AHC: Dystopia in a CP victory world

samcster94

Banned
What can be done to make things as bad as possible with a German victory in WWI??? Obvious answers are a worse Armenian genocide, Russia ends up under a slavic-fascist analog, Austria falls to pieces Yugoslavia-style, some colonial genocide by somebody etc ???
 
Charles Evan Hughes becomes President in 1916, only for his party to catch the blame when the end of the war causes a recession like OTL. The Democrats nominate Wilson's Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and once he wins, he uses J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation to jail labor organizers, dissidents, and any political opponents. Also, butterfly DC Stephenson's rape scandal, and the KKK remains an important force in Indiana and the rest of the Midwest, a natural source of additional coercive power for President-for-Life Palmer.
 
Opposed to democratisation and increasing SPD popularity, Crown Prince Wilhelm and his friend Kurt von Schleicher stage a coup d'etat and create a reactionary dictatorship influenced by the ideas of the Pan-German League.
 

samcster94

Banned
Charles Evan Hughes becomes President in 1916, only for his party to catch the blame when the end of the war causes a recession like OTL. The Democrats nominate Wilson's Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and once he wins, he uses J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation to jail labor organizers, dissidents, and any political opponents. Also, butterfly DC Stephenson's rape scandal, and the KKK remains an important force in Indiana and the rest of the Midwest, a natural source of additional coercive power for President-for-Life Palmer.
Opposed to democratisation and increasing SPD popularity, Crown Prince Wilhelm and his friend Kurt von Schleicher stage a coup d'etat and create a reactionary dictatorship influenced by the ideas of the Pan-German League.
Both of these are good. I think Austria falling apart violently in the 20's or 30's also easily qualifies. People do not know how scary the 2nd KKK was(where Portland, Oregon was run by these hooded bigots).
 
It depends on what exactly 'dystopia' is meant to mean. Same as OTL, the way to achieve the worst possible world is still a global nuclear war, maybe with some nasty biological elements to spice it up. This, same as OTL, could be achieved even if in the lead up to it, say 1918-1980, was markedly better than OTL's 1918-1980.

If you mean the establishment of a variety of really nasty regimes either in Europe or across the whole world (which is almost certainly still better than a nuclear/biological war), then there are broadly two main ways to go about, one that OTL dodged and one that it did not.

The first is that the (remaining) colonial powers decide for one reason or another that instead of largely allowing the empires to disintegrate without extreme repression, they rather decide that they are definitely going to keep them. Avoiding a second world war is sufficient to prevent these states (included truncated France/Italy) from being too weak/poor to go Full Imperialist, so all that really needs to occur is that domestic politics evolves in such a way that they are willing to use the necessary brutality to hold their colonies probably indefinitely. Without the US/USSR being the only two Great Powers left who also happened to be anti-colonial, Europe could hold its empires essentially indefinitely if it is filled with regimes on the level of, say, fascist Italy.

The other way, which I suspect is the one the OP is getting at, is for Europe to be taken over by a regime/hegemon that is on par with the Nazis in terms of its brutality. Germany is highly unlikely to be a candidate for this, given that it won the war, France and Italy are too weak, Britain is also too weak and highly likely to be essentially intact post-war. The only candidate, which still is unlikely, is Russia.

If the scenario for a German victory is that Russia exits the war before the massive German advances into Ukraine/Belarus/Baltics and effectively only loses Poland and some minor territories, with the Western front ending up being a late German victory (let's say the PoD is either no unrestricted submarine warfare/something that leads to that), what Europe will look like is a heavily weakened France and Italy, a beaten but unconquered Britain, and a Russia that is defeated but essentially intact territorially. This leaves Germany with an incomplete hegemony that will appear strong initially but will be very much challengeable a generation later.

Russia as OTL is perfectly susceptible to becoming a nightmarish totalitarian regime. This could easily happen ITTL, be it a Soviet expy or some right wing Nazi expy. It does not matter which. Perhaps it is matched by some equivalents in France and Italy. The British are very unlikely to go down that route, but a victorious Germany will remain a major naval threat to Britain, especially as it would now control ports on the channel coast. It's not impossible that such a Britain would end up siding with Germany against some really horrible regimes in France, Italy, and Russia, but it is also very possible that it would decide that Germany were still the greater threat. All that needs to happen now is a WW1 rematch but this time with Russian industrialisation/totalitarian regimes. Russia and Co win, or even better, Germany wins in the west (including beating Britain) before Russia in turn wins in the east and establishes a really awful regime across the whole continent. So long as it's not Nazi level economically incompetent, this could be maintain for decades if not longer. Maybe the Russians decide to go full Nazi are start reducing the populations of certain ethnic groups; the nastiest can be as bad as the author can imagine. Essentially, the same as an OTL Nazi victory scenario.
 
- Russia restore monarchy and falls soon fascist nation with very antisemitic and anti-Muslim ideology and government practise very discriminating politics and later they will launch genocide against them.
- Ottomans continue Armenian and Assyrian genocide. Ottomans too are able win violently some Arab revolts. But on 1930's the country falls to ultra-violent civil war (Syria in steroids) and is dissolved.
- France falls as authotarian state but not fascist altough hostile towards Germany but still helpless do anything.
- Austria-Hungary faces civil war on 1920's and is dissolved.
- United Kingdom turns more authotarian but not fascist.
- On 1930's Japan is extreme nationalist country and launch invasion against China. Japan wins Second Sino-Japanese War and creates several puppet Chinese states after killing millions of Chinese.
- On 1940's Russia launch invasion against Germany and its puppets. Years lasting war kills ten of millions people. Russians too practice genocidal politics on occupied regions. But Germany is able finally win them with dropping few nuclear bombs around Russia.
- Indian independent movement becomes violent and there is war.
- On 1960's sees several violent decolonisation wars.
 
