There is no question that the events of this Time Line have diverged significantly from those of ours. Such that people who died in ours are living, while people that lived if only for a few days more than they did IOTL, have died. So a man who managed to father a child IOTL, didn’t get the opportunity ITTL, while a man who failed to produce a child, during those few extra days of life managed to produce a child. Women who were forced by the death of their partner, to ether raise a child without a father, or remarried another man, get to live out their lives with the man who was the father of their child and possibly have others of his subsequently. And these are just some of the smallest examples, the major changes such as the earlier ending of the campaign in North Africa, and the failure of the Japanese to capture Malaya, Singapore, Burma, etc. Are going to have significant consequences for the post war world, especially the relationship between the British and Americans. As as has been said by others, no Japanese capture of Burma, essentially means no Bengal famine, which will effect the post war settlement of Indian independence. Without the total loss of prestige suffered by the French in North Africa, and the supplanting of French rule by the Anglo Americans after operation Touch, the Algerian independence movement is going to take a very different path.
Spain, which was up until mid 1943, a reluctance supporter of Germany, Franco wasn’t a fascist or an antisemitic, and had a very low opinion of Hitler, he was however a nationalist and a clever man. Franco having looked at the events in the Mediterranean, and reliant on America for the food to feed his nation, and Britain for permission to import that food. Is once he has used German to eliminate some of his hard right opponents, via sending them to die in Russia fighting communism in the Blue Devision. He being the realist that he was, is slowly going to change his position and try to develop a much better relationship with the Americans and British. Much the same can be said of Turkey, which was mostly pro allies thanks to the legacy of Kimmel Ataturk, had once Greece had been overrun by the Italians and Germans, had to walk a very fine line between the allies and the axis powers. Will once the French Levant swaps sides, and with the Soviet Union on its boarder, begin to align itself more and more with the allies. In the Far East, the failure of the Japanese to capture Burma, Malaysia and the DEI’s, means no Burma railway. And no Burma railway means that along with the hundreds of thousands of locals forced to help build it, and die in the process. The locals will not see thousands of European troops and civilians subjected to doing meanly labour under the Japanese lash. Without the subjection of the European masters, by fellow asians, the myth of European superiority will not be shattered in the way was. And the process of decolonisation will be slower than it was IOTL, I would expect Indonesia to remain a Dutch colony until the mid fifties at least. And it’s independence to possibly take a different form, with the individual islands having more autonomy than they did.
There is no question that a number of prominent individuals from OTL, will follow a different path ITTL, some will be killed, while others will be remembered for totally different achievements. Others who never gained promidnentance IOTL, ether because they didn’t live long enough to achieve what they achieved IOTL, or because they were never in the place or situation for their abilities to be noticed, will achieve greatness. The son/daughter of a man/woman who died before they could be created, will be born and go on to achieve a greatness that another would never achieve IOTL. Books will be written that have a profound impact on literature that were never written, plays, films, music and dance crazes will all come into being that never existed. IE, the Australian doctor who discovered the link between bacteria and stomach ulcers, might be a female doctor in Greece, or an Indian doctor in Calcutta . Nor is it written that Watson and Crick, will be the ones to discover the double helix of DNA. The Americans might fail to remove/steal the papers of the British team that assisted in the Manhattan Project, and these papers along with a Britain that is stronger financially post war, could instead of the Soviets be the second nation to detonate a nuclear bomb. The post war world while basically similar to ours, will be very different in its particulars, names that we have never heard of will become prominent, while names that are prominent to us, will be just a line on the census.
RR.
