A Three Way Cold War

I'm a little bit new here, so don't bite into me too much...

Here's a little one, the POD is somewhere during WWII and the result is the powers of Germany, Russia, and the USA are superpowers competing for ideological dominance. Where would the POD be and what would happen in the future?

Hey Bob said:

I'm a little bit new here, so don't bite into me too much...

Here's a little one, the POD is somewhere during WWII and the result is the powers of Germany, Russia, and the USA are superpowers competing for ideological dominance. Where would the POD be and what would happen in the future?

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The POD would probably be Germany does not declare war on the US. This keeps the US preoccupied with Japan for long enough that Germany is able to take Britain, in a reverse Normandy-scale invasion. I'm not sure what goes on between Russia and Germany though.

rewster said:

This keeps the US preoccupied with Japan for long enough that Germany is able to take Britain, in a reverse Normandy-scale invasion.

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Smells like... Sealion.

HERESY!!!!!1111

Just kidding.

Nope, Sealion is impossible. But I could see the Germans and Russians making a negotiated peace sometime in 1943, giving Germany the Baltics, Eastern Poland, and Western Belarus and Ukraine... Britain would likely give up soon after.

Could the Soviet Union become a superpower with the loss of all that land to the Reich?

I think the Third Reich could become a superpower easily if they just hung onto all of Europe and North Africa (Britain, maybe or maybe not) and partitioned off peacefully the contested territory between the Soviet Union.

How would this come about, that no war would come about against the Soviet Union? Maybe a better military set up for the Soviets? Barbarossa begins, the Nazis get in a little ways, and then find themselves in a stalemate against prepared Soviet forces. Eventually they just come to a settlement.

Or we could have some way that the Nazis don't start Barbarossa and focus on the Brits instead... then you keep Molotov-Ribbentrop borders.

Well, depending on how the war pans out, maybe the Germans drop the bomb on London, and one or two other major cities. That would make invasion either easier or unnecessary.

rewster said:

Well, depending on how the war pans out, maybe the Germans drop the bomb on London, and one or two other major cities. That would make invasion either easier or unnecessary.

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I don't know if the German A-Bomb program was that advanced... a simpler way to end the war would be to have the U-boots starve the Brits out.

Maybe...

What if the Nazis sent in the panzers at Dunkirk and wiped out or captured the British Expeditionary Force? That might have been enough to convince the English to negotiate some sort of a peace with Germany... although the Germans might still have tried an invasion - and perhaps they might have succeded, if they were willing to also maintain their pre-defeat of France production of combat air craft and expand it - in OTL they not only failed to increase the production of combat aircraft, they cut back. So, they fight the Battle of Britain against a demoralized England, with more planes available, and no Eastern Front to suck away troops and material. (Since they would've decided to postpone attacking the Soviets - which they could have - books have been written on how Stalin probably wouldn't have tried to back stab Hitler, and how if he had, the Nazis would probably have been able to halt his attack... and held, if they didn't try advancing too far into Russia.)
So, if Hitler sends the panzers in at Dunkirk, maintains and expands the production of combat aircraft and doesn't go after the Soviets, then he might manage to have his German state survive to act as a third super-power in a three way Cold War. Might... I'd have to agree with rewster - they'd also probably have had to not declare war on the US - that or take over England before Japan made the stupid choice to attack the US, which would be pretty hard to do.

Technicaly, it was partially our otl - China may have been communist, but they had taken Maoism instead of Leninism, and for such ideological (and national) reasons, China and USSR where pretty much at least in cold relations for much of the Cold War era. China hated occident, but as we say, the ennemy of my ennemy..

My idea would be: some authoritarian figure NOT straight out of the insane asylum takes power in Germany. Analogue to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the system of Versailles is overturned.
France loses, Russia is in its pre-1918 frontiers (maybe without the Baltics and Finland, but is compensated in South-East Europe and/or parts of Turkey)

-Germany rules the continent, but both nations further ambitions are checked by an Anglo-American threat to intervene, and after the partition of Eastern Europe both have run out of mutual interests and compete more and more hostile to each other.

Note: Key to this TL is: all nations keep an eye on exit strategies for wars and don´t go for "world domination or bust".

Maybe...

Maybe. Or perhaps that non-looney German leader might have done all of the other things I (and rewster) suggested, and ended up with a much stronger position.

RCTFI said:

Maybe. Or perhaps that non-looney German leader might have done all of the other things I (and rewster) suggested, and ended up with a much stronger position.

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The only problem though is how to take a Hot War leader and get them to then fight(?) run(?) a Cold War? After all the Americans were involved in the Battle of the Atlantic before Hitler's declaration of war. Roosevelt just didn't have a big enough causus belli to declare war himself. Besides his initial strategy was to get the British and French (and later the Russians) to do the fighting. In ontrast, Hitler's strategy seemed to be picking one fighter after another.

Basically...

Basically, that does just about sum up Hitler's war strategy. Still, the point of this thread is the whole three way Cold War - could it have happened, and if so, how.
One of the simplest things would be to have Hitler not go after the Jews - then Einstein and co. would have been working for him, and he might have gotten an A-bomb before the Allies... in which case it's bye-bye London... (unless he'd taken it by then...)

One reason that the Cold War was so cold was the risk for direct military action. Both sides could attack in Germany. I dont think the US could be drawn in in this Cold war.

Of course it could. Just imagine that Stalin (or, say Tuchachevsky) goes east after fortifying the border with Germany (which could be dragged down trying to save Benito's butt in Africa) and takes large parts of China and Japan.

If u had a leader different than Hitler (who siad nuclear physics was jew science ie bad and wrong) Who was more Like stalin in the fact he would put guns to their head Get the bomb win the war then Exterminate the jews.

Or...

Or if Hitler had been more tolerant of the Jews... as I said before, he could have gotten The Bomb first, then used it to ensure Germany's continued position as a major power.
But, then he wouldn't really be Hitler, would he? One of the big things about OTL Hitler was his anti-semitism - perhaps a less looney guy as Fuhrer might have had that result, but with the same guy it seems unlikely...

Mein Kampf..

As long as Hitler was in charge, a confrontation with Soviet Russia was unavoidable. It's all set out clearly in Mein Kampf and I can't see anything changing that.

In SS-GB, the famous Len Deighton AH novel, Germany has conquered England and in late 1941 there has been no Barbarossa. In "Hitler - the victory that nearly was", Bruce Quarrie argues that Hitler could have postponed Barbarossa to complete the defeat of England in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Even so, Barbarossa still happens only in May 1942 instead of June 1941.

I suppose we could have a situation like "Fatherland" with a German-dominated Europe but the war in the east continuing for decades while the US remains isolationist.

I think a tripolar world dominated by Germany, Japan and the US (no Pearl Harbour) is more likely.

Maybe...

stodge said:

I think a tripolar world dominated by Germany, Japan and the US (no Pearl Harbour) is more likely.

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Maybe... of course, we could also have a different Hitler, one who might be willing to accept a long-term peace with Russia... after all, we are talking about massive changes here, aren't we?