China could indeed become Asian power player and probably strong rival of Japan if Qing regime just plays its cards correctly. I would expect Indochina becoming part of Japanese sphere.
The Russian Century - a TL
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
China could indeed become Asian power player and probably strong rival of Japan if Qing regime just plays its cards correctly. I would expect Indochina becoming part of Japanese sphere.
you don't really need to disbanded yugoslavia, maybe modified it with Bulgaria joining to counter balance serbia
Interestingly, from what I can see TTL's WWII isn't really a black and grey struggle, as much as it is a grey on gray conflict. A past chapter has pointed out that the Tsar is essentially a constitutional monarch who has to work with influence instead of ruling by decree. I don't imagine Germany being any different, given their loss in TTL's WWI, even if our old buddy Willy somehow managed to keep his throne. Likewise for Italy. Japan may be the odd man out, but not having won a lopsided victory ITTL's Russo-Japanese War may also butterfly any extremism on their part. If nothing else, the Japanese ITTL showed a degree of...self-awareness, OTL Showa Japan wouldn't have had when they decided to give up on expanding into China and Siberia in the face of a strong Russia (that, and they got a fair share of the continent during TTL's Partition of China).
In short, this AU WWII isn't a struggle of democracies plus a necessary evil/s against a bunch of undeniably evil nations. It's a struggle between two different groups of democracies for who gets to be the top dogs.
In short, this AU WWII isn't a struggle of democracies plus a necessary evil/s against a bunch of undeniably evil nations. It's a struggle between two different groups of democracies for who gets to be the top dogs.
This is indeed very different WW2 compared to OTL and most of AH WW2s. There is not clearly evil regimes and it wasn't begun due peaces of previous great war.
Just wondering will historians of TTL see WW2 being totally unavoidable since it was just something which went out of hands.
WWII here seems to be essentially WWI part 2 rather than a grand ideological clash. I wouldn't be surprised if the losers here turn to some form of the far left or far right.
Fascist USA? All too plausible, given things like American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and all that crap, plus a sense of constantly getting thwarted by Old World powers, first in China, and now in WWII.
the democrats overseeing us troops dying in the italian meatgrinder and then five cities getting nuked could absolutely see the gop turning ugly- think how bad mccarthyism was otl without any serious us military defeats to complain about; keep in mind that otl we don't really have a frame of reference for the us post becoming a great power losing a non-guerilla war
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The USA could go down a hasher path TTL with all that they've dealt with (nukes are no joke), maybe we can see a major increase of activity in Latin America? The USA could be completely isolationist with Europe by and large, but absolutely dominating North/Central/South America with economic deals and security agreements? Maybe see a Mexican-American War (with full annexation) to help bring up morale?
That would be the logical direction, considering how the USA has historically laid claim to the entire New World through the Manifest Destiny doctrine.
I'm calling it right now, we will see The United States of North America within a few decades. If we are lucky "The United States of the Americas". Fortress America, nothing gets in or out. Could we possibly see ideologies like Technocracy or Socialism become popular? I was thinking several nukes could can a weird Pan-Americanist ideology to rise up.
Let's not forget a healthy dose of ethnic cleansing, considering American history with regard to the Native Americans. A past chapter also mentions a pro-American reorientation in Canada after the war, so in addition to ethnic cleansing, we might see forced cultural assimilation, i.e. taking children from families and putting them in boarding schools to 'learn to be proper God-fearing and freedom-loving Americans...or else'.
I wonder if Civil Rights will happen like OTL? Maybe it happens with strict laws about assimilation/acceptance to the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture of the USA? We need a chapter on the domestic situation of the USA.
I'm not so sure. A lot of the momentum behind Civil Rights was from OTL WWII, what with so many black servicemen serving with distinction, plus the horrors of the Holocaust. We might see a reverse ITTL, that is, some morons might go "America lost because it dirtied its own military with niggers, spics, chinks, and kikes".
Disclaimer: I only used those words in an in-universe context, that of a WASP blaming the lost war on racial grounds, and that a purely white military could have smashed the Quadruple Alliance.
