Tying My Harebrained Ideas Together

One reason I am a GM and not a novelist is I am presented my worlds in snippets rather than as whole.

But every once and a while things click together.

A recurring theme is mixing history with magic.

Old West has failed at least three times for various reasons.

It's the never played fragments that are trying to merge in my mind.

Magic "wakes up" in a burst during The Great War.  The trench lines become a necromatic wasteland now known as "The Blight".  WW1 ended differently because the warring powers needed to deal with The Blight.  It was rapidly obvious that it was a problem that couldn't be ignored in the hopes that it would take out the other side first.

The awakening was a bad day for many as they found they suddenly knew complete grimoires entire.

Many were driven insane.

Those that weren't were now powerful mages.  They formed the Mage's Guild.

The guild and its attendant athame, used with permission from Lawrence Watt-Evans, I've made details for a prohibition era setting that never was played.

There's people who can do magic without casting spells.  They are outside The Guild and are known as Warlocks.  GURPS has a vast advantage set for this.

Then there's religious magic.  All the "old ways" also returned with magic awake again.  All of the old pagan rituals (and even some mysticism from the monotheisms) work again, and don't operate under the same principles as The Guild's magic.

Russia is White.

The nobility of Europe is mostly intact, as are the pre-war nations.

The Roaring 20's still happen because magic is an endless bounty with no down sides.

The Great Depression still happens because of the world's economy adjusting to magic.

WW2 happens, but without a holocaust.

And this is where it stops merging, but I have a decent idea of where the world IS in 1959 and what I want it to be.  I'm just having trouble bridging the twenty year gap from 1939.

I want it to be very similar to real history and I think I can get there despite the changes I've made.

Just need a good Cold War substitute.

There's some sticky wickets with religion and magic.  How greatly does one offend if one declares that the reason The Holocaust doesn't happen is because the Rabbis can summon real aid with their prayers in the Holiest of Holies?

Would I end up on a neck-cutting list if, after letting Jewish prayers work, I say that Christians have no equivalent and Islamic mysticism is merely magic?

Playing around with the real world can be icky and dangerous in ones fantasy world.

An undercurrent could be played that religious magic is not divine power at all, simply religious rituals tapping into a different form of magic than mana.

Theology and Thaumatology are real sciences here.