An idea I had for an Alternate History. It's a typical Axis victory at WWII, though they don't manage to pull off conquering the world.
Hitler decides to put off conquering Russia until he's finished conquering western Europe. Japan's leaders decide to follow similar reasoning, and don't attack Pearl Harbor. Nazi Germany conquers western Europe, while Japan conquers most of Asia.
Eventually, the atomic bomb is developed by three superpowers (Germany, Russia, and America), leading to a three-way cold war instead of a two-way one.
How plausible does this sound?
Zero probability without numerous other POD.
The UK was never going to fall to the Reich. Flat not going to happen. Even at its most effective the U-boat campaign wasn't sufficiently successful to win, unless the U.S. not only stay out of the war, but goes to strict neutrality, something that would require a whole host of butterflies, starting with no FDR after 1936 and expanding out from there. Even the Isolationists had no desire to share the Atlantic with the Reich. This being the case, the Reich will eventually accidentally do something so foolish (like sink an American battleship, which damn near happened) that the U.S. will react.
Hitler's one chance was to play a REALLY long game, five years at least, maybe longer, until the British electorate has had it and brings in a different PM. Of course, by then the Soviets are fully modernized, they have completed the defensive fortification across Poland, and they simply crush the Reich like a bug.
In the Pacific it is, if anything, even worse for the Japanese. They were done for the minute they entered French Indochina and the U.S. pulled the trigger on sanctions. The civilian leadership had no choice but to annex the region since the Army AND Navy both wanted it to happen and either could bring down the government at will (not to mention the unfortunate habit of company and field grade officers sort of murdering politicians that didn't follow the script). The Japanese also believed (erroneously as it turned out) that French Indochina could provide food exports that would reduce the reliance on the U.S. (and to a lesser extent the UK and USSR) for imports. Japan, unlike the UK, could not even come
close to feeding itself, and it was doing its damnedest to piss off every grocer on Earth. Once the sanctions hit, especially on POL, Japan is on the clock. They have under one year fuel reserve for the IJA and less than two years for the IJN. They either get oil in a year (June 1942) to 18 months at the outside (assuming the Navy is forced somehow to hand over part of its reserves to the Army) or they are back to horses and oxen. No more industrial base at all. To alter this you need a POD going back into the 1890s, at the latest, maybe the 1870s.
You also need to overcome the reality that the U.S. and Japan rather hate each other, and have since modern Japan was established. The fault is more on the U.S. than the Japanese, but the fact remained that the two countries were at odds almost constantly and that their individual national security requirements overlapped to a degree that there was no way to deconflict them.
Take away everything else, all the issues involving China and the French colonial Empire, WW II, all of it, doesn't matter. Sooner or later the U.S. and Imperial Japan were going to have it out. That only changes if the "Empire" disappears or there is a Yellowstone eruption.