When US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in April 1945, he left the world in a very different state. His Vice President Harry Truman, on the job for just over eighty days, suddenly was elevated to the Presidency and had a war to win in Asia. He did so using the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and immediately changed the world.
Despite the will to use nukes on Germany though, British opposition to the plan on account of German threats meant that ultimately the Germans were never attacked. Instead, the US opted for a show of force by detonating a nuclear bomb on the small island of Heligoland, long seen as a threat to North Sea security by the British but too small of a target for the Germans to reasonably launch a counter-strike. The bomb devastated the Island and its small town, but ironically didn't actually destroy the island itself, which you can still visit to this day.
In approaching the new European security challenge, the US adopted a policy of 'containment'. Labelled in a policy memo by former Berlin Charge D'Affairs Leland B. Morris as an "expansionist threat to global security and stability", Nazi Germany would be subjected to a policy of 'indirect warfare' and subjected to an endless global blockade and, where appropriate, direct action. This policy became what is now known as the 'Truman Doctrine', and saw Germany become increasingly isolated in the aftermath of the war. Overtures were made to the Franco regime of Spain, along with the Mannerheim and even Mussolini regimes in Finland and Italy respectively, while the neutrality of Turkey as a non-combatant power only ever legally engaged in a police action against the Soviet Union was recognized by the UK and US.
This containment policy sought to establish a 'cordon sanitaire' against Germany, forcing it to isolate itself geopolitically after losing its only major ally in Japan. For the Germans though, ironically this did not seem too disturbing or dangerous. Despite the furious fears of Ribbentrop that Germany would become economically isolated from the world and regime change would follow, an ironically sober analysis for the man, such concerns would be largely dismissed with Ribbentrop's own fall from grace in 1945 by a Foreign Office 'coup' by the SS against the much disliked Ribbentrop.
For Hitler and the German Government, while their global ambitions seemed to be dashed they had no clear direct threat to their regime anymore from outside powers, and thus settled in to a dogmatic war of words with the allies rather than a war itself. Faced with an enormous 'eastern problem' in the form of literally millions of Soviet citizens now under Nazi rule, the Nazis imposed Generalplan Ost - a disgracefully callous and inhuman policy of mass slavery, starvation and genocidal slaughter that by 1952 saw the obliteration of previous eastern European societies.
Official United States and British Government estimates for the implementation of the plan assume that Poland now features only four to five million of the previously thirty-five million person population after mass expulsions and genocidal killings, while up to 30 million Russians are presumed likely to have died either fleeing the Nazi advance, or due to the implementation of a 'hunger plan' in Western Russia.
Unfortunately for Germany, and fortunately for humanity, this did not go without significant difficulty. The resistance of the Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic peoples to Nazi occupation proved fierce and damaging. In western Russia partisan attacks would continue well up until 1947, resulting in thousands of deaths of German soldiers, even if at the cost of millions of White Russians. Ultimately Belarus would be pacified through sheer brutality of the SS and Wehrmacht special units, but at great expense to Germany. Meanwhile, in Ukraine a policy of genocide and resettlement came up against constant resistance over the vast flat terrain.
Ukrainian and Soviet partisans worked together, putting aside historical differences, and caused immense damage to German forces and settlement attempts - resulting in the disastrous 'Försterstadt' massacre in 1946 when Ukrainian partisans slaughtered an entire town of thousands of settlers. This proved such a hindrance to the Reich, combined with the failure of Ukraine to become a breadbasket for Germany, that ultimately German settlement attempts were restricted almost entirely to the Crimea area - connected only by a few small railway lines and stopping off fortress towns. However, by 1952 western Ukraine is largely pacified and has become more broadly settled by a few million willing or unwilling German peasants.
Meanwhile, the army was out fighting in the far off Urals region aiming to establish the 'A-A' line until 1946. This ultimately proved impractical, no matter Hitler's assistance, and after a series of failures in offensives aimed at capturing territory up to the Urals German high command in 1946 would approve a withdrawal and fortification of the Volga river on the western bank to create a natural defensive barrier - much to Hitler's frustration. Some SS units still occasionally launch 'raids' out to the east and the Luftwaffe has made use of its largely ineffective strategic bomber command to continue a policy of 'aerial pacification' through terror bombings of Soviet infrastructure. However, for the most part the war in the east has now become an endless and slow slog as Russian units in the north engage in a war of extermination against their occupiers or against German supply lines, outposts and fortifications while German forces cling on.
