The Long Night Falls

[Eurofed]

Sometime ago, when I made an Axis victory ISOT, I was prompted to go and make a full TL of it. Although Nazi victory TL are a dime a dozen, the most unoriginal subject of the whole AH genre ever, and rather more dystopic (and controversial) than I'd like to write about, I felt driven to answer the challenge, since it strived to make it a bit more original by boosting the fortunes of the three main Axis powers more or less equally at once (WWII TLs that feature a strong Axis Italy and/or a victorious Axis Japan are nowhere as frequent as Naziwanks).

While the attempt to "whitewash" the bloody consequences of a Nazifascist victory is a common complaint laid against these scenarioes, this TL does not flinch from Nazi genocides, on the contrary it assumes that closer collaboration between Nazi Germany and a stronger Fascist Italy would prompt the latter to extend the Lebensraum policy to its own empire. On the other hand, the TL otherwise purposefully strives to build a best case scenario for the Axis, while steering away from the double pitfalls of depicting the Nazifacists as diabolical supermen or as loony bumbling fools who can't get anything right but gratuitous murder.

Note 1: abundant due credit to Blairwitch 749 for all the ideas I derived from his masterpiece WWII TL.

Note 2: for the sake of semplicity and recognizability, I deployed a butterfly net for several OTL events that fulfilled the TL's purpose. While it is likely that in practice several details would have gone different, I am honestly persuaded that the main sequence of events depicted in the TL falls well within the bounds of plausibility.

Note 3: despite what stated above, I left the fate of the Jews (and the Rom) undescribed, because I was not sure what option to pick. Although I agree with the moderate functionalist historians about the origins of the Holocaust, and therefore think that the Final Solution would not have likely occurred with an early Axis victory, I was uncertain whether deportation to Madagascar, deportation beyond the Urals, or slave labor (to death) in Eastern Europe would have been the most likely ATL fate for the Jews (and the Rom). Anyway, pick the option that best suits your judgement.

 

[Eurofed]

“The Long Night Falls; World War II and the Birth of the Fascist Bloc, 1939-1943” New York, 1966.

It seems to be the emerging consensus among historians that one of the most important reasons for the victory of the Axis powers in WWII, besides American neutrality, Axis innovative military tactics, and good strategic coordination, was the discovery of the Libyan and Manchurian oilfields in the late 1920s. Those oilfields allowed Germany and Italy to enjoy an abundant fuel supply before and during the war and Japan to defy Western oil embargo when it invaded China and later the Soviet Union. Mussolini developed the Libyan oilfields with the cooperation of American oil companies and was able to build up the Italian economy, military, and merchant fleet in the 1930s, as well as infrastructures in southern Italy and Libya. Germany and Italy formed a strategic partnership with an economic cooperation pact and a military alliance in 1937 (the “Pact of Steel” or “Berlin-Rome Axis”), based on similar political systems and largely complementary expansionistic-imperialistic ambitions. Italy gave its assent to the Anschluss while Germany recognized an Italian sphere of influence in the Balkans and both powers agreed to support their respective expansionist plans in Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean. The German-Italian “Axis” alliance was expanded to Japan (albeit on a rather looser basis) within the framework of the 1935 Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan, when Italy joined the ACP in 1937. The partnership of Germany and Italy with Japan was never so tight as the one within the Euro-Axis, due to distance and cultural differences, so a true alliance was not set up until 1941 (the “Tripartite Pact”); however a common understanding was established that joint diplomatic and military action was to be undertaken against common enemies if mutually beneficial to both sides. Germany, Italy, and Japan extensively developed their Navies and Air Forces and the mechanization of their Armies, since they did not fear an oil shortage in wartime.

Hitler and Mussolini followed a parallel foreign policy and strategy up to 1940, alternating much-publicized claims of peaceful intentions with increasingly boisterous expansionistic-irredentist claims on various neighbor nations and ambitious military build-ups. Both powers made a military intervention, thinly disguised as “volunteer corps”, in the Spanish Civil War, which ensured the victory of the Nationalists (at the end of the war, Italy claimed the Balearic Islands as reward for its efforts). Britain and France tried to match the rising threat of Axis powers with rearmament programs of their own, but domestic opposition and budgetary constraints created substantial limits to the extent and pace of those programs, so the Entente powers were driven to seek an “appeasement” of the fascist powers. Therefore there was little opposition when Germany established the “Anschluss” of Austria and Italy annexed Albania in early 1938, and a supreme effort was made to appease the fascist dictators in the Munich Conference of late 1938, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany and Dalmatia to Italy. Almost all hopes that peace could be saved were dashed in early 1939 when Germany annexed Czechia and Italy occupied the Ionian Islands, while Hungary annexed Slovakia with German-Italian support and joined the Axis. Britain and France reluctantly prepared for a general war in Europe and gave military guarantees to various nations seemingly threatened by fascist expansionism, including Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Romania. In the meanwhile, Japan had stepped up its expansion in East Asia by making an all-out attack to China with the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It also achieved a draw with the Soviet Union in the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars of 1938-39. Stalin, fearful of an encirclement by the fascist powers and Japan, (rightfully) suspicious that the appeasement foreign policy by the Entente Powers also meant to channel the fascist powers in a clash with the USSR, and harboring expansionist ambitions of his own in Eastern Europe, made a dramatic political-diplomatic 180° turn with the fascist powers, by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Ciano Pact. Officially a non-aggression pact (which cooled the relationship between the Euro-Axis and Japan for a while), the deal secretly established a partition of Eastern Europe in spheres of influence between the fascist powers and the USSR. Despite the deal was not made to last (it remains a perennial object of contention between historians whether Stalin planned to eventually betray the pact from the start, but it is fairly certain that Hitler and Mussolini did so), it made the USSR a de facto quasi-ally of Germany and Italy in 1939-40, allowing the fascist dictators to wage a war with the Western powers without fear of a second front.

And war swiftly came in late 1939 when Germany pursued its irredentist claims on defiant Poland to the point of open military aggression and Italy paralleled the actions of its ally by attacking Yugoslavia, which forced the Entente powers to declare war to the fascist powers. The Wehrmacht swiftly crushed Poland, while the Italian Army toiled a bit more to defeat Yugoslavia, due to various flaws which the invasion revealed and that were ironed out, with structural reforms and German assistance, afterwards. Some licenses for German weapons and equipment were also traded to Italy to help the restructuring. However it was eventually successful. Britain and France took a defensive stance, while the USSR exploited the situation to annex Eastern Poland and the Baltic Republics and attack Finland, according to the spheres of influence drawn in the M-R-C Pact. Heroic Finnish resistance and the manifold flaws of the Red Army, which the attack revealed, delayed Soviet victory for a good while, but eventually Soviet force of numbers and some hasty reforms of the Red Army crushed the Finns into signing a peace treaty that ceded West Karelia. However the Winter War gave Germany and Italy a pretext to occupy Denmark-Norway and Greece respectively, while the Entente powers’ hasty intervention failed to deploy an effective resistance to those invasions. The fate of Western Europe was sealed in mid-1940 when Germany and Italy, their backs secured by the M-R-C Pact, enacted a successful invasion of the Low Countries and France. Innovative German tactics ensured the grand encirclement and swift destruction of the Dutch, Belgian, and French armies, while the Italian attack in the Alps front and in Tunisia was eventually able to make a breakthrough, although made rather more difficult by French fortifications and troublesome terrain. The British were able to evacuate and save part of their troops, although most of their expeditionary corps was trapped and destroyed. The French will to fight collapsed in the face of military catastrophe and invasion, and far-right French collaborationists exploited the opportunity to seize power and establish a pro-Axis homegrown fascist regime that signed an armistice with Germany and Italy. By its terms the fascist powers occupied northern and southeastern France, Corsica, Algeria, and Tunisia, while the rest of mainland France and the French colonial empire remained under the authority of so-called “Vichy France”, which adopted a policy of pro-Axis neutrality. Despite reeling from defeat on the continent, Britain resolved to continue the war, hoping that America would eventually join it. US President Roosevelt had every intention of doing so, but the vast majority of the American public sadly remained strongly isolationist at the time and was quite unwilling to get involved in foreign wars, according to a long-standing tradition (more so after the experience of intervention in WWI had proven less than satisfactory), in the lack of a clear and direct threat to American security. FDR had got legislation passed to give US weapons, equipment and commodities to Britain and China (and later, more contentiously, to the USSR) despite neutrality laws since 1939 and to effectively gift them on very favorable conditions since 1941, but that was all what the influence of American internationalists could achieve. Unfortunately, it proved far from enough.

