Axis victory without Barbarossa and the multipolar Cold War

[eurofed]

This TL develops an idea that in my knowledge did not get much representation in AH: an Axis victory that does not include an armed clash between the Axis powers and the USSR. ITTL America stays neutral and the Soviets join the Axis powers during WWII to crush the British Empire, even if later fascists and communists get alienated again. So a multi-polar Cold War eventually develops between the Axis powers, the USSR, and the USA.

ITTL Roosevelt died by an early stroke in 1939, and after James Garner completed his term, one among James Farley, Cordell Hull, or Thomas Dewey was elected President in 1940. Although the new President followed an internationalist foreign policy broadly similar to FDR, he was more suspicious of Stalin and less willing to go out of his way to pick a fight with the totalitarian powers unless they directly threatened US security. The botched attempt of Britain and France to intervene in the Winter War and deny Germany access to Swedish iron supplies caused the German occupation of Sweden, the Anglo-French bombing of Baku, and a state of war between the USSR and the Entente powers.

Hitler reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally - even if he planned to attack the Soviets once the British were defeated - and the Axis alliance was expanded to the USSR. The Soviets attacked and overrun Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, while Germany did the same to Western Europe and forced France to surrender. Because of the Soviet co-belligerence, Germany and Italy agreed to cooperate and pursue a Mediterranean strategy, while Spain and Vichy France joined the Axis. Charles de Gaulle died during the Fall of France, so no equivalent of Free France ever arose and France was deemed a genuine member of the Axis coalition by the democratic powers.

The Axis forces occupied Portugal, Gibraltar, and Malta, overrun North Africa, drove the British out of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and made inroads into western India and East Africa. The British Empire got in dire straits, despite the generous Lend-Lease support of the USA. Its fate was sealed by two events: first Hitler died (by assassination, accident, or drug overdose) before he could unleash his planned attack on the USSR, and second the Germans and the Soviets were able to keep the Japanese from attacking the USA. Goering took over as Hitler’s designated successor with the support of party moderates and the Heer. He mostly marginalized or purged Himmler, the SS, and the extremist wing of the Nazi ruling circle, even if Heydrich was able to make himself too useful to be purged and stay in the good graces of the new leadership.

Goering decided an unprovoked war with the USSR would be too risky and exhausting, and the gains from hegemony in Europe and victory over the British Empire would be enough to satisfy Nazi Germany’s imperial ambitions. On his own part, Stalin showed a similar degree of caution and moderation: he realized a war with fascist Europe and Japan would be quite difficult and risky, and the gains from control of the Middle East and access to the warm seas would be enough to appease Soviet ambitions. The bad situation of the British stoked Japan’s imperialist appetites for southward expansion. Moreover the Japanese were eager to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia to secure a steady supply of resources against the American embargo that was strangling their economy.

However Goering and Stalin were eager to prevent an American intervention in the war from Japan’s aggressive actions, which would make victory against the British much more costly and difficult. They persuaded the Japanese to join their alliance and pledge to leave the USA alone with offers of technological exchanges, peaceful expansion in Southeast Asia, and access to Soviet resources on favorable terms. The Japanese occupied French Indochina and Dutch East Asia with the acquiescence of the Axis powers and picked the excuse of a few naval incidents with the British fleet to attack the British Empire. However they reluctantly did so by establishing armed defense on their eastern flank against the potential threat of the Philippines and the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese rampage swept British possessions in Asia up to New Guinea and eastern India, and made the already bad British situation turn worse.

The combination of German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Soviet power made the air-naval battle over the British Isles and in the Atlantic turn from bad to worse for the British, and Britain came to experience serious food and resource shortages for its population and industry. The war situation radicalized the Indian independence movement into a demand for immediate self-rule and a drive to expel the British by mass civil disobedience and insurrection. A widespread wave of strikes, riots, and armed uprisings swept India, just as the Axis armies were fighting their way to the border regions of the subcontinent on two sides.

Hope in American aid had long sustained the British will to fight despite the long list of military defeats and the increasingly desperate character of the struggle. The US Administration and public opinion were sympathetic to the British cause and willing to help it by providing generous economic to Britain and putting the Axis countries under embargo. However they remained unshakably reluctant to pick a fight with the powerful Axis coalition if it didn’t directly threaten the USA. The Americans realized it would be a very difficult, costly, and bloody war with victory in Europe far from guaranteed even with full mobilization of the vast US economic and military potential. Even the recurrent naval incidents in the Atlantic that involved American shipping were not enough to motivate the USA into intervention. Many Americans were mindful of the 1917 precedent dragging the USA in a war that had proved futile and were reluctant to follow the same course. ‘All aid to Britain short of war’ proved to be the psychological threshold the American people was unwilling to cross short of being directly attacked by the Axis.

But American economic support proved wholly insufficient to make Britain withstand the military onslaught from the combined might of the Axis powers, with a never-ending string of defeats and territorial losses in three continents, round-the-clock bombings, increasingly tight blockade, food and industrial shortages, and India being swept by rebellion. Desperation made the British will to fight inevitably shatter, the war supporters were ousted from power, and a pro-peace coalition took over who petitioned the Axis powers for a beggar’s peace. In the following peace negotiations, Britain was able to avoid military occupation and keep its independence and political system, but had to recognize the conquests and continental hegemony of the Axis powers, and pledge to keep a foreign policy that would not challenge Axis interests in any way. The British Empire got entirely dismantled and Britain left WWII as a broken, exhausted, impoverished, humiliated pale shadow of its former power and glory.

