Fascist united Europe ISOT to 1939

[eurofed]

ITTL, an ISOT (based on a cosmic copy and paste) occurred in early 1939. It replaced most of Europe with the equivalent from a TL where it unified in a federal equivalent of the EU after an earlier version of WWI and a revolutionary war with Communist Russia, and a more inclusive and pragmatic version of fascism took over after an equivalent of the Great Depression. In the original TL, the Great War occurred a generation earlier, at the end of the 19th century. It ended in a stalemate followed by collapse of pro-war governments, the downfall of the old empires, the rise of Communism in Russia, and a peace of exhaustion.

By a compromise peace settlement, France took Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Wallonia, with the Netherlands getting the Flanders. Germany kept West Prussia and Upper Silesia, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, and formed a confederation with Czechia. Italy got Trent, South Tyrol, the Kustenland, and coastal Dalmatia, and formed a confederation with Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania. Hungary kept the broad equivalent of 1941 borders and formed a confederation with Slovakia. Congress Poland became independent with Posen and Galicia. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia failed to form because of the war's outcome and the postwar disruption caused by the conflict with the Soviets. Therefore, Croatia became independent and partitioned Bosnia with Serbia. In various cases, plebiscites and/or population transfers helped stabilize and entrench these new borders.

Being victorious in Russia, the Communists got emboldened to attempt spreading their ideology and control across Europe by a mix of armed invasion and revolutionary destabilization. Government forces combined with right-wing militias however were able to suppress Red insurrections in Western Europe and a hastily assembled European coalition contained and pushed back Soviet invasion of Central Europe. However, the Europeans could not stop the Reds from taking over vast chunks of the Balkans and the Near East with the help of Communist insurgents and pro-Soviet proxies.

The compromise peace left the Soviets in control of Finland, the Baltic States, eastern Poland up to the Narew-Vistula-San line, and Moldavia-Bessarabia, which they annexed as various SSRs. They also held Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Dobruja, and mainland Greece, which they merged into a Communist Balkan Federation, a client state of the USSR. Insular Greece remained free from Red control and formed an independent state under the military protection of the European powers. Pro-Soviet forces also seized control of Turkey, North Persia, and Afghanistan, which became other client states of the USSR. The Soviets exploited the situation to annex Western Armenia and Iranian Azerbaijan. TTL Iron Curtain rose at the Vistula-Carpathians-Danube line, with an extension cutting through the Western Balkans.

The outcome of the war and revulsion at the suffering it caused inspired widespread rejection of nationalism and gave a massive popularity boost to the ideal of European unity across Western and Central Europe. In a few years, the Western and Central European nations merged into a close analogue of the EU, which quickly took a federal character. In addition to all its OTL integration achievements, this version of the EU had a constitution, a strong common army, fiscal integration with well-developed taxation and welfare systems, and a semi-presidential government. The latter included a president directly elected by European citizens, a parliament with legislative initiative that included a directly elected assembly and a senate appointed by national parliaments, a supranational executive accountable to the parliament and the president, and a well-developed Pan-European party system.

France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and White Greece joined the new federal union as its member states. Czechia, Slovakia, Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania joined as well as autonomous subunits due to their confederal bonds with Germany, Hungary, or Italy. Postwar Germany kept its federal character with a reorganization of its internal borders; Italy and Spain evolved in a similar way, granting a sizable degree of devolution to their regions. The European peoples' motivations for integration included a wish to avoid another general war, expectation that continental unity would bring political stabilization and economic development, and mutual protection from the Soviet threat.

For a generation, Europe experienced a solid boom thanks to economic unification of the continent. This paved the way to major industrialization of its Southern and Eastern regions and consolidated mass consensus to the European unity project. Its success fostered the rise and entrenchment of a solid Pan-European identity among the peoples of the continent. A wish for ease of communication drove the Europeans to adopt a reformed version of Esperanto (effectively indistinguishable from Ido) as their lingua franca, official language, and a mandatory school subject. In a few decades, Ido achieved strong popularity and became widespread in Europe among the elites, middle classes, and younger generations.

Chance discovery of North African oilfields further fueled European economic boom and infrastructure build-up in the region. It also greatly increased European appetite for acquisition and development of African and Middle Eastern resources, as well as interest for colonization of Africa using the settler model that had been so successful for the Americas.

The war also caused a partial collapse of the British Empire, as the Dominions reacted badly to paying a large price in blood for the empire’s glory in a seemingly pointless conflict. A series of peaceful republican revolutions swept the Dominions and drove them to sever political ties with Britain. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand joined the USA, out of a wish to get protection and stability from a sympathetic power that had stayed neutral and shared their culture. The English-speaking states and provinces of the Dominions became US states, while the territories became US territories. Quebec became an associated state of the USA.

South Africa decided to stay an independent republic and took over Basutoland, Swaziland, Bechuanaland, Southern Rhodesia, and South West Africa. Over time, South Africa developed increasingly close ties with Europe, up to becoming a client state of the EU. The British however were able to keep control of their colonial empire in Asia and considerably enlarged it since the war and its peace settlement enabled Britain to take control of European colonies in Indochina and Indonesia. The British also seized control of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Arabia during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the conflict with the Soviets, turning the region into a series of client Arab kingdoms. South Persia became another client state of the British Empire.

