alternatehistory.com

This is something of a reboot of an old thread I did, with a rather different eventuality. Hope y'all like.

1.

Before reviewing the course of the final conflict between the United Nations and the Axis Powers, it is worth summarising the events which brought the world to this point.

The Third World War, and indeed the two previous world wars, were at their core the result of several centuries of European history and politics ultimately becoming unsustainable. For many years before the 20th Century, Europe had regarded itself as the beating heart of civilisation. It had plenty of reason to believe this. Here the Renaissance and Enlightenment was born, yet the European continent was also cursed by near-constant war between its shifting patterns of great powers. Yet by the 19th Century, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, this seemed to be passing. The European powers had found a way to avoid such conflict; by projecting their aggression outwards, expressed in the greatest period of colonialism in world history. The British, French, Dutch, Belgians, Spanish, and Portuguese all constructed vast empires in these years while a period of peace settled between the powers. This was not without exception – the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, and Austro-Prussian War were among the major conflicts – but by and large there was still relative peace. Yet the deep rivalry between the powers of Europe remained, and by the turn of the century was reaching boiling point. Gradually, two sides had begun to form, each a mighty alliance. Britain, France, and Russia stood on one side while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy stood on the other. The slightest pinprick was enough to force the inevitable, and a fairly minor crisis in the Balkans set in motion a chain of events which would find the continent at war with itself within a month.

The so-called Great War which followed, known today as the First World War, raged for four long years. The industrial and technological genius which had propelled Europe’s wealth in the previous century now wrought its demise as a new type of war, stripped of all pretensions of glory which had justified imperial ambitions, slaughtered a generation. By the time it was over, Europe was changed forever. The ascendency of the continent over the course of hundreds of years had been reversed in one apocalyptic war in which many millions had perished. A country only truly wins a war if it finds itself in a more advantageous position than when it began, and this was true for none of the belligerents on either side. Germany was the main defeated power, stripped of her empire and cut down to size, while emasculated with military restrictions and the shame of having guilt for the whole conflict forced upon it. Austria-Hungary collapsed entirely, forming multiple countries which could provide little resistance when eventually gobbled up. Italy, which had turned on its allies a year into the war, would soon fall to men who called themselves Fascists, doing their bit to ensure the 20th Century would be humanity’s great tragedy. Russia fell to another barbaric scourge, as revolution and civil war brought a murderous communist regime alien to anything the world had seen before and the source of much fear across the rest of Europe. Britain and France may have been the victors, but they were decisively weakened as their empires began to totter. Across the Atlantic the New World was now the great power. For the first time in human history hegemony was moving away from Europe, as the United States of America found itself the centre of the world economy.

In the time being, Europe tried to recover but each step forward would be met with two steps backwards. Ironically it would be events in the United States, not the doings of Europe, which precipitated their doom. The Great Depression, the worst economic disaster of modern times, crushed fragile European economies and none more so than Germany which still struggled under the weight of the war’s legacy. In the chaos and fear which followed, the Nazis rose.

The Nazis were both a repudiation and extreme exaggeration of everything Europe had believed it stood for. Progress, intellectualism, liberalism, democracy, all were now the enemy. Meanwhile the Nazis took the European conquest of far off lands and applied its same principles to their European neighbours. Their belief in the existence of a master race, destined to rule over all others, took hold and they saw in Germany the nation which would achieve this. In particular, they identified the Jewish peoples as the greatest enemy of all, deserving of nothing more than total extermination. Anti-Semitism was nothing new in Europe. Yet like in so many other cases, the Nazis took it as far to the extreme as they could. They were the result of so many centuries of enlightenment; madness. Their leader was a man who should have been a nobody, an Austrian corporal and failed artist called Adolf Hitler. By 1933, he was the Chancellor of Germany and Europe’s fate was perhaps sealed. There were chances for the chaos which would follow to be stopped, but the victors of the last war, Britain and France, were too late to see the threat, too afraid of triggering another calamity. And so they allowed Germany a free hand, tolerating the Nazis when they annexed Austria, or marched into the Rhineland, or took the Sudetenland and occupied Czechoslovakia. Then Hitler turned his eyes towards neighbouring Poland, much of it comprised of territory which had once been German. Believing Britain and France would not respond, they struck in 1939. Poland was soon conquered and, over the coming years, its population would effectively vanish amid industrial, deliberate slaughter on a level never seen before or since in human history. The Western powers finally saw no alternative, and declared war.

