alternatehistory.com

World War II - or rather the German War - is contained within Europe and starts a year earlier than it happened following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The other Little Entente members in Yugoslavia and Romania join a war against German aggression alongside France and potentially Poland, seeing the invasion as an act of aggression.

Italy and Japan don't join, as the Axis wasn't formally ratified as a military alliance until 1939. Britain joins the war at a later date, and Germany's defeat is complete by 1946 (the German war machine was much more industrialised than the old empire of World War I, though a war on all fronts proved to be costly and Germany fell to internal strife alongside foreign efforts).

Japan remains an important power in the Pacific and stands as a barrier to both Soviet and American expansionism. Italy remains fascist - the system itself remains a popular alternative to Western liberalism, as well as Soviet socialism (we could butterfly Spain as exiting its civil war as a communist country).

The late 1950's and early 1960's see the actual Second World War unfolding after the rather loosely-aligned West sees the Soviet Union as a threat to its own dominance. A much stronger British Empire, along with a fully-industrialised United States, a better-armed France, a Western puppet state in Germany, as well as a military force in fascist Italy as well as all of their allies end embroiled in a conflict against the USSR and Imperial Japan, who are forced into being allies of convenience.

After a bloody war which leaves Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Pacific, practical battle zones, the war ends when "sunbombs" are dropped on Stalingrad, Leningrad, Hiroshima, and Kyoto. The USSR survives but remains a rump, while Japan undergoes American occupation for a few decades.

The modern day sees the existence of a Soft War (read: TTL Cold War) between the US and the Anglo-French-led Entente. Technology is about ten years backwards, though development is occurring at a much faster rate currently.
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