Red Alert Timeline: Einstein, Stalin, Yuri and the Empire of the Rising Sun

Red Alert is what happens when Command & Conquer stops taking itself seriously and keeps going. It begins with Albert Einstein removing Hitler from history in a handshake and ends with tesla troopers, a giant squid and a schoolgirl with a psionic blast. Under the jokes there's a real alternate history, and it branches every time a campaign has two endings. Here it is in order. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert)

Red Alert: Stalin's war#

Einstein builds a time machine at Trinity, New Mexico, goes back to Landsberg in 1924 and shakes Hitler's hand outside the prison, removing him from the timeline. He prevents one war and gets a worse one. With Germany no longer in the way, Stalin grows unchecked, and the Soviet Union invades Europe. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert)

The Allied campaign is a long fightback led by the commando Tanya Adams and generals including Nikos Stavros. The Soviets build the Iron Curtain, the Allies build the Chronosphere, and the war ends at Moscow. Stalin is found alive under the rubble, and Stavros has him gagged and left there. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert)

The Soviet campaign ends in London. At Buckingham Palace Nadia poisons Stalin and announces that the Brotherhood of Nod will rule. Then Kane, Stalin's quiet adviser, shoots her and says he's the future. Westwood's plan was that the Allied ending led into the Tiberian saga, which is why that scene is so debated. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert)

Red Alert 2: America invaded#

After the war the Allies put Alexander Romanov in charge of the Soviet Union as a puppet. He plays along, then rebuilds. Under cover of supporting a revolution in Mexico he invades the United States, helped by Yuri, whose psychic powers stop America's nuclear response before it starts. General Vladimir commands in the field. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2)

The Allied campaign runs through occupied cities, psychic beacons and the destruction of Chicago. Allied commanders under Ben Carville and President Michael Dugan fight back with Einstein's prism technology, and Carville is killed by a Soviet suicide bomber. The war ends with a Chronosphere invasion of Moscow, and Romanov's capture. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2)

In the Soviet ending Yuri takes over from Romanov, and the player has to defeat him and go on to win the world. A last scene shows that he survived. The series follows the Allied version. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2)

Yuri's Revenge#

With the Soviets beaten, Yuri has built a chain of Psychic Dominators around the world, and when they come online most of humanity falls under his control. The surviving Allies use a time machine to go back and destroy the Dominator being built on Alcatraz, then chase him across the globe. The campaign ends with him captured in Antarctica and locked in a Psychic Isolation Chamber. (Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge)

The Soviet campaign is sillier. The strike team overshoots into the Cretaceous, and at the end Yuri flees by time machine, gets stranded there and is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge)

Red Alert 3#

Facing defeat again, General Krukov and Colonel Cherdenko use a time machine beneath the Kremlin to travel to Brussels in 1927 and kill Einstein at the Solvay Conference. They come back to a better-looking Soviet Union, with Cherdenko as Premier and no nuclear weapons anywhere, and then the Empire of the Rising Sun declares war on everyone. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3)

It's a three-way war, and each campaign ends with its own winner. The Allied ending puts Cherdenko and Krukov in cryo-prison. The Soviet ending leaves the player as Premier. The Empire ending has the player named Supreme Shogun. None was ever made official, and the story hasn't continued since the Uprising expansion in 2009. (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3)