The Fall of France prompted Britain to attack and destroy most of the French Navy, to prevent its fall in the hands of Hitler and Mussolini; although it diminished the immediate naval threat, the attack made the French people more sympathetic to collaboration with the Axis. Germany and Italy adopted a Mediterranean strategy, concentrating the bulk of their air forces and a sizable portion of their land forces in the Med, which was made possible by interwar infrastructure development in southern Italy and Libya. Joint German-Italian operations occupied Malta and Crete (albeit to a rather high price in blood), and overrun Egypt in late 1940. This prompted Spain and Vichy France to join the Axis and open their borders to German-Italian forces. Hitler and Mussolini were therefore able to land forces in Lebanon and Syria, and send their mountain divisions to besiege Gibraltar. Despite a valiant resistance, the Rock fell, sealing the transformation of the Med into an Axis lake, which was already ongoing owing to German-Italian naval victories and air theater superiority, the conquest of Malta, and the fall of Alexandria and Suez. Moreover, Axis troops in the Levant opened a second front in the theater that allowed the Axis offensive to break through the Suez Canal and overrun Palestine and Iraq in early 1941. Pro-Axis Arab nationalist groups rose up to support Axis advance against the British. Like the unwilling subjects of Stalin later, little did nationalist Arabs suspected how the grandiose racist plans of the Axis leaders would soon get their hopes horribly betrayed. Turkey agreed to join the Axis. Stalin reacted to Axis occupation of Iraq and presence in Turkey (which he claimed belonged to the Russian sphere of influence) with the Soviet occupation of Iran. Hitler and Mussolini seemingly accepted Soviet control of Iran with little fuss, while stepping up their ongoing preparations for invasion of the Soviet Union. Over late 1940, tentative diplomatic talks had occurred between Germany-Italy and the USSR, about a possible Soviet full Axis membership. Although the three powers had gotten close to agreement on several issues, no deal was possible on some areas (Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey) which the Soviets claimed as theirs and the fascist powers had got or meant to get under their control, either as part of their spheres of influence or a stepping stone for invasion of the USSR. Although Hitler had consented to the M-R-C Pact as a temporary semi-alliance of convenience, in the long term he remained implacably determined to invade and subjugate the Soviet Union as the cornerstone of his grandiose Lebensraum plans, and Mussolini was only eager to reaffirm the anti-Communist credentials of the fascist regime and reap further glory for Italy in an anti-Soviet crusade.

 

[Eurofed]

Diplomatic talks were reopened with Japan and the Axis was expanded to the Japanese Empire as the “Tripartite Pact” in early 1941 to heal the breach that had occurred over the M-R-C Pact. A military alliance was established against the USSR, even if Moscow was told that the objective of the Tripartite Pact was to intimidate America into neutrality. After the fall of France, Japan had occupied Indochina with the assent of the Axis powers. America had reacted by implementing an economic embargo, but this had had limited impact thanks to the oil supply ensured by the Manchurian oilfields. Hitler and Mussolini preferred to keep America neutral at least until Britain and the USSR were crushed (they had given strict instructions to the Kriegsmarine and the Regia Marina to avoid incidents with the USN), so they offered Japan their support for territorial gains in South East Asia at the peace table if it refrained from hostile actions against America and joined into a combined attack on the USSR instead. Some licenses for German weapons were thrown in the deal to further entice the Japanese. Up to then, the militarist leadership of Japan had been split into a vicious power struggle between the supporters of the “Strike North Group” and “Strike South Group” which favored expansion in the Russian Far East and South East Asia, respectively. The existence of the Manchurian oilfields made the Indonesian ones much less vital (although still quite useful) to Japanese economy and Japan more eager to ensure the security of Manchuria by wrestling control of the Far East from the Soviets. Moreover the draw achieved in the Border Wars made the Japanese leaders confident enough that victory could be achieved in an all-out war against an USSR weakened by a two-fronts war. So the German-Italian offer tilted the balance in favor of the Northern option, and Japan prepared for joining the offensive against the USSR by taking a defensive stance in China and calling up the reserves. On their part, Germany and Italy stepped up their own preparations for the invasion of the USSR, but also spared little effort to secure the defeat of Britain. An ambitious naval program for substantial expansion of the German and Italian submarine and surface fleets was started to secure naval supremacy in the Atlantic and strangle the British Empire into economic collapse. Portugal was invaded and occupied by Axis forces: although it had a political regime similar to the Axis powers, they distrusted it because of its traditional status as a satellite of Britain and wanted to use it as a naval base and to reward their Spanish ally. Plans were also laid down for conquering Kenya, Uganda, Yemen, and British colonies in West Africa. Although the Italian military by now matched the German levels of effectiveness, many other European members of the Axis still lagged rather behind although in no way lacking for bravery, such as the Hungarians, Romanians, Spaniards, and Turks. After the conquest of the Middle East, Germany and Italy were now free to throw the bulk of their forces against the USSR, and their armies were to bear the brunt of the effort in the first phase of the war. Nonetheless, the wide success of German-Italian military and economic cooperation persuaded Hitler and Mussolini to establish a large degree of military and economic integration for the whole Axis bloc, so a large-scale system of Axis license-sharing, equipment standardization, economic cooperation, and joint military training was established, that aimed to get the other Axis members close to the German and Italian standard. Although France was in much less need of such assistance, Hitler and Mussolini remained more than a bit wary of allowing a huge French rearmament. Nonetheless, the French fascist regime appeared to be quite cooperative (its leaders had full expectation that the Axis would win the war and were eager to secure a cozy position within the new order for France) and with a good following in the mainland and in the colonies. Therefore Vichy France was given a peace treaty and allowed to join the Axis as a full member in good standing; German-Italian military occupation was ended, apart from the troops deployed to defend the coasts from the British as part of the alliance, and a sizable amount of French troops that looked politically reliable were raised up and tasked to help with the invasion of the USSR and to defend French coasts and colonies. The surviving portion of the Marine Nationale and the Spanish Navy joined the Axis naval forces in the Atlantic. Such an ambitious military build-up made it necessary total economic mobilization of Axis Europe.

Although Stalin was by then persuaded that war with the fascist powers was inevitable, he remained also convinced that Hitler and Mussolini would not attack as long as war with Britain still raged, so he neglected the growing signs of an impending Axis attack. He had milked everything else he could from the M-R-C Pact when he had bullied Romania to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina during the Fall of France, which prompted Hungary to claim northern Transylvania with German-Italian support. And later he had exploited the Axis conquest of the Levant as a pretext to conquer Iran. However Finland, Bulgaria, and Turkey, which he also coveted, had joined the Axis camp and escaped his grasp. Although he reluctantly authorized some halfhearted defensive preparations, they were far from sufficient when the Axis attacked the USSR in June 1941. The Axis Blitzkrieg again proved its terrible effectiveness as the initial Red Army positions and the Soviet troops deployed on the border were swiftly overrun, encircled, and crushed, and the pattern kept repeating over the rest of 1941 as the Soviet forces were steadily pushed more and more deeply within the Motherland. The Russian people rose to defend their country with desperate valor. After entertaining brief illusions in some cases that the Axis forces could be liberators from the Soviet yoke, non-Russian nationalities did so as well. Typically, more so out of apolitical nationalistic patriotism or a desperate survival urge when faced with the bloodthirstiness of the Axis occupation than because of any strong loyalty to the brutal Soviet regime. Nonetheless, the Red Army was hard-pressed to stop the Axis onslaught, and the Japanese attack in the Far East only made things worse. The Imperial Japanese Army met rather greater difficulties achieving a strategic breakthrough against the Red Army than the Euro-Axis, since Japan had neglected to correct many of the flaws that had surfaced in the Border Wars. However the IJA stood its ground and made some inroads in Soviet territory which included the all-important conquest of Vladivostok. After the Axis attack, Roosevelt had (controversially) extended American supplies aid to the Soviet Union, but as time went on, to deliver it proved more and more difficult. The Axis naval forces were increasingly getting the upper hand in the Atlantic and the Japanese Imperial Navy blocked the Pacific route and later the conquest of Vladivostok removed it entirely. Only the Iranian-Indian route was partially available, even if it was logistically poor and harassed by Axis submarines and raiders. By the end of the year, the Euro-Axis forces had seized a quite large swath of Soviet territory, including Leningrad, the Baltic countries, Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia proper. Sheer exhaustion and overextension had stopped the Axis forces on the outskirts of Moscow and the banks of the Don. However they were able to withstand and repulse the messy Soviet counteroffensive and entrench for the winter operational pause in good order. In the far southern front, the Axis forces met severe difficulties breaking through the Caucasus and the Zagros Mountains, however they were able to seize southwestern Iran (with its ports and oilfields) and German-Italian bombers kept hitting the Baku oilfields, albeit at a very high price. This created a serious oil deficiency for the Red Army.