[eurofed]

Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, the Flanders, northern-central Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, western-central Poland, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia, Carniola, Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia. The Nazi leaders gave up their plans for colonial expansion in the Soviet space as unfeasible, and instead turned Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia into their new version of Lebensraum. Under Goering, Nazi Germany adopted a racial policy that deemed most Slavs who accepted forced Germanization fit for assimilation into the Reich. It earmarked the ones who resisted Nazi rule or clung to their national identities for extermination or deportation. Germany also got a vast tract of Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Ubangi-Shari, Gabon, French and Belgian Congo, Angola, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, and northern Mozambique) as its new colonial empire of Mittelafrika.

Italy annexed Nice, Savoy, southern Switzerland, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, coastal Dalmatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, northwestern Macedonia, Malta, Tunisia, Chad, South Sudan, British Somaliland, Uganda, and Kenya. Spain got Gibraltar, Portugal, and French Morocco. France annexed Wallonia, western Switzerland, and the British and Portuguese colonies in West Africa. Bulgaria annexed most of Macedonia, southern Dobruja, and the western portion of Eastern Thrace; Greece got Cyprus and swapped the Dodecanese for the Ionian Islands with Italy. Hungary annexed southern Slovakia, northern Transylvania, and Backa. Europe was bound into the European League, a fascist equivalent of the EU/NATO system with an economic and monetary union and an integrated military alliance. It included Germany as its undisputed leader, Italy as second-in-command, France and Spain as the other members important enough to have a say, and Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece as the minor member states.

The USSR annexed Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, Bukovina, the Turkish Straits, eastern Anatolia, northwestern Persia, Xinjiang (renamed East Turkestan), and Mongolia as several SSRs. Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, the Arab United Republic (a union of Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states) were turned into various Communist client states. The Raj lands west of the Indus were partitioned between Afghanistan and Iran. Egypt with North Sudan, Mandatory Palestine, and the Hejaz became a client state of the European League. The resistance of the Chinese Nationalists was crushed by a combined Soviet-Japanese offensive; China proper was divided between a pro-Soviet western area ruled by the CCP, and a pro-Japanese eastern region controlled by a collaborationist faction of the KMT.

Japan annexed northern Sakhalin (ceded by the Soviets for concessions elsewhere), most of Manchukuo (Jehol was returned to East China), Hainan, and New Guinea. The Han inhabitants of Manchuria and Hainan were largely expelled and replaced with Japanese and Korean settlers. The Japanese established East China, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaya, and Indonesia as client states of theirs bound in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Axis states invariably established a fairly uniform policy of colonization, forced assimilation, and ruthless suppression of dissent for their annexed territories. In the conquered territories that were not planned for ultimate ethno-linguistic assimilation imposition of client-state status, brutal repression of dissent, and economic exploitation were the standard. Political opponents, members of the resistance, and hostile nationalists got killed, sent to the concentration camp system and often worked to death, or deported to distant and inhospitable corners of the Axis empires. In several cases the victorious powers did not bother to try and absorb the subject populations deemed too difficult or troublesome to assimilate or undesirable for racial reasons. They were subject to summary mass deportation and replacement by the conquerors’ settlers. This policy was deployed with some more leniency and flexibility in Western Europe, with rather more brutality in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, with varying degrees between these two extremes in East Asia, but was the standard across Axis Eurasia and Africa.

Germany got involved into an extensive effort to absorb the West and South Slav lands through a mix of nativist policies, settler immigration, forced cultural assimilation, mass deportation, and genocide. The other European powers established a very similar policy for their North African colonies – Spain for Morocco, France for Algeria, and Italy for Tunisia and Libya. As a matter of fact, the demographic effort to find enough settlers for the colonized lands got serious enough that the EL established a common policy of opening the Eastern European and North African colonies to immigrants from Europe at large, provided the settlers were subject to political and cultural assimilation from the nation that owned the area.

The European powers drew grandiose plans to eventually extend this colonization policy to Sub-Saharan Africa and eventually turn vast tracts of it into a settler colony. In practice the colonization of Eastern Europe and North Africa absorbed enough of the demographic resources of Europe that such plans were earmarked for the distant future. In the meanwhile, fascist Europe imposed an extremely harsh regime of serfdom and economic exploitation on its African colonies. In practice it established slavery in all but name and made the infamous conditions of the old Congo Free State the standard across the continent. In South Africa a pro-Axis far right faction took over, established a racist police state, and aligned the country with the EL in foreign policy. South Africa annexed the rest of Southern Africa (South West Africa, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Swaziland, Southern Rhodesia, southern Mozambique), and strived to imitate brutal Axis colonial policies for its own Black population.

Decisive defeat utterly discredited the cause of the British Empire for the White Dominions and drove them to sever all political bonds with Britain. They got frantic to find protection from renewed totalitarian aggression, so they picked political union with America as the only safe course to bind the USA to their defense. Even a close alliance of republics was deemed too risky and uncertain a course in the dramatic period following WWII. The outcome of the war at last awakened America from its isolationist spell, but by then it could do little more than rearm, accept the petitions for union of the Dominions, and pursue a policy of armed defense of the Western Hemisphere and Australasia.

