AHC: Cold War Between the Soviet Union... and Nazi Germany

[Ellis MacVey]

Okay so this is perhaps one of the most hellish AH TLs ever, but how could we have an alternate Cold War between the two major world powers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany? I think that the best case scenario for this TL is nuclear annihilation for the entirety of humanity, but we're still doing it.

 

[Kalga]

-Have US collapse into civil war in the 1930s
-have hitler dies before invading the USSR
-have the UK tap out at some point.
-have both Germany & USSR possessing nuclear weapons and used it on some other poor schmucks so that they'll realized the power of those weapons and have a brief pause (so as to build up nuclear stockpiles for MAD).

 

[Born in the USSA]

You could give Atlantropa greater cultural impact, perhaps not enough to overcome Lebensraum theories but enough to temper them, at least for a little while. Although the final phases of the Atlantropa project are obviously not feasible, a greater general focus on the Mediterranean and a colonial attitude toward Africa could buy the Soviet Union a bit of time to fortify the border and sow the seeds for future proxy wars.

 

[jerseyguy]

A banned user called MSZ had an TL along these lines called Kalter Krieg. Hitler is assassinated just after taking the Rhineland in '38, but the Nazi state survives more or less intact and Goering takes over as the new Fuhrer. Goering abandons Hitler's plans for lebensraum in Poland and farther east, but the threat of military force to get Danzig and Memel.

Germany uses its economic influence to form a kind of fascist NATO/EU organization that includes Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Iberia, and the Balkans except for Greece. The low countries remain neutral, while the Scandinavian social democracies band together with a customs union and military alliance system.

A kind of three-sided cold war evolves between liberal democracy (UK and France), fascism (Germany, Italy and friends), and Communism (USSR, China, comintern lil buddies bordering these two, and various assorted terrorist groups and anti colonial guerillas. Nuclear weapons emerge much later without WW2, but ballistic missiles tipped with chemical weapons like Sarin and VX nerve gas play an analogous role to nuclear warheads for much of the '50s and '60s.

 

[Michel Van]

To manage that, you need:

-Hitler get killed before 1939
-NO Operation Barbarossa - Wehrmacht occupy Europe only
-Co-coexistence of Third Reich and USSR (instead of German-Japan Axis)
-UK declare to be neutral in WW2 (realistic scenario if Churchill is NOT PM)
-Third Reich never Declare War to USA.

You can get a "stable" situation until Stalin died and his successor distrust the Third Reich more as Stalin...

 

[Michel Van]

You could give Atlantropa greater cultural impact, perhaps not enough to overcome Lebensraum theories but enough to temper them,

The Atlantropa was proposed German Megaproject from 1920s
Were the Mediterranean Sea is block by three gigantic dams
it would drain up the Mediterranean Sea
A Idea Mussolini would be absolut not happy about it !
also not Stalin because Black Sea level would rise, flooding USSR cities and military Harbors...

 

[Born in the USSA]

The Atlantropa was proposed German Megaproject from 1920s
Were the Mediterranean Sea is block by three gigantic dams
it would drain up the Mediterranean Sea
A Idea Mussolini would be absolut not happy about it !
also not Stalin because Black Sea level would rise, flooding USSR cities and military Harbors...

I know, I'm just saying greater interest in the plan early on could lead to a focus on the South rather than the East, even if the project proves impossible to actually implement.

 

[Michel Van]

I'm just saying greater interest in the plan early on could lead to a focus on the South rather than the East

There was a Nazi fraction inside NSDAP who focus on regaining the former German Africa colonies and Atlantropa !
but Hitler forbid any deviation from "Lebensraum in Osten"

 

[ObssesedNuker]

I think we could use that as part of it. Another key would be to keep the US heavily isolationist so it doesn’t support Britain. So let’s say Roosevelt dies of a unfortunate stroke around, oh, 1930. After the Fall of France, Hitler trips down some stairs or something and the Nazis sympathetic to manage to stuff like the Atlantatropa scheme take charge. Without Lend-Lease and with the additional German focus on the Med inflicting greater military reverses, Britain is forced to bow out of the war for a “Peace With Honour” in ‘42, returning all the German colonies plus some change along with some other concessions.

 

[Michel Van]

So let’s say Roosevelt dies of a unfortunate stroke around, oh, 1930. After the Fall of France, Hitler trips down some stairs or something

There was assassination attempt On February 15, 1933, by Giuseppe Zangara on Roosevelt POD for "The Man in the High Castle"

On Hitler there around 50 attempts to kill him
the best one was on November 8, 1939 in Munich by Johann Georg Elser
had he manage that Bomb Explosion on time, it would not only kill Hitler, but also Top of NSDAP who were on place
Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, August Frank, Hermann Esser and Christian Weber.

 

[Mr.J]

I'm not sure how you prevent the rise of a third power, either the US, some other rising power in the Americas, Japan, China, India or somebody else... there's enough non-Nazi and non-Soviet parts of the world that I don't see how they stay as the two sole great powers.

So given that and given that the post-Stalin USSR was an unpleasant dictatorship but definitely not worse than nuclear annihilation, I have to disagree that nuclear apocalypse is the best outcome.

 

[Ellis MacVey]

The amount of people who responded with "Incoherent tankie/neo-nazi gibbering" is concerning.

 

[Kalga]

The amount of people who responded with "Incoherent tankie/neo-nazi gibbering" is concerning.

Pretty sure most of those votes are joke votes, I mean why else would those options be there in the first place?

 

[xie323]

Okay so this is perhaps one of the most hellish AH TLs ever, but how could we have an alternate Cold War between the two major world powers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany? I think that the best case scenario for this TL is nuclear annihilation for the entirety of humanity, but we're still doing it.

You need to on the Nazi side get Hitler and Himmler and the more extreme ideologues out of the picture. Have a more realpolitik oriented figure or a simple opportunist take over(goering perhaps?). US remains isolationist. Assuming that war in Europe dosent happens Nazis try to spread their ideology as much as possible.

End result is a Nazi Soviet Cold War but with possibility for US to appear as a third power. This world wouldn’t necessarily deserve a nuclear apocalypse as it’s possible for the democracies to bounce back and assuming the more extreme ideologues are either purged or sidelined in NSDAP we might not get a final solution. There will still be racism and antisemetism but whether this becomes a holocaust is anyone’s guess