By the middle of 1937, as the third armored division moved in position at the Slovak border, I called a large peace conference in Vienna, inviting Benito and Adolf, as well as the Austrian and Czech leaders.
Soon to be called the Vienna Diktat by the entire world, I simply offered a map giving Germany a lot more land containing Germans, Italy some bits of Austrian land and Romania getting a Slovak puppet. Before the ink got dry, tanks were rolling into their new lands, while Cehia got a bit smaller. Austria was already gone.
I know Benito envied the 43 kilograms of medals hanging on my chest, so I made sure to bestow upon him a dozen high value decorations for his bravery.
Thus, I returned home a hero, waving a peace of paper in the air and screaming "Peace in our time!"
I mean, the world war had already begun, with Japan attacking China and so on, but hey. I had a piece of paper proving my words, am I right?
The secret clause in the Vienna treaty was the partion of Poland, should it ever happen. Romania was not greedy, as we only wanted the missing corner of Western Bukovina that still contained Romanians.
I didn't even ask for Stanislawow, or Lviv, like Adolf urged me to. I liked to be modest and so on.
Sadly, Adolf was not satisfied with the great paper he had signed, and decided to integrate Cehia into the German Reich soon after. What can I do?
I protested loudly over the radio, and denounced the man as lacking character to my wavering French allies. They kinda seemed to doubt me now, even though I assured them with fervor that Romania will not join the Pact of Steel. The French were even asked to come in and inspect how nicely the Slovaks were treated, which was indeed much nicer than any puppet state in the Romanian Empire.
Sure enough, De Gaulle arrived for inspection, although he seemed more interested in our Grey Wolves tanks and the rocket Wolves, and making surprised sounds at the small radios inside the tanks, now almost the same size with the French messenger pigeons.
As we drank some champagne in my castle, I assured the man that any willing Czechs that managed to reach the Empire would be put on trains and sent to France, and perhaps the same for the Polish if the Soviet Union attacked. His eyes became quite cold at my words.
"Your Majesty, do you have serious information about such an impending attack?" he asked a bit too glacial, although the champagne wasn't that cold.
"Well, I have some idea about what the communists are planning, for example Finland, the Baltics and Poland being on the Soviet menu in the near future. How soon though? At least a year I believe. You'd have to ask Stalin the exact dates." I offered with a careless shrug.
"And this is why you're building your own fort line in the East." De Gaulle concluded with a sad voice.
"The two maniacs in the middle of Europe are also planning to get more things, most likely the Low Countries and Africa, but they wouldn't say it out loud. Adolf did say something about exterminating all Jews, but I don't have any spy reports about gulags or gas chambers being built, for now. Hopefully the Jews will only be sent to the mines." I added for no reason at all.
De Gaulle didn't seem to like his champagne anymore, remembering I was actually transporting many Jews to the Holy Lands for some reason.
"Britain has actually approached us with an alliance offer. Will the Romanian Empire join us?" he asked instead, making it sound really official.
"You know, I didn't like the Great War for a good reason. The Russians could not be trusted and the Americans arrived much later. This time, we will wait for America and not get squashed between two fronts." I answered with a calm voice.
"If you have the chance to wait, you mean." he answered a bit rhetorical.
"Well, I do have a million Germans living in Romania, available to be crucified if the worst happens. Adolf assured me he wants to keep them alive." I said with a toast of champagne.
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The man just grunted and bowed politely, before turning around and leaving at the brisk pace.
He will make a fine President one day.
As for my dear cousin, King George the VI , he was mostly a figure head in Britain. He also had trouble speaking, so he was kinda devoid of options in restoring Crown authority and such.
By the time our first jet fighter flew over my castle, Britain and France announced their alliance, and began pressuring the Low Countries to join as well.
I cared little about that drama, instead sending several alpine battalions to Finland to get trained in Arctic conditions, as well as propose and equip a Murmansk offensive when the Soviets attacked in Karelia. And if the training battalions were equipped with sufficient weaponry to arm several divisions, it was mostly because we expected severe attrition in the Arctic, right? 200 Ferdinands and 200 Wolves were sent to equip a Finish armor division able to take Murmansk in case of an invasion, as well as 200 anti-air trucks and 1000 normal trucks for infantry and supplies.
The Finish didn't have the manpower or the funds to construct a proper fort line in Karelia, but 200 of our 65mm guns would help them hold the Soviets in place.
A single 12 inch fort was established 10 kilometers inward, where a second line of defense was prepared for the inevitable fall of the Mannerheim Line. This line also received 100 Grey Wolves that slowed my fourth armor division getting ready, but that also meant the fourth division would train even more, on lighter tanks.
For two months of production, I could cause the Soviets a great deal of problems, especially if the Murmansk port at the Arctic Ocean actually fell.
The second line of defense would also get a radar bunker and a dozen steel towers for radio detection, with a pair of Archangels of the Legion making sure the radar would be blown up and never captured.
And so, by the time 1939 came around, my Romanian Empire had become a medium power in the world, if still below Italy in statistics.
The Italians did have 4 battleships, some 22 cruisers and over 70 subs, while my Navy wasn't even half, and far less trained. But then I wasn't Japan, eager to engage in a decisive naval battle.
Or rather, I did have carriers and suicide planes to act as cruise missiles with human pilots instead of guidance computers.
So perhaps a bit like Japan? The good parts, at least.
The small carriers could only hold 20 planes each, of which 2 were reconnaissance and 6 were fighters, leaving only 12 torpedo bombers to actually engage enemy ships.
For the carrier fighters we used another Soviet model, Polikarpov_I-16 which had a very short landing and didn't tilt forward when stopped by arresting wires. We called it the Seagull, since a pigeon would have been too on the nose.
Of course, the base machine was the normal Soviet crap that needed a lot of work to become any good, as it lacked a closed cockpit, an armored seat and any radio. Anyways, only 100 of these fighters needed to be produced, thus a Greek factory in Athens got the project. Land based fighters were mostly our nicer IAR 80, which had become the IAR 82 after several upgrades. Captured fighters from our puppets were mostly used for reconnaissance and training, while all the bombers were gathered in Constanta to be fitted for maritime operations. All 33 of them.
We would bypass most of the bomber development to go straight to jet bombers when the time was right, and the technology advanced enough.
More research, more production and more troop training continued til late August 1939, when a bunch of demented Polish border guards attacked Germany and started World War 2, in Europe. In Asia, the Chinese had lost like 3 or 5 million soldiers already, and probably even more civilians. It was hard to know, without the internet. Not that the Chinese wouldn't censor their internet anyways.
Anyways, it was war time, baby!