My own Axis victory TL, the "Long Night Falls", sees Nazifascist Europe gradually embracing a reformist course as the pragmatic technocratic wing of the regime keeps winning the power struggle with the hardliners, in successive crises in the late 40s (after the death of Hitler), in the 60s-70s (out of the pressures created by the 60s social changes and imperial overextension) and in the 90s-2000s (out of popular frustration for the regime's corruption and cronysm, and pressure for liberalization).
The final outcome is, by 2020, the evolution of Europe into a post-fascist semi-authoritarian federal superstate rather similar to (a much less crappy) Putinist Russia, even if in the meanwhile, the Nazi democide has run its course to its extreme consequences, the Slavs and Arabs have been wiped out as recognizable entities, and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East have been assimilated by "Aryan" Europe. The Japanese Empire experiences a similar evolution, and turned into a right-wing, statist version of the PRC. It also assimilated Manchuria, Mongolia, Korea, Taiwan, and the former Russian Far East. Both powers remain locked into a seemingly eternal Cold War competition with a USA that over time absorbed the British Dominions and North America, made an EU-like compact with South America, and a NATO-like one with Britain, South America, and India.
So you might think that this TL would be an example of a *successful* Gorbachev-like evolution (or more properly, a Deng-like evolution), which reforms the empire without causing its collapse.