Second World War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Date | 7 February 2022 – present | ||
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| Location | Canada, the North Atlantic and the United States | ||
| Status | Ongoing | ||
| Belligerents | |||
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| Commanders and leaders | |||
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| Casualties and losses | |||
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| Civilian dead | c. 250,000, mostly in Canada | ||
| Total | c. 600,000, including c. 60,000 in the 2022 nuclear exchange | ||
The Second World War is a war between the European Federation and the United States, fought since February 2022. It began on 7 February 2022, when a European delegate opened fire on the American delegation at the Second Canadian Summit; the Federation declared war within hours, and nuclear weapons were used within a day. Most of the fighting has taken place in Canada and the North Atlantic.
The war has been fought at low intensity throughout, as both powers have committed most of their forces to the parasite war. The industrial group H&A has been the Federation's primary contractor since 2022, and since 2027 its war effort has been run by a joint H&A-EF command. As of 2028 the United States government holds only part of the interior of the country, and most of North America is held by the Knox hive.
Background
Kaltkrieg
The First Euro-American War of the 1940s, during which the European Federation was founded, ended without a peace treaty. Relations between the Federation and the United States in the following decades, known in the Federation as the Kaltkrieg, were a cold war without direct armed conflict between the two powers. Arrangements to limit the risk of war included naval deployment limits in the North Atlantic, mutual notification of orbital imaging passes, and a joint commission for the arbitration of trade disputes.
Canada was divided between the two powers. The Federation held the east, including Southern Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland; the United States held the west. The status of Quebec and Newfoundland remained in dispute.
Arrival of the Iris
After the Iris arrived in 2020, the Federation and the United States cooperated for about six weeks, after which the earlier disputes resumed.
Canadian summits
The two powers held a series of summits in Canada from 2021, at the Mattawa Line House on the line between their territories. The first, from 6 September to 6 October 2021, collapsed after thirty days without an agreed agenda. The second was called on 15 November 2021 on the disputed eastern territories and opened on 10 January 2022. The Federation proposed a referendum in both halves of Canada on which power each belonged to, and the American delegation refused to put it on the table.
Outbreak
At 15:42 on 7 February 2022, six hours into the second round of the Second Canadian Summit, Daniel Furlong, a member of the European delegation, took a pistol from a Federation security officer and opened fire on the American delegation, killing three of its members, among them the head of the delegation, Gordon Pell. Furlong was shot dead. American guards then fired into the Federation's half of the building, American divisions on the line were ordered forward, and Federation intelligence reported American nuclear warheads leaving their stores. The Federal Council declared war on the United States at 02:15 CET on 8 February. A Federation commission of inquiry, chaired by the judge Maria Kessel, did not establish the delegate's motive, or whether the shooting had been ordered by anyone.
Nuclear weapons were used within a day, before formal protests had been delivered. The first detonation was at sea in the Labrador Sea at about 23:40 EST on 7 February; each side states that the other struck first. Over about thirty hours some 34 theatre weapons of 1 to 150 kilotons were used, confined to military targets: command posts, airfields and forces in eastern and central Canada, and naval units in the North Atlantic. No city was struck. The exchange stopped on the morning of 9 February after the two governments agreed to restraint over the teleprinter link between them. It killed an estimated 60,000 people, most of them military personnel.
Course of the war
Northern theatre and integration
Neither side could afford sustained conventional war alongside the parasite war, and after the nuclear exchange the fighting settled into a low-intensity conflict in Canada. The front ran along the line of 1947, from Georgian Bay to the Ottawa River and down the St Lawrence. The Federation's forces there are supplied through Newfoundland, the only secure route in, with rail ferries across the Cabot Strait, a railway west to Southern Ontario and forward supply bases at Ottawa and Toronto. Near the Dispatchers that reached the front from 2024, radio could not be used, and both armies went over to field telephones and fibre-guided drones.
In the Battle of Boston, on 14 April 2022, a Federation air raid on the radar and anti-submarine bases covering the Gulf of Maine met American interceptors in far greater numbers than expected, and lost fifteen aircraft. In August 2023 an American attempt to cross the St Lawrence among the Thousand Islands and cut the railway at Kingston was repulsed; it was the last American offensive across the river.
In March 2022, with orders for both wars passing through the procurement systems of its member states, the Federation could no longer supply both wars itself. H&A became its primary operational contractor under the EF Integration Agreement, with command remaining with the Federation. Under the Kraków Accords of 2 March 2027 operational authority passed to a joint H&A-EF command based in Amsterdam, and H&A has fought in the war as a co-belligerent since.
Knox hive and the Blackout
In the autumn of 2024 American forces cordoned Knox County, Kentucky, where a parasite hive had formed, and tried to burn it out; the campaign was called off in December. From January to March 2025 Federation missiles and bombers from Southern Ontario struck the railway junctions, tunnels and power stations around the county on thirteen nights, which the Federation described as attacks on American war industry and the United States as terror bombing; about 9,000 civilians in Kentucky were killed. The strikes broke the American cordon and allowed the Knox hive to spread beyond the county. It spread through American territory over the following years.
The 1st Vagrant, at the centre of the Knox hive, caused a sustained communications blackout across American-held North America through the hive's Dispatchers in 2027, filling American military networks with false traffic while parasites cut the cables. A joint command offensive launched at the height of the blackout, Operation Portage, advanced further into American territory than any before it, taking Buffalo and Syracuse and retaking Sudbury; by the autumn it had fallen back to the old line everywhere except Sudbury.
The Federation has also pressed the United States over the Panama Canal Zone, through support for local resistance short of open war (see Panama Question).
Fragmentation of the United States
The United States lost its coastal regions, the south and most of the east to the infestation, and by 2026 four rival governments claimed authority over what remained, none recognising the others: the federal government, the Pacific Council at Sacramento, the Provisional Government of the Southern States at Austin, and the Atlantic Commonwealth at Albany, which held the front facing the Federation. The federal government kept authority only over the interior Midwest and the mountain West, and moved from Washington to Omaha in March 2027. Since 2027 some military strikes on both sides have been made on forged orders issued by agent swarms.
Naval war
Since 2022 the North Atlantic has been a war zone. Marine insurers withdrew cover from most routes, under the combined risk of the war and of parasites at sea, and Federation shipping moves under naval escort. Most of the Federation's sea freight is carried by H&A Logistics on its own ships.
Home fronts
In the Federation the war has had less effect on daily life than the infestation. There has been no general mobilisation, and most of the fighting is far from Europe. The European Parliament approved the declaration of war after the fact, and has continued to debate the war throughout.
In the United States the war was overtaken by the loss of territory to the infestation and to the Knox hive, and by the fragmentation of federal authority from 2026.
Casualties
Estimates put the war's dead at about 600,000 by 2028. The Federation's armed forces have lost about 140,000 dead, and those of the United States about 210,000, the larger share in the offensive during the Blackout. About 250,000 civilians have been killed, most of them in Canada. The nuclear exchange of 2022 accounts for about 60,000 of the total.
American figures after 2026 are incomplete, as federal record-keeping broke down with the loss of territory, and no figures exist for the forces of Knox County. Deaths caused by parasites in the war zones are not counted as war casualties.
Status as of 2028
As of 2028 the war continues at low intensity. No ceasefire has been agreed, and no negotiations are known to be taking place. The Federation holds parts of eastern Canada, around St John's, Halifax, Cape Breton, Quebec City and Goose Bay, and in 2028 began evacuating officials, soldiers and specialists from them. The United States government holds a shrinking area of the interior, and most of North America is held by the Knox hive.