The Scramble for Africa, the Great War, Europe’s unification, the post-war settlement, and South Africa’s independence left the EU in control of the vast majority of the African continent. European colonies included the Maghreb; most of West Africa except US-aligned Liberia and the British colonies of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone; the Congo basin in Central Africa; Angola, Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia in Southern Africa; and most of East Africa except British Kenya and Uganda. The British also kept control of Egypt and Sudan as a protectorate.

For a good while, it seemed postwar hopes for prosperity, democracy, and stability in Europe were going to be fulfilled thanks to the vast success of the European integration project. TTL equivalent of the Great Depression, however, got them terribly betrayed. A nasty global recession worsened by a vicious trade war between the capitalist powers ultimately created enough hardship to enable the electoral victory in Europe of a front of far-right parties and a fascist regime change of the EU.

TTL version of European fascism (known as ‘frontism’) became broadly similar to its OTL counterpart with a few important differences. The vast success of the European integration project drove them in their formative years to forsake their ties to ethnic nationalism and embrace a far-right version of Pan-European civic nationalism as their ideology. They gave up any notion of opposing European unity and refocused their efforts on shaping it in their image. Once the frontists took over, they reorganized the EU into the European Empire. They combined idealized notions of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg and Capet monarchies, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Napoleonic Empire to make up their historical precedent and merged it with the typical features of modern fascism to establish their model of society.

They pragmatically continued to give full support to use, teaching, and diffusion of Ido as the European lingua franca and official language; for ideological reasons they also made some serious effort to establish a simplified version of Latin (effectively indistinguishable from “Latino sine flexione”) as the second common language of Europe. Despite reaping some popularity among scholars and being eagerly adopted by the Catholic Church, however, this version of Latin ultimately got much less success than Ido. Across Europe, Ido continued to reap ever-increasing numbers of native speakers and people that were fluent in it, gradually evolving into the main language of the continent. Growing linguistic unification thanks to success of Ido helped cement political unity of Europe and the rise of a solid Pan-European identity for the foreseeable future, regardless of the fortunes of the frontist regime. In the international field, Ido became one of the most widely spoken and fastest spreading world languages. Only English rivaled its importance and diffusion.

As it concerns their racial policies, TTL circumstances drove the frontist movement to accept more or less all European ethnicities as equal and valuable components of their supremacist in-group, and have no wish to discriminate or persecute them. They retained a strong wish to destroy the USSR if they get a chance, conquer the Russian peoples, and assimilate them in their empire, but they did not mean to treat Eastern Europeans any worse than Western Europeans. Of course, they kept the usual ruthless drive of totalitarian regimes to eliminate anyone that defied their rule. Besides the Russian lands, they harbored a strong wish to complete the unification of Europe under their regime by conquering the British Isles and the Balkans as well. However, they were willing to take a pragmatic attitude about it, and had no particular ill will against such peoples, provided they submitted to their rule.

The frontists did not really like the Jews, but early in their development, they realized the Jew minority was so important, influential, and integrated that serious discrimination or overt persecution would be too disruptive to their aims and their PR. Therefore, the frontists adopted a relatively pragmatic and tolerant policy towards the European Jews. Apart from occasional propaganda badmouthing and a few legal limitations, they mostly left the Jews alone and allowed them decent living conditions for the standards of their society.

Since the Jews devised the Zionist project on their own, the frontists opportunistically turned to support it as a near-optimal means to unburden Europe of its “excess” Jew population and keep the Jews at home and abroad friendly. In the frontists’ ultimate plans, their empire across the Old World would become so vast, powerful, and wealthy they did not mind carving out a Zionist homeland in Palestine and letting it exist as a client state. If the Zionist project in its original version ultimately proved unfeasible, the frontist policymakers planned to replace Palestine with some low-value area of Africa.

The frontists focused most of their murderous racist hate against non-White ethnicities, especially the ones, such as the Arabs/Muslims and the Blacks, which they regarded as especially troublesome for reasons of proximity, territorial competition, historical enmity, and/or sheer prejudice. Broadly speaking, TTL version of fascism replaced Eastern Europe with Africa and the Middle East as the target of a grandiose settler colonization project fueled by large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide of natives.

They devised and engaged in a grand project to remove the Black and Arab/Muslim population of Africa and the Middle East by means of large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide. They would replace them with a sizable number of European settlers they expected to be available thanks to demographic growth and natalist policies. They aimed to expel or exterminate most of the Arab/Muslim and Black population of Africa and the Middle East and replace them with White settlers, especially in the areas that are sufficiently valuable economically and suited for large-scale European immigration.

