AHC: Create Orwells 1984 by 1984

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With any number of realistic PoDs after 1945, have Orwell's nightmare scenario of 3 totalitarian, mass survalience superstates locked in eternal military struggle be the geopolitical reality by 1984
 
I think this is impossible in a literal sense, but almost OTL in a metaphorical sense. Just have the USA go a little nastier and the Cold War intensify a little. The key is that the Soviets and Chinese should actually have an economy that rivals that of the USA, even separately - and for that, each of them will need more trading partners and allies, as they were terribly outmatched on the economic front IOTL.

Maybe something like no Sino-Soviet split, leading to a joint communist effort against the American sphere of influence, which then leads to some significant communist revolutions - a big wave in Southeast Asia, perhaps France being flipped in a '68 analogue, and definitely a stronger communist movement in the 60s or so in America itself. This leads to a panicky USA (and its spherelings) becoming ever more authoritarian, with the two main parties becoming the same all but in name. Eventually, of course, the Soviets and Chinese can turn against each other (we have always been at war with Eastasia), with the Chinese having rapidly developed under the Soviet aegis and developing a powerful military and economy of their own faster than OTL. Someone other than Mao in charge of China would be a nigh-necessity though, considering how disastrous he was as an administrator.

Eventually, as WMDs and countermeasures develop, limited-scale nuclear wars could start coming in, perhaps aimed at the peripheral states first, and eventually getting a lot more dreadful.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
I don't remember what it was called, but I'm certain someone did this using Oswald Mosley as Big Brother.
 
I think it requires the USA to mess up really badly. Get some kind of failed revolution in the 1920s or 1930s, a counter-revolution that sets up a personality-based dictatorship (MacArthur?), USA enforces more manifest destiny stuff in the New World, breaks with the British and French, and fights Japan more or less on schedule.

Japan conquers China and sets up a colonial/military regime there before itself getting nuked into the ground, emperor and all. What survives of Japanese militarism is a regime in China, Korea, and Manchuria, as the Home Islands are subject to brutal occupation. The Japanese occupier maintain influence, but are subsumed into a political cult of amalgated Chinese partisans.

In Europe, the USSR conquers Germany and inherits its annexed lands and machinery of genocide, which it uses to crack down on pesky nationalists while co-opting communist movements to Moscow's will. Alarmed by the development of nuclear weapons, it develops its own bombs and deterrent.

Seeing what the USSR did to Europe, Britain and USA make up and form "Oceania," marketing their common enmemy as "Eurasia." Both systems are plagued by unsustainable repression and brutal, incompetent leaders.

In the early 1950s, Eurasia launches a first strike with new ICBMs against Oceania, which responds with waves of nuclear bombers. Several hundred bombs are used in the short but destructive war, including dozens on Britain. Japan-based Oceanian military forecs are wiped out by Soviet attacks, leading to a successful uprising in that territory, which is absorbed into the (Japanese military-influenced) China and Korea to form what foreigners will end up calling "Eastasia."

Oceania undergoes a revolution from the ranks of its powerful military, which are influenced by an egalitarian ideology called English Socialism. They use their naval superiority to consoliate power over the former British Empire and the United States, and over a few years of civil war "liberate" Oceania and unite it under the Party.

The Eurasian system is oddly saved by the nuclear war, which caused the various nationalist uprisings to lose steam while the Soviet estblishment prepared for the war (which it started) by hardening its leadership and military industries.

In the postwar, while Eurasia is more powerful than Eastasia and Oceania more pwoerful than them both in terms of nominal resources and landmass, Oceania is forced to spend exorbitant efforts on pacifying its diverse population and maintaining internal stability. Eurasia is in a similar but not quite so extreme situation. Eastasia is the most stable, being based on a preexisting country (China), but also the weakest. It continually plays the "northern and southern barbarians" off each other, entering into frequent alliance with either side yet breaking them at its convenience, thus filling a critical role in maintaining the three-superstate system. Even when it is ganged up upon by both Eurasia and Oceania, that alliance also never comes to fruition.

This system comes into being by 1965, and is going strong as of 1984.
 
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