Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East in an Axis victory scenario?

Does United States enter the war, is there a peace treaty between the western allies and the axis, is the axis kicked out of Africa and the two sides staring across the Mediterranean with an Armistice ?
I was thinking about having the USA avoid entering the war and the Axis possessing a foothold in Africa via North Africa - maybe with Italian Libya and an Egypt controlled by Young Egypt.
 
I think Iran would remain occupied in order to keep supplying the USSR with lend-lease.

Palestine would never have enough jews to form a Jewish Homeland, if there is a 1948 Arab-Israeli war analogue ITTL, I could see Jordan end up taking all of Palestine. Syria will go pretty much as OTL, since the French left in 1946, if this is an Axis Victory, their independence will just be recognized earlier. King Farouk of Egypt and Prime Minister Pasha would probably be allowed to remain in charge of Egypt as Germany didn't really put in Fascist movements until it was their last option, that's if they're captured in 41-43, Nasser would probably side with the Germans/Italians if he still performs a Coup in 52.

Personally, I think the French could hold Algeria indefinitely if it was an Axis Victory scenario. It was a close run thing IOTL, the French (by accident) wiped out the FLN's leadership in basically one fell swoop. They controlled both borders stopping any weapons and reinforcements being able to get in. Their tactics of Quadrillage and Ratissage worked to root out the FLN. The big differences would be that the FLN suffered from a lack of foreign support IOTL, which I don't think would be a problem, since the British and Americans will send them whatever they want (getting the weapons in would still be an issue), and the anti-war sentiment that was the real cause of France's loss would be restricted.
 
What happens with the rest of the colonies in Africa? Do they collapse and become Axis client states or fall into the Allied sphere of influence, should they become independent at all?

Sub-Sahara is entirely Allied, at least early on. The Axis just doesn't have anyway to get troops there, or even materials to supply uprisings.
 
Sub-Sahara is entirely Allied, at least early on. The Axis just doesn't have anyway to get troops there, or even materials to supply uprisings.
So it’s effectively a Cold War between the Axis and Allies. The Axis might take the same stance the Soviets did in our timeline, except promoting Fascist ideology instead of Socialism.
 
So it’s effectively a Cold War between the Axis and Allies. The Axis might take the same stance the Soviets did in our timeline, except promoting Fascist ideology instead of Socialism.

Fascism isn't really spreadable like Socialism. It's not a concrete ideology, and every individual Fascist (Fascism, Nazism, Falangism etc) paint their own people as the chosen ones. When the Germans could secure cooperation they preferred standard conservative anti-communist collaborators, they only put Fascists in power if they couldn't get anybody else eg Quisling, or if their puppets turned eg when they put the Arrow cross party in power in Hungary.

Any cold war is going to be far more fluid and less ideological.
 
Fascism isn't really spreadable like Socialism.
I'm not sure about this when we take into consideration how influential Fascism was in the anti-colonialist independence movements of the '30s, such as in Arabia and India. There could be a chance it takes to Africa who already has some antecedents in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (which will probably take the first chance to exploit this), South Africa and the Japanizers of Ethiopia.
 
At the outset of the war, Germany and Italy had separate goals. The German goal was to conquer vast swaths of Eurasia and forcibly depopulate it in order to create lebensraum for German settlers. The Italian goal was to establish hegemony over the Mediterranean Sea.

Germany would thus have virtually zero interest in either Africa or the Middle East, except insofar as they may have served the "depopulation" goal. (For example, there was an official German plan to forcibly relocate Jews to Madagascar.) Italy would want to seize territory in the Levant and North Africa, and potentially expand their African possessions.

France held, at the beginning of the war, what is today Syria and Lebanon along with much of sub-Saharan Africa. Under the terms of their 1940 armistice, they were even allowed to keep all of this territory, even though they were forced to give up more valuable territory such as Paris. So it's hard to imagine any scenario where Italy would expand at France's expense. Furthermore, much to the dismay of Charles de Gaulle, the French colonial governments in these areas did not, by and large, see any reason to break with Vichy.

