The Soft Underbelly - a Gallipoli TL

Watching this thread with interest.

I have got to wonder though, will the United States and/or the United Kingdom continue their nuclear weapons programs. Depending on how much a grudge the United States has against Germany, I wonder if they would have an impetus to develop rockets as a delivery system.
 
Final update.


Chapter XI: The Cold War, 1945-2016.

In the Berlin peace negotiations, Germany got Alsace-Lorraine back and gained Briey-Longwy from France as well, giving it one of the largest steel producing regions in Western Europe and dealing a blow to the French economy. Belgium was partitioned with the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders going to the Netherlands and the coal and steel producing (albeit Francophone) region of Wallonia to Germany. Germany also carved out a colonial empire out of the former Belgian Congo, the French Congo, Gabon and Ubangi-Shari, realizing its Mittelafrika ambitions. Italy gained Savoy, Nice, Corsica, Tunisia and Djibouti from France and saw its gains at the expense of Greece confirmed. Russia annexed Constantinople, the Bosporus and the northern half of Afghanistan predominantly inhabited by Turkmens, Tadkjiks, Haraza and Aimak (leaving the Pashtun south a small independent country wedged in between the Russian Empire and India). Iran moved its eastern frontier to Herat and the nationalization of its oil stuck, but in return they had to tolerate the establishment of a Russian naval base on the Persian Gulf. Japan got to annex Annam, Laos, Cochinchina, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.

Great Britain was spent after fighting another global war in only two decades time and slowly saw its Empire fall apart, starting with India becoming a full dominion as promised. The new Labour-Liberal coalition government that emerged from the first post-war elections didn’t really care about the Empire as much as rebuilding the country and quickly forgetting the atomic bombings. France also no longer had the resources to maintain its empire, certainly not with the crippling blow to their economy of losing their main steel and coal producing regions. Apart from Algeria they didn’t bother and didn’t have any colonies left by 1960. The British and French drifted into the sphere of influence of the American giant that had been awoken by the war, a giant that was faced by the tremendous continent spanning “Imperial Alliance,” which now had a weapon of mass destruction that the USA didn’t yet.

The world seemed to be settling in for a Cold War between the two blocs, but that was only true the first few years. The truth was that the interests of Germany, Russia and Japan were very divergent and their victory over their shared enemies had taken away the only thing they had had in common. It started when Germany wouldn’t share knowledge on its atomic bomb program with the Russians, who had started their own immediately after the war under Igor Kurchatov. The Italians also weren’t too happy with the Russians projecting influence into the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Constantinople, now known as Tsargrad. The equally worried Greeks reconciled with Italy because of this to keep the Russians contained, allowing an increased Italian naval presence in the Aegean Sea. The Germans began prioritizing their relations with Italy over those with Russia, where a military junta continued Kolchak’s policies under General Zhukov (Kolchak died in 1950).

In 1950, Tsar Nicholas III turned 18 and began his personal rule. Shortly thereafter his tired, old and depressed grandfather and former regent Grand Duke Nicholas (the former Nicholas II) died, aged 82, and was buried alongside his wife, who had died in 1947, aged 75. They were outlived by their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, who lived into the late 1970s and early 1980s and had children that married into various European royal houses. Among them was Maria’s son Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, born in 1924, who directly succeeded his grandfather Ferdinand I in 1948 (his father Crown Prince Boris had died in 1945). Another was Tatiana’s son with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, who succeeded his father in 1960 as Alexander II, aged 38. Today, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra still have seven living grandchildren, 45 living great-grandchildren, 108 great-grandchildren and 72 great-great-grandchildren for a total of 232 living descendants. One of them is the 84 year-old Tsar Nicholas III; with his 78 year reign he is one of the longest reigning monarchs in world history.

In 1946, he USA was the first to test an atomic bomb after Germany, followed by Russia in 1950, Great Britain in 1952 and Imperial Japan in 1954 (China followed later in 1962). It inspired Germany to expand its atomic bomb program and look into fusion weapons, producing a working hydrogen bomb that was tested in 1955, producing a 1.1 megaton blast. Beyond that, ballistic missiles were tested as delivery systems, giving the great powers unstoppable city destroying weapons to threaten with (besides that, they were used in the space race). For Germany, it nullified the numerical superiority of the Russian Army and the industrial might of the United States. Beyond their use as weapons, rocketry was also used in the space race, with Germany being the pioneer: they sent the first satellite into space, put the first man into space and launched the first manned moon mission. In the game of catch-up, the United States and Russia followed: the US just beat the Germans with the first manned mission to Mars in 1985.

Nuclear power and showing off in space, however, didn’t do a thing against unrest among Germany’s African subjects, who started to stir in the early 1960s, provoking a brutal German response. The insurgents in turn were supported primarily by the United States, revealing the future of conflicts between the great powers: to avoid nuclear destruction, the great powers would fight each other through proxy wars. Germany and Italy had decolonized by the 1970s, though they had installed white minority regimes in several of their former colonies, producing prolonged insurgencies well into the 1980s while the business interests of the former colonizers still made money.

The eventual fall of these neo-colonial regimes was considered a major victory by the United States, driving Germany and Italy to the defence in this Cold War. Part of it simply had to do with electoral success for parties that opposed further embroilment in former colonies’ business. Germany and Italy had evolved into democracies after 1918 and especially after 1945 with a burgeoning middle class and scores of veterans tired of war. Imperial Japan held onto its protectorates in East Asia, but was faced with popular discontent with the Zaibatsu and the military-industrial complex, leading to the Autumn Revolution of 1989, coinciding with the end of the Showa Era. The new Emperor of Japan was faced by a post-war generation that wouldn’t stand for militarism and authoritarianism anymore, but which still supported him and looked to him to initiate change.

In the meantime, Germany and Italy, after the loss of their empires in Africa, felt compelled to seek out Russia and Japan again. Russia and Japan had their own reasons to respond positively: WW II had allowed Imperial China to vastly expand its military, making it a power in its own right by 1945. Under the Xuantong Emperor’s reign, China’s population and economy continued to grow and in 1962 China tested its own atomic bomb. Under his son and successor, the Juexing Emperor, China became the world’s largest economy in 2015 and reached a population of 1.7 billion.

Germany had a population of 101 million, Russia 322 million and Japan 127 million, for a total of 550 million, so in any war they’d still be outnumbered 3:1, though the fact that it would probably be a nuclear war rendered that moot. Nonetheless, it brought about a resurgence of the Imperial Alliance. Given the rivalry between China and India after Indian independence, overtures were even made to India. A few decades earlier that would have been unimaginable given India’s opposition to colonial and neo-colonial regimes. By the early 2000s, the world had settled into a three way Cold War between the Anglo-American-French bloc, the renewed Imperial Alliance plus India and lastly China with its increasing informal empire in Southeast Asia. This equilibrium has given the Cold War a new dynamic for the 21st century.
 
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So I take it most of Eastern/ Central Europe remains under semi-fascist rule or has the racist (and religious part) part of Kolacks regime been sidelined?
 
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