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[A Note on this TL, it assumes the following events will take place regardless of butterfly effect: 1) The continued U.S. embargo on oil sales to Japan (even if, as is assumed in this TL, Roosevelt doesn't run for a third term in 1940), and 2) 7 December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor and hostilities opening between the U.S. and Japan (and to a lesser extent, between Japan and Britain and France). If these assumptions-or anything else-is unlikely, or downright impossible, given the POD below, feel free to let me know. Oh, and yes, this is a Deutschwank, detailing a scenario where Hitler makes the best possible strategic decisions (based on my understanding of the situation). Please don't pull the ASB card, people can have epiphanies without magic intervention...all it takes is a bit more or less sleep one night, or the right comment at the right time. On such events turn the wheel of fate.]

February, 1939:
Adolf Hitler has rejected plans, of which he initially approved, to invade the remaining portion of Czechoslovakia. He has decided that it is better to let the British and French believe their appeasement has satisfied his appetites, with the intention of styming any impetus by the two powers to move towards more aggressive rearmament. He has reevaluated his inital interpretation of the Munich Agreement. Clearly, the Western Powers will do much to avoid a war (the fools!), but just as clearly, their are limits. An occupation of Czechoslovakia, he has decided, would humiliate the Franco-British Entente' and only lead to war before he was ready. Let Poland and Czechoslovakia be granted a stay of execution. Germany will rearm, fervently, while the British and French sit on their hands in the ignorant belief that there is "peace in our time". And when war with the West comes-as Hitler has come to realize, it must-Germany will not settle for anything less than total victory.

October, 1940
Joachim Von Ribbentrop returns to Berlin, having shook hands with the Devil himself in Moscow. The Russo-German Non-Agression Pact is signed and sealed, and the Fatherland's Eastern border is secure. Although it does not know it, Poland is a dead duck, it's choice portions already carved out in advance between Russia and Germany. Germany still has many preparations to make-best, the Fuehrer has decided, to plan for a short war but prepare for a long one. It was risky, as the British and French may (and in some circles, will) feel threatened by the Pact. But Hitler's stature has risen in the intervening year, and has earned a great deal of trust and respect, especially among the Chamberlain government in London. The Fuehrer is confident he can portray the Non-Aggression Pact as "in the furtherance of European peace". Most will be satisifed, and Germany will be on step closer to a reckoning with the English and the French. And once that is done-the Russians will have their turn.

December 1941
6 months! 6 months Hitler delayed plans for the Polish operation, as Stalin grumbled and waited impatiently to "liberate" his half of Poland. Six months, to give Mussolini time to bring his pathetic army up to something that might be useful in the coming war. And now, the Japanese-bless them!-have attacked the Americans! There will be no repetition of 1917. The Americans will be focused on their affairs in the Pacific, and the war that is coming will not interest them. Hitler writes a note to himself. Ribbentrop can go and settle the idiot Communist pig's distemper. Poland's demise is soon in the coming.

February, 1942
Peace in Our Time, Indeed! Halifax cannot believe the horror that has fallen in his lap. 4 years, Hitler has done nothing! Oh, yes, he's built up his military, but nobody except that blustering idiot Churchill paid any attention. Why would they? Hitler held fast to the terms of the Naval Agreement, and made no aggressive moves toward anyone. Mussolini was the only one warring with any country in Europe, with his silly little campaign against the Mohammedians in the Balkans. And now-Poland invaded, crushed really, and Czechoslovakia occupied in the blink of an eye. War has to be declared, of course. The French and the BEF will deal with Hitler...hopefully. And if not...well...there are worse things than an accomodation with Hitler. Hell, perhaps-just perhaps-that story about Polish raiders attacking a German radio station might even be true....after all, Hitler kept his word at Munich....
[Note: This TL assumes Halifax in office at the time...whether or not this is possible, I am not sure. But Chamberlain can't very well be PM from a coffin, and Churchill would be a discredited "alarmist" in this timeline, and that exhausts my knowledge of potential cantidates for PM at the time:eek:]

June, 1942
It's over. Or it may as well be. The French are crushed, and the so-called "Dunkirk Miracle" is a joke, a bit of propaganda on the part of the British. 160,000 evacuated, only half of them British. And now...Hitler holds it in his hands, lovingly, the note, transferred through the good offices of neutral Sweden, from Halifax, suggesting the possibility of an armistice. Amazing. Accomodation with Britain had been something Hitler had hoped for-but he had come to the realization that he'd be unlikely to get it, and had to prepare for a real fight (and the possibility of Stalin trying a surprise attack while he launched his forces on Britain's shores!). Now it's been handed to him on a silver platter. Certainly, providence is with him...

April 1943
Josef Stalin feels the frisson of horror go up his spine. Zhukov had suggested attacking while the Germans still had a foe in the West, but Stalin had waited. He had hoped Hitler would, as he boasted, "Fly the Blutflagge from the Houses of Parliament" and kindly place his forces in the worst possible disposition. It had been a gamble, and a bad one. Perhaps it wouldn't even have mattered, the Germans might have rallied anyway. But as things stood...Moscow was under German control. The full force of the German Wehrmacht, plus allied forces-even the Italians, who would have imagined?-were headed towards the Baku Oilfields. Stalingrad is the last stand of the Soviet Workers and Peasants. Another gamble. Does he take it?

September 1943
Adolf Hitler feels the energy coursing through him as he parades through Red Square, thousands of German soldiers lined up to give him the Nazi salute. Stalingrad had been a tough nut to crack...but in the end, the poisoned Russian morale after losing Moscow, and then Leningrad, had been his greatest weapon. Stalin was dead. Eastern Europe belonged to the Reich. The rest of Russia had about as much independence as the Republic of Slovakia. Deutschland Uber Alles played in Moscow, the French were suborned and humiliated, Britain was a neutral, perhaps in time a friendly, power, and all of mainland Europe answered to Germany's will. And that was enough. For now. With the United States so occupied by it's bloody invasion of Japan...who knew what the future held?
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