Basically just a game of Kaiserreich where the AI makes all the evil choices and Sternberg somehow conquers China :p
 
With a CP victory Germany would have an extensive empire in Africa and a huge navy.

So a 2 or 3 way superpower (USA, USSR, German MittelEuropa) plus some great power allies with their own empires could rage over much greater swathes of the world and be far more destructive than OTL's WW2. If it got nasty enough we could even see chemical warfare fought worldwide.
 
With a CP victory Germany would have an extensive empire in Africa and a huge navy.

So a 2 or 3 way superpower (USA, USSR, German MittelEuropa) plus some great power allies with their own empires could rage over much greater swathes of the world and be far more destructive than OTL's WW2. If it got nasty enough we could even see chemical warfare fought worldwide.

United Kingdom is more plausible third superpower as USSR/Russia. Germany wouldn't allow strong Russia.
 
United Kingdom is more plausible third superpower as USSR/Russia. Germany wouldn't allow strong Russia.

UK has zero capacity to be a superpower in a world with a strong US and Germany. It’s metropole is far too small and the only reasonably industrialised dominion, Canada, is right next to the US which is still 2 to 1 on Britain+dominions. Germany+AH has more potential than the US at least until American demographics really kick in the mid-late 20th century. UK just can’t compete.

Russia on the other hand depends on how badly it actually loses WW1: short of OTL Brest-Litovsk/alternative stripping of Ukraine it can definitely still compete, but if it does lose those large western territories and Germany works to keep it down then it probably will never be more than a fairly distant third.
 
UK has zero capacity to be a superpower in a world with a strong US and Germany. It’s metropole is far too small and the only reasonably industrialised dominion, Canada, is right next to the US which is still 2 to 1 on Britain+dominions. Germany+AH has more potential than the US at least until American demographics really kick in the mid-late 20th century. UK just can’t compete.

Russia on the other hand depends on how badly it actually loses WW1: short of OTL Brest-Litovsk/alternative stripping of Ukraine it can definitely still compete, but if it does lose those large western territories and Germany works to keep it down then it probably will never be more than a fairly distant third.

United Kingdom would have still its empire. Germany can't take anything from Brits.
 
United Kingdom would have still its empire. Germany can't take anything from Brits.

Britain would still be a player, but Britain was already eclipsed. The same trends that saw Britain end up deferring to the US would only be accelerated; a friendly culturally similar state that actually had the resources to put up a global struggle would be very welcome when Central Europe is home to 120 million moderately-to-very industrialised competitors. Germany can long term easily outbuild the RN without France to worry about, and even AH would likely exceed the UK in gdp by the late 20th century if it survives. Britain would be no pushover, but shorn of continental allies (while Germany still has one) it cannot go head to head with the Germans without at least one of Russian or American support.
 
Although as a follow up, central Europe’s capacity to compete with the Americans is also limited in the long term; in 1918 it would be 120 million vs 100 million in the US, with roughly comparable industrial capacity. Today? European demographics are such that it would probably be something like 200 to 300, again with roughly comparable gdp. With the UK+others in the American camp, Germany+AH is probably going to be incentivised to to not be a dick to all the other players due to American advantage.
 
United Kingdom would have still its empire. Germany can't take anything from Brits.

The natives can, though. British prestige will have taken a terrific knock, so Indian nationalism will probably develop even faster than OTL. If British insecurity leads to even more Amritsar-type events, that boosts it even more. Ditto for Afrikaner nationalism in SA, which may well acquire a pro-German government. Persia and Afghanistan may drift into the German orbit. Not to mention Ireland.
 
Not to mention Ireland.
Ireland would be a great submarine and air base for the Germans in preparation for a future conflict with the British Empire or even simply as a threat, and the Americans staying out of the war in a CP victory means that the British would very likely introduce conscription in Ireland, almost certainly sparking off the Irish War of Independence early in which the combination of British financial and military weakness, war-weariness (even OTL there was major unrest among British workers and the army around this time) and German support could give the IRA a major advantage.
 
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France becomes a Nazi* state, successfully invades and occupies Germany, and treats the Germans like the nazis treated the Slavs. Or even the Jews.
 
Enforced racial hierarchies in Colonial Africa, authoritarian, eugenicist regimes across Europe, and every empire getting the bomb.
 
Enforced racial hierarchies in Colonial Africa, authoritarian, eugenicist regimes across Europe, and every empire getting the bomb.

Woulden't the later create a MAD scenario that would REDUCE the likelihood of international war? A continued focus on building up stockpiles of chemical weapons (or maybe biological) that can be deployed against rebellious native populations without destroying resources/infrastructure would be better.
 
Woulden't the later create a MAD scenario that would REDUCE the likelihood of international war? A continued focus on building up stockpiles of chemical weapons (or maybe biological) that can be deployed against rebellious native populations without destroying resources/infrastructure would be better.

I'm given to understand that the environmental hazards of nuclear weapons weren't well-understood right away. It might take quite a few nuked colonies before people get the message, and even then, they might go for it anyways out of spite/to satisfy a totalitarian ideology.
 
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