Alaska, Hawaii, the Australian states, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and almost all Canadian provinces became US states. Prince Edward Island got merged with Nova Scotia for reasons of insufficient population for statehood. Yukon merged with Alaska. The Canadian Northwest Territories and Australian Northern Territory initially became US territories, but eventually the former fused with Alaska, and the latter got enough population from immigration to qualify for statehood. Quebec and Iceland negotiated a status of associated states with the USA, with self-rule in most domestic issues and Washington managing foreign policy, defense, and the economy. They got their non-voting representatives in the Congress.

America annexed the European possessions in the Western Hemisphere and Oceania with the acquiescence of local authorities; it kept Greenland, the Caribbean islands, and the Pacific islands as territories, but it ceded the rest to various Latin American states. Argentina got the Falkland Islands, Guatemala took British Honduras, and the Guyanas were partitioned between Venezuela and Brazil. Out of its wish to secure undisputed strategic control of the Caribbean region, the US government bribed the ruling elites of several states in the region (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama) to accept political union with America with offers of economic and monetary compensations. They became associated states of the USA and Puerto Rico got the same status. Japanese supremacy in Southeast Asia drove the American and Filipino leaders to abandon all plans for independence of the Philippines. The two sides negotiated an extension of the Commonwealth of the Philippines associated-state bond with the USA to indefinite duration with a few adjustments. The union of the USA with its associated states became commonly known as the American Commonwealth. Over time the US island territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific got self-rule as associated states of the USA and joined the AC system.

In a few years after victory in WWII, relations between the fascist and communist powers again degenerated from allies of convenience to rivals and potential enemies. The main causes were a mix of insufficiently threatening common enemies, resurgent imperialist competition and ideological tension, and mutual suspicion. Nonetheless the leaders of two sides remained cautious and practical enough to shun escalation into an armed conflict. They deemed their wartime gains extensive enough and the effort of assimilating and managing their empires complex enough to avoid the risk of further expansionist adventures. They resorted to watchful containment, armed defense, and the usual Cold War means of competition to preserve their interests from external threats. More or less the same conditions settled in place between the USA and the totalitarian powers.

In a few years, near-simultaneous development of nuclear weapons, extensive WMD arsenals, and intercontinental bombers by all the great powers (USA, German-led Europe, USSR, and Japan) cemented MAD into place. India picked a course of opportunist neutrality that wavered between drifting closer to the USA, Europe/Japan, or the USSR depending on which political faction got in power and what seemed more convenient at the time. The Japanese at times drifted between a more autonomous foreign policy when tensions with the Soviets and the Americans toned down, and closing ranks with fascist Europe when antagonism with their powerful neighbors flared up. ‘Britization’ became a word to define the policy of a weaker country that strived not to challenge its more powerful neighbors in foreign policy while maintaining independence and its own political system.

[lordroel]

Oct 6, 2016 13:04:05 GMT eurofed said:

This TL develops an idea that in my knowledge did not get much representation in AH: an Axis victory that does not include an ultimate armed clash between the Axis powers and the USSR. ITTL the Soviets join the Axis powers during WWII to crush the British Empire, even if later fascists and communists get alienated again, and America stays neutral. So a multi-polar Cold War develops between the Axis powers, the USSR, and the USA.

Thanks for posting it here, i wonder who dominates the Axis the Germans or the Soviet Union.

[eurofed]

Oct 6, 2016 14:06:44 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 6, 2016 13:04:05 GMT eurofed said:

This TL develops an idea that in my knowledge did not get much representation in AH: an Axis victory that does not include an ultimate armed clash between the Axis powers and the USSR. ITTL the Soviets join the Axis powers during WWII to crush the British Empire, even if later fascists and communists get alienated again, and America stays neutral. So a multi-polar Cold War develops between the Axis powers, the USSR, and the USA.

Thanks for posting it here, i wonder who dominates the Axis the Germans or the Soviet Union.

Good question. I think ITTL Germany backed by the rest of fascist Europe and the USSR are sufficiently equal in resources to make their wartime alliance of convenience a true diarchy, and even when they get estranged rivals during the Cold War the two empires are balanced enough to keep their relationship stable until the withering of their totalitarian systems changes the whole picture. Due to the superior economic efficiency of fascism to communism, and the common interest of the European powers to cooperate for economic integration, defence from Soviet Russia (once the convenience of wartime alliance expires with victory) and anti-colonial America, and exploitation of their colonial empires, Germany won't need much coercion to keep the rest of Europe bound to the EL system, unlike OTL USSR with the Warsaw Pact. Fascist Europe has more than enough demographic and indistrial resources, not to mention a bigger know-how, to balance Soviet Russia and democratic America, even more so since it can ruthlessly exploit captive Africa for resources. On the other hand, Soviet Russia has more natural resources in its core territory, and a smaller empire (the Middle East, Central Asia, western China) whose resources it can ruthlessly exploit even if it shall be more restive to control than Europe because of the greater inefficiencies of its system and the character of its subject populations. ITTL neither Germany nor Europe at large nor the USSR suffered the vast majority of the damage they experienced in our version of WWII. Victory over the British Empire was relatively easy, and the war was mostly fought in the air, at sea, and in the Muslim lands. If anything Britain itself experienced the worst damage that left it a broken, impoverished, exhausted middle power cowed into Finlandization. Its empire was entirely seized by victorious Axis powers, nationalist Indians, opportunist Americans, and turncoat South Africans.