Mexico has a population of more than 23 million people in 1945, absorbing that overnight will not end well for anyone.
23 million is just a number and numbers can be reduced. A US absorption of Mexico won't be easy, but it can be done. There will be a low level insurgency, but I'm betting TTL USA will be willingly to use any means to pacify the newly conquered region.
I can't see civil rights movement being as succesful as in OTL. Without Holocaust there is not such discredit of racism. And since USA lost the war instead winning, sacrifices of Afro-Americans are pretty much ignored and in worst case some dixiecrats might argue that presence of blacks just worsened American capacity to fight and win Germany before it could had developed nuclear bomb.
And in this case, I kinda see the Civil Rights movement ended in a catastrophic failure, with a worst case scenario being that it's even set back compared to that same timeframe IOTL.
Chapter XIX: The Post-War Order, 1945-1947.
Update time! Before anyone asks: Russia's wins are covered in the next chapter 
After the United States had agreed to bow out of the war without any territorial concessions or war reparations, the entire Entente powers were at the tender mercies of the Quadruple Alliance. They could only plead for leniency and tried to play them apart: Britain did so by advising the Germans that they could be of great help against growing Russian power that had already eclipsed German power. Meanwhile, the French also predicted a Russo-German rivalry over influence in Central and Eastern Europe. At this time, however, what was to be gained from the losers would be enough to content the victors. There was enough to be had. In the Moscow Peace Conference held in the Kremlin, territorial changes were decided upon across Eurasia from the white cliffs of Dover to northern China and also in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
In Western Europe, Belgium was partitioned: the Dutch-speaking Flemish part was annexed by the Netherlands, giving them three major ports in total: next to Amsterdam and Rotterdam now also Antwerp. The francophone half Wallonia was annexed by Germany because of its significant coal reserves and steel industry. Belgium had ceased to exist after an existence of little over one hundred years.
France not only had to part with Alsace-Lorraine again after winning it back less than thirty years prior, but also had to cede the coal and steel producing Briey-Longwy region and that would reduce France to a medium economic power. France had to accept the loss of its great power status and that the best thing they could aspire to was to be some kind of junior partner role to Germany, competing for German favour with Italy. Italy clearly had the advantage and could annex Nice, Savoy and Corsica. France had to establish demilitarized zones 50 km deep on their borders with Germany and France and accept the establishment of German naval bases at Calais and Brest which Germany would lease for 99 years. Italy acquired a similar lease for a naval base at Toulon. France was not allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Great Britain didn’t lose any territory in the British Isles, but had to restrict the size of its navy to 50% of the Imperial German Navy’s tonnage and had to keep England south of the Thames River demilitarized. Entanglement in foreign alliances had led Britain to this, imperilling the British Empire and so the new government would adopt a foreign policy of Splendid Isolation to make sure that didn’t happen again. Britain would maintain a large standing army as the navy could no longer be counted on to hold off an amphibious invasion, an army specializing in guerrilla warfare as conventional war was no option against an enemy that could tactically use nuclear weapons. The government nationalized coal, oil, steel, shipping and heavy industry and created the welfare state, which included the National Health Service. This government was led by Clement Attlee, the leader of Labour which won the first UK general election in 1945 in a landslide whereas the Tories were decimated. Labour had an absolute majority in the House of Commons.
In the Balkans, significant territorial changes took place too. Hungary, being one of the victors, took the entirety of Transylvania and made sure to completely “Magyarize” it by expelling the entire Romanian population, which amounted to 3.7 million people. The violent way in which this forced displacement took place was tantamount to genocide, with hundreds of thousands dying from violence, deprivation and illness. The Turks who’d settled Eastern Rumelia after the Bulgarian Genocide and the Serb minority in Vardar Macedonia were in similar bad luck: the victorious Bulgarians annexed Eastern Rumelia and Vardar Macedonia, exacting revenge by enacting systematic ethnic cleansing.