As it concerns the North African and Middle Eastern natives, they deemed a lot of them too ‘corrupted’ by (i.e. loyal to) Islam and/or Arab influence to be tolerated. However, they were willing to make an assimilationist exception for all the elements that had apparently resisted such ‘corruption’, such as the Christian Arabs and the collaborationists that forsaked Islam and accepted cultural assimilation. They deemed these peoples sufficiently close to Europeans, if often corrupted by African influence and miscegenation, to make assimilation potentially possible. In practical terms, the frontists deemed resistance to European rule and loyalty to Islam and/or Arab culture as a hallmark of irredeemable racial corruption that singled out an individual or group for elimination. On the other hand, a collaborationist attitude and acceptance of Europeanization was a good sign of assimilationist suitability.

For obvious racist reasons, they meant to allow no such reprieve for Black Africans, and planned ethnic cleansing, genocide, or enslavement as their inevitable doom. They aimed to wipe them out from the valuable parts of Africa that seem suitable for White settler colonization, and keep them as a captive workforce and enslaved underclass in those areas that have useful resources but are inhospitable to Europeans. For practical reasons, they were likely going to corral survivors in ‘reservations’ in the least valuable and most inhospitable corners of the continent. They gave priority in their genocidal colonization efforts to the regions that held valuable resources and were suited to large-sale European settlement, such as North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, and southern Central Africa.

Union between the EE and South Africa considerably eased their plans. Since its independence, South Africa gradually developed a close bond with Europe. The regime change in the EU only reinforced this process; the Great Depression and widespread sympathies among the South African settler population for the colonial policies of the EE enabled a frontist takeover in South Africa. The two states gradually developed an ever-closer patron-client relationship fueled by ideological affinities, economic and military cooperation, and convergent interests in domestic and colonial policies, up to successfully negotiating a political merger.

Until the frontist colonizers could replace them with European settlers, they meant to keep the Africans alive but make them subject to a regime of ruthless exploitation, forced labor, and brutal suppression of any resistance that amounted to slavery in all but name. In the valuable areas that were sufficiently suitable for White immigration, they meant this as a strictly temporary measure. Frontist policymakers debated their options about the areas of Africa that had valuable resources but did not seem that suitable for large-scale European settlement, such as parts of West Africa and northern Central Africa.

Such options ranged from keeping the African population as a permanent enslaved workforce to eventually enlarging the White settlement scheme to these regions if with more difficulty and over a longer schedule. A few even proposed gradually “whitening” the African population through selective mixed breeding between white people and black people. They meant this as an extreme means of completing colonization of Africa and an explicit exception to their usual policies, which condemned and harshly persecuted miscegenation with Blacks.

The other colonial possessions of Europe that did not seem to have valuable resources or be suitable for White settlement were to become by default “reservations” for the remnants of native populations. Such areas also provided the frontists a handy way to get Europe rid of another unwanted minority. They planned for a gradual deportation of the European Rom population to low-value areas of Africa. Frontist policies towards other disliked minorities such as homosexuals, leftists, and disabled people did not differ much from OTL Nazi ones. The main difference was, much like it was planned for the Rom, the African colonies provided lots of suitable places to deport the “undesirables”, much the same way the Soviet empire did with Siberia.

As it concerns the South Asians, East Asians, and Latinos, distance, a relative lack of imperialist competition, appreciation for their achievements, and a wish for allies and trade partners made the frontists take a practical and relatively open-minded attitude towards them, up to and including a potential willingness to treat them as near-equals and allies if convenient.

In the domestic field, the frontists addressed the economic crisis that had brought them into power with the mix of a vast public works program, a massive rearmament program, and the African colonization project. Notwithstanding the typical corruption and inefficiency problems of authoritarian regimes, these policies enabled the building of a sizable amount of new infrastructure and industry across Europe and in the colonies and were remarkably effective to ensure the economic recovery of Europe. They also did a lot to improve consensus to the frontist regime in the European population, despite its totalitarian character.

The frontist regime harbored serious ambitions of conquering the British Empire and the Soviet bloc, to eliminate their potential threat and unify Europe, western Eurasia, and Africa under their rule. The European leaders planned and prepared for a two-front conflict, not trusting either Britain or the USSR to stay neutral if they got in a conflict with the other power. They strived to expand the more modest but still impressive land forces rearmament the democratic EU had enacted for defense against the Soviet threat into a juggernaut that would crush the Red Army and conquer the Soviet bloc. At the same time, they sought to build up the European navy and air force into a tool capable of overwhelming British air-naval power and enabling conquest of the British Isles, the Middle East, and the British colonies in Africa.

Until their country was ready to strike, the European leaders near-unanimously acknowledged they had to bide for time, and settle for a while in a three-way Cold War dynamic with Britain and the USSR. In a long-term perspective, however, the frontist leaders were not of one mind about an aggressive drive to conquer their neighbors. An important faction argued that their existent possessions in Europe and Africa were more than enough to satisfy their needs, especially once settler colonization of Africa would enable their full development. Assimilation of the British Isles and the Soviet bloc, and ownership of Russian and Middle Eastern resources, would surely be useful, but not that necessary. Therefore, they pushed for giving priority to the African colonization and picking an opportunist stance vs. the British Empire and the Soviet bloc. If either power somehow unleashed a conflict on their own initiative or weakened too much, Europe should surely engage in a war of conquest. Otherwise, they should build up their strength and wait for a good opportunity.