Of course, the population of the annexed territories shall not be happy with their lot, but given the practical character of TTL Nazi racial policies, I think a lot of people in those areas shall accept forced cultural assimilation and integration with the conquerors' settlers when it is offered, and the opponents shall be largely wiped out, since the alternative is to be killed, sent to the concentration camp system, or deported far away from home. In certain places the victorious powers did not bother to attempt forced cultural assimilation and enacted mass forced transfer of the original populations and their replacement with their own settlers immediately after victory. If the totalitarian regimes stay in power long enough, I expect the ethno-linguistic map of Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and Northeastern Asia shall experience many extensive and irreversible changes, even if their eventual decline and fall might leave several troublesome areas into place that look like Scotland or Catalonia at best, like the Basque Countries or Northern Ireland at worst. As it concerns the occupied areas of the Axis empires at large, the victorious Nazis and Stalinists are efficient and brutal enough in their repression policies, the would-be members of the resistance mostly cut off from any external help, and their situation looks desperate enough, that any organized resistance shall cease or be crushed by the late 1940s or early 1950s at the latest.

Over time, organized mass resistance may revive in the unassimilated subject areas of the totalitarian empires that face severe oppression and exploitation, such as Sub-Saharan Africa for the EL, Middle East for the USSR, China proper for Russia/Japan, if they can get enough external support from the other superpowers. The strain from repressing such resistance might be a serious cause of trouble and decline for the Commienazi empires. I'm honestly uncertain if over time Southeast Asia shall turn out more like the quiet cores of the Euro/Russo/Japanese empires or their troublesome peripheries. The other major cause for their decline, of course, would be the emergent flaws and inefficiencies of the totalitarian powers in their natural evolution and competition with America. Apart from this, I expect this tripolar system, once established, shall be stable enough to last a long time, in all likelihood as much as OTL Cold War if not more.

[lordroel]

Oct 6, 2016 13:04:05 GMT eurofed said:

Goering decided an unprovoked war with the USSR would be too risky and exhausting, and the gains from hegemony in Europe and victory over the British Empire would be enough to satisfy Nazi Germany’s imperial ambitions. On his own part, Stalin showed a similar degree of caution and moderation: he realized a war with fascist Europe and Japan would be quite difficult and risky, and the gains from control of the Middle East and access to the warm seas would be enough to appease Soviet ambitions. The bad situation of the British stoked Japan’s imperialist appetites for southward expansion. Moreover the Japanese were eager to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia to secure a steady supply of resources against the American embargo that was strangling their economy.

However Goering and Stalin were eager to prevent an American intervention in the war from Japan’s aggressive actions, which would make victory against the British much more costly and difficult. They persuaded the Japanese to join their alliance and pledge to leave the USA alone with offers of technological exchanges, peaceful expansion in Southeast Asia, and access to Soviet resources on favorable terms. The Japanese occupied French Indochina and Dutch East Asia with the acquiescence of the Axis powers and picked the excuse of a few naval incidents with the British fleet to attack the British Empire. However they reluctantly did so by establishing armed defense on their eastern flank against the potential threat of the Philippines and the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese rampage swept British possessions in Asia up to New Guinea and eastern India, and made the already bad British situation turn worse.

With Goering in charge i assume the Luftwaffe will be the most important force in the German armed forces.

[stevep]

Even for Eurofed this is a dystopic scenario. I wonder how much the population of the old world hemisphere is going to drop during the following decade or so?

I find it highly unlikely you would get the MAD deterrent proposed however. For one thing nuclear weapons development is likely to be significantly delayed in TTL. For another once one of the dark empires gets the weapon, especially given the secrecy involved, its likely that would move quickly to crush one of its neighbours. Highly doubtful Japan would be in the running so we're talking about sudden strikes by either German or the Soviets on the other. [Given the nature of the regimes they would fear that the other might develop such weapons and also see a monopoly over them as an idea opportunity to crush the enemy they fear and distrust more than any other. This is different from the OTL situation where a democratic state was the 1st to gain nuclear weapons and its major rival was a former wartime ally].

Even more likely I would expect that war would occur before any of the three developed such weapons. There is too much hatred plus once Britain is forced to make peace no real incentive to maintain the 'alliance'. This puts the Soviets in the greatest peril in an early war as Germany will probably have greater overall strength early on, plus the alliance against Japan and a 'crusade' against Bolshevism is one thing that would gain significant support amongst Germany's subject nations. However if war doesn't break out until the late 40's the greater efficiency [or should I say lesser inefficiency] of the Soviet system will give it an increasing edge over the shambling mess that will be the Nazi empire. Plus by that point Japan is probably faltering over its attempts to try and hold its empire in China, SE Asia and probably parts of India.