After the winter ’41-’42 operational phase and another hasty Soviet counteroffensive repulsed by the Axis forces, spring ’42 saw a new Axis strategic offensive which targeted the lower Volga basin. The benefits of the Axis cross-training and equipment standardization programs were by then showing their benefits as the increased effectiveness of the European Axis troops had come reasonably close to the one of Germans and Italians. On the other side, the desperate patriotic valor of the Soviet troops could not make up for the serious deficiencies of oil, foodstuff, other commodities, and industrial production which were increasingly hampering the Soviet war effort. The trickle of American aid that managed to reach the Soviet shores couldn’t make up for those deficiencies created by loss of occupied territories and the bombing of Baku. After some months of fierce fighting, Axis troops occupied the lower Volga basin with Stalingrad and reached Astrakhan. The road was open for an Axis north-south strategic pinch to occupy the Caucasus and northwestern Iran, which further increased the oil starvation of the Red Army. Fighting continued in the fall, while Axis troops extended their control of the Volga basin upstream towards the Russian heartland of the Volga bend, conquered central Iran, and prepared for a great strategic offensive to take Moscow. A last-ditch Soviet counteroffensive saw initial tactical victories but was eventually contained and destroyed by Axis flexible defense. In the Far Eastern front, the Japanese met somewhat greater difficulties to make as dramatic gains as their allies; nonetheless they were able to exploit the growing disorganization of the Soviet forces and gradually conquer Outer Manchuria over mid-late 1942.

Over late 1941 and 1942, the British war effort met increasingly severe difficulties. Repeated air-naval battles between British and German-Italian forces occurred in 1940-42 in the Med and the Atlantic which despite significant Axis losses (which prompted the revamping of the fighter pilot training system) gradually and severely depleted the ranks of the Royal Navy and the RAF faster than its Axis counterparts. Combined with the extensive Axis naval build-up, this ensured a significant surface superiority and a decisive submarine supremacy of the Axis forces in the Atlantic. Although Britain kept enough air-naval strength to make an amphibious invasion in the British Islands look like a risky extreme option (anyway unfeasible as long as the bulk of the Axis land forces were engaged on the Eastern front), the supremacy of the German-Italian submarine forces had substantial effects. German and Italian submarines roamed up and down the Atlantic from a line of bases stretching from Norway to West Africa, with the support of Axis surface squadron task forces which issued on a regular basis. This ensured increasingly unbearable losses for British convoys and a steady loss of morale for a nation already demoralized by an apparently non-stop three years’ row of disastrous defeats. The growing Axis naval advantage was also increased by the loss of the Enigma trick for the British. The UK deciphering of Enigma codes had been lost when France had joined the Axis and it had given hard evidence of the intelligence breach to the Germans. The Wehrmacht had since plug the leak by adopting the slower but more secure Italian ciphers. Over 1942, Britain was rapidly nearing the point where its war economy would be crippled by a series of commodity deficiencies and the ability to supply garrisons in India and South East Asia critically compromised. Despite the generosity of the American supplies aid that issued from US ports, only a limited amount, steadily shrinking to a trickle, reached British shores, and the trade routes from South America fared no better. The harried British witnessed further problems in India, where instability grew with the declining fortunes of the British Empire. The leadership of the Indian nationalist movement was contested with increasing success to the Indian National Congress moderates, utterly dominant before the war, by the pro-Axis radicals of the Azad Hind movement, which got generous support from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The RAF managed with increasing difficulty to maintain an effective air defense of the British Isles, and this gave some limited comfort, since the specter of Axis invasion remained an ever-present fear. Axis offensives to occupy Kenya, Uganda, Yemen, and UK colonies in West Africa were successful, but the British successfully kept Oman and supported the Soviets in the defense of southeastern Iran. Axis occupation of Portugal had given Britain a pretext to occupy the Azores, which yielded a useful but insufficient base for convoy defense. This gave the harried British high command the inspiration to try and occupy the Canary Islands. The operation was successful, bringing some much needed relief to British morale. The Euro-Axis however retaliated by preparing an operation to re-conquer the islands and by making a deal with Japan about co-belligerence against the British Empire.

 

[Eurofed]

As evidence accumulated of British weakness, and Japan’s war with the Soviet Union progressed to a sufficiently good, if not quite satisfactory, pace, calls had been made again in the Japanese ruling circles and with their European allies for an attack against Western colonies in South East Asia. Different Japanese Army and Navy factions argued for focusing on land war with the Soviets, return to an offensive stance in China, occupation of European colonies in South East Asia, or a pre-emptive war against America. As the Canary battle and British defense in the Persian Gulf hinted that the British Empire still had some fighting in it, Germany and Italy switched to support a Japanese invasion of South East Asia, as long as America was left strictly alone. Hitler and Mussolini were not deadly afraid of America, but they did not want to waste their strength with another war when victory against Britain and Russia seemed close at hand. Euro-Axis diplomatic support swung the power struggle in Japanese ruling circles towards a compromise between the Army and Navy factions that supported a two-front war against Britain and the USSR and a defensive stance with America. Japan ordered a general mobilization of its forces to prepare for a two-front fight, declared war to Britain, and its troops invaded Hong Kong, British Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, while Siam opened its borders to the IJA and became a Japanese satellite. The British fought fiercely to defend their empire, but the supply deficiency caused by the Axis naval war, only worsened by the IJN theater superiority, hampered the efficiency of defense. In a few months the Japanese forces overrun Malaya, North Borneo, and the DEI. The British forces retreated to Singapore, while the IJA invaded Burma. A naval battle saw the destruction of the British fleet, albeit with heavy Japanese losses, and Singapore, long thought impregnable from the sea, fell after an attack from the mainland. Australian forces were however able to maintain control of New Guinea. The demoralizing news of the fall of Singapore by chance came within days of the successful re-conquest of the Canary Islands by a German-Italian task force. The expanded war only kept bringing bad news for the British public over the rest of 1942. The Japanese cleared British forces out of Burma. The IJN victory ensured the Axis a strong naval superiority in the Indian Ocean too, which the Germans and Italians exploited to conquer Oman and coastal southeastern Iran. India, wracked by Azad Hind nationalistc unrest, seemed open to a two-front invasion, with the connection to Britain severed. In the Atlantic, the Axis naval war had progressed to an effective blockade and the British war effort could only really rely on the resources of the Home Islands, creating all kinds of critical deficiences. Air defense of the British Isles was staggering. The Soviet Union was clearly headed to a total defeat, and in America the perspective of intervention kept hitting into a seemingly impassable wall of opposition. In early '43, the situation had worsened to the point that the British morale met a tipping point of frustration and demoralization. Successive war governments had been brought down by military defeats in early 1940, early 1941, and mid 1942. Now the fourth and last war government fell and the war coalition collapsed as the British Parliament and public shifted from blaming the leaders to losing hope about the war. The peace faction took over in Parliament and the new government asked the Axis powers for an armistice.

