AHC: A Cold War between Nazi Germany and The Empire of Japan

[the Imperium of Canada]

Challenge here is to create a, at least, somewhat realistic scenario that leads to something akin to a Cold War between a victorious Nazi Germany and Japanese Empire.

The idea has cropped up in some notable works of alternate history, most notably The Man in the High Castle, though the scenario laid out in the book is flat-out impossible, most egregiously a United States divided between Japan and Germany.

 

[Saint_007]

The biggest challenge would be a realistic collapse or breakdown of all the major Allied Powers; USA, USSR, and Britain.

The USSR would be relatively simple; Stalin dies before or shortly after Barbarossa, leaving a squabbling Politburo at ends with one another while also juggling the defense of the Motherland. With the logistical system impaired by squabbling and the leadership unable to bring the lines together for a solid defense, the Germans manage to break the USSR easier. Japan moves in to clean up the East after that.

The USA, however, is far more tricky. The only way I can see it happening is either a Fascist takeover, a la It Can't Happen Here, thus making the USA more isolationist and focused in the Americas, leaving Japan freer reign in Asia and the Pacific. Alternatively the Great Depression goes critical, and the USA either undergoes a second Civil War or becomes bankrupt and unable to fight wars abroad.

With the failure of the USA and USSR, Britain is alone, unable to face both Germany and Japan, and eventually signs a peace treaty, slowly sliding into ineffectiveness.

After that, the German-Japanese Cold War continues... until the horrible inefficiencies and mounting bureaucratic messes in both regimes eventually cause the collapse of both empires.

 

[Mr_Fanboy]

It seems hard to create an exact parallel to the Cold War of our world, with Germany and Japan as the two preeminent global powers, but in a scenario where the United States goes hard isolationist during the late thirties and early forties, the United Kingdom drops out of the war early, and the Axis powers absolutely run the tables in their individual theaters for the next few years, I could see the wartime cooperation between Berlin and Tokyo breaking down into petty squabbling over the size of their spheres of influence in Eurasia.

 

[M79]

Have USSR collapse via a failed defense of Moscow or different weather. Maybe an earlier Eisensturm with earlier German refining of the Piaggio P.133 or mass production of the (formerly) French Bloch MB 162 bomber. USSR is split as proposed in OTL with much of the rest of Asia coming under Axis control. A peace is reached but Japan and/or Germany feels it got cheated, Japan controls Afghanistan, Pakistan, Xijiang, etc.