The best option under Eurofed's conditions is say a war starting in ~44-46 that is tight enough that there is no overall winner and all three empires collapse under their own weight. After that its possible that some degree of democracy and civilisation could start to recover although the loss in human life and society would be appalling.

If we assume that only the 1st two conditions are met, i.e. the western powers attacking Russia over the Winter War and Hitler's sudden death then there is a more logical and optimistic alternative. Under those circumstances with France falling in 1940 and the British so thinly stretched I can't see them continuing beyond late 40 or early 41 at the latest. Especially once its clear that the US won't offer serious support. Egypt might well be held because of the problems of logistics for both the fascists and communists, plus the poor quality of the Red Army at this point and more importantly most of the rest of the empire in Africa when Britain makes peace. There are likely to be concessions made, such as returning the Canaries to Spain and possibly also even Egypt although probably not much more. As such a large chunk of Africa will stay outside the control of the dictators and Britain will stay largely independent. Also, vitally, Britain will be at peace before Japan is in a position to attack in the Pacific. As such it would have a much greater problem winning a war in SE Asia and possibly, with German control of the Dutch East Indies, not need to do so.

The down side for this is that Germany is likely to seek to strike to attack Russia very quickly and also seek to pressurise Japan into supporting it. As I say above the Soviets are very likely to lose a war at this period, although the Japanese are likely to play only a minimal role because their manpower intensive form of ground conflict is going to make little progress against Soviet firepower.

However if the war is delayed a couple of years its likely to be a lot more even, especially if Nazi 'education' policies continue and there is growing discontent with Goring's leadership,both of which are fairly likely. As such the dictatorships are likely to bleed each other white and Britain, especially if the US wakes up and allies with it, could step in and end at least some of the bloodshed fairly quickly, especially if they have nukes and a suitable delivery system by then.

Alternatively if the democracies get the bomb 1st then under those circumstances they could well use them and the additional military strength developed to decisive effect, at least against the European fascists. Or possibly the Nazis and Soviets are lead to bled each other dry if Japan still blunders into a war with Britain, especially if as likely the latter has US support.

There are still likely to be tens of millions of additional deaths compared to OTL and a Soviet state may survive but at least things won't be as bloody and destructive as in Eurofed's nightmare TL.

Steve

[stevep]

Oct 7, 2016 1:49:35 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 6, 2016 13:04:05 GMT eurofed said:

Goering decided an unprovoked war with the USSR would be too risky and exhausting, and the gains from hegemony in Europe and victory over the British Empire would be enough to satisfy Nazi Germany’s imperial ambitions. On his own part, Stalin showed a similar degree of caution and moderation: he realized a war with fascist Europe and Japan would be quite difficult and risky, and the gains from control of the Middle East and access to the warm seas would be enough to appease Soviet ambitions. The bad situation of the British stoked Japan’s imperialist appetites for southward expansion. Moreover the Japanese were eager to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia to secure a steady supply of resources against the American embargo that was strangling their economy.

However Goering and Stalin were eager to prevent an American intervention in the war from Japan’s aggressive actions, which would make victory against the British much more costly and difficult. They persuaded the Japanese to join their alliance and pledge to leave the USA alone with offers of technological exchanges, peaceful expansion in Southeast Asia, and access to Soviet resources on favorable terms. The Japanese occupied French Indochina and Dutch East Asia with the acquiescence of the Axis powers and picked the excuse of a few naval incidents with the British fleet to attack the British Empire. However they reluctantly did so by establishing armed defense on their eastern flank against the potential threat of the Philippines and the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese rampage swept British possessions in Asia up to New Guinea and eastern India, and made the already bad British situation turn worse.

With Goering in charge i assume the Luftwaffe will be the most important force in the German armed forces.

  He will probably seek to boost its influence further, which will make the army unhappy.  Although it partly depends on how much he is weakened by his drugs and syblitic lifestyle.  For all of Hitler's stupidity and raving insanity he would 'work' a lot harder than Goring.  Furthermore would he ally with the army or the more extreme SS elements?  How much infighting would there be between the assorted factions and groups?  If the Nazi 'education' programmes continue then even if the mass slaughter doesn't bring their empire down that will cripple the 'master race', although that might take a generation or two and I can't see the empire lasting that long.

 

[lordroel]

Oct 7, 2016 19:49:38 GMT stevep said:

Oct 7, 2016 1:49:35 GMT lordroel said:

With Goering in charge i assume the Luftwaffe will be the most important force in the German armed forces.

  He will probably seek to boost its influence further, which will make the army unhappy.  Although it partly depends on how much he is weakened by his drugs and syblitic lifestyle.  For all of Hitler's stupidity and raving insanity he would 'work' a lot harder than Goring.  Furthermore would he ally with the army or the more extreme SS elements?  How much infighting would there be between the assorted factions and groups?  If the Nazi 'education' programmes continue then even if the mass slaughter doesn't bring their empire down that will cripple the 'master race', although that might take a generation or two and I can't see the empire lasting that long.

 

I wonder if he is still the same person as he was in OTL.

