Völkisch.
1940
April/May: thanks to an extensive employment of the newly created Meta-Humans, Nazi Germany occupies Denmark and Norway. The escape of Aaron Spiegelmann causes the replacement of the whole management group of the Wundersprojekt: Seelenjäger is its new commander.
May 6th: on the coast of Folkestone in Kent (United Kingdom), the British find Professor Aaron Spiegelmann. He is the first Meta-Human to be taken alive by the Allied Forces.
May 10th: with the invasion of Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, the German offensive moves on the Western front. In the United Kingdom, the new coalition government is led by Winston Churchill – who enrols Jesper St. Clare as a special consultant.
May 28th/June 3rd: the British and French troops under siege in Dunkirk are evacuated. Winston Churchill has a private audience with Aaron Spiegelmann. Together, they devise a new project (suggested by Jesper St. Clare) that will allow the British Empire to create some Meta-Humans of its own. To kickstart it St. Clare, with the approval of the Prime Minister, starts searching for individuals with extraordinary powers. He recruits Lord Ian Aloisius Wylde and Ryan O’Shea (an avatar of the mythic hero Cúchulainn).
June 10th: Italy declares war against France and the United Kingdom.
June 14th: the Germans occupy Paris.
June 22nd: France signs an armistice with Germany; the north is occupied, while in the south a collaborationist government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain takes power.
June 25th: the first mutation chamber in the United Kingdom, built according to the projects stolen by Spiegelmann, starts operations.
July: Germany starts the “Battle of Britain”.
July 2nd: Billy Fish “The Triton Man” is the first stable “prodigy” created in the British mutation chambers. Enthusiastically, Winston Churchill calls Professor Spiegelmann “the only hope for this country and for the whole world”. From this definition he will take his new codename: Dr. Hope.
July 17th: the British government publicly announces the creation of the first operational squad of British Meta-Humans, The Protectors, at the orders of the Office for Extraordinary Matters (O.E.M.). Its official members are Cúchulainn, Lord Ian Aloisius Wylde, Rose Kathleen Dawson, Billy Fish and Jesper St. Clare in person.
August 10th/17th: the German naval blockade on Britain threatens the development of Meta-Humans. For this reason, St. Clare travels to the USA, for the first time in an official mission supported by the British government; he tells President F. D. Roosevelt about the existence of Dr. Hope and of his mutation chamber; he offers his technology in exchange for economic and military support. In this occasion, the creation of a number of mutation chambers on American territory is discussed for the first time; this will be the basis for the creation of Department H.
September 15th: despite the blockade and frequent bombings, O.E.M. carries on working; in order to fight a possible enemy invasion, they create a number of “Farms” in the Cumbrian farmlands. The creation of Prodigies is intensified. The government starts a campaign aimed towards the recruitment of Natural Prodigies and Keepers.
September 27th: Italy, Germany and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.
1941
February 15th: Dr. Hope sends a letter to President Roosevelt detailing his progress in the creation of Department H and in the development of Project H.O.P.E.
March 23rd: the first American Meta-Human squad, the Freedom Flags, begin covert operations.
December 27th: after the USA joined the war, the Freedom Flags complete successfully their first official operation.