Frontism’ more pragmatic and inclusive racial policies in comparison to OTL fascism drove it to take a more pro-science stance that emphasized the practical value of education and the pursuit of scientific and technological progress in a harmonious balance with athleticism to increase the strength of the people and the power of the state. Ideology-based intervention of the frontist regime in these fields was mostly limited to endorsing, emphasizing, and radicalizing the arguments of scientific racism about the superiority of the Whites and the innate savagery and barbarism of the Blacks. This stance combined with lack of persecution for the Jews to ensure there was no exodus of the European scientific community to foreign countries. Apart from a fringe that was motivated to leave by a militant anti-frontist stance, almost all the European scientists stayed home.

This helped the EE keep pretty much all the expertise it possessed before the frontist takeover and stay the global leader of scientific and technological progress in a tie with America. In OTL terms, Europe suffered none of the tech gaps the Axis powers experienced vs. the Allies and enjoyed a favorable standard that varied between full parity and a moderate advantage depending on the specific field and the counterpart used as a comparison. It also helped that the frontist system suffered the usual degree of inefficiency and corruption of right-wing authoritarian regimes, but none of the widespread administrative chaos that burdened Nazi Germany. To quote a notable example, this situation ensured America and Europe were going to develop nuclear technology more or less at the same time, and substantially earlier than the other industrialized great powers.

[eurofed]

When the ISOT event occurred, it involved the areas the EE controlled in Europe (France, Greater Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Iberia, Scandinavia, Czechia and Slovakia, western Poland, Hungary, western Romania, Slovenia and Croatia, Montenegro and Albania, insular Greece), Northwest Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya), and Greater South Africa (South Africa, Basutoland, Swaziland, Bechuanaland, South West Africa, and Southern Rhodesia), but not its other colonies across Africa.

Soon after the out-timer (OT) frontists and the in-timer (IT) powers became cognizant of the event’s features and consequences, conflicting territorial claims and geopolitical ambitions combined with mutual suspicion to plunge the world in a modified but broadly familiar version of WWII. The British and the Soviets panicked about this apparently effortless takeover of Europe by fascism. Britain let its dread of hostile European hegemons and an escalating conflict with the EE about control of Southern Africa goad it into war. Stalin decided to exploit the confusion created by the ISOT and enact some pre-emptive land-grabbing. He sent the Red Army to occupy the surviving rumps of IT states in eastern Poland and eastern Romania, as well as Finland and the Baltic states. European hostile reaction to this move quickly created a state of war between the EE and the USSR as well. The British and the Soviets established an alliance of convenience.

The frontist leaders unanimously agreed these circumstances made engagement of the EE inevitable in an all-out effort to conquer Britain, Russia, the Middle East, and the rest of Africa. They had been long preparing their armed forces for this kind of conflict vs. the British Empire and the USSR. Their manpower and industrial resources enabled them to fight a multi-front conflict with these powers from a favorable position, and even the contingency of an American intervention seemed best avoided but sustainable for Europe. In comparison to OTL Axis powers, they enjoyed a remarkable set of advantages that made the task of winning WWII much easier for them.

They had the widespread loyalty of the European peoples and full and reliable access to the resources of a united continent, with domestic resistance to their rule not exceeding a few anti-fascist militant fringes. OT industrialization of Europe had progressed to a level similar to our late 20th Century, barring technological differences, and they had full control of Northwest Africa, Southern Africa, and the resources thereof. Europe had been able to build up land, air, and naval forces that were at least a full match for, or in favorable circumstances significantly better than, the Allied equivalents. Its resources and development made the EE equal or slightly superior to the Allied powers in industrial and technological terms. The lessons of WWI and the perspective of total war with the USSR had made Europe pursue a similar path to innovative weapons and tactics as OTL Germany, only with all the resources of the EE fueling its war machine and much less of the organization flaws of the Nazi regime.

Their racial policies made it so at least non-Muslim Eastern Europeans did not have to fear EE conquest as an existential threat and quite possibly would find frontist rule a better deal than Stalinism, in all likelihood substantially lessening the degree of resistance. On the other hand, the same policies would surely make Arabs/Muslims resist the frontists as fiercely as the Eastern Europeans did with the Nazis. Theoretically speaking, the same of course applied to the Africans, but in the 1940s, they still were far too disorganized and backward to make much of a difference.

Once WWII started, frontist Europe deployed a grand strategy that aimed to defend its European and African territories and the logistic connections between them, get the upper hand with Britain in the air-naval field, and conquer European Russia, the Middle East, and the rest of Africa. Once this was accomplished, they would engage in a further effort to conquer the rest of Russia, bring Britain to its knees, consolidate their conquests, and defend their empire from a possible American threat.