[stevep]

Oct 7, 2016 19:56:56 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 7, 2016 19:49:38 GMT stevep said:

  He will probably seek to boost its influence further, which will make the army unhappy.  Although it partly depends on how much he is weakened by his drugs and syblitic lifestyle.  For all of Hitler's stupidity and raving insanity he would 'work' a lot harder than Goring.  Furthermore would he ally with the army or the more extreme SS elements?  How much infighting would there be between the assorted factions and groups?  If the Nazi 'education' programmes continue then even if the mass slaughter doesn't bring their empire down that will cripple the 'master race', although that might take a generation or two and I can't see the empire lasting that long.

 

I wonder if he is still the same person as he was in OTL.

  Well it mentions three PODs, that the allies support Finland militarily, bringing about a Nazi-Soviet alliance, that Hitler dies early and that Japan attacks only Britain and its allies and ignores the US.  None of those would alter Goring before 1939 at the earliest, by which time his character and flaws were pretty well established.

[lordroel]

Oct 7, 2016 20:40:58 GMT stevep said:

Oct 7, 2016 19:56:56 GMT lordroel said:

I wonder if he is still the same person as he was in OTL.

  Well it mentions three PODs, that the allies support Finland militarily, bringing about a Nazi-Soviet alliance, that Hitler dies early and that Japan attacks only Britain and its allies and ignores the US.  None of those would alter Goring before 1939 at the earliest, by which time his character and flaws were pretty well established.

So he might be the drugs addict of OTL, that will end well.

[eurofed]

A few points that are established facts of this TL:

- IOTL Goering had a on-again, off-again pattern in his drug addiction. He got the opportunity to kick out his opiate addiction when he was imprisoned by the Allies and turned out quite lucid and competent a defendant at the Nuremburg Trials. ITTL the stimulus of becoming Hitler's successor acts more or less the same way and as a consequence he turns out a fairly competent and efficient leader for Germany. Even if he weren't able to cut his drug habit, opiate addiction may actually be not that destructive to the subject's body and job performance if they get steady access to high-quality drugs under medical supervision; stimulant addiction (of the kind Hitler got thanks to his quack doctor) is actually worse in this regard. Goering's obesity was actually more of a serious problem for his long-term health, but I assume he would still live at least up to the early-mid 1950s in decent conditions, quite possibly a decade longer. Otherwise, I don't see how a 'sybaritic' lifestyle of his having may have significant adverse consequences either on his health or on his performance as a leader. Several other historical leaders were womanizers and fond of art and luxury, and they still turned out competent and efficient.

- ITTL Goering consolidates his power base as Fuhrer by relying on party moderates, technocrates, and the Heer and marginalizing or purging Himmler, the SS network, and the radical wing of the Nazi party (with a few exceptions such as Heydrich who is too useful and talented to be purged). As a consequence, Nazi racial policy gets a more practical bent by assuming assimilation of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Germanic lands has to be the new version of Lebensraum and the Slavs who accept Germanization should be deemed racially acceptable for incorporation in the Reich. Much the same way, with the Nazi radicals deprived of influence, the negative effects of Nazi policies on education get radically limited. Under the prevailing influence of the technocrats and the professional officers, the anti-intellectual bent of the regime is seriously cut short and in the end fascist Europe gets more or less as efficient in education and scientific/technological progress as post-Stalin USSR or slightly better. There are very few fixed kill quotas of the GPO kind ITTL, and 'industrial' extermination of European minorities is avoided as a waste of resources and an unnecessary PR risk. The Axis empires are so vast that many 'undesirables' are dealt with by mass deportation to some distant and low-value corner of Africa or Asia. The Nazi concentration camp system and repression apparatus gets to work much like the Soviet one, by focusing on elimination of political opponents, members of the Resistance, and hostile nationalists who refuse assimilation in the victors' states. Even so, given the vastness of the totalitarian empires it is often more practical to deport the less dangerous malcontents someplace more distant and less valuable than their original lands.

ITTL the considerable body count of the victorious fascists and communists occurs as a mix of Stalinist purges, Nazi-Soviet-Japanese mass deportations of natives in harsh conditions and ruthless repression of nationalist dissent in the lands earmarked for colonial assimilation (Eastern Europe, North Africa, Northeast Asia, northern Near East), their brutal repression of active resistance in the other restive conquered lands (Middle East and China; fascist Western Europe gets a fairly lenient regime for Nazi/Soviet standards and mostly settles down to find its relatively comfy place in the Nazi EU, and I likely expect Japanese-ruled Southeast Asia would end up basically the same), and an Heart of Darkness regime being imposed on all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Systematic extermination for its own racist sake of the Final Solution and GPO kind does not really enter the picture - well, fascist Europe does plan it for the African colonies but it largely remains on paper because of insufficient resources, so Nazi Europe mostly defaults to enslaving Africa; the duration and severity of postwar Stalinist purges largely depend on how long Stalin lives ITTL. On the other hand, this version of WWII has a much lower body count than OTL; it is essentially fought in the air, on the sea, in the North African/Middle Eastern deserts and Southeast Asian forests. Europe and Russia end it essentially intact (the air war sees Britain on the defensive pretty much all the time), only Britain experiences some serious damage from the bombing offensive and blockade.

