Confederacy in the Axis Powers

Here's my scenario.

In an alternate timeline, somewhere in the 1860s the Union gives up on the war, and makes peace with the Confederacy, and it gains independence and the Arizona Territory. During the French-Mexican War, they would take northern Mexico and Baha California, but fail to help the Second Mexican Empire from collapsing. Later in the 1880s the Confederacy would abolish slavery, but keep a system of institutionalized racial segregation.

During WWI, the USA, under Theodore Roosevelt, joins the Triple Entente in 1915, for the Sinking of the Lusitania. The CSA, under Windrow Wilson, joins the Triple Entente, for the Zimmerman Telegram, which promised Mexico lost territories from the CSA and USA. The CSA was offered former German Colonies, but Wilson declines, which made a lot of people in the South mad, especially the secret society, the
Knights of the Golden Circle.

This is the only time that the CSA and USA fought together in a major war. This leads to a decade of cooperation, such as the Eighteenth Amendment, and during the Great Depression, both USA president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and CSA president, Huey Long, worked together to start the New Deal Program in both countries. However many upper people in the South, didn't like Long's cooperation towards the North, his near dictatorial use of the Veto system to get most of these programs to stay, and trying to get blacks to have equal rights, and in 1935, while visiting his home state of Louisiana, was assassinated by a unknown gunman. This leads to a new political party, called the Golden Party, a branch of the Knights of the Golden Circle, to have their candidate elected as president.

The main ideology of the Golden Party was to expand into many parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, possibly North America, and to reestablished Slavery as a legal practice, to create the Golden Circle.

In 1936, after the New Deal Program was finished, the South began to distance itself from the USA, and began to strengthen relations with Nazi Germany.

In 1940, the Quadruple Pact was signed, and the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo-Richmond Axis, or Axis Powers, was created.

Given this scenario, what would've happened next during the war? What would Hitler think of the Confederacy and their views?

What military training be like in the CSA? Would the South still have the advantage of good Military Commanders and Generals? Could the military invade many of the Latin American Countries?
What would be the breaking point of the CSA?

Here's map of the Confederacy
upload_2018-8-14_13-29-8.png
 
Oddly I have always assumed the CSA would align with Great Britain, who likely sided with them in the Civil War and is their biggest trade partner. Despite being against slavery, the British have a mercantile need to import Southern cotton and could gain a good place for lower cost labor intensive industry. And then I might assume it is the CSA that intervenes in Mexico, potentially sparking a proxy war as the USA funds Mexico. Heavy German and Irish immigration to the USA eases them to side with Germany against the old enemy Great Britain. The USA squeezed between Canada and the CSA is a vulnerable ally for Germany to hope to support. But then it might be Germany who holds all the former Spanish colonies and is positioned off Florida in Cuba and PR.
 
A lot will depend on how far the CSA has/not developed industrially. She lacks the resources for a protracted campaign without major help from overseas and unless her navy is solid then good luck. If nothing else I also see a large faction of this CSA deciding 'better DC than Berlin' and offering help to the US in exchange for freedoms. The main avenues of invasion will already be fairly well defined east of the Mississippi (there are only about seven east of Oklahoma) so it becomes a duel of artilley for the forst few rounds. Also I doubt the CSA has the infrastructure to to a lot of its own R&D so the war probably ends with the US taking Richmond about 12-16 months in and ending the war altogether around 16-20 months after the war starts.
 
The fundamental flaw here is the presumption history would proceed otherwise identically if the Confederacy won. Odds are Hitler wouldn’t have come to power in that world. The South winning would have bigger ripples that extend beyond their independence that would impact the entire world.
 
Woodrow Wilson only became a politician after becoming president of Princeton University, which is in New Jersey, not the confederacy.
 
He could become president diffently, maybe going to a different university or some other mean

Which is exactly everybody's point. Over the course of 90 years, without more specific information, the oppritunities fly off in so many different potential directions that predicting your war's result is essentially impossible. It could be a bloody slog between equals, a curbstomp by one side or the other, of literally anything in between depending on intervening events.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
What military training be like in the CSA? Would the South still have the advantage of good Military Commanders and Generals? Could the military invade many of the Latin American Countries?
What would be the breaking point of the CSA?

So many species of butterflies killed here. Let's start with what is answerable. The Military training of the CSA would be much like the training of the USA (i.e. Read the West Point Manuals) combined with some borrowing from which ever foreign power helps them win. And which ever power is their long-term ally that allows them to survive. You get a much different CSA in France helps versus UK helps versus France+UK helps. So for example, it is easy to imagine the CSA army staying with the Grey uniforms but the CSA navy moving to UK style uniforms on UK built ships. Small ships.

The South fails if has a single war with bad Military commanders, so the south survival answers that one for you. The CSA has a elite officer corp since it exists in 1940. And pretty damn good diplomats too.

The South will spend all of its large military budget on the Army and maybe some coastal defense ships. The CSA lacks the Navy to screw with South America UNLESS the UK is ally and this expansion also helps the UK. Handwavium, the UK decides the best way to keep Cuba out of the French hands is to let the CSA annex Cuba. Things like that.

The CSA breaks when the USA attacks it and the CSA's allies don't rapidly come to its defense. The CSA has to have a large army for its size, fine officers, good diplomats AND the CSA will be second fiddle to someone.
 
