World War II
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In the entire History of the Avatar's World, only three cases have been recorded of contact with alien life-forms. The first, in the late 1930s, was Tagton.
An interstellar mercenary, Tagton offered his services as assassin to whoever could pay him - the payment in question consisting of valuable human artwork (it has been theorized that Earth holds nothing of value to Tagton's tech-advanced civilization, but that he can find alien collectors interested in another specie's art). One of his very first clients was the Third Reich.
On the Avatar's World, Nazism had to somehow fit mutation into its ideology - after all, Hitler needed the Axis's mutants to serve as super-soldiers. One major obstacle to his military plans, however, was the Avatar: The latter was vastly more powerful than any mutant, and while not politically active, had made it very clear that he was no partisan of racial supremacy. If The Axis was to declare war, the Avatar would almost certainly stand against them.
And thus, Hitler opted to hire Tagton, requesting that he eliminate the Avatar. The assassin proceeded to use not only alien technology, but also professional ruses and a highly elaborate trap, through which he defeated the Avatar, and plunged him into the sun. While this green-lighted Hitler's plans, he didn't - and never had - any intentions of actually paying the non-human mercenary. When Tagton came back for his payment, the Nazis tried to kill him - which, as it turned out, he had seen coming: Having taken his own precautions, he slaughtered his assailants, took his payment, and sat out the rest of the war.
With the Avatar gone, the war was waged in a manner not too dissimilar from our own world, save for the presence of mutant super-soldiers on both sides. Some of them excelled (such as Bastion, of Bastion Award fame). Some perished. Some turned the tide of battles, fighting both against normal soldiers, tanks, and the other side's mutants. Aside from their direct value on the battlefield, super-soldiers were often a great tool for both troop morale and propaganda; their role as such further helped meta-humans' positive image in society.
On April 1944, however, the Avatar came back. He had spent the last five years trapped in the sun, constantly burning, regenerating, and trying to get free despite the atrocious pain. The Allies kept his return secret while he took his only recorded vacation to recover; he returned to action on June the 6th, assisting the Allied armies as they struck at Normandy.
With the Allies opening a second front in France and the Avatar lending his power to their forces, the Axis was clearly losing. With desperate times calling for desperate measures, Nazi leadership opted for an alternative strategy - one that would affect the fate of the world for decades to come:
For many years, Hitler had been in contact with the Thule Society, a mystical organization that had thrown its lot with the Nazis as they rose to power. The research of the Thule Society led to believe that in the past, magic had been a powerful force in the world, allowing for powers not inferior to those of the mutants - as opposed to the meager party-tricks that even the best mystics of the Thule Society had to admit were the best they could do. They believed (correctly) that a powerful ritual had once sealed magic in Limbo, and that a counter-ritual they had developed could bring magic back - thus empowering not only the Thule mystics, but also the vast trove of artifacts they had collected over the years. Hitler, desperate for a power with which to counter the Avatar, green-lighted their plan, and a ritual to return magic was enacted.
In a way, the ritual was a success. The mystics were able to develop powerful spells, several of them joining the ranks of the super-soldiers. Others used newly-empowered rituals to give regular German soldiers super-powers (such as the infamous Blitzkrieg). As for the magical artifacts they had gathered, many of them proved quite potent indeed. On the other hand, while this new advantage did slow down Allied progress, it could not turn the tide of the war. WWII ended in 1945, with the Axis utterly defeated... but with magic returned to the world, the war was nevertheless going to have long-term effects.