The settling of scores in the Balkans did not end there. Bosnia-Herzegovina and the majority Croat portions of Yugoslavia were broken off and formed into the independent Kingdom of Croatia, an Italian satellite state. King Victor Emmanuel III’s first cousin once removed Prince Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta, became its king under the regnal name Tomislav II. Under Prime Minister Ante Pavelic, ethnic cleansing was carried out targeting the Serbian minority. The people of Serbia and Romania were left severely traumatized by the aftermath of the war. Greece, despite its neutrality, was forced to cede Western Thrace to Bulgaria.
The Ottoman Empire’s lingering influence in the Balkans had finally been removed and it was now subjected to partition. Russia annexed the Bosporus as well as Turkish Armenia and incorporated Anatolia’s Black Sea coast as well. This ensured a contiguous land link between Russia proper so that the Bosporus wasn’t an exclave that could be cut off from reinforcement by anyone with a superior navy. Constantinople was rechristened Tsargrad. Greece was rewarded with Smyrna and Cyprus to compensate the loss of Western Thrace. Italy established a naval base at Antalya, which became a de facto part of its sphere of influence. Greater Syria, defined as the territory between the Taurus Mountains and the Sinai, was awarded to Sharif Abdullah of Mecca who also took control in the Arab Peninsula. The Levant and the Arab Peninsula (minus Oman, Yemen and some Gulf states) formed a united Sunni Arab kingdom under the Hashemites. The Sharif of Mecca was proclaimed King Abdullah I of the Arabs and he assumed the title of Caliph, which the Ottoman Sultans had held for so long. Iran annexed the predominantly Shia Arab Baghdad and Basra vilayets; the Mosul vilayet became an independent Kurdish republic. What remained of the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish rump state in Anatolia with its capital in Ankara, where Sultan Ahmed IV ruled as a Russian puppet.
The African map was redrawn too. All of Germany’s lost colonies were returned: Cameroon, German Southwest Africa (Namibia) and Tanganyika. But given their nuclear monopoly, the Germans could take what they wanted and they did exactly that in their ambition to realize Mittelafrika: the name for an envisioned German geostrategic region in central and east Africa. French Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Gold Coast, Dahomey, Nigeria, Ubangi-Chari, Gabon, Middle Congo, Belgian Congo and Rhodesia were all taken and merged into German Central Africa. Germany also assumed control of the French protectorate over Morocco.
The policies that had made Togoland into a “model economy” were implemented everywhere to make the African subjects into “Black Germans”. Now, with a colonial empire rich in diamonds, gold, rare metals, critical minerals and oil the German colonial venture did turn a profit. Probably the greatest advance would be the construction of the “Kaiser Wilhelm Hydroelectric Works”, a series of four dams on the Inga Falls (a group of cataracts in the Congo River downstream of Livingstone Falls and Stanley Pool). These dams were envisioned by a German engineer who calculated in a 1945 study that with the Congo River’s flood rate a series of dams could generate nearly 40.000 megawatts, enough to electrify the entire African continent at the time with capacity to spare. Construction would begin in 1947 and take a decade.
Meanwhile, Italy wanted to connect Libya and Italian East Africa with a contiguous land link, establishing a large colonial empire in the northeast of Africa that controlled the strategically important Suez Canal and the Red Sea. The virtual British protectorate over Egypt was supplanted by an Italian one, which was formalized by an Italo-Egyptian treaty, with an Italian resident in Cairo wielding most power. This treaty also determined that the co-dominium that Britain and Egypt had over Sudan – which in practice ensured British control even though in theory London and Cairo shared sovereignty and administration – switched to Italy now. The small remaining British colonial presence consisted of Gambia (a sliver in northwest Africa), Kenya, Uganda, Bechuanaland and the dominion of South Africa.
In Asia, some colonial holdings switched control as well. Imperial Japan got back all the islands in the Pacific the US had conquered. It gained French Indochina, Burma, Malaysia as colonies whilst establishing a protectorate over Thailand. Playing Britain and France apart to maintain independence would no longer work in this situation. Thailand could not resist Japanese pressure now that it was surrounded by Japanese territory. Japan, having been bombed heavily, also received war reparations to fund its recovery and had high hopes of becoming the leading power in East Asia again. Somebody else, however, was going to grab that title.