So many species of butterflies killed here. Let's start with what is answerable. The Military training of the CSA would be much like the training of the USA (i.e. Read the West Point Manuals) combined with some borrowing from which ever foreign power helps them win.

I always imagined, if the CSA was part of the Axis powers, Hitler sends German recruits to be trained in South, by a More Southern Sergant Gunnery Hartman figure.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I always imagined, if the CSA was part of the Axis powers, Hitler sends German recruits to be trained in South, by a More Southern Sergant Gunnery Hartman figure.

Handwavium. If the Nazi are allied to Nazi Germany, then the CSA will be a testing ground for Nazi Equipment. Also, don't be surprised if post WW1, the German arms industry largely relocates to the CSA.
 
Handwavium. If the Nazi are allied to Nazi Germany, then the CSA will be a testing ground for Nazi Equipment. Also, don't be surprised if post WW1, the German arms industry largely relocates to the CSA.

Semi-automatic Whitworth-style rifles using Mauser bolt-action and maybe even developing a true assault-type rifle in time for WWII...
 
Wanting to return to this scenerio. There is actually one thing that the Confederacy has that the Axis Powers would desperately need, and could be the reason why the CSA are allowed to join the Axis Powers...

...Oil
 
If you want to cut down all the butterflies you want then fine I counter with the British West Indies blocking the Carribean and therefore any oil exports to the Axis

Wanting to return to this scenerio. There is actually one thing that the Confederacy has that the Axis Powers would desperately need, and could be the reason why the CSA are allowed to join the Axis Powers...

...Oil
 
It's a cliche on here IMO to paint the 20th century CSA as a banana republic but let's be honest, it's going to be maybe a step or two above that. If it's as economically developed as Italy in the 1930s, then that's an incredible result. More likely is somewhat less than Italy.

Oddly I have always assumed the CSA would align with Great Britain, who likely sided with them in the Civil War and is their biggest trade partner. Despite being against slavery, the British have a mercantile need to import Southern cotton and could gain a good place for lower cost labor intensive industry. And then I might assume it is the CSA that intervenes in Mexico, potentially sparking a proxy war as the USA funds Mexico. Heavy German and Irish immigration to the USA eases them to side with Germany against the old enemy Great Britain. The USA squeezed between Canada and the CSA is a vulnerable ally for Germany to hope to support. But then it might be Germany who holds all the former Spanish colonies and is positioned off Florida in Cuba and PR.

Not vulnerable at all given the US in the Great War wouldn't be the same US with an army suitable for fighting no enemy tougher than Native Americans. Given that Canada's main cities are so close to the border and the CSA has so much vulnerable land (a lot of the TN-KY border is flat and has rivers leading right to Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Northern Alabama, and the OK-TX is even more flat), it wouldn't be too tough at all to secure North America. I'd go for Canada first since to secure the majority of the country you just need to take a few cities. The CSA would be a bit tougher though.

Although Britain will have the naval advantage, the US will almost certainly possess a substantial naval advantage where it will count the most--on the rivers and the Great Lakes. Control of the Lakes and rivers will spare a ton of lives and resources at much lower cost. I'd expect the Navy on the oceans to be a lot smaller, not only to help the Army but because resources and sailors are needed for the Great Lakes fleet and the riverboats.

Wanting to return to this scenerio. There is actually one thing that the Confederacy has that the Axis Powers would desperately need, and could be the reason why the CSA are allowed to join the Axis Powers...

...Oil

Good luck getting that to any friendly Axis port. US Navy would be prepared for that exact scenario. The oil fields in Texas are very vulnerable given the terrain.

If you want to cut down all the butterflies you want then fine I counter with the British West Indies blocking the Carribean and therefore any oil exports to the Axis

The Pacific wouldn't work either since the ports in Baja are very close to the border while Sonora has the problem that the Sea of Cortes has several chokepoints which shouldn't be too hard to patrol.
 
Wanting to return to this scenerio. There is actually one thing that the Confederacy has that the Axis Powers would desperately need, and could be the reason why the CSA are allowed to join the Axis Powers...

...Oil
The U.S. Navy in the Royal Navy might have something to say about the Axis getting Confederate oil.
 
If we go with the OP, the north will essentially have 80-90 % of its GDP OTL and the south will be, well, poor and defenseless. They'd be overrun in a year.
 
The South would actually be susceptible to communist subversion in this scenario. If the landed Southern gentry was still into the 20th century, then blacks and most whites would likely still be sharecroppers, landless agricultural laborers, or poorly paid industrial workers. These are the same kinds of socioeconomic conditions that attracted people to socialism, communism, and anarchism in places on the European periphery like Spain, Russia, and most of the new states in interwar Eastern Europe.

Maybe the DDR would be the Dixie Democratic Republic in this world, where the golden circle regime is overthrown by a popular resistance movement that forms a new socialist state. It could be organized Yugoslav lines where each state is the analogue of Yugoslav republic, or it's set up as a binational state where southern whites and blacks are an analogue of Czechs and Slovaks in communist Czechoslovakia.

King Cotton will be replaced by Commissar Cotton. I can already see the boastful propaganda about surpassing the five year plan's targets for Sweet Tea Production.
 
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