The Darkest (Wolfenstein) Timeline

 The original Wolfenstein game - playing a US soldier trying to sneak around a Nazi castle - was a primitive top-down game that I missed at the time.

Instead, like many people, my first taste of Wolfenstein was Wolfenstein 3D.  Going through linear mazes, pressing every wall for secret passages, eating dog food to heal, listening to a litany of "Mein leiben!"s, killing Robo-Hitler... good times.   Part of the ID Software progression of Wolfenstein -> Doom -> Quake  (for some reason stopping before Daikatana).

Various iterations of Wolfenstein followed over the years, with only a thin - in any - narrative connection between the games.  Until Wolfenstein: The New Order.

I'll admit, I didn't get the game when it originally came out.  As much as I loved the games, it was hard to stomach the idea of having to navigate in a world where the Nazis won.  However, in the end the lure of killing Nazis was too much - and it was worth it.  Weird science, moon bases, lasers, giant subs... all very cool.  Like game designer Kenneth Hite once remarked, "If they made the game, they'd kill you!" (And that's literally true in the sequel, where you can play an arcade version of Castle Wolfenstein where you get to be a Nazi killing the Resistance fighters).

For those unaware, the game is set in a universe where Nazi Germany has developed various weird science superweapons and are slowly winning World War II.  A prequel (The Old Blood) and the prologue of The New Order is set in 1947, with your hero part of a massive Allied assault on the fortress of the chief scientist of the Nazis.  The attack fails, and BJ, the US soldier, ends up catatonic after barely surviving a fall into the ocean.  When he comes to, in 1960, the Nazis have conquered the entire world, with the exception of lower Africa.  BJ then begins the impossible task of defeating the Nazis.

The most recent game, Youngblood, brings the time forward to 1980.  The world does recover a bit; the United States is freed, as well as other parts of the world, and Hitler is (finally) dead.

The game universe is fairly well described, and has a host of newspaper clippings, letters, and other information detailing aspects of the alternate reality.  I've scoured the four games, and put together a document with the following information:

1)   List of the various newspaper articles, with date, location, and article title.

2)   Translation of the history of the Nazi space program, at the London research center.

3)   List of the dates culled from the files on the various Nazi commanders targeted by the Resistance.

4)   A complete timeline, up through Youngblood.

You can access the document here.