Chapter XIX: The Post-War Order, 1945-1947.
After the United States had agreed to bow out of the war without any territorial concessions or war reparations, the entire Entente powers were at the tender mercies of the Quadruple Alliance. They could only plead for leniency and tried to play them apart: Britain did so by advising the Germans that they could be of great help against growing Russian power that had already eclipsed German power. Meanwhile, the French also predicted a Russo-German rivalry over influence in Central and Eastern Europe. At this time, however, what was to be gained from the losers would be enough to content the victors. There was enough to be had. In the Moscow Peace Conference held in the Kremlin, territorial changes were decided upon across Eurasia from the white cliffs of Dover to northern China and also in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
In Western Europe, Belgium was partitioned: the Dutch-speaking Flemish part was annexed by the Netherlands, giving them three major ports in total: next to Amsterdam and Rotterdam now also Antwerp. The francophone half Wallonia was annexed by Germany because of its significant coal reserves and steel industry. Belgium had ceased to exist after an existence of little over one hundred years.
France not only had to part with Alsace-Lorraine again after winning it back less than thirty years prior, but also had to cede the coal and steel producing Briey-Longwy region and that would reduce France to a medium economic power. France had to accept the loss of its great power status and that the best thing they could aspire to was to be some kind of junior partner role to Germany, competing for German favour with Italy. Italy clearly had the advantage and could annex Nice, Savoy and Corsica. France had to establish demilitarized zones 50 km deep on their borders with Germany and France and accept the establishment of German naval bases at Calais and Brest which Germany would lease for 99 years. Italy acquired a similar lease for a naval base at Toulon. France was not allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Great Britain didn’t lose any territory in the British Isles, but had to restrict the size of its navy to 50% of the Imperial German Navy’s tonnage and had to keep England south of the Thames River demilitarized. Entanglement in foreign alliances had led Britain to this, imperilling the British Empire and so the new government would adopt a foreign policy of Splendid Isolation to make sure that didn’t happen again. Britain would maintain a large standing army as the navy could no longer be counted on to hold off an amphibious invasion, an army specializing in guerrilla warfare as conventional war was no option against an enemy that could tactically use nuclear weapons. The government nationalized coal, oil, steel, shipping and heavy industry and created the welfare state, which included the National Health Service. This government was led by Clement Attlee, the leader of Labour which won the first UK general election in 1945 in a landslide whereas the Tories were decimated. Labour had an absolute majority in the House of Commons.
In the Balkans, significant territorial changes took place too. Hungary, being one of the victors, took the entirety of Transylvania and made sure to completely “Magyarize” it by expelling the entire Romanian population, which amounted to 3.7 million people. The violent way in which this forced displacement took place was tantamount to genocide, with hundreds of thousands dying from violence, deprivation and illness. The Turks who’d settled Eastern Rumelia after the Bulgarian Genocide and the Serb minority in Vardar Macedonia were in similar bad luck: the victorious Bulgarians annexed Eastern Rumelia and Vardar Macedonia, exacting revenge by enacting systematic ethnic cleansing.
The settling of scores in the Balkans did not end there. Bosnia-Herzegovina and the majority Croat portions of Yugoslavia were broken off and formed into the independent Kingdom of Croatia, an Italian satellite state. King Victor Emmanuel III’s first cousin once removed Prince Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta, became its king under the regnal name Tomislav II. Under Prime Minister Ante Pavelic, ethnic cleansing was carried out targeting the Serbian minority. The people of Serbia and Romania were left severely traumatized by the aftermath of the war. Greece, despite its neutrality, was forced to cede Western Thrace to Bulgaria.
