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On 10th May 1941, Rudolph Hess, deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany, arrives in Scotland. Low on fuel, his Messerschmitt 110 touches down at the airstrip of Dungavel House the estate of the Duke of Hamilton. There to meet the Deputy Führer, is the Duke of Kent, King George V’s younger brother and several senior representatives of the ‘Peace Party’ of Great Britain. They hustle Hess away from his plane and into a waiting car.
Negotiations between the Duke and Hess rapidly produce a formula for peace: Britain will leave Europe to Germany, and Germany will leave Britain to its Empire. The King is informed and approves. He makes a wireless broadcast, announcing the peace terms, his view that the government should accept them and that he will abdicate as King if the terms are not accepted. To encourage the move, Hitler announces a cease-fire.
Churchill tries to call a general election, on the single issue of the peace plan. The King refuses to dissolve parliament, dismisses Churchill and appoints Lloyd-George as Prime Minister. Churchill, with the backing of the Labour party and some Conservatives tables a motion of no confidence in the Lloyd-George government but is defeated. Knowing his popularity in the country, Churchill resigns from parliament and tries to whip up popular discontent. He is arrested under section 18B of the Emergency legislation that his government had itself introduced to intern Walter Moseley and other German sympathisers.
The new British Government quickly makes peace with Hitler. Hess returns to Germany a hero. The governments-in-exile of countries attacked by Hitler, no longer welcome in Great Britain, move to the USA. In June 1941, with the Western front secure, Hitler attacks the USSR. As the Wehrmacht approaches Moscow, Stalin gambles by deploying Siberian divisions to its defence, halting the attack. Seeing that Stalin has denuded the Siberian front, the Japanese attack the USSR.
With the war over, at least temporarily, the British cancel their purchases of war material from the USA, drawing back from the bankruptcy they were heading for. The economy quickly recovers from the short war.
President Roosevelt extends Lend-Lease to Russia, but his attempts to drag the US into the war are defeated when neither the German’s nor Japanese respond to diplomatic and naval provocation. When Congress receives evidence of Roosevelt’s illegal activities he is impeached and resigns. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party gains power, cancels Lend-Lease and reverses the US military build up. Without the stimulus of armament production, partially for Lend-Lease, the US economy returns to slump.
Early in 1942, gaining intelligence about the mass murder of Jews on the Eastern Front and the possibility of a more extensive ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Problem’, the British forestall it by offering Palestine as the new home of the Jews. When the Vatican intervenes to publicise the attacks on Jews and fearful of the effect on morale, the Nazis agree to deport all European Jews under their control to Palestine. Without the power to challenge the British, the Arab nations are forced to accept the Jews, who rename the country Israel.
Attacked on two fronts, and with no allies, the Red Army still puts up stiff resistance. The Wehrmacht strikes south, seizing the Caucasus oil fields, but still the Red Army doesn’t break. Stalin gambles again, providing only token resistance to the Japanese, whilst throwing all his reserves into battle against the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht takes huge losses trying to capture Stalingrad and the battle ends in stalemate after a Russian counter attack succeeds in surrounding the attackers and they have to fight their way out. The Imperial Japanese Army advances rapidly and captures Siberia and Mongolia. Having achieved their objectives, they declare a cease-fire, which is not recognised by the USSR, who however have insufficient troops in the theatre to mount a counter attack.
The British, fearing a renewed Nazi onslaught if the Soviet Union is defeated, work feverishly on their atomic bomb project, codenamed Tube Alloys, making good use of Jewish nuclear physicists expelled from Germany. Concentration of research priority on the strategic rocket programme and a reluctance to countenance ‘Jewish Physics’ slows German progress on an atomic bomb.
Late in 1943, after a summer of inconclusive fighting between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, Beria, chief of Soviet intelligence, seizes power from Stalin. Beria proposes a peace deal with the Germans, which includes ceding to Germany the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus, and recognising the German annexation of Poland. Deputy Führer Hess meets Beria to negotiate, knowing that the Wehrmacht is unlikely to be able to seize any more territory from the rapidly strengthening Red Army and anxious to consolidate the new lebensraum, he agrees to peace if the Soviet Union also cedes control of the vital oil fields in the Caucasus area. Reluctantly Beria agrees. Stalin is subjected to a show trial for crimes against humanity and shot. Beria transfers the best Red Army divisions to the Mongolian Front to attempt to recover the territory lost to the Japanese.
