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I first had the idea for this timeline when reading Calbear's excellent Anglo-American Nazi War ATL and when reading about the murkiness of Nazi-Soviet diplomacy during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I figured that it would be an interesting challenge to invert the AA/N War timeline with the Soviets fighting the Nazis single-handedly after the Nazis and Imperial Japan defeat the democracies.

To do this I came up with an obvious POD surrounding the state visit of Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin in 1940. This visit historically was one of the key turning points on the Nazi decision to launch Operation Barbarossa, and ITTL the Nazis decide on a different means to the same end of a war between fascism and communism over Lebensraum: they decide to wage a naval war of attrition against the British in order to starve them out of the war and to invade the USSR when it's totally isolated and can receive no help in any nearby sense that might relieve it during the event of such a war.

For Stalin's part, his motivations in this alternate 1940 meeting are very simple ones: to buy the USSR sufficient time to both overhaul the Soviet Union's military capacity and ensure that competent officers and better equipment are there for the Soviet Union to use and to ensure that when war does come the USSR is fully ready for it.

The result is the (IATL) secret Berlin Corollary to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Nazis, seeking to take out the UK first in a naval war agree to a temporary decision to grant the USSR a free hand in the Baltic states and decide to write off Finland, but do so from Hitler's viewpoint that in doing so he's only extending the potential wealth of the Slavic Untermenschen-ruled domain he can loot and pillage from.

The Berlin Corollary allows for Soviet observers of Nazi military actions and enables the Nazis to begin important talks with Japanese Prime Minister Matsuoka as 1940 turns into 1941.

It might be noted that it's improbable the Nazis could in fact do all this but if they don't there's no real ATL to pursue so they're doing so from motivations less kind and gentle and more a different kind of illogic to the OTL Barbarossa invasion.

With this introductory post I begin this ATL.....
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