The Ottoman Empire’s lingering influence in the Balkans had finally been removed and it was now subjected to partition. Russia annexed the Bosporus as well as Turkish Armenia and incorporated Anatolia’s Black Sea coast as well. This ensured a contiguous land link between Russia proper so that the Bosporus wasn’t an exclave that could be cut off from reinforcement by anyone with a superior navy. Constantinople was rechristened Tsargrad. Greece was rewarded with Smyrna and Cyprus to compensate the loss of Western Thrace. Italy established a naval base at Antalya, which became a de facto part of its sphere of influence. Greater Syria, defined as the territory between the Taurus Mountains and the Sinai, was awarded to Sharif Abdullah of Mecca who also took control in the Arab Peninsula. The Levant and the Arab Peninsula (minus Oman, Yemen and some Gulf states) formed a united Sunni Arab kingdom under the Hashemites. The Sharif of Mecca was proclaimed King Abdullah I of the Arabs and he assumed the title of Caliph, which the Ottoman Sultans had held for so long. Iran annexed the predominantly Shia Arab Baghdad and Basra vilayets; the Mosul vilayet became an independent Kurdish republic. What remained of the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish rump state in Anatolia with its capital in Ankara, where Sultan Ahmed IV ruled as a Russian puppet.
The African map was redrawn too. All of Germany’s lost colonies were returned: Cameroon, German Southwest Africa (Namibia) and Tanganyika. But given their nuclear monopoly, the Germans could take what they wanted and they did exactly that in their ambition to realize Mittelafrika: the name for an envisioned German geostrategic region in central and east Africa. French Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Gold Coast, Dahomey, Nigeria, Ubangi-Chari, Gabon, Middle Congo, Belgian Congo and Rhodesia were all taken and merged into German Central Africa. Germany also assumed control of the French protectorate over Morocco.
The policies that had made Togoland into a “model economy” were implemented everywhere to make the African subjects into “Black Germans”. Now, with a colonial empire rich in diamonds, gold, rare metals, critical minerals and oil the German colonial venture did turn a profit. Probably the greatest advance would be the construction of the “Kaiser Wilhelm Hydroelectric Works”, a series of four dams on the Inga Falls (a group of cataracts in the Congo River downstream of Livingstone Falls and Stanley Pool). These dams were envisioned by a German engineer who calculated in a 1945 study that with the Congo River’s flood rate a series of dams could generate nearly 40.000 megawatts, enough to electrify the entire African continent at the time with capacity to spare. Construction would begin in 1947 and take a decade.
Meanwhile, Italy wanted to connect Libya and Italian East Africa with a contiguous land link, establishing a large colonial empire in the northeast of Africa that controlled the strategically important Suez Canal and the Red Sea. The virtual British protectorate over Egypt was supplanted by an Italian one, which was formalized by an Italo-Egyptian treaty, with an Italian resident in Cairo wielding most power. This treaty also determined that the co-dominium that Britain and Egypt had over Sudan – which in practice ensured British control even though in theory London and Cairo shared sovereignty and administration – switched to Italy now. The small remaining British colonial presence consisted of Gambia (a sliver in northwest Africa), Kenya, Uganda, Bechuanaland and the dominion of South Africa.
In Asia, some colonial holdings switched control as well. Imperial Japan got back all the islands in the Pacific the US had conquered. It gained French Indochina, Burma, Malaysia as colonies whilst establishing a protectorate over Thailand. Playing Britain and France apart to maintain independence would no longer work in this situation. Thailand could not resist Japanese pressure now that it was surrounded by Japanese territory. Japan, having been bombed heavily, also received war reparations to fund its recovery and had high hopes of becoming the leading power in East Asia again. Somebody else, however, was going to grab that title.
Considering the lines here, I think a conflict between Germany and Japan will happen in the future, something that will give someone like France and Britain a chance to get back at the Germans and Italians, with the US also allying with them to further stomp out japanese influence in the East.
Nice chapter, the Russo-German Alliance is dominating Europe. While some have said the two won't fight each other, a great Cold War will existed between them. I wonder how long Japan's dominance over East Asia will last. Britain and France are going to have a rough time, their empires were greatly reduced and what they have left will leave when given the opportunity. Britain's "Splendid Isolation" seems to me a bandaid over the massive issues the country has to get through if the United Kingdom wants to stay united. Would like to see how the USA is doing after the war. Italy managed to survive and keep it's colonies, how involved will they be in global affairs? (I'd say go isolationist when it comes to geopolitics). Keep up the good work.
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