Soon after war started, the EE exploited the pretext of conflicting territorial claims with the Balkan states to invade and overrun rump Yugoslavia, mainland Greece, and Turkey quickly and efficiently. Bulgaria was persuaded to accept EE occupation without a fight, more or less for the same reasons it joined the Axis IOTL. Much the same way, their conquest of the Middle East turned out a decisive success. The European armed forces had long prepared for a large-scale conflict in the Mediterranean area, and the EE had extensively built its infrastructure network in the region as part of its colonization and development program. Gibraltar and Malta quickly fell to EE conquest, the European air and naval forces got the upper hand against the RN and the RAF, and the British armies proved poorly prepared to withstand innovative European maneuver warfare despite their valiant resistance. In about a year, the European forces gradually overrun Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia, Sudan, and East Africa. More than anything else, poor logistics of the region proved to be the main speed bump to their advance.

As a rule, the Italian forces in East Africa, the Zionist groups, and the Middle Eastern Christians took a collaborationist attitude. The Balkan peoples did not show a radically different attitude to occupation from OTL. However, in most cases their overall degree of hostility was considerably reduced since partisans effectively lacked any external support, it seemed increasingly clear their side was going to lose, favorable circumstances enabled the frontists to apply a more lenient treatment, and the EE cause appeared more appealing than the Axis one for various reasons. The Muslim Arabs, the Turks, and the Persians mostly staged an extremely fierce if poorly equipped and organized resistance to the European occupiers, especially once the existential threat of frontist policies in their regards became clearer and clearer. EE forces of course reacted by enacting extremely brutal large-scale repression against insurgents and the civilian population alike. Due to this insurgency burden, logistic issues, and different strategic priorities, the European forces mostly took a defensive stance once they reached the outskirts of India, limiting their initiative to a few minor offensive inroads and sending support to pro-frontist Indian groups.

TTL version of Barbarossa proved to be just as decisive a success as European conquest of the Middle East. The advantages the EE forces enjoyed combined with the post-purges flaws the Red Army suffered at the beginning of WWII to doom the chances of the USSR. Unlike the Wehrmacht, the EE army had more than adequately built up the means to sustain an all-out advance in the depths of Russia. The huge numbers of the Red Army and the vast size and difficult climate of Russia only proved out to be significant speed bumps for frontist conquest. Enemy numbers and issues of space and logistics delayed its full realization by a couple years, but in that time the European forces gradually fought their way to Leningrad, the Moscow region, the Caucasus, and the Volga basin, occupied them, and pushed further to the Urals. The Soviet remnant in Siberia and Central Asia effectively ceased to exist as a military opponent for the EE. However, the priority of consolidating their gains and logistic issues made the Europeans mostly leave them alone for the moment, apart from a bombing offensive to take out its remaining industrial strongholds.

As a rule, European conquest of Russia experienced much less resistance than OTL once the initial obstacles of the Red Army and the Soviet state apparatus were broken down. The IT Poles and Romanians, the Finns, the Baltics, and the Ukrainians usually welcomed and supported the frontist conquest that promised a better deal than Stalinism and accepted any Eastern European that bought in it. Even if the EE was a totalitarian system like the USSR, it still offered better living standards, less intrusion in personal lives of loyal citizens, private property, and tolerance of Christianity. Even many White and/or pragmatically minded Russians that valued these things more than loyalty to the Soviet cause or Russian nationalism embraced a collaborationist attitude. Of course, there still were more than enough dedicated Communists and Russian nationalists to stage some significant partisan resistance.

Since the beginning of the war, the balance of forces between Britain and Europe and the strategic situation created by the ISOT forced the British into a defensive stance of limited effectiveness. Any offensive action against European-held territory proved suicidal, and they could do little to prevent the enemy from overrunning the Med and the Middle East. The air war increasingly turned against the RAF, with Britain getting subject to a serious bombing offensive and Europe mostly being safe from retaliation. Much the same way, the naval side of the conflict also showed a significant advantage for the EE, which was able to defend its coasts and supply lines with remarkable effectiveness.

The European navy was able to exercise a serious interdiction of British supply lines to the Americas and India, even if British naval power was strong enough to prevent them from creating too severe shortages, at least at the beginning. As time went on, however, the air and naval conflict increasingly turned worse for the British. The Europeans gradually intensified their bombing and blockade and made some serious preparations to deal Britain the coup de grace by amphibious invasion if such means did not work to bring them to their knees. However, the task required some lenghty build-up and they gave priority to accomplishing their objectives in Russia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Because of their strategic situation and long-term objectives, the frontists deemed full control of Africa a more important prize than conquest of the British Isles, and acted accordingly. European forces gradually spread out from the two ends of Africa to occupy the rest of the continent. They overwhelmed British garrisons and took over IT European colonies across Africa without excessive difficulty, apart from the obvious logistic issues. As a rule, the British forces fiercely resisted as usual, but colonial administrators of erased European states mostly took a pro-frontist stance or failed to display any effective resistance. Once the facts of the ISOT sunk in, many IT Europeans in the colonies turned to regard the EE as sufficiently close to a legitimate successor of their lost nations, or at least the best available equivalent, especially if they harbored right-wing attitudes.

