How long time before Europe will settle down after an AXIS "Win/stalemate"

Now, we have been dancing around that one as WWI. Interesting reading.

Insofar as this ALTERNATE HISTORY, let's entertain this one:

1) US not getting involved in Europe. Hitler not declaring war on US after PH
2) Britain isolated after fall of France
3) Stalemate in the desert (that is reasonable to achieve after all. Kill Malta, etc)
4) Barbarossa is modified and is a) "No untermenchs", b) achieving a stalemate in 1942
5) Hitler goes on pension (or dies in a plane crash together with soem of the other fanatics)
6) Churchill is losing the elction as there is no end to the war and no real winning card to be pulled (please, leave the bomb alone for now, it would be many years away if Britain had to do it themselves)
7) Now what?

Will Europe end up in a cold war scenario?
EU with Britain longing to be a member (like when it happened and De Gaulle said "NO"

A war cannot go on forever, so some sort of settlement will have to happen.

I know Hitler is a bit of a show-stopper there, so let him go away in 1942?

Ivan
 
Hitler goes away and that's not a game-changer in any sense except that which favors the Allies. The Nazis deliberately rigged their system so one man, Adolf Hitler, had complete responsibility at a strategic sense. The generals never seriously questioned this, and showed no more strategic sense in WWII than they'd done in WWI. It is vanishingly unlikely for the Nazis to wind up at war with the USSR without a war with the UK (it could at an extreme remove be done), but it's impossible for the Nazis to defeat the USSR and UK alone, or even to stalemate them.

You need far greater changes than the removal of Hitler to give Germany a chance in any WWII equivalent, going all the way back to 1919, as the entire Nazi system was built on a rotten foundation.
 

CalBear

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While the removal of Hitler may be seen as a positive, I would have to disagree. His potential replacements were in no way improvements, and in many case would have been worse (Himmler would actually be worse and Goring was... Goring, drug habit & all). Speer would probably have been the best, but he lacked the Party connections to stay in power.

If you want any sort of Reich victory, you need Hitler, as bad as he was, to pull one off.

The defeat of the USSR is, as always, the most difficult to achieve, and it will not become easier in this scenario, the Soviets had both land and people to spend, those are two of the most important currencies in warfare.

As mentioned in a different thread, the Reich would find it a nightmare to NOT declare war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor. It would mean allowing virtually unlimited access to U.S. goods to the UK, a country that was America's ALLY against Japan.

Perhaps the biggest thing mentioned that, quite simply can not be changed, is Barbarossa and the attitude toward the Slavs. To make that change you have to make the Nazis not Nazis. If you make them not Nazis the entire European war doesn't happen.
 
Calbear,

Yes, that's the problem.

Make a Nazi victory without Hitler is a bit impossible, etc.

Breaking some of those things you mentioned, turns it into ASB, not alternate history. And that is a pity, really.

So, some of the more basdic historical facts cannot easily be changed to fit our needs. (damn).

Ivan
 
Calbear,

Yes, that's the problem.

Make a Nazi victory without Hitler is a bit impossible, etc.

Breaking some of those things you mentioned, turns it into ASB, not alternate history. And that is a pity, really.

So, some of the more basdic historical facts cannot easily be changed to fit our needs. (damn).

Ivan

So you can't have the Nazis win without Hitler, but Hitler is also too crazy to successfully lead the Nazis. If they were to have a coup, with Hitler serving as a figurehead, might that do the trick? It would need a pre-1939 (or maybe even pre-1933) POD, probably.
 
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