The peace treaty imposed by Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese government included a Territorial Protocol which ceded all the British possessions conquered by the Axis powers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South East Asia, plus Northern Rhodesia, the former German colonies of Tanganyika and South West Africa, and Eastern Baluchistan and Pashtunistan. The Diplomatic Protocol called for British recognition of and non-interference in the territorial changes and political asset enforced by the Axis powers and their allies towards oher defeated nations and their colonies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, cessation of British assistance to Russia and China, and the signature of a non-aggression pact between Britain and the Axis powers. The Economic Protocol called for the immediate resumption of normal trade relations between Britain and the Axis. The terms looked harsh but with the British Isles and unrest-torn India trapped into an air-naval vise and seemingly threatened by invasion, there was little choice but to accept. Britain signed the peace treaty and the subsequent elections were won by the Labour Party, which run on a platform calling for the creation of an extensive welfare state and a mixed economy. In foreign policy, opinion was split across parties between a faction that decried fascist hegemony in Eurasia as an unpleasant but inevitable reality that Britain had tried valiantly but failed to prevent, and argued for turning inward and rebuilding the country with a well-armed defense of what little was left of the British Empire in cooperation with America, and another that blamed British interventionism in European affairs and in the World Wars as a suicidal mistake that had brought the British Empire to ruin, and called for a neutral peaceful coexistence and good neighbor policy with the Axis bloc. However, both factions agreed on the dire necessity of avoiding further military confrontations with and provocations to the Axis powers. King George VI, overwhelmed by deteriorating health and self-perceived co-responsibility for the defeat, abdicated and his young daughter Elizabeth took the throne.

The defeat of the British Empire had dramatic political consequences for America and the White Dominions, too. Over 1941 and 1942, the growing strength of the Axis powers had slowly shifted the American public opinion away from hardcore isolationism and neglect of foreign affairs, but despite President Roosevelt’s ardent pleas, the majority in the Congress and the country still balked at a declaration of war against the Axis powers in the absence of a clear provocation or direct threat to American security. The President was only able to get a series of increasingly ambitious rearmament programs and measures passed to increase the collective security of the Philippines and the Western Hemisphere. The success of the Axis naval war, and Japanese invasion of South East Asia, increased the concerns of the American public, accelerating the shift towards internationalist interventionism. In the last phase of the war, the majority of American ruling circles and public opinion had crystallized into a split between moderate isolationists that argued for well-armed defense of the Western Hemisphere (and for several, Oceania too) and decried assistance to Britain and Russia as a big waste of US money that Axis navies merrily sent to the bottom, and moderate interventionists that advocated defense of the British Isles from Axis conquest as a necessity for US security. Depending on whom you asked, this could mean "all assistance short of war", US armed defense of the British Isles in case of invasion, while a few openly dared propose US armed defense of trade routes to Britain and hence de facto naval war with the Axis. As much as US public opinion was turning to fear Axis global hegemony, it also remained terrified of US armed intervention as a repetition of WWI massacres in a futile attempt to undo Axis victory (an "American Gallipoli on European beaches", as the isolationist opinion-makers dubbed it). The split between isolationists and interventionists cut across parties but with the former prevalent in the GOP and the latter in the Democratic Party. The midterm 1942 elections saw the Republican Party make major gains and get a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. This probably also meant that many wealthy voters were becoming tired with the policies of Roosevelt, who had served an unprecedented amount of time in the White House, and felt that the nation need to change its direction. But in foreign policy, it was widely seen as a mandate for continental defense, but against intervention and war with the Axis. The British defeat cemented the American public into deeming the Axis a clear and real threat to the security of the Western Hemisphere. A solid public opinion support coalesced for well-armed defense of the New World and a “Fortress Democracy” internationalist policy. It would ensure the safety of the Western Hemisphere and Oceania with a combination of regional collective security, economic integration, and political ties to bind North America, South America, Australia, and the Philippines and contain Axis military threats and political subversion. At the same time, the defeat of Britain also drove the White Dominions to sign armistices and peace treaties of their own with the Axis powers, declare themselves Republics, and sever their direct political links to Britain, for different reasons. In South Africa, a far right Afrikaner faction staged a political revolution and took over, shifting the country to a pro-Axis foreign policy. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, disgust for the shameful defeat the British Empire had suffered, combined with generalized fear of the Axis and eagerness to find a new great power protector, pushed those countries to cast their lots with America. Hasty diplomatic talks were started to form a military alliance and economic-political union with the United States. Those talks were quickly joined by the autonomous US Commonwealth of the Philippines, whose eagerness for independence had vanished in the face of growing Japanese might, and by Greenland and Iceland, which had been occupied by US forces with the agreement of local authorities. Acting on their own initiative, the USA also occupied all European colonial possessions in the Americas and in the Pacific east of the Philippines. US forces also landed in New Guinea to support Australian control of the island.

After the usual winter operational phase, in spring ’43 the Axis war machine sealed the fate of the Soviet Union when two great pincers struck both north and south of Moscow and successfully closed the circle around the Soviet capital, which fell after a month of desperate fighting. The Axis forces were able to occupy all territory west of the Volga. The loss of the Moscow region and the Russian heartland meant the death knell for the centralized Soviet state machinery, which fell into chaos. Soviet organized resistance collapsed and the Axis forces pressed on towards the Urals. The Soviet regime was overthrown by a military coup and Stalin and his inner circle shot. A nationalist junta government took over, established the Russian Federation, and engaged in the desperate attempt to fend off chaos and restore some sort of order for the unoccupied former Soviet space of Siberia and Central Asia using local resources. Organized military resistance (but not strong partisan insurgency) to Axis forces de facto ceased, while Axis troops occupied their planned final positions on the western edge of the Ural Mountains and river. On their part, the Japanese staged a general advance and occupied Outer Mongolia and the Russian Far East up to Lake Baikal and the Lena River. After the collapse of the USSR, they transferred a sizable portion of their forces back to the Chinese front and resumed the offensive. Over the rest of the year, Japan gained control of the Chinese provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangxi, and Guangdong, as well as southern Henan and western Hubei, acquiring a land connection between Japanese conquests in China and in South East Asia, as well as full control of coastal and eastern China (although partisan insurgency raged on).

 

[Eurofed]

During and immediately after the war, the Axis powers reshaped the political map of Eurasia and Africa to satisfy their imperialistic ambitions and (where feasible) give some reward to their allies/vassals. Germany annexed Czechia, Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Flanders, Denmark, northern Switzerland, as well as former Soviet territory up to the Ural Mountains and river. It also rebuilt a “Mittelafrika” German colonial empire in Africa with Nigeria, Cameroun, Gabon, French and Belgian Congo, Angola, Northern Rhodesia, Malawi, and Mozambique, plus the former German colonies of Tanganyika and South-West Africa. Italy annexed Albania, Yugoslavia, Nice, Savoy, Corsica, southern Switzerland, Malta, and Greece. It also expanded its colonial empire with Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Somaliland, Chad, Ubangi-Shari, Kenya, and Uganda, and established its “protectorate” over Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Oman, Eastern Arabia, and Iraq-Kuwait, which was expanded with the Iranian provinces of Ilam and oil-rich Khuzestan. Hungary got Slovakia, northern Transylvania, Baranja, and Backa. Bulgaria got Vardar Macedonia, western Thrace, and Southern Dobruja. Romania got back Bessarabia and Bukovina and received Transnistria. Finland got back West Karelia and received Kola, East Karelia, and the Finnmark. France got Wallonia and western Switzerland, and the British colonies of Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Ghana. Spain annexed Gibraltar, Portugal, and French Morocco. Outer Manchuria was united with Manchukuo, Inner and Outer Mongolia were united too to form the Mengjiang Republic. The Dutch East Indies with East Timor, British Malaya and North Borneo, French Indochina, Burma, and Siam became various Japanese “protectorates”, while the rest of the Russian Far East (Yakutia, northern Kavabarosk, Kamchatka, Magadan, Chukotka, Buryatia, and Chita) were set up as another Japanese puppet state, the White Russian Far Eastern Republic. Turkey received Cyprus, Russian Armenia, and Russian-Persian Azerbaijan, and was given Hedjaz and the administration of the Muslim Holy Sites of Medina and Mecca. South Africa, which joined the Axis bloc, annexed Lesotho, Swaziland, Bechuanaland, and Southern Rhodesia. Although Persia suffered the loss of some choice bits of its territory to Italy and Turkey, it was allowed to join the Axis as a member in good standing and rewarded with the annexation of Eastern Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Eastern Pashtunistan.