It often took a militant anti-fascist stance for an IT European to take the opposite stance, and people of that kind were relatively rare in the colonies. A notable exception was French Equatorial Africa, since its governor, being a Black man, had an obvious stake in opposing the frontists. Nonetheless, the European forces conquered the colony without much difficulty. The EE forces took over the African colonies and made them subject to an extremely brutal occupation regime that soon turned into a huge humanitarian disaster. This of course drew the opposition of the natives, but as a rule, they were far too poorly organized and equipped to stage any effective armed resistance.

The course of the war turned bad enough to create serious demoralization in the British public, even more so since the Soviets were faring even more poorly and got closer and closer to total collapse. The British government was only able to prevent ultimate collapse of will to fight and its own downfall by clinging like dear life to the hope of an American intervention and waving it in the face of the public. The interventionist attitude of the US government gave credence to such hopeful expectations. President Roosevelt successfully lobbied the Congress for Lend-Lease economic assistance to Britain and spared no effort to get the US Navy take an interventionist stance in the Atlantic within the bounds of his executive powers. Extension of Lend-Lease to the USSR proved too controversial to be approved, and even if it had been enacted, the strategic situation would have made its delivery quite difficult, and past a point, effectively impossible. 

As a rule, however, the US public showed little appetite for armed intervention. Once the ISOT event became old news, most Americans turned to regard the status quo it created as an unpleasant fact established by an impersonal and unknowable act of God. The stunning sequence of European victories against the Anglo-Soviet Allies only seemed to confirm its inevitability. The totalitarian character of the EE indeed made its success unnerving, and its potential hegemony of Afro-Eurasia seemed a bleak perspective, but circumstances made it look less of an existential threat to the USA than the Nazis or the Soviets. As far as American observers could tell, the EE did not come into being or started the conflict with a clearly recognizable sequence of aggressions or violent revolutions, and evidence of its intent to threaten US security or vital interests was questionable at best.

Besides the usual repressive standards of authoritarian regimes, the frontists only seemed to be violent and cruel against sworn opponents and people that the average American citizen perceived as distant and was accustomed to regard as inferior, a hostile Other, and/or helpless victims of colonialism. The Jewish community was mostly indifferent or even opportunistically sympathetic to the European cause because of its support of Zionism. Aside from far-leftists and radical liberals, the only component of American public opinion with a serious stake into fiercely opposing the frontists was the Afro-Americans, but in the Jim Crow era, their political influence was still quite limited.

[eurofed]

In the end, much like OTL, it was Japan to break the impasse. As the tide of war turned against the Anglo-Soviet Allies, the Japanese got increasingly anxious to reap their share of booty from their downfall. They had serious expansionist ambitions on the Russian Far East and the European colonies in Southeast Asia, and eagerly lobbied the EE for a cobelligerance deal. The frontist leaders proved amenable to such offers, more or less for the same reasons as their OTL Axis counterparts. They had little interest in East Asia, deeming it too distant and peripheral to their concerns, and were willing to leave it to the Japanese in exchange for their help to deal the British and the Soviets a coup de grace. Negotiations progressed to a deal that allowed the Japanese to occupy French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies without opposition, since their colonial administrators mostly regarded EE authority as legitimate. The Japanese agreed to intervene against Britain and the USSR.

They took a defensive stance in China to free up military resources for a three-front war, and attacked the Soviets in the Far East and the British in Southeast Asia. The overall military situation had turned bad enough for the Anglo-Soviet Allies that the Japanese offensives turned into decisive successes. They were able to overrun British Southeast Asia all the way to the outskirts of India and occupy North Sakhalin, Outer Manchuria, the Trans-Baikal region, and Outer Mongolia without excessive difficulty. Thailand accepted Japanese occupation without a fight.

Against the wishes and expectations of the EE, as usual Japan deemed it could not safely control Southeast Asia without eliminating the potential threat of American military power in the Pacific theater, given the increasingly hostile attitude of the USA to Japanese expansionism. Therefore, they expanded their invasion of Southeast Asia to the Philippines and enacted a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Since ITTL no equivalent of the Taranto raid ever took place, the Japanese studied successful, if less extensive, European attacks against the British fleets at Scapa Flow and Alexandria as a precedent.

The Japanese attack caused the same massive wave of outraged patriotic mobilization as OTL in the American public. Towards the Europeans, however, the attitude was much less militant since the EE did not declare war on its own initiative. On the contrary, they avoided any show of support for Japanese actions against America and condemned the Pearl Harbor attack. Up to then, frontist leadership had been divided about the likelihood of US intervention but in a good agreement about their policy stance towards Washington. A few were confident American isolationism made a US intervention quite unlikely, others feared Roosevelt’s meddling and provocations might eventually find a way to cause it. Everyone agreed the EE had scarce interest in, and little to gain from messing with, the American sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific, and continuation of the isolationist status quo was near-optimal for fulfillment of their ambitions. They also understood an American intervention would make the war costlier, longer, and more difficult, especially once victory against the British and the Soviets got in sight. On the other hand, they were frustrated by the Administration’s hostility and intransigence and unwilling to compromise with the USA if it meant sacrificing some vital interest of theirs in the Old World. They did not fear the Americans too much, since they assumed European military and industrial power would make the war winnable in any case. In short, they were eager to avoid an unnecessary expansion of the conflict to the sleeping American giant, but not at any price. 

