AHC: Non ASB Axis victory?

[patch_g]

Just thinking: Don't have Britain/France fight the Nazis at all and have a straight match-up of Germany vs. USSR. How? Ribbentrop seems to be blamed for messing up the German-British relationship. Get rid of him (how's up to you, simple accident or just send someone else as the ambassador) and the British might - just - tolerate the invasion of Poland (unlikely, I know). That puts the USSR and the Nazis side-by-side. Have a few more Soviet spies exposed in1940/41 in the US & UK, less enthusiasm for the USSR as a whole when Barbarossa starts roughly on schedule so reduced/delayed/no material support from the west. Then the kicker; Stalin, the 60+ heavy smoker/drinker under stress from leading the fight for the USSR, has a stroke/heart attack at just the time they need unity. The resulting infighting gives the Nazis enough of a chance to ....... "win"?, for a given value of win.
No idea how to have the Japanese win though.

 

[Julian]

Just thinking: Don't have Britain/France fight the Nazis at all and have a straight match-up of Germany vs. USSR. How? Ribbentrop seems to be blamed for messing up the German-British relationship. Get rid of him (how's up to you, simple accident or just send someone else as the ambassador) and the British might - just - tolerate the invasion of Poland (unlikely, I know). That puts the USSR and the Nazis side-by-side. Have a few more Soviet spies exposed in1940/41 in the US & UK, less enthusiasm for the USSR as a whole when Barbarossa starts roughly on schedule so reduced/delayed/no material support from the west. Then the kicker; Stalin, the 60+ heavy smoker/drinker under stress from leading the fight for the USSR, has a stroke/heart attack at just the time they need unity. The resulting infighting gives the Nazis enough of a chance to ....... "win"?, for a given value of win.
No idea how to have the Japanese win though.

The problem is that German militarism/power was always regarded as the primary threat to Anglo-French interests on the continent and beyond. The Soviet Union and communism were disliked, but relations progressively normalized into the 30s and it wasn't regarded as as dangerous a threat. Particularly not when Germany began rapidly rearming and expanding, violating treaties designed to limit its power. It's ironic that the Soviet Union feared being attack by a capitalist alliance far more than the capitalist great powers feared Soviet expansion; most of its military planning was based on fighting defensively against a massive invasion.

 

[Know Nothing]

My thinking is that Germany's best chance would be in June 1940. If it can pressure Mussolini into staying out instead of giving Britain new fronts on which to fight, then Germany can conceivably leave Britain alone and let the war sputter out.

This only gives a Phony Peace, though, IMO. As soon as it attacks the USSR, Germany would have to again attack Britain because Britain would just become the Russian arms supplier.

 

[King Augeas]

It's ironic that the Soviet Union feared being attack by a capitalist alliance far more than the capitalist great powers feared Soviet expansion; most of its military planning was based on fighting defensively against a massive invasion.

Is it fair to say that Communist ideology led the Soviet Union to think in terms of a grand capitalist alliance that in reality could never exist?

 

[Julian]

Is it fair to say that Communist ideology led the Soviet Union to think in terms of a grand capitalist alliance that in reality could never exist?

Well the basis partially lies in the Entente interventions following the Revolution, which were seen as a grand capitalist attempt to suppress them. Mutual hostility in the 1920s further encouraged this. There was also a fear of renewed German hostility working with Poland/the Baltic states which had it's roots in the Soviet Polish War, WW1, and pre-Soviet foreign policy.

 

[lounge60]

Is there any non-ASB way to have a US president who would sympathise with Hitler enough that Japan wouldn't view America as a threat?

Lindberg in 1940?

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Lindberg in 1940?

He would have had to have a vastly different life to get involved in politics in time to challenge FDR politically. 1940 is far too late to get involved in politics, as the Democrats won't primary him for Lindbergh, nor is anyone in the GOP electable against FDR by 1940. Lindbergh also probably wouldn't be as pro-German (which IMHO is exaggerated, he was more isolationist than pro-German) without his non-political activities in the 1936-38 period that brought him into contact with the Nazi hierarchy and made left him in the political wilderness (largely his self-exile in the mid-late 1930s after the kidnapping of his meant he was outside the US political scene and without basis for a run in 1940). Not an option. There is going to be a Democrat in the White House after Hoover, even if not FDR. Once a New Deal gets going then there is no way that someone like Lindbergh could ever hope to challenge that sitting president.

 

[WillieB]

Have the reparation payments to France, Britain , Belgium and Italy stop in 1928 or 1929 instead of 1932 under international pressure.
The economic climate would have been entirely different then.
Less than 3 years ago Germany was still paying back loans for this.

Huge probability that there simply wouldn't have been a war and Germany would almost certainly have become the European 'wunderkind'