After the war, Germany and Italy maintained their strategic partnership and cooperation to rule their newfound empires. The other surviving nations of Continental Europe (France, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) were driven to adopt a fascist political system, if it wasn't already in place, and to join with Germany and Italy into a tight confederal political bloc, economic union, and military alliance, the New European Order (NEO), which also included their respective African colonial empires. The NEO was of course ruled by the German-Italian diarchy, although France and Spain were allowed to claim a subordinate leadership role. Germany and Italy staged an ambitious program to assimilate their respective possessions in Central and Eastern Europe and in North Africa, the Middle East, and the western Balkans, respectively, by a mix of exterminations, forced population transfers, forced cultural assimilation, and settler colonization. Areas annexed by Axis nations in Western Europe and Greece were simply earmarked for ruthless cultural and political assimilation but were generally spared harsher measures thanks to their “Aryan” racial classification, cultural closeness to the annexing nation, and in Greece’s case, the significance of Greek culture in the political mythology of fascism. Although the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa, too, were earmarked for eventual elimination and replacement by European settlers, this was seen as a very long-term project even by the most ambitious NEO racial planners, and for the moment Africa was consigned to extreme colonial exploitation with the establishment of slave labor. Japan implemented a similar assimilation-colonization program in Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and Mongolia, while it earmarked South East Asia and mainland China as ruthlessly exploited colonies under the thin facade of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” (GEACPS) confederation. The Western Hemisphere also saw the birth of a third continental polity, when negotiations between America and its allies ensued in the creation of the “Commonwealth of Free Nations” (CFN), commonly known with the informal name of “American Commonwealth”, a confederal union of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, and the Philippines, where each state kept autonomy in internal matters but established an integrated military (with national commands in peacetime and a unified one in wartime), a common foreign policy, and an economic and monetary union under US leadership. More controversially, Cuba too was driven by local pro-US lobbies to join the CFN (some say this happened under the influence of American organized crime groups). New Guinea and the former European colonial possessions in the Americas and the Pacific were established as CFN territories, with the exception of Belize, which was annexed by Guatemala, and Newfoundland, which joined Canada. For the first few years after the war, Britain kept a public stance of neutrality between the blocs, since the Labour government wished for closer ties with the CFN but dared not openly establish them for fear they would be seen as a provocation by the NEO.

During the first few years after the war, Germany and Italy pursued a most ambitious (and infamous) program to swiftly remove the bulk of the native Slav and Arab populations by extermination or deportation and replace them with their own “Aryan” settlers and a minority of “Aryanized” natives throughout the occupied territories. This was an issue where Nazist Germany “Lebensraum” ideas had been successfully imprinted on and eagerly adopted by Fascist Italy. However it soon became clear that doing so would leave the conquered areas huge graveyards and destroy their economic value to the Axis bloc, since it was impossible to muster up enough “Aryan” settlers to quickly repopulate them. To rule empty wastelands seemed an unpleasant perspective even to racist butchers, so a more gradual colonization policy was adopted. The bulk of the native Slav and Arab population in European Russia and the Middle East was to be kept around an as exploited serf working class. The hardcore extermination/deportation/assimilation and colonization policy was to be initially focused on and limited to the areas territorially contiguous/closest to Germany and Italy and/or of greatest economic and strategic value (e.g. Czechia, Poland, the Baltic lands, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, the Maghreb), where Axis planners expected sufficient settlers could be mustered to repopulate with current demographic and economic resources. Settler colonization and the related “removal” of the natives would only be extended to the “outer” territories in rough concentric waves when and if the “inner” ones had been assimilated. In the meanwhile, they would be kept as ruthlessly exploited economic colonies. Strong natalist policies for the “Aryan” peoples of the NEO were implemented, and the amount of natives deemed acceptable for “Aryanization” were somewhat increased with slightly more flexible racial guidelines. This pragmatic shift in policy was eased by the death of Hitler (who was succeeded by Goering) in the late 1940s, which favored the relative marginalization of the worst racist extremists in the Axis ruling elites: as always, racial policy was one field where Fascist Italy was only too happy to follow the example of Nazi Germany. Fascist France and Spain, and Axis South Africa eagerly embraced NEO racial policy for their own African territories.

After the defeat of Britain and Russia, international relationships between the newborn Axis and Western blocs gradually grew quite tense and hostile, and many feared that a new World War would soon explode. However, several factors conspired to defuse such an outcome: all but the most fanatical warmongers on both sides recognized that a war between Axis Old World and US-led New World would be quite costly and bloody and quite likely would end into a stalemate: both blocs were engaged into a brisk naval rearmament, and it was terribly unlikely that either the NEO or the CFN would be ever able to invade their rival in the foreseeable future. The CFN had a narrow but definite industrial advantage on the Axis bloc and could quite likely defeat Japan in a limited war, but the NEO was expected to side with their GEACPS allies, and the perspectives of facing an enemy that could rely on the manpower and industrial potential of continental Europe and Japan and all the resources of Eurasia looked quite bleak. On the other side, Germany, Italy, Japan, and their various satellites were now engaged in the herculean task of building up the NEO and GEACPS empires in Eurasia and Africa, which looked like it would keep them quite busy for many years to come. Even Hitler liked to remark that to deal with the New World would be the task of the next generation, unless America forced the issue. So in the early years of the Cold War, both sides kept studying and snarling to each other, but refrained from unleashing another armed conflict. Both sides strived to develop intercontinental bombers, which became available by the end of the ‘40s, and the NEO also poured efforts in missile technology, a field where it had a definite lead, although true ICBMs would not become reliable until well into the 50s. However the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction arsenals, and the means to deliver them across the Ocean changed the equation. The American nuclear program had been started in 1941, but its pace had relatively lagged for a couple years due to peacetime budget constraints and lack of focus. After America switched to a peacetime war-footing stance and massive rearmament for the first time in its history after the start of the Cold War, the nuclear program too got a substantial boost of resources and attention. However, by that time, the Axis powers had managed to get full access to the archives of Soviet intelligence, which revealed the existence and features of the US nuclear program, and to the data of the Soviet nuclear program. That evidence corrected some critical flaws in, and prompted a substantial boost of resources, energies, and attention for, the German-Italian and Japanese nuclear programs. As a result, the CFN and NEO nuclear programs progressed at more or less a similar pace after 1943, and both yielded working nuclear devices almost simultaneously in 1947-1948, while Japan and Britain developed their own Bomb in 1952. The development of CFN and NEO intercontinental bombers in 1947-48, paired to the build-up of sizable chemical arsenals, had already laid down the basis for the Mutual Assured Destruction stalemate. The creation of nuclear weapons, and the realization of their terrible destructive potential when the Axis powers made generous use of nuclear and chemical WMD weapons to break the residual strength of the Chinese and Russian strongholds in western Siberia and western China, locked the MAD strategic stalemate of the Cold War into place. As much as the Axis and Western blocs could despise, hate, and fear each other, a general conflict between them soon became more and more unthinkable. The Long Night had fallen on the Old World.

