Annexation is the taking of another country's territory, which makes the land an addition part of your existing country. Annexation in Hearts of Iron IV is usually done by force (i.e. war). The annex command does exactly as the name might suggest - it allows you to instantly annex an existing country. This guide outlines how to use it.
We are assuming that you already know how to open and use the console in HOI4 in this tutorial. If you aren't sure what the console is, or how to use it, see our opening and using the console guide first.
How to Annex a Single Country
To annex a single country in Hearts of Iron IV, you'll need to know the country tag of the country you wish to annex. A country tag is a 3 character code that identifies a country - they're quite easy to guess: Germany's country tag is GER, Poland's country tag is POL, etc. If you aren't sure of the country tag of the country you wish to annex, see our country tag list. In this example, we will use GER, which is Germany's country tag.
After you've worked out the country tag of the country you wish to annex, all you need to do is type annex followed by a space, and then a country tag. To annex Germany, you'd type:
After entering the above command into the console, Germany would be annexed and its land would become a part of the country you are currently playing as.
How to Annex a Country for Another Country
If you want to annex a country's territory for a country other than your own - say you wanted to annex France for England (and you were playing as Spain), you would first have to use the tag command to switch to England, annex France, and switch back to Spain. So you'd execute the following commands:
This command would switch you to England. As AI will take control of Spain for the short period of time that you are playing as England, you may wish to pause the game.
As you're now playing as England, the above command would annex France for England.
Spain's country tag is SPA. This command would switch you back to Spain (England would be controlled by AI again).
How to Annex All Countries
If one, two, three or fifty countries isn't enough and only world domination will suffice, you'll be happy to know that there's an easy way to annex all countries in the game with one command. All you have to do is execute the following command:
Note that it would be very hard to undo the effect of an annexation of all countries in the game, so we recommend you save your game and take caution when executing the above command.
That's all there is to the annexation cheat in Hearts of Iron IV. If you want to find out more commands, check out our commands list. You can find more help for the annex command here. For more articles like this one, that provide indepth help and explanations, check out our blog.