Thirty Years' War, 1618 to 1648

Although the Augsburg Peace created a temporary end to hostilities, it did not resolve the underlying religious conflict, which was made even more complex by the spread of Calvinism throughout Germany in the years that followed. This new religion was not recognized by the Augsburg terms, in which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties. The rulers of the nations neighboring the Holy Roman Empire also contributed to the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The political and religious divisions sown by the historic conflict blocked Germany's further national centralization, as was the case in France, Spain and England at the time. For this reason, German political unification would only occur more than 200 years later. Historians still argue about the reasons for the bohemian (Czech) Wallenstein during the war. Some see him as a German patriot, others as a great mercenary. He did not have Gustavo Adolfo's tactical genius, but he was a very skilled mobilizer and strategist. "What if" he really had the potential to be a German "Napoleon", uniting Germany under his rule and neutralizing, at least during his lifetime, the imperial influence of the Habsburgs. In this simulation, of course, he will not be murdered.