The Axis WMD attack on rump China and Russia at the end of the ‘40s proved to be the death knell for both polities. In the mid 1940s, the NEO and the GEACPS had largely focused their resources on basic stabilization and economic integration of their empires, suppression of already raging insurgencies in conquered regions of Eurasia, and the arms race with the CFN. The NEO and Japanese armies mostly limited to bombings and to search and destroy offensives in unoccupied Siberia and western China, leaving aside for the moment the full occupation of those lands and full partition of Eurasia between the already huge Axis empires. Therefore, although the NEO and Japan had nominally agreed to a full partition of Eurasia, with the demarcation line defined on the Yenisei, they had showed no great drive to occupy Russian Siberia or western China, which seemed well headed to slide into chaos on their own, owing to economic collapse, unsustainable numbers of refugees, and Axis attacks. By 1944-46, Germany and Italy already achieved a remarkable result when they managed to make Central Asia break out of Russian control and become independent as a set of pro-Axis warlord states, while Japan achieved a similar result when Xinjiang became a satellite of the Japanese empire. Tibet likewise broke out of Chinese influence and became a neutral buffer state.

 

[stodge]

Comment...

Ok, it's closely-written and well-argued. There are elements from the Quarrie book "Hitler - the Victory that Nearly Was" as well as some vaguely Orwellian overtones about the emergence of a Nazi Eurasia and is the NEO Eastasia by another name ? It's not quite "The Man in the High Castle" though there are elements of that too.

The TL seems to stand on no US involvement by putting off Pearl Harbor as well as Spain joining the Axis in the summer of 1940. The latter and a rather incredibly successful Mediterranean strategy in 1940 forces the British more or less out of Mare Nostrum as the Italians would view it.

The Royal Navy seems more ineffective than I would imagine as does the RAF though I note you don't go down the route of a more developed German rocket force in 1942-43.

I'm not enough of an expert to have significant issues with this but the whole thing strikes me as just too favourable to the Axis. In any conflict, both sides make mistakes - it's usually the one that makes the fewer or the less significant that prevails.

 

[Eurofed]

Ok, it's closely-written and well-argued. There are elements from the Quarrie book "Hitler - the Victory that Nearly Was" as well as some vaguely Orwellian overtones about the emergence of a Nazi Eurasia and is the NEO Eastasia by another name ?

There are Orwellian overtones but the NEO (New European Order) is Nazifascist Eurasia while the Yamato GEACPS (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere) is the EastAsia equivalent. However, this is clearly a case of convergent evolution between the Axis OTL geopolitical plans (given the slant of an ATL stronger Italy) and Orwell's ideas (I dunno if and how much Orwell was aware and inspired by the OTL Axis plans to partition Eurasia when he devised his tripartite world).

It's not quite "The Man in the High Castle" though there are elements of that too.

An Axis successful conquest of America is far in hardcore ASB territory and this is where I firmly meant to keep it.

The TL seems to stand on no US involvement by putting off Pearl Harbor as well as Spain joining the Axis in the summer of 1940. The latter and a rather incredibly successful Mediterranean strategy in 1940 forces the British more or less out of Mare Nostrum as the Italians would view it.

You did not pay enough attention to the PoD. The main reason that the Mediterranean strategy succeeds and the Euro-Axis wins is the discovery of Libyan oilfields in the late 1920s. This A) makes Italy rather stronger economically and militarly than OTL B) gives Italy and indirectly Germany the means and motivation to mechanize their armies and build up their navies and air forces rather more than OTL C) leads to substantial improvement of infrastructures in southern Italy and Libya D) makes Hitler and Mussolini agree on the Med strategy from the start. All of this explains why the Germans and Italians are later able to kick British butt in the Med and in the Atlantic. Spain Axis belligerance is helpful but not essential in comparison.

The Japanese don't do Pearl Harbor, since the discovery of the Manchurian oilfields makes them stronger, less eager to conquer the DEI oilfields, and more so to kick Soviet butt. When the time comes to invade South East Asia, they feel strong enough to do it (Britain and the USSR are close to death) while leaving America alone.

The Royal Navy seems more ineffective than I would imagine as does the RAF

They face stronger German and Italian counterparts than OTL, and there is no Battle of Britain. You may notice that Sealion is never treated as a realistic option, and the RAF keeps rough air parity over the Home Isles up to the bitter end. OTOH, they definitely lose the Battle of the Atlantic to a stronger Axis team-up, with no American help, and that dooms them.

I'm not enough of an expert to have significant issues with this but the whole thing strikes me as just too favourable to the Axis. In any conflict, both sides make mistakes - it's usually the one that makes the fewer or the less significant that prevails.

Much like Allied OTL relatively minor mistakes are frequently downplayed or glossed over because they won, so TTL Axis relatively minor mistakes lack coverage since they didn't matter in the end.

 

[I Blame Communism]

*hums the finale from Les Mis*

*under breath* For the wret-ched of the Earth, there isa flame that neh-ver dies; even the dark-est night will end and the sun will riiiiiise! Pom-pompaaaawm...

Ahem.

My views (oil is not magical fairy juice and does not solve institutional problems; "licenses" don't retool factories; the appeasement policy was contingent on many factors including the belief that mussolini was acting as a brake on Hitler and would respond to a German takeover of Italian military capacity; Mussolini wouldn't surrender power and adopt such a reckless policy in any case; the is no reason for the BoB not to happen; building a surface navy is a huge and risky investment; Britain was already outproducing Germany in planes by 1940; and many more!) have been broadcast often enough, and I know this isn't the thread for wrangling about them. It's an intellectual exercise. All I'll say is that it would have been more courteous, and just as plausible, to have the old country go out in a blaze of glory. Submarine warfare, after all, was never actually an existential threat as it had been during WW1; and if you have seemingly unlimited airpower and can somehow send naval patrols to the Indian Ocean, why not just build some decent landing craft and go for it? It saves the business of explaining how a pro-war majority in parliament launches a "revolution".

I will say this, though: I notice that this all draws from the same source. Does it all perhaps reflect the bias of a particular ATL historian? That would explain a lot, like his misrepresentation of the appeasement policy (the public was generally more belligerant than the government after 1938) and his anti-communism (there is nothing the Nazis could "reveal" about the USSR that had not been plastered across the headlines of the right-wing press throughout the previous 2 decades in the company of outright slanders).

There are Orwellian overtones but the NEO (New European Order) is Nazifascist Eurasia while the Yamato GEACPS (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere) is the EastAsia equivalent. However, this is clearly a case of convergent evolution between the Axis OTL geopolitical plans (given the slant of an ATL stronger Italy) and Orwell's ideas (I dunno if and how much Orwell was aware and inspired by the OTL Axis plans to partition Eurasia when he devised his tripartite world).

Orwell drew some of his ideas from the doom-saying, power-worshipping pamphlets that were pissing him off in the mid-war period. You can definitely smell hints of 1984 in his discussion of a pamphlet called "The Managerial Revolution". Eurasia in his book is presumably derived from the Soviet Union, but one of the things he criticised about TMR and its ilk was that they forecast Nazi world power until Kursk, then Stalinist world power, then American world power, because their allegiance lay with the biggest bully. Since the book is an exploration of a world where all values except power-worship are gone, who the 3 powers actually are doesn't matter.

 

[loughery111]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the Libyan fields are too deep to reach in the 1940's and that there was no reason to explore Daqing because the geography was regarded as being unsuitable for containing oil... or I could be completely wrong, I don't remember enough about it.

 

[Eurofed]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the Libyan fields are too deep to reach in the 1940's and that there was no reason to explore Daqing because the geography was regarded as being unsuitable for containing oil... or I could be completely wrong, I don't remember enough about it.

For what I know, the Libyan oilfields were reachable with 1930s American technology and both the Daqing and Libyan oilfields were not discovered because of faulty geological theories. The PoD may easily be the early development of an improved geological theory.

 

[Eurofed]

*hums the finale from Les Mis*

*under breath* For the wret-ched of the Earth, there isa flame that neh-ver dies; even the dark-est night will end and the sun will riiiiiise! Pom-pompaaaawm...

Well nobody said, or even implied, that in the very long term the Axis bloc is going to fare that much better than the Soviet bloc, although for many of its victims would be too late and the demographics of Eurasia would be irrevocably changed by the time a plausible decay and fall would set in.

My views (oil is not magical fairy juice and does not solve institutional problems;

No, but it may easily justify greater industrialization and greater development of mechanized armies, navies, and air forces, and even prompt tactical changes that go with them.