In the Caucuses meanwhile a policy of 'local rule' aimed at placating local Muslim and minority groups such as the Chechens championed by Reichskommissar Arno Schickedanz ultimately proved a dismal failure when, with the door to self rule opened,the inevitable clashes between local people and their rather brutal occupiers meant that collaborating cliques lost legitimacy. While some 'self rule' groups still exist, with a Chechen Government, along with Georgian, Dagestani and other minor administrations around the Caucuses under German overall rule, terrorism is rife along the vital lifeline Baku-Rostov rail line and against German garrisons - particularly in the mountainous south. An ongoing Chechen Islamically inspired revolt against the atheistic and Christian fascists also continues unabated, despite several massive attempts to remove the insurgents in the south east of Chechnya. Futher revolts across Georgia also include Georgian nationalist partisans, along with post-Soviet communist partisans, along with a host of other, smaller groups across the Caucuses.
In Azerbaijan too the war continues in earnest. While German forces were able to eventually reach Baku in 1944, the city and oil fields having been bombed extensively by the RAF, they did so with great difficulty and found themselves faced by not just Soviet forces - but British-Indian forces too. While German forces did manage to secure the city and northern oil fields after months of fighting and casualties, German forces proved incapable of crossing the Kura river line established by the Allies, while Turkish non-belligerence with the British ensured that the potential for a flanking attack against British forces by Dietel's 1st Mountain Army proved impossible. While the system is stable now and extensive fighting has not been seen for years, Azerbaijan remains under German military direct rule and the rule of the 'ESSO' oil extraction company in the province has proven often brutal - even despite attempts to employ local rulers to satisfy Turkey.
In Germany itself however the situation after 1945 quickly began to decline. Elated by the victory in the war and the conquest of the east, the German people found themselves almost 'half victors', having been unable to defeat the British. Unsure of what they actually achieved by conquering the USSR, many ordinary Germans feel the endless war in the east is an endless and fruitless endeavour - even if few know the full details and complexities of the conflict. Rebuilding after the war has also proven a slow affair. Despite the efforts of the German Government to drum up a popular worker's army to rebuild the country - particularly Germany's decimated industrial cities - the lack of wage growth for a decade proved a massive inhibitor for the state. By 1946 this proved too much and the impoverished German working class, combined with SS crackdowns on young student parties, inflation and a weakening Reichsmark began to revolt.
The 1946 'wage protests' were a massive mark of protest against the Nazi regime, making visible for the first time mass frustration against the regime. While ultimately the protests would be put down in a series of paramilitary attacks, SS crackdowns and Gestapo arrests, the damage to the psyche of the Nazi leadership was immense and Hitler reshuffled his cabinet shortly afterwards. Removing most of the economic team that had led the country, the country pivoted away from the mass-warfare based economic system towards an economic expansion Keynesian program aimed at huge public works, providing resources at relatively cheap cost through mass slavery in the east to supply the secondary economy of builders, clerks and artisans. While this somewhat repaired the German economy, with companies like Porsche moving away from making tanks and instead making millions of tractors and cars, the economy has never really flourished and merely 'survived'.
Slavery in Germany has now become commonplace, though is seen less often in Germany proper now than it was during and in the immediate aftermath of the war. Big industrial giants excessively use slaves to complete backbreaking tasks, building enormous key infrastructure such as the slowly progressing Breitspurbahn railway system that connects the eastern resource extraction zone with the German economic heartlands, while millions of Russian slaves toil over fields and in mines on a daily basis in the east. Slavery also persists in most upper middle-class German households, with young women often being used as servants and cooks, leading to a divide in German society over the inevitable suspicious rise in German-Slavic birth rates as young German men fall for their maid - further compounding the growing divide in Germany between the young and old.
The economy and society's war exhaustion has slowly improved though after the end of bombing raids by allied aircraft in 1949. Having developed a successful V-2 program, by 1949 Germany finally completed a test detonation of the first 'Wunderwaffe' nuclear weapon. Nicknamed A-1 by the Americans, the bomb was tested in the Russian heartland by a group of more dedicated, or better compelled, Nazi scientists and by 1952 Germany retains a small but nonetheless impactful nuclear arsenal of around ten nuclear weapons - which the Germans demonstrated with the use of a V-5 missile armed with a nuclear device against the city of Perm in 1950 as a show of force that ended Russian attempts to cross the Volga again. This was the last known detonation of a nuclear device.