- With Goering as supreme leader, the Luftwaffe gets some serious favoritism but it has limited consequences for the internal stability or war effort of Germany, since it happens in a strategic situation that drives Germany and its allies to privilege air-naval build-up instead of land forces development. Since their enemy is the British Empire, this is only the natural and smart thing to do; the Axis powers need a lot of planes and ships to bring Britain to its knees and can only find use for land forces to conquer North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. They need a fraction of the material to seize these lands that OTL Germany and USSR had to build and use for the furnace of the Eastern Front. The war ends before the Axis gets a serious chance to invade India or the British Isles (they were getting to it, but Britain surrenders first) and the Chinese Nationalists quickly fall to the combined Soviet-Japanese offensive when the Axis powers get to stage it.

- ITTL a 'second round' of WWII with a Nazi-Soviet armed clash does not happen, because both sides regard their wartime gains extensive enough, the task of consolidating them burdensome enough, and the risks and costs of this war serious enough that they never really dare doing it. Much the same way, a late intervention of America against the victorious Commie-Nazi coalition does not happen, for the reasons already exposed in the TL (Goering and Stalin actively avoid a clash with the USA and bribe the Japanese to do the same, the President is not a warmonger like FDR, many Americans regard the conflict in the Old World too costly and difficult to win against the Nazi-Soviet-Japanese coalition and not their business w/o provocation). The great powers develop their arsenals in such a way that leads to the early establishment of a tripolar MAD. Perhaps America develops nukes first, but lacks intercontinental delivery means for a while and a decent casus belli to launch an unprovoked and massive WMD attack on totalitarian Eurasia. Its achievement spurs Germany and the USSR to develop their own nukes and build up their nuclear and chemical arsenals in a near-simultaneous way. All three powers develop long-range bombers more or less at the same time, so tripolar MAD quickly settles in.

A more personal note as the TL's author: yes, this is a dystopic TL where the totalitarian bad guys win a real victory. People that wish to read a rather more optimistic TL of mine with a similar initial PoD (WWII starts with a Nazi-Soviet coalition) are encouraged to read a "A Different Cold War", also on this board (I originally conceived this TL as a variant of that one, and got intrigued once I realized nobody to my knowledge had ever written much about this scenario). If I bother to write a "bad guys win" TL for the sake of telling the story or exploring a scenario, I usually mean the victory to be a real, meaningful one, with long-term and often permanent consequences. A story where the main point is the bad guys are supposed to win and apparently do for a short while but then quickly self-destruct or the good guys have a swift comeback feels to me like a moralistic, fake cop-out that only serves to make fanboys of the good guys feel good, so I'm not interested. I'm even less interested into hypocrite revenge porn where the bad guys' success drives the good guys to turn a continent into a wasteland and reap a worse body count than the bad guys in the name of 'liberating' it, since the hypocrisy turns me off. There is no built-in cosmic enforcement mechanism for justice and conventional morality in this amoral, materialistic, indifferent universe, and quite often in history brutal force and might makes right succeed in a major and lasting way. On the other hand, I'm a long-term optimist since mankind has shown to be quite resilient and adaptable and its grand trajectory has been towards thriving, growth, and progress. It has survived and recovered from natural and man-made disasters that make anything the greatest mass murderers in history could realistically do feel minor and tame. In a few centuries the misdeeds of victorious totalitarians shall turn out and feel as remote and devoid of importance as the rampages of the Assyrians or the Mongols.

As it concerns me as a AH author and reader, I'm enough of a cynical, amoral misanthrope to regard "bad guys win and reap a lot of lives and suffering" TLs with the same callous indifference many people regard the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars universe or massacre mooks in games. If a lot of people can enjoy the SW story and regard Vader and Palpatine cool despite they blow up inhabited planets, I share the same attitude for TLs where historical bad guys win. My knowledge of the humanitarian consequences of their success does not stop me from appreciating the narrative appeal of the story or the cool factor in their military or technical achievements. It makes no difference to me that in AH the fictional victims are alternate variants of real people and in sci-fi or fantasy they are people living 'long ago, in a galaxy far away'. It takes something as extreme as apocalyptic destruction of civilization to shake my indifference and feel depressed or uncomfortable about this kind of events in fiction. I'm also entirely alien from the notion of guilt by association and I judge everything on its own practical merits, so a good thing done by a bad guy is still a good thing to me, no strings attached.

[lordroel]

Oct 8, 2016 15:52:49 GMT eurofed said:

As it concerns me as a AH author and reader, I'm enough of a cynical, amoral misanthrope to regard "bad guys win and reap a lot of lives and suffering" TLs with the same callous indifference many people regard the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars universe or massacre mooks in games. If a lot of people can enjoy the SW story and regard Vader and Palpatine cool despite they blow up inhabited planets, I share the same attitude for TLs where historical bad guys win. My knowledge of the humanitarian consequences of their success does not stop me from appreciating the narrative appeal of the story or the cool factor in their military or technical achievements. It makes no difference to me that in AH the fictional victims are alternate variants of real people and in sci-fi or fantasy they are people living 'long ago, in a galaxy far away'. It takes something as extreme as apocalyptic destruction of civilization to shake my indifference and feel depressed or uncomfortable about this kind of events in fiction. I'm also entirely alien from the notion of guilt by association and I judge everything on its own practical merits, so a good thing done by a bad guy is still a good thing to me, no strings attached.

I see no problem in this timeline so carry on.