Spain and Portugal were both neutral, and Spain had an Axis-aligned government, so I don't see their territory being affected much. The Belgian Congo is a puzzling case. Belgium itself wouldn't exist, but it's not entirely clear that Germany would want to keep the Congo. It probably goes to either Italy or Vichy France.

That leaves the UK. Early in the war, Hitler was amenable to making peace with the UK and allowing them to keep their Empire. If, early in the war, Churchill's government had collapsed and replaced with a defeatist government as happened in France, there would be a significant possibility of Britain leaving the war intact and in control of their African and Middle Eastern possessions, colonies, dominions, and mandates. However, the longer the war dragged on, the more Germany would have demanded in concessions. Furthermore, Italy's plans for the Mediterranean could not easily coexist with British control of Palestine, Egypt (and hence the Suez Canal), Cyprus, Malta, and Gibraltar.

Another thing to consider is what set of counterfactual circumstances would have led to Axis victory. This establishes both facts-on-the ground and, potentially, changes the set of interested parties. To name some examples:
  • If Italy were, in general, more competent than IOTL, they would end up in a much better negotiating position and may have been able to forcibly seize some or all of Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan, or more of British Africa, supporting their desire to retain these territories.
  • If Spain joined the war, their obvious first move would have been to seize Gibraltar. Presumably, they'd want to keep it.
  • If Vichy France joined the war, they might have been interested in some British colonial possessions, along with the Belgian Congo. They would also have had more influence in the ultimate peace treaty, curbing Spanish designs on French Morocco or Italian designs on French Syria or Tunisia or Algeria.
  • Most British colonies had at least one native movement that at least somewhat entertained the notion of collaborating with the Axis. In Iraq, that metastasized into a coup (which the British promptly quashed). If one or more of those movements managed to hold effective control of the country at the end of the war, they would presumably expect the Axis to recognize the legitimacy of their government, and the Axis would have some vested interest in doing so.
  • If Britain were subverted by defeatists and collaborationists as France was, they may have even been able to resurrect some style of "friendly" relations with Germany and retain many of their possessions, much to Italy's chagrin. This was vaguely the goal of the Rudolf Hess plot in 1941.
 
Nasser would probably side with the Germans/Italians if he still performs a Coup in 52.
Unless the United States sides with Britain in an alt suez-crisis. Libya and the rest of North Africa is a sticking point along with Italian territorial desires on Egypt and Sudan. If Israel exist you'd likely see Nasser play the Axis and Allies off each much like he did with the Soviets and Americans.
 
Unless the United States sides with Britain in an alt suez-crisis. Libya and the rest of North Africa is a sticking point along with Italian territorial desires on Egypt and Sudan. If Israel exist you'd likely see Nasser play the Axis and Allies off each much like he did with the Soviets and Americans.
Would Italy be able to annex Sudan, especially in consideration of Egyptian desires to annex it?
 
I doubt Italy would be able to do much beyond Libya, let alone North Africa. What do you think?

Italy IOTL possessed Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia at the height of their wartime expansion. They would want to hold onto these as to better control access to the Red Sea and hence the Mediterranean.

Edit: Another thing worth pointing out is that almost any Axis victory would utterly discredit De Gaulle’s “Free France” and leave Vichy France an Axis-aligned power much like Spain. So any place like Algeria, French Somaliland, French West Africa, etc. is just Axis. ITTL this gives the Axis a very strong foothold on the continent of Africa, with Britain at most retaining South Africa (as a Dominion), Rhodesia, Kenya, etc.

This also has the interesting side effect that, with most of Africa colonized by fascist dictatorships (yes, including Vichy France) and with Britain not ruined by vigorously prosecuting a World War alongside American allies who kept spouting idealistic platitudes about “self-determination”, there would probably not be the same movement towards decolonization. The Brits might want to decolonize, but the fascists almost certainly wouldn’t, and I’m not sure how that would work out. IOTL, the French and British and Belgians were all on good enough terms that decolonizing didn’t automatically mean a rival power would go recolonize whatever chunk of Africa you just abandoned.
 
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