Having, as he sees it, beaten back the Communist menace, although having failed to stamp it out completely, Hitler moves back to his second obsession, the Jews. Seeing the success that the Jews are making of Israel, he determines on its destruction and a war with America, still a nation with a large Jewish community. The British stand in the way of both aims, as Israel is part of the British Empire and the Wehrmacht will be unable to cross the Atlantic to attack America unless the Royal Navy is neutralised.
In 1944, the Wehrmacht masses in the Caucasus, for the invasion of the Middle East. Well aware of German preparations through their code breakers, the British invite German and Japanese representatives to a ‘demonstration’ on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. When the representatives arrive, the British allow them to inspect a new airborne weapon, carried by a modified version of the famous Avro Lancaster bomber. The representatives board the aircraft and it proceeds to the target. The weapon is released and the German and Japanese representatives feel the awesome power of the world’s first atomic weapon.
Flashing the film of the explosion and technical data of the bombs capacities around the world, the British announce a doctrine of ‘European containment’ of Germany. Any advance by German forces towards the Middle East, across the Atlantic, or even back into Russia, will meet with atomic retaliation. The Führer is furious but the Wehrmacht generals will not risk their troops in the face of a weapon of such awesome power.
The British Bomb stymies Hitler’s dreams of further conquest; Hitler orders a crash program for an atomic weapon. Attempts by German intelligence, the Abwehr, to discover British nuclear secrets and British attempts to prevent German acquisition of Uranium and Heavy Water through sabotage and partisan action blamed on the Soviet Union, start a ‘Cold War’ between the British and the Germans.
Beria’s professes gratitude for British nuclear guarantees and in return agrees to end of the Soviet Union’s commitment to World Communist revolution and winds up the Comintern. But his spies also seek Britain’s nuclear secrets and with greater success than the Abwehr. Klaus Fuchs provides the Russians with much of the necessary data to build a bomb, enabling them to steal a march on the Germans.
Soviet offensives in Mongolia and Siberia make little headway and eventually Beria signs a peace agreement with the Japanese ceding the territories to Japan in return for a non-aggression pact. The Red Army is transferred west again.
The Japanese, economically the weakest of the Great Powers and without much of the necessary scientific and technological base required for building an atomic bomb, are forced to start their nuclear research from scratch.
The USA, cut out of the world’s markets by the British/German/Japanese empires, and without a strong currency, remains a second-class power, happy in its isolation and suspicious of involvement in world affairs. The US government eschews nuclear weapons research, relying on its geographical and political isolation to prevent attacks. The continuing economic slump exacerbates racial tensions, preventing any liberalisation in the American South.
The Nazis produce an atomic bomb by 1947, shortly after the Russians, but by then the British have perfected the Hydrogen Bomb, making war unthinkable.
Hitler’s megalomania, frustrated on Earth, turns to the heavens. The German rocket programme, under former armaments minister Albert Speer, regains its top economic priority once the Nazi atomic and hydrogen bombs are complete. Hitler sets the rocket programme’s long-term aim as the colonisation of Mars. The British, needing rockets for their strategic nuclear deterrent and to maintain British prestige, develop their own programme, but it is far behind the German’s. With the British Empire covering a third of the globe, the British concentrate their efforts on aircraft, which they need to tie the Empire together.
The Japanese focus on their economy, building their co-prosperity sphere to include China, Mongolia, Siberia. They annex the French Far East colonies, something that France is unable to prevent, still being occupied by Germany. The British seize the Dutch Far East Territories, with their valuable oil deposits, under the guise of protecting them from the Japanese.
By 1949, the German’s have a man in space. Their two-stage rocket, a successor of the A4 of the war years known as the A10, is a wonder of the world. The British take a different and initially slower approach, building aircraft that can fly up through the atmosphere and into space – their aim is a space-plane that can fly to Australia in a few hours.