[stevep]

Eurofed

As usual your applying the God delusion. I.e. x, y and z happens because you wish them to, regardless of their often low probability. That's the 2nd reason why I tend to dislike your TLs, the primary one being your preference for TLs in which vicious dictatorships slaughter millions and human rights are suppressed, quite possibly for generations if not centuries in a scenario like this.

As I say a prolonged period of peace between the assorted dictatorships is extremely unlikely, especially since with so much going right for them they are going to win the initial round of conflict, against the western democracies, pretty quickly and easily. Holding their likely gains, let alone the massively greater conquests you assume is another matter but the problems there, except possibly for Japan are highly unlikely to be enough to prevent an early Nazi-Soviet war. Even with the major rewrites of Goring your suggesting and the dodgy time-scales your assuming.

I'm not sure which would be the greater catastrophe, such a bitter long war lasting possibly the best part of a decade or a longer possibly generational period of brutal totalitarian dictatorships that under those circumstances are likely to continue at a high level of oppression simply because the ruling elites feel a lot more threatened by their equally repulsive neighbours.

Correction, the former is likely to be far less destructive, IF it leads to the end of those dictatorships because something lasting into the 60's say before they start to collapse is likely to lead to a [possibly massive] nuclear exchange. If not, since communism is somewhat less self-destructive than fascism, especially the Nazi/Japanese version, then a less destructive version of a nuclear collapse is likely to be a prolonged Soviet empire, accompanied by further rounds of slaughter, destruction and repression.

That's why as an eternal optimist, I would prefer to consider a far less destructive alternative, of Britain being defeated a lot earlier, as is almost certain under those conditions, then being able, preferably with US support, to end the dictatorships relatively quickly and with far less bloodshed. Plus its at least as likely as your dark scenario.



On a side issue the fact a lot of idiots like systems such as the Star Wars empire, or in RL the Nazis doesn't make such ideas either moral or practical. Its not just that system like the Nazis are evil its that their extremely inefficient, in part because their evil. Because they encourage division and destruction for their own sake and put power into the hands of relatively small elites they come complete with the seeds of their own destruction.

The Mongols were very destructive, when they faced opposition but once they conquered areas, at least until religion and internal power-struggles got involved, they were pretty tolerant. This can be said of none of your three empires, not even the Soviet one and definitely the not the Nazi or Japanese ones, who apart from other exclusions only allowed membership of their own national group. You can hope that they might extend membership of that elite identity to others for a while but even if it occurs its unlikely to last, if only for internal political reasons.

Steve

[stevep]

Oct 8, 2016 18:01:21 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 8, 2016 15:52:49 GMT eurofed said:

As it concerns me as a AH author and reader, I'm enough of a cynical, amoral misanthrope to regard "bad guys win and reap a lot of lives and suffering" TLs with the same callous indifference many people regard the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars universe or massacre mooks in games. If a lot of people can enjoy the SW story and regard Vader and Palpatine cool despite they blow up inhabited planets, I share the same attitude for TLs where historical bad guys win. My knowledge of the humanitarian consequences of their success does not stop me from appreciating the narrative appeal of the story or the cool factor in their military or technical achievements. It makes no difference to me that in AH the fictional victims are alternate variants of real people and in sci-fi or fantasy they are people living 'long ago, in a galaxy far away'. It takes something as extreme as apocalyptic destruction of civilization to shake my indifference and feel depressed or uncomfortable about this kind of events in fiction. I'm also entirely alien from the notion of guilt by association and I judge everything on its own practical merits, so a good thing done by a bad guy is still a good thing to me, no strings attached.

I see no problem in this timeline so carry on.

  Eurofed and me are old opponents, being pretty much polar opposites.  He prefers massive and brutal empires while I tend more towards the advantages being with liberal states and more rights for people.  Therefore as he says his TLs tend to have the SW empires win and suppress all alternative viewpoints, whereas I'm very happy with multiple powers surviving and existing in relative harmony.  I believe the future is with heterogeneous societies that can not just tolerate but enjoy new idea and questions.

  There is a side issue in that he thinks that the main [or sole?] reason why Europe wasn't united under some nationalistic empire was the independent of a British nation.  Hence he tends to have especially unpleasant fates in his TLs for Britain.  Apart from rubbing me the wrong way of course, this is rubbish as I have pointed out numerous times.  However he prefers to believe that, I think because it makes his own desired empires more likely.  [From his point of view remove/cripple Britain and Europe falls to some conqueror.  Of course while Britain played a significant role the reason Europe was never united was overwhelmingly it was the united efforts of many peoples who defeated each such would be conquerors]. 

[lordroel]

Oct 8, 2016 19:34:50 GMT stevep said:

Oct 8, 2016 18:01:21 GMT lordroel said:

I see no problem in this timeline so carry on.

  Eurofed and me are old opponents, being pretty much polar opposites.  He prefers massive and brutal empires while I tend more towards the advantages being with liberal states and more rights for people.  Therefore as he says his TLs tend to have the SW empires win and suppress all alternative viewpoints, whereas I'm very happy with multiple powers surviving and existing in relative harmony.  I believe the future is with heterogeneous societies that can not just tolerate but enjoy new idea and questions.

Well everybody has a side he like ore hates, as long as it remains civil on both side it is okay.