Windows 11 system
I can install the game. I can start it. I can set preferences, difficulty, chose map, nation etc. When I press play game crashes and I go back to desktop.
Any ideas how to solve it please?

I'm having the same issue. Disabling In Game interface for Nvidia GeForce helped once, and then it again stopped working.

I am having the same issue - it is also affecting the European scenario starts on Imp1.

The crash is always the same, the game starts and allows you to pick a nation and start the game, but as soon as you close the first newspaper screen it crashes to desktop.

This is a very recent bug as both games were running perfectly well just last week.

Turning On DEP helped me. I'm on WIndows 11. Official support gog page shows how to turn it on.