The Second World War was a repeat of the first only in terms of who was on which side. This time, Germany was dominant. Nearly all-powerful, the new so-called Third Reich invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France soon followed in a series of lightning strikes which made Hitler the master of the continent. The British, alone, were expelled and waited for invasion. It would never come. The Nazi war machine was finally blunted in the skies over England, as the Battle of Britain saw the last stand of the United Kingdom. It was nowhere near the end of the war; in the words of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, it was only the beginning of the end.

Conflict continued in North Africa, as Germany’s Italian ally demonstrated the opposite level of efficiency and skill. Only German intervention saved the Italian campaign to dominate Africa and forge a new Roman Empire from total disaster. A crucial battle at El Alamein would eventually force even the Germans to retreat, and in late 1941 the Empire of Japan joined the war by attacking the United States pre-emptively, itself on a quest to conquer. Meanwhile Germany took the Balkans, with Yugoslavia and Greece falling beneath her jackboots. Two years later, Africa was liberated. Also in 1941, came arguably an event even more decisive than the Fall of France when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the name for the communist-ruled Russia and her satellite republics. Here the fighting could not have been bloodier, more brutal, more devastating. Millions died on both sides and Eastern Europe was torn apart in a bloodbath far beyond anything seen when Germany faced off against their Western adversaries. For Germany, the war against Russia was something else entirely. It was a holy war, fought for the rejuvenation of the nation’s soul and the destruction of the Bolshevism which threatened the sanctity of European civilisation. Three years of furious conflict were the result, sometimes with Germany on the defensive and pushed back and sometimes not, until the luckiest bomb in the world killed Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union. Amid the resultant political chaos, the Soviet armies fractured as their orders came from different places, and soon Moscow had fallen. In these circumstances, a new provisional government agreed to unconditional surrender in early 1944. The terms were beyond harsh, as Russian territory up to the Ural Mountains was annexed into Germany in one of history’s greatest territorial expansions. All civilians not judged ethnically pure enough were to either vacate across the Urals or submit themselves to extermination at worst, or slavery at best. With the rump Russian state forbidden from allowing Allied troops onto its soil on pain of reactivation of hostilities, the last possible challenge to German hegemony in Europe was gone. Or so it was thought.

Desperate to save the situation on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies turned to their last ditch hope and mounted on March 10th, 1944 what was known as Operation Pharaoh; the invasion of Occupied Europe. Twelve American, British, and Canadian divisions landed in the Pas-de-Calais in northern France. Launched too early and right into the heart of German defences, it was one of military history’s great disasters; after less than a month, superior forces pushed back the Allied beachhead and a humiliating evacuation from Calais took place. It was Dunkirk all over again, but worse. 86,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers were killed or left behind in the disaster. With that, German mastery of Europe was unquestionable. President Roosevelt, already frail, would die just three months later. For many Americans, this was when it became clear that the war in Europe was lost.

Yet there was success elsewhere. On the opposite side of the world, the United States busied itself with a long campaign to retake the Pacific from the Japanese Empire. Island by island they hopped, whole fleets needed to retake single islets, as they edged closer to the Home Islands of Japan. Japanese soldiers fought with a tenacity and resilience that shocked their Western opponents, believing that to surrender would be an intolerable shame upon them. But the United States had unlocked the possibility to change everything.

On July 16th, 1945 the Trinity test took place in the Mexico desert. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated, and suddenly the ability to wipe out an entire city with just one bomb was open. The capability to bring Japan to its knees, and Germany too, without a single Allied casualty was now available. And yet it was never dropped. American planners came to the conclusion that to do so would alert the Third Reich that such a weapon was possible. Not enough bombs were available to destroy both empires or even just one, and Germany certainly had enough resources as its disposal to create its own in potentially a very short time. In truth, the West simply did not know whether Germany could do this. It was known that the German nuclear program seemed to be abandoned, and the Nazi’s own ideological distrust of “Jewish” science proved a blessing. But if Berlin or Hamburg were vaporised, how long until the same happened to London?