Therefore, the EE showed its sincere disapproval for Japanese aggressive recklessness that overstepped the terms of their deal and its wish to keep America neutral, but absolutely refused to tone down its air-naval warfare against Britain just because the USA and the UK had turned cobelligerants against Japan. The President combined this refusal with other doctored or exaggerated justifications about US-EE naval clashes in the Atlantic, Euro-Japanese collusion, and frontist espionage in America, and expended a great deal of political capital in a relentless lobbying campaign for intervention in the European war. He was eventually able to persuade the Congress to declare war to the EE by a narrow margin after a few months of strenuous effort.

However, while the American people wholeheartedly supported all-out war against Japan, and the President ultimately got his way, heavy doubts and serious second thoughts lingered in US collective mind about picking a fight with the EE. This ambivalent state of mind fueled a persistent split between the Europe First stance of the Administration and the Japan First preference of the Congress and public opinion. Military, intelligence, and government officials got divided on the issue, and the American war effort turned out slightly less effective as a result.

No matter how much half-hearted and occurring at the last moment, however, American intervention surely was the crucial factor to prevent ultimate collapse of Britain in political, economic, and military terms. British will to fight was on the brink of crumbling under a never-ending sequence of major setbacks, and the economic and military situation was getting hopeless. The Soviet situation went from bad to worse, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia had been lost, India was turning into a big mess, air warfare had turned wholly against the RAF, the Battle of the Atlantic got steadily worse seriously threatening starvation and a collapse of British economy, and the Europeans were gearing up for an invasion of the British Isles.

The American intervention rekindled hope in the British public, the arrival of US forces made Britain safe from invasion, and US support turned the course of the air-naval conflict enough to make the British Isles much less vulnerable to bombing and blockade. On the other hand, to the Americans’ great frustration, their best efforts could not overcome the extremely powerful defense the Europeans established for their Afro-Eurasian stronghold. EE industrial power proved an adequate match for the USA, and European military power was more than strong enough to deter Anglo-American offensive attempts. The American intervention caused a strategic stalemate that made either side unable to threaten the territory and supply lines of the other side in any serious way. The Anglo-Americans could also do nothing to prevent the Soviets from collapsing into a powerless remnant holed up in Siberia and Central Asia.

Before the American intervention, the situation in India had steadily deteriorated into a major mess for the Allies. Success in the other theaters eventually drove the Europeans to increase their efforts to bring down the stubborn British Empire, and one component of that was greater engagement in the Indian theater. The EE army made a few serious inroads in northern and western India, much like the IJA did in Eastern Bengal and Assam. In both cases, however, poor logistics prevented too much of an in-depth penetration. In the end, though, the support the Euro-Japanese sent to sympathetic Indian nationalist groups and their overall military successes were much more important to cause a major change in this theater. These factors, combined with Indian frustration for lack of independence and unwillingness to stay on the losing side of the war, caused the ranks of radical pro-frontist Indian nationalist groups to swell up in a massive way. Past a point, they gained the upper hand in the Indian nationalist movement, challenging and displacing the supremacy of the Indian National Congress.

They became able to stage a widespread uprising against the British Raj that drastically destabilized British hold on India. Pro-frontist insurgents mostly drew support from ring-wing Indians and Hindu nationalists, while left-wing Indians largely remained apathetic and Muslim nationalists downright hostile. This polarization at times threatened to escalate into an Indian civil war, even if both sides of the Indian nationalist movement remained reluctant to indulge in an all-out fratricidal struggle and united in their common aspiration for independence. The split between Hindu and Muslim nationalists, however, turned out more serious, also because of their opposite alignments: the Muslims mostly clung to a pro-Allies stance due to frontist persecution of their correligionists, while many Hindu nationalists showed sympathies for the EE. This divide repeatedly escalated into serious bouts of violence between the two communities.

Once America joined the conflict, it made a few half-hearted efforts to help pacify India by military and diplomatic means. After they failed, it remained quite reluctant to engage in a major effort to put down the Indian insurgency and shore up British rule. Such an engagement would have been rather exhausting and distracting for its war effort and deeply unpopular at home. In the end, the Americans could not find a better solution to the crisis than negotiating a deal that allowed India to achieve immediate de facto independence and take a neutral stance in the general conflict.

The British forces withdrew from the subcontinent and the American ones redeployed to border western and eastern regions in a defensive stance. The USA pledged to help defend India from Euro-Japanese aggression but avoid using its territory to support offensive actions elsewhere. The British Indian army also redeployed to take a defensive stance in the border areas as well. The Europeans quickly turned to support the deal by withdrawing their forces to Iran and promising to respect Indian neutrality. After a few ineffective attempts to renew their offensive drive, the Japanese eventually agreed to take a similar stance and withdrew to Burma.