The Japanese produce their first atomic bomb in 1950. Threatened by the nuclear-armed Japanese, the US is forced to ally itself with the British and moves under their ‘Nuclear Umbrella’. In return, the British conclude a free trade deal with the US, moving it within the Empire System. This boosts the economies of both the British Empire and the US, moving the British Empire towards economic supremacy and finally ending the decades long American economic slump.
London is the centre of the world’s financial system. The Royal Navy remains the largest in the world, challenged only by the Japanese in the Pacific where the US Fleet tips the balance firmly towards the British. The Empire retains the Dominions, including India, within the Empire trade system through a combination of liberalisation, non-racism, Home Rule and economic bribery. With the continued enforcement of peace and the rule of law, better education and booming trade, living standards throughout the Empire improve quickly, although from a low base in some cases, meaning that there is still a great deal of poverty in the African dominions. Jobs in the Civil Service, the Royal Navy and Air Force provide an escape route for many.
The London capital markets, under direction of the Bank of England, invest heavily in the Empire, particularly in India, which takes off economically. The Israelis use their financial and commercial acumen to turn Israel into a major trading nation and the economic powerhouse of the British Near East.
In 1950, the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty recognises the Big Three and Russia as the only possessors of Nuclear weapons. Other nations agree not to attempt their creation.
1956 sees the first man on the moon, a German naturally, carried there on the stupendous three-stage A15 rocket. Soon, with the Führer’s aim colonisation not prestige, the Reich spaceport at Peenemünde is the gateway to space; the vast production lines humming as the rockets launch on a weekly basis. The men in charge of the space programme, Albert Speer and his chief scientist Werner Von Braun, are the most famous figures in the Reich after the Fuhrer himself. Meanwhile, the British Avro Vanquish is the world’s biggest, fastest aircraft and has the longest range. The civilian version, the Avro Valentine is introduced on the London - Sydney route, breaking all speed and distance records on its maiden flight. Soon fleets of British space-planes are keeping even the most distant Dominions of the Empire supplied.
Under pressure from the Dominions for more democracy, the British expand Parliament. With British aircraft able to reach any Dominion in three hours or less, MP’s can sit in their own country’s parliament for questions of Home Rule and still reach their seats in Westminster from their constituencies across the globe without difficulty. The franchise is restricted by property and education but not race or sex. This, along with widespread gerrymandering and propaganda avoids explosive social change.
The Empire Parliament takes responsibility for Trade, Imperial Defence and Foreign Affairs. The combination of Home Rule, the economic boom and a say in decisions through the Empire Parliament reduces pressure in the Dominions for Independence. The British Empire, rechristened The Commonwealth to reflect its wider base, regains popular support.
The immense German space project reaches its goal of Martian colonisation in 1964. The dying Adolf Hitler makes his last public appearance to congratulate the captain of the first A18 to reach Mars. The British space-plane programme, after a slow start, is now advancing rapidly. The latest, the Avro Valkyrie, carries British Astronauts to the Moon and back days after the Germans reach Mars.
Hitler dies in early 1965, after naming his successor as Albert Speer. Shortly after becoming Führer, Speer denounces the crimes of the Hitler era, although blaming them on the SS. By now the SS is lead by Reinhard Heydrich, who assassinated Himmler and took his position. Heydrich attempts a coup but the Wehrmacht backs Speer and it fails. Speer moves to dismantle the SS terror machine. Although by no means democratic, and retaining many illiberal measures such as censorship, Speer’s Germany moves back to a system of rule by law. In the late sixties, Speer creates a ‘European Community’, which is a liberating measure compared to the forcible economic subservience of the Hitler era. By the late sixties, Speer is trying to end the Cold War with Britain through a policy of détente.
By 1970, the world has three evenly matched superpowers: the Japanese Co-prosperity Sphere, the British Commonwealth and Greater Germany. Germany dominates Europe and Mars, the Japanese the Far East and the British Commonwealth the rest of the world.
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