So it was that the bomb never fell. Instead, on March 1st, 1946 no less than forty divisions landed around Tokyo and made their way inland in the largest amphibious invasion in history. 10,000 Americans died in one day. The invasion would last more than a year, with the death of Emperor Hirohito further radicalising the Japanese people against the invader. But eventually it was all over. Amid mass suffering and famine, with millions dead, Japan surrendered unconditionally on April 7th, 1947. It was just a formality; the paper had only been signed once every inch of Japanese territory was occupied. But with it, the last holdouts put down their weapons and the nightmare was over.

In Europe, this was not the case. There may not have been any more conflict on land besides against partisans on the Eastern Front, but Germany had now turned its attention squarely towards Great Britain once more. A new air war developed on an intensity far beyond that seen in 1940, while the Battle of the Atlantic also raged with hundreds of German submarines swarming towards every Allied convoy they could find. Gradually, Germany would lose this war in the seas as superior technology overcame it. But the war of attrition in the air continued for years, with bomber crews suffering losses comparable to infantry in the First World War; tens of thousands were killed on either side. Germany upped the ante with the legendary Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, which cut through B-29 and Lancaster formations as hundreds churned off assembly lines deep in Russia, beyond the reach of Allied bombers. Allied introduction of new developments such as the RAF's Grand Slam bomb or Avro Stockport heavy bomber failed to make a war-winning difference. Yet for Americans the air campaign, and indeed the entire war with Germany, would reach its climax on September 22nd, 1946 when a fleet of 127 Me 270 strategic bombers roared from the skies and struck at New York City and Washington, D.C. Not a single one would survive to return home but Brooklyn, Midtown Manhattan, and Arlington saw enormous damage and more than 7,000 people were killed. For America, after years of sky-high casualty rates trying to wear down Germany from the air, the raid proved that the Reich was nowhere near falling to its knees and indeed seemed to be improving in capability.

How long the war might have continued without the intervention of the natural world is impossible to say. Starting on January 21st, 1947 the coldest winter for more than a century descended on northwest Europe. Britain was engulfed in a deep freeze, with aircraft unable to fly as their propellers froze. The same happened to the coal waiting in sidings, leaving Britain utterly prostrate. Germany, the Low Countries, and northern France saw similar situations but by this point it was clear that Britain had simply had enough. She couldn’t take it any longer, and who could blame her? Meanwhile an American public, deeply war weary, saw no end in sight after the failure of Operation Pharaoh.

On March 5th, 1947 the first peace feelers were sent out by the Allies through neutral Switzerland. After several weeks of back and forth, representatives of the belligerents met in Geneva and signed the European Armistice Agreement. With no peace treaty, the two sides would remain technically at war. One notable absentee from the meeting was Winston Churchill; the wartime hero had told his War Cabinet, “I did not fight for the liberation of Europe for seven long years only to place my signature beneath an acceptance of Europe’s slavery.” He resigned from office and in his place came the new Prime Minister, Lord Halifax, whose career would only last a few more months.

At eleven o’clock on April 20th, 1947 the Second World War came to an end. Ironically, it was the day of the Fuhrur’s birthday. There was celebrating in the streets, but only in Germany. In Britain and the United States, the reaction to the news was solemn. There was no euphoria as there was upon the previous war’s conclusion. Lord Halifax put on a brave face for Parliament. “It is with profound grief that we signed this armistice,” he told them. “Ultimately, common sense and not bravado must dictate government policy.” Winston Churchill was absent from the session; he had chosen the day of the war’s end to march down to Dover. There, he spent a great deal of time watching across the strait, across which the French cliffs stared back. “It’s not the end,” he muttered to his wife, Clementine. “It’s the beginning of the end.”


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