"licenses" don't retool factories;

In the end, they do.

the appeasement policy was contingent on many factors including the belief that mussolini was acting as a brake on Hitler and would respond to a German takeover of Italian military capacity;

Apparently, a mistaken OTL belief which may happen ITTL as well.

Mussolini wouldn't surrender power and adopt such a reckless policy in any case;

ITTL Benny acts from a rather stronger economic and military standing and Italian oil and greater strength makes Adolf more eager to court and appease Benny since the 1930s. This makes the German-Italian partnership be established slightly earlier than OTL, with greater sharing of strategic plans and diplomatic moves between Germany and Italy. Benny was quite the opportunist and it is plausible that he reacts to Hitler's courtship and the unique opportunity to build the Italian empire with the help of a strong ally by agreeing to Axis strategic coordination.

the is no reason for the BoB not to happen;

Libyan oil and German-Italian strategic cooperation makes the Med strategy looks preferable to the BoB, much like the Daqing oilfields make Strike North look preferable to Strike South for Japan.

building a surface navy is a huge and risky investment;

It's not like even IOTL the KM and RM didn't exist and had to be built from scratch during the war, they just get an extra boost that starts to build up before the war.

Britain was already outproducing Germany in planes by 1940;

But Germany can also rely on a decade of extra oil-driven industrialization in Italy.

and many more!) have been broadcast often enough, and I know this isn't the thread for wrangling about them. It's an intellectual exercise. All I'll say is that it would have been more courteous, and just as plausible, to have the old country go out in a blaze of glory.

I felt the TL was courteous enough to delay the collapse of British morale till the moment they are nearing economic collapse and starvation from a lost Battle of the Atlantic, despite two years and half of unrelenting defeats on the other fronts with a neutral America and a collapsing Russia. We may nitpick where the most likely breaking point would lay, give or take a season or two, but given TTL strategic situation, I think it is absolutely plausible one has to exist that in many cases would occur before American hesitation ends in the lack of PH. OTOH, I absolutely despise the "nevah surrendah" clichè, if Britain falls we just set up shop in Canada, and I'm not ever going to give it ATL credence in anything I write. I felt that a decisive defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic, with US neutrality, was both more plausible and less clichè than a successful Sealion. Also I felt I was giving Britain a better deal with Finlandization than with making them an occupied province (and I wanted to give the TL an Ameriwank trademark slant of mine with the US-Commonwealth union).

Submarine warfare, after all, was never actually an existential threat as it had been during WW1; and if you have seemingly unlimited airpower and can somehow send naval patrols to the Indian Ocean, why not just build some decent landing craft and go for it?

I beg to disgree about submarine warfare given TTL circumstances. It is quite likely that if Britain had not fallen by the time the Soviet Union croaks, Hitler and Mussolini would have started building landing crafts. But the blockade works faster and with less effort, and victories in the Med and Atlantic made them confident of naval strategy.

It saves the business of explaining how a pro-war majority in parliament launches a "revolution".

Sigh. Despite nationalist clichè, I remain confident that the British democracy is exposed as any other to wartime morale collapse in the face of economic collapse and a seemingly hopeless military situation. There are limits to how much fatalistic determination may last.

I will say this, though: I notice that this all draws from the same source. Does it all perhaps reflect the bias of a particular ATL historian? That would explain a lot, like his misrepresentation of the appeasement policy (the public was generally more belligerant than the government after 1938) and his anti-communism (there is nothing the Nazis could "reveal" about the USSR that had not been plastered across the headlines of the right-wing press throughout the previous 2 decades in the company of outright slanders).

As a matter of fact, the TL is loosely written from the perspective of a 60s CFN *Cold War historian. He is driven to paint the US-Commonwealth union in a positive light as the part of Anglosphere that has successfully stood up to the Nazifascist onslaught ever since the end of the war, albeit tinged with much shameful regret about US wartime neutrality, while Britain is the part that pathetically failed and was shackled, and hence gets a negative depiction. Communism, owing to its ATL utter military failure, is seen as the "murderous despots that failed" and given much contempt, with the right-wing opinion of it becoming the consensus, while the Nazifascists are the "murderous despots the succeeded", and allowed much hateful respect.

 

[Purity of Violence]

What a wank

Two questions:

How much did your replica SS uniform cost?

How do you get the cum stains out?

 

[Eurofed]

Two questions:

How much did your replica SS uniform cost?

How do you get the cum stains out?

I dunno, my tastes for kinky sexual Roleplaying have never extended into "Night Porter" territory.

 

[I Blame Communism]

Well nobody said, or even implied, that in the very long term the Axis bloc is going to fare that much better than the Soviet bloc, although for many of its victims would be too late and the demographics of Eurasia would be irrevocably changed by the time a plausible decay and fall would set in.

Of course, the ex-USSR has on average basically become no safer or free-er since 1991; but still, I retain my faith in the ultimate victory of humanity, in spite of the horrific consequences of Axis success. Unless they can actually conquer the world, these totalitarian systems are doomed to fail. Their dream of slave-empires must perish while armed demcracies still exist. The results of that death will almost certainly be even more bloodshed. But I was clarifying my view - one I think we agree on - that there is no plausible way for the victorious Axis to enjoy long-term stability.

Also, the Les Mis score contains most of the socialist anthems worth humming ever produced by the English-speaking peoples, so I never miss a chance to slip it in.

Wrangling

I said I wasn't going to clutter up your thread by wrangling. We're not going to agree on these points. I have no objection to debate for the sake of it, but not when it gets in the way of everybody else's reading.

I felt the TL was courteous enough to delay the collapse of British morale till the moment they are nearing economic collapse and starvation from a lost Battle of the Atlantic, despite two years and half of unrelenting defeats on the other fronts.

As I say, the idea that starvation conditions in the country are plausible is just bogus. That's one thing I'm going to hold to my guns on: in WW1, the whole merchant marine and some of the Admiralty were pretty much wilfully blind to the benefits of the convoy system, rationing was introduced too slowly, and the submarine was an unprecented weapon against which few effective counter-measures existed.

In WW2, we had convoys, rationing, and extensive anti-submarine efforts from the word go. Our food stocks never went as low as they had during WW1 - and we hadn't starved during that war.

And it's not like our country is 100% covered by Dark Satanic Mills, either. We actually have, you know, farms, and a diet of bread, cheese, and herring is all we had before the industrial revolution.

As a matter of fact, rationing meant that people in the east of London ate better than they had before the war. Hurrah for socialism!

Starvation just ain't plausible.

OTOH, I absolutely despise the "nevah surrendah" clichè, if Britain falls we just set up shop in Canada, and I'm not ever going to give it ATL credence in anything I write.

You've never produced any evidence against the view, which is supported by every action of the government (preparations were made for all the necessary evacuations, and the embassy in Washington discussed the arrangements for a government-in-exile with the White House). That's not to say that the Canadians would have carried on some kind of quixotic struggle rather than taking in the refugees and moving under the American umbrella: the point is that we were willing to carry on to the point of evacuating the island. We'd certainly be willing to carry on to the point of losing Gibraltar.

What do you have to hold up against that? Comments made in parliament? The usual parliamentary criticism of Churchill was that he wasn't fighting the war efficiently enough. Pacifist publications receiving any credibility at all? We banned printing of the word "fuck" at the time, but nobody interfered with Peace News.

"Clichè" is a word you're using to avoid addressing the historical facts.

I felt that a decisive defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic, with US neutrality, was both more plausible and less clichè than a successful Sealion.

As I say, the idea that Germany can somehow out-attrit the RAF (untrue IOTL) and create decently-sized surface squadrons already changes the basic dynamics of defending the country. It's more likely than starvation conditions by a long way.

Also I felt I was giving Britain a better deal with Finlandization than with making them an occupied province (and I wanted to give the TL an Ameriwank trademark slant of mine with the US-Commonwealth union).