The war against Japan soon took a course much similar to OTL with a steady sequence of American successes. It progressed up to the point the obvious next step for the US forces was invasion of the Japanese islands and Korea. However, the USA (or the EE for that matter) had not yet been able to develop nukes and conventional invasion threatened to require an extreme blood cost the Americans were unwilling to pay. The USSR had devolved into a pitiful remnant unable to defend itself, much less provide any help. Moreover, past a point the Euro-Japanese engaged in a largely successful drive to wipe it out and seize control of Siberia and Central Asia. Despite logistic difficulties seriously challenging their progress, the EE and Japan came sufficiently close to fulfil the terms of their spheres of influence agreement, which left Western Siberia and Central Asia to the Europeans and Eastern Siberia to the Japanese. Three-front war had forced Japan into a defensive stance in China, but the Chinese were too weak to do much more than holding their ground. Tight blockade and relentless bombing of Japan showed some serious potential to bring the stubborn Japanese to their knees, but it was not happening fast enough to quell American impatience, especially given the frustrating course of war in the European theater.

In the end, the Americans accepted to moderate their demands for unconditional surrender into a de facto conditional deal. It guaranteed Japan preservation of its imperial system, economic livelihood, eventual recovery of political independence, and territorial integrity in its pre-1919 borders plus North Sakhalin. In return, the Japanese would agree to US military occupation, disarmament, punishment of war criminals, democratization, a federal reform of the state, and cultural autonomy for the overseas territories. The deal seemed good enough, and the damage of US bombing and blockade was getting serious enough, to persuade the moderate wing of the Japanese ruling elite. They staged a coup to overthrow the militarist extremists with the support of the Emperor and accepted surrender.

Exiled Korean nationalists and the Chinese were displeased with the deal, but they were not in a position to do anything about it, and Americans thought surrender of Japan was much more important than their satisfaction. Moreover, the USA deemed democratization, federal devolution, and cultural autonomy were enough for Korea and Taiwan, and promised China sizable territorial compensations in Mongolia and the Russian Far East. The Americans took a cavalier attitude to Russian territorial integrity since unlike China, the USSR had effectively vanished from the map.

In the European theater, the course of the war only confirmed the entrenched strategic stalemate, to the overall satisfaction of the Europeans and great frustration of the Anglo-Americans. All Allied attempts to invade Europe, the Middle East, or Africa turned into bloody failures, and for that matter so did European attempts to attack the British Isles. The air and naval war locked into a swinging but ultimately static equilibrium, with either side being able to protect its own territory and supply lines but powerless to invade or deal serious damage to the other side. Churchill’s attempts to drive Britain to use chemical and biological weapons on European cities went nowhere. Opponents were quick to point out that strong European air defense in all likelihood would greatly limit the effectiveness of such attacks, and/or the EE would surely retaliate against British cities with devastating effects given its missile technology and nerve gas superiority.

Much the same way, the American and European nuclear programs were progressing at a similar pace even if not yet complete. Therefore, in all likelihood use of nukes would at most result into a MAD stalemate after loss of a few cities on both sides. Moreover, given the effectiveness of European air defense and EE superiority in missile technology, it was quite possible the Europeans would ultimately get a better outcome in any such exchange. In the end, however, the situation luckily came to a resolution before the war escalated into WMD use. Growing popular frustration for the course of the war, its apparently unbreakable stalemate, and the seeming futility of its sacrifices eventually drove American and British public opinion to push for an end to the conflict with irresistible force.

Widespread opposition to war exploded in the British Parliament and in the Congress, Churchill and the hawk faction were voted out of office, and a pro-peace government took over in Britain. The stress of cumulative setbacks in the anti-fascist crusade he held so dear caused a stroke that killed FDR. His VP Wallace succeeded him as President but he was unpopular with the public and in the Democratic party, and lacked his predecessor's prestige and power base. Pressure of the Congress and public opinion with legislative action to tie up his war powers and threats of impeachment for non-compliance forced him to accept a de facto truce with the EE. Soon afterwards, a snap election in Britain cemented the hold of the peace faction on power. An isolationist Republican candidate that run on a platform of “peace with honor in Europe, victory on Japan is enough” won the Presidential election, and an anti-interventionist coalition of GOP isolationists and conservative Democrats seized a comfortable majority in the Congress. The EE and the Western Allies started peace negotiations and soon finalized and signed a peace treaty.

By its terms, the EE pledged to respect the independence and security of the British Isles, the Western Hemisphere, and East Asia under American military projection. The Anglo-Americans recognized frontist control of Europe, Russia (including Western Siberia and Central Asia), the Middle East, and Africa. The peace accords established a demarcation line between the European and American spheres of influence that run along the western border of China up to Tannu Tuva, and then northward along the Yenisei river to the Arctic Ocean. Both sides acknowledged the neutral status of the Indian subcontinent, so the line further extended westward along the eastern border of Iran and the northern border of Afghanistan, and eastward along the Sino-Indian border and the Indo-Burmese border to the Indian Ocean.