UPDATE!!
Here is map currently working within December 1941 mod .... this is a pre-alpha form of Scenario titled "Summer 1937" or "July 1937"
As it would be too hard to model Anschluss and Sudetenland capture (similar to how its hard to model Bridge of Marco Polo incident sparking 2nd Sino-Japanese War), these will remain as German cities, but Germany as a whole would have military and tech level of summer '37, which is significantly lower.
Primary reason for this is because Nationalist China (as leading party of United Chinese Front) can still have Nanjing as it's capital. Many remember of the Japanese "Rape of Nanjing", but few remember that this was the Capital of the Chinese Kuomintang party from 1927 to its capture in 1937 (December, 5 months after the opening salvos of the war). Out of the original 400 Chinese divisions, only 200 of these had any sort of rifle or musket, and only 35 divisions were top of the line, well equipped, and happened to have been trained by German Officers. Well, out of these 35 elite divisions, 30 fell while defending Nanjing, as Chaing Kai Shek was furiously hoping that Foreign Intervention could save Nanjing in time. And technically, had British, Soviet, German, or American Forces been nearby in significant number, *perhaps* they could have made some dent in the fighting ... but if 35 divisions were all protecting Nanjing, then that means Japan had to have had at least 10 divisions on the offensive coming North from Shanghai. (Japan defeated Chinese 7:1 in the field, and 3:1 in the city, but with these being Chinese elite forces, perhaps Japan had as many as 30 divisions for the Nanjing Offensive. Even elite Chinese divisions are no stronger than a normal Japanese division. Even so, I may have to do further research on the actual facts of the battle many refer to as the Rape of Nanjing) - this was before 1940, so Germany was still "allied" or at least trade partners with China. And since Japan's war economy was buzzing at maximum speed, Germany may have benefited more from the raw material and trade deals China had to offer in the long term of the war, as opposed to forming the tripartide, but I digress.
In any case, this is still a massive number of divisions, with 200 "swordsmen" with a grenade or two, 165 musket divisions, and 35 WW2 era infantry divisions ... with all 35 being based in Nanjing .... I'm not sure, but I think it would be interesting to give the Chinese player a chance to do things a bit differently. In our timeline 30 out of the 35 elite divisions were destroyed in the assault on Nanjing, and from what I can gather, they were essentially sacrificed in order to buy time for Chiang to gather Foreign support for some sort of Foreign "rescue" intervention. This is similar to how Poland was sacrificed to give France and Britain time to figure out how to defeat Germany during "the phony war" phase of WW2 prior to the Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes. Or how the 6th Army was sacrificed at Stalingrad due to Hitler's egotism and a refusal to retreat. However, if these elite divisions were instead drawn back from Nanjing, to later exploit weaknesses in the Japanese front line, a Chinese player might have much larger successes than even when starting in 1939 or 1941 (due to having access to the initial elite divisions before losing more territory).
I don't think there can be much done about Peking and Shanghai, but in real life it was horrendous organization among the Chinese military which led to defensive line after defensive line to fall without much of a fight, which allowed for Nanjing to be reached as swiftly as it was. If your opponent is the AI, it is likely Nanjing (the original capital) might never fall in the first place. However, even if you are playing against a yourself or another human, you can still withdraw your elite units for later combats, and instead use your weaker divisions as a defensive screen to buy time, but MORE EFFECTIVELY than expending valuable troops might buy one's time. In effect you are buying your time for the cheap (using swords instead of guns), and saving the German Trained Bolt Action Rifle divisions for when they will be needed most. Specifically, once the Japanese begin to expand deeper into China (Nanjing, Tsingtao, Tianjin, Peking) eventually they will create a massive front line which cannot be maintained without numerical superiority. Meanwhile hopefully your under-teched units have been sitting fortified in some secondary defensive position, and your elites are waiting for the moment when the superior Japanese forces have moved far enough away from their supply lines that perhaps you could manage to trap them into China and swallow them with your superior numbers. This would of course require surrounding a greedy Japanese task force with so many units that they are simply trapped, and instead of attacking them, wait for them to attack you (in which case even though Japan might can defeat you 7:1 or greater, with the weaker divisions, each of their units can only kill one of your divisions per month, and if you trap them within enemy territory hopefuly their passive healing will be negligible, which will allow for the slow whittling away of them until they can be picked off by elites, airplanes, whatever.
I think the Absurd "Spaniards vs Aztecs" vibe of Chinese Hordes vs Modern Military Might is an interesting one, especially in the realm of WW2, and a scenario which allows the Chinese player to look at his options is certainly a worthy cause.
Still of course, this map can be used for any number of things, even Napoleonic Wars!
