The reason Germany has had far fewer superhuman problems than other nations is that a superhuman genius with the power to mould peoples mind to his will stands behind the throne there. He has influenced most German, and many captured and now 'collaborationist' superhumans round to his side so that because of him the German government has a considerably larger group of superhumans working for it than any other.
He also rearranged things so that Hitler, who he considered too extreme in his military tactics, was killed and replaced by Goering. As far as anyone knows he was murdered after Kristalnacht by fanatical Zionists with links to most European Jewish groups (this was a major frame-up of the Jews). Goering has been manipulated too, and so many of the Nazis more stupid tactics have been avoided.
The manipulator tried to use his powers on FDR, Stalin and Churchill, but couldn't - their minds were too strong for him. He had FDR and Churchill assassinated by the Spear of Destiny in such a way that it looked like they had been assassinated by normals (i.e the Spear of Destiny used a gun rather than his powers) and manipulated their successors so that the Nazi's now have 'friendship pacts' with the US and Canada. He tried the have the Spear of Destiny kill Stalin too, but Stalin was too paranoid for this to succeed.
This is inspired by Dave Cockrum's 'The Futurians'
The Philadelphia Experiment somehow damaged the unconscious/Spirit plane (see the section on Magic in this game), causing it to gradually deteriorate over a long time period. This caused a consequent deterioration of all life on earth, both physically (e.g. reduced numbers of species, life forms being generally less healthy, reduced world-wide genetic diversity) and morally (humans became nastier, more soulless, more 'evil', in the same way as that caused by disconnection from the 'worldsoul'). Humanity stagnated, with all humans suffering from all the problems of disconnection from the worldsoul (see the Magic page).
A faction from the future have escaped back into their past. They discovered that it is possible to send energy (including information) and small (microscopic) amounts of matter back through time. They sent back genetic enhancement packages to an appropriate time (the early 20th century), though there is some scatter to before and after this period. They have selected this period because it is a major turning point between freedom and totalitarianism, and want to turn the world to the latter. They also triggered and tailored the 1936 supernova so that it would trigger the gene packages to produce superhumans.
Once this was done, they transmitted their minds back into the bodies of random humans. They have the ability to 'jump' their minds from body to body and low-level mentalism capabilities all the time, and can use any intrinsic superpowers (including magic) when in bodies with those abilities. Since their arrival, they have 'jumped' to 'more appropriate' bodies.
They want to take over the world for their own. Superhumans are to be their soldiers.
Because the genetic enhancement packages are designed rather than random there are no 'random' disadvantages associated with them, only unavoidable ones, and an inbuilt genetic susceptibility to the 'Futurians' mental powers. The enhancement packages are similar to mitochondria in that they are separate yet integral parts of cells. They are passed on to offspring. It is possible that superhumans could be created by the extraction of the packages from one superhuman and their implantation into another (using some kind of weird science device, perhaps).
The 'Futurians' are aware of the 'worldsoul' and the damage caused to it by the Philadelphia experiment. For this reason they stopped the damage before it occurred, by destroying the project, all associated people, and all documentation, using 'jumped' human and superhuman bodies (see Part 3 of the Timeline). No-one other the 'Futurians' know the real reason why this occurred.
An unexpected side effect of the 'Futurians' travelling to the 20th century is their reconnection with the 'worldsoul'. Because of this, some of the Futurians have come to be fully human, and now deeply regret what they have done to the world. Others are dyed-in-the-wool scum and have not changed even after reconnection to the worldsoul.
One of the 'Futurians' could be responsible for pulling a group of player characters together - they can't act directly against each other as they are aware of each other.
"We come from the future. We wrecked your world, turned it into the abomination it now is. The Nazis should have lost. There should be no superhumans. This war should have lead to the long golden age where we were born. But the golden age ended. We became soulless and inhuman, empty shells, and didn't care. We had enemies and the universe was dying. We knew from where our enemies had originated, and what was causing the death of the universe, but could do nothing about either of them. In the past though, they were primitive and vulnerable. We could stop them.
"So we remade the past, seeding the powers among you, and triggering them. Sending ourselves back here too. With our knowledge and superhumans as our tools we could have ruled it all, as we thought we deserved, and destroyed our enemies before they were born. All your world as it is now is a lie. A fabrication we made. Even this body is stolen, though not from an innocent.
"But since we came back to here I, at least, have changed. I've developed a soul, I think. Reconnected with the life of the world. We did this to your world. Our handiwork. Our selfishness. Our crime. Our shame, even if the others don't know it. Now I know what we did was wrong. I want to give our toy its life again. That's why I arranged you for you to form this team. To bring down the Nazi machine. Make things right."
The Gods of legend could be a statistical fluctuation in the distribution of overshooting enhancement packages, which became activated somehow...
Obviously time travel is possible. Changes to the past do not split off a new timeline, but instead rewrite the future. However, this rewriting does not occur instantly, but propagates forward at a predictable rate. This is what allowed the Futurians to succeed in their plan and escape back to the past before being rewritten by the changes they themselves caused. Beings and things from a future are not rewritten by changes to the future they originate from if they are in the past, though they would be altered by changes in history originating from before their current position in time.