We have differant definitions of a "better deal". If I may quote Orwell at length, on the possibilities of military defeat:

But, terrible as it would be for anyone who is now adult, it would be far less deadly than the ‘compromise peace’ which a few rich men and their hired liars are hoping for. The final ruin of England could only be accomplished by an English government acting under orders from Berlin. But that cannot happen if England has awakened beforehand. For in that case the defeat would be unmistakable, the struggle would continue, theideawould survive... We may see German troops marching down Whitehall, but another process, ultimately deadly to the German power-dream, will have been started.

I beg to disgree about submarine warfare given TTL circumstances. It is quite likely that if Britain had not fallen by the time the Soviet Union croaks, Hitler and Mussolini would have started building landing crafts. But the blockade works faster and with less effort, and victories in the Med and Atlantic made them confident of naval strategy.

It is certainly more effort to bash one's head against a brick wall that to walk around it, however thorny and risky the path around may be, and the idea of starving Britain into submission is frankly a brick wall. We weren't even rationing bread and tatties during the war. They were rationed in the latter 40s by the Labour government, and meat rationing was ended in 1954. Even if the Germans could actually decrease the rate of food supply seriously - dubious, what with the constant improvement in our destroyer weapons and tactics (Hedgehog increased the kill rate from 7% to 25%) and the rate at which Liberty ships could be launched - that would result not in starvation, but in people eating as badly in 1942 as they did in 1947.

Sigh. Despite nationalist clichè, I remain confident that the British democracy remains exposed as any other to morale collapse in the face of economic collapse and a seemingly hopeless military situation. There are limits to how much fatalistic determination may last.

You don't seem to get how parliament works, though. The ammendment to the Septenniel Act meant that there would be no general election until the conclusion of the war, and the majority in parliament were in favour of continuing the war. The only way to get a peace through would be to wait for more than half of MPs to resign or physically die, or to present a peace-deal that more than half of MPs would find acceptable.

Your treaty is unconditional surrender. That's what it ammounts to in practice: the end of our independence in foreign-policy making and the operation of our economy (and, on a side-note, a change in the laws of monarchical suggestion). Yours is a victors peace, so if you want to oppose it, you had better win a conclusive victory.

The idea of "food riots" from a people who's worst-off were eating better than they had in peacetime is hilarious. I know the Axis radio reported a lot of improbable prices for basic items in Britain, but have you glanced at any other sources?

As a matter of fact, the TL is loosely written from the perspective of a 60s CFN *Cold War historian. He is driven to paint the US-Commonwealth union in a positive light as the part of Anglosphere that has successfully stood up to the Nazifascist onslaught ever since the end of the war, albeit tinged with much shameful regret about US wartime neutrality, while Britain is the part that pathetically failed and was shackled, and hence gets a negative depiction.

Yes, indeed, a "good deal" for Dear Old Blighty.

Communism, owing to its ATL utter military failure, is seen as the "murderous despots that failed" and given much contempt, with the right-wing opinion of it becoming the consensus, while the Nazifascists are the "murderous despots the succeeded", and allowed much hateful respect.

That seems to me a consensus that reflects your views rather a lot. The left-wing was full of Stalin-fanciers in most democratic countries during the 1930s - and a left-winger who isn't a Stalin-fancier is someone like George Orwell, who actually understands the difference between the Nazis and the Soviets. If the Nazis, the Great Enemy, are constantly going on about how terrible and wicked the Soviets were whilst themselves being ten-to-the-twelve times worse, won't a comination of human sympathy and the non-existence of an actual communist country mean that more Americans hold to the sympathetic view of martyred Russia that prevailed during the war?

 

[Shogo]

I'm somewhat inclined to believe a victorious Axis could last a good while . . . But rather than offer up any criticism I guess I'll just go with what gave me a chuckle.

That US-Commonwealth thing. Pretty early in I had a sneaking suspicion I'd see that come into existence.

I've always wondered . . . Is there any particular reason you're so fond of fusing the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand?

------------

And what the hell, Purity? Not cool. Not cool at all.

Personally, if you're going into a sticky situation you need to go in Gestapo style. Those coats? Made of sex. Perfect for anything involving . . . fluids.

Damn Nazis. Tainting those awesome uniforms with evil.

 

[I Blame Communism]

Look, SS uniforms are objectively pretty awesome, but the Nazis don't have any kind of monopoly. Personally, I regard the pre-WW1 French as having the sexiest uniforms by far. And wheres I'm sure you're all expecting me to come in with some words on behalf of the Soviets... nah. The NKVD, though they may have adopted the black leather greatcoat look first, were frankly the Gestapo with less pizzaz - and the whole tight red leather deal the Cheka had going on during the Civil War was somewhat, ah, excessive.

As a matter of fact, I have it on female authority that the British officer's uniform is the sexiest. It's the tie.

I've always wondered . . . Is there any particular reason you're so fond of fusing the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand?

He likes the minimal possible number of states, so naturally he's in love with the "Imperial Federation" or "Greater Britain", the really rather implausible idea of a state for all the English-speaking peoples that would give Churchill a delighted heart-attack.

However, despite his affinity for this trope of our jingoes, he admits a peculiar prejudice against the island of Great Britain. As for Ireland, god knows. It's probably because the Irish notoriously don't like being ruled by foreigners no matter what you do.

 

[T3h_shammy]

I enjoy how the Germans have the supplies to overrun the Middle East all the while setting Barbossa off earlier then normal. Sweet stuff there

 

[Shogo]

Oh, I know there's no monopoly but even asking for a PART of a uniform, not the whole thing, can lead to people throwing bitch fits.

I just want the damn trench coat! I don't want armbands or insignias! It's a coat! It is awesome! Wanting it doesn't make me a Nazi!

----------

I don't actually mind the creation of super states, I personally just prefer that North America becomes one nation while Australia and New Zealand becomes a second nation.

My entire reason really just being "Australia and New Zealand are too far away."

Let North America consume South America before they worry about overseas absorbtion.

 

[I Blame Communism]

To expand on what I said about the Atlantic: Enigma isn't everything, and in the timeframe Eurofed is talking about there was no critical threat to shipping. The times when things looked really bad were the first happy time and the period just before Black May, and the second isn't even going to happen if the war ends in 1942. The first happy time was the first time the German submarine threat was actually taken seriously - before the Fall of France, the force has been very small and limited in range. During that time, we were basically inventing ASW as we went: there had been next to no training or research before the war. Depth-charges dropped over the back, ASDIC wasn't properly understood, tactical training was inadequate, the best RAF Coastal could do was machine-gun where they thought a submarine was, there was no way to detect a surfaced boat in the dark, hardly any defence against air attack, and there weren't enough escorts. Why do you think we were keen to accept 50 American hulls with no ASDIC that needed refit? The biggest problem the Germans had was finding us.

Once command moved up to Liverpool and Stephenson started cracking heads on Mull, once we started putting the Flower class at sea and tag-teaming with the Canadians, once RADAR came in, and once RAF Coastal came under Admiralty command, the duckshoot ceased. Enigma certainly helped evade the Germans, but the issue at the time was not one of attacking the submarines, it was of keeping the merchantmen afloat. And as I say, we were capable of eating less than we were in 1942. And being defeated in every theatre reduces our supply needs to a minimum, too. What the Germans were threatening to do before Black May was to sink tonnage so fast that we couldn't keep up offensive war against the Axis. Preventing a nation which can grow a considerable part of its own food from starving is another matter.

 

[Dunois]

Frankly the idea that discovering oil in Libya is suddenly going to solve all of Italy problems is laughable. Have you ever heard of the Dutch disease Eurofed?
Plenty of countries all over the world have massive oil ressources but that does not make them instant great powers with a strong industrial base as you seem to think. Corruption in fascist Italy was widespread and could actually even increase even further if suddenly oil money becomes available. This won't be of any help when in increasing Italy's industrial base and neither will the facists economic policies for that matter.

I am also rather puzzled at the idea that Vichy France is suddenly going turn its back on its forming allies and join the Axis with its fleet and other assets. Moreover the situation being different the destruction of the French fleet in Oran could easily be avoided as it could have in reality.

All in all a predictable TL on the line of Germany and Italy and hammers the nasty French and British hard like yours tend to be.