Before the bomb could be completed though, the Wage Protests triggered a major crisis in German security; the Norwegian crisis. Occupied throughout the war and under the rule of a German Reichskommissar and local nazi Quisling, the protests in Germany quickly spread across their empire. While protests in Paris were quickly stamped out in violent crackdowns, resulting in the fall of the only two-year-old 'conciliatory' government of Pierre Laval restored to the capital and his replacement by hardline military chief Joseph Darnand, protests in Norway proved decisive. Hampered by endless insurgent attacks by 1946, most of Norway had largely been liberated by the Royal Norwegian Army of Resistance, with only a few key cities and the territory around Oslo actively held by German forces. The sudden mass protests in Germany triggered mass protests in Oslo too, prompting the isolation of the overwhelmed German garrison who became trapped in the city. Given their chance for freedom, Norwegian forces successful isolated and destroyed German forces in some cities and requested allied (now United Nations) assistance.
The US and British quickly obliged, and a force of several divisions soon landed in Bergen from Iceland to liberate the country. In a brief conflict, UN forces easily kicked out German forces from Norway - marking the first time a country had been liberated since the beginning of the war. Furious at the crisis, Hitler ordered the remains of the Kriegsmarine into battle, resulting in the brief Battle of the Skaggerak in 1946 that saw most of the German surface fleet destroyed, and nuclear weapons were soon deployed to Norway by the United States to assure it's security.
In Germany this triggered a temporary collapse of confidence in the Wehrmacht by Hitler, and prompted an attempt by the SS to seize control of the military and merge the Heer into the Waffen-SS. Infuriated, but not willing to risk a coup as some Wehrmacht officers had attempted and failed in 1944 in the '20th July Plot', the Heer stood their ground and the over-eager SS, attempting to isolate Heer units in key regions such as the SS-Ordensstaat Burgund and Reichskommissariat Kaukasien, triggered gun battles and in some cases actual pitched engagements between the Heer and Waffen-SS. Furious at the SS bringing the country near to a state of civil war and keen to undo the rising power of the SS in his Government, Hitler ultimately turned on the SS and fired Himmler as Interior Minister, but allowed him to retain SS command. This somewhat fractured the SS who long saw themselves as Hitler's champions, not opponents, and threw the organization into a period of reconsolidation - but assured the independence of the Wehrmacht for now.
Elsewhere in the world meanwhile, in Italy the loss of Sicily proved a damning failure for Mussolini whose reputation was deeply damaged by the event. However, a major cabinet reshuffle ultimately gave Mussolini enough political sway to survive and he continues as the nation's dictator to this day with the backing of King Umberto II. Despite this, the divided country is not excessively fond of the now aged dictator and fascist party members look keenly for an alternative to lead the nation. Meanwhile, in Asia history largely went off undisrupted. There will be no Vietnam war in this timeline as a weakened French Republic, still led by De Gaulle in Algeria, could not contest Indochina which was handed to a far more pro-US Ho Chi Minh. While in China, a prolonged civil war still rages - but the US have long since recognized that the Communists under Mao will prove victorious. India additionally achieved independence in 1946 and remains a neutral state in world affairs, while the middle east teeters constantly on the balance of civil war and revolt after 'decolonization' belatedly took place in the region, and conveniently saw the elevation of only pro-western regimes, leading to a strong German backing of the pan-Arab Baathist movement that threatens to undo the balance of power in Europe. Finally, in the Balkans, Yugoslavia the partisan war rages on - much like Russia proving simply too stubborn and geographically advantaged to stamp out. Meanwhile after a brief war between the Romanian Ion Antonescu regime and Horthy's Hungarian regime over Transylvania in 1945 Hungary's Government collapsed under a wave of protest, prompting the country to be occupied by Germany and Romania to this day under the Arrow Cross party. All the while in the United States the Presidential election approaches. US President Harry Truman has declined to run leaving the field open - the question is, how will that affect American relations with Germany as the isolationists re-emerge to demand a detente?
