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The POD: In between the end of the Polish campaign and the spring of 1941, Hitler dies. Tragic car/plane/boat/zeppelin accident, heart attack, slips in the shower, whatever. After the initial shock wears off, there's a nasty, but short, struggle for power between the various factions (Party bureaucrats, Himmler and his mega-lunatics, the Wehrmacht) that ends up with a military junta in power. They collectively realize that invading the USSR might not be a good idea, and by the time they consolidate power it's too late in the year to even think about it anyway. Gradually, as 1941 wears on, and the war with Britain continues, the idea becomes ever more preposterous - as does declaring war on the United States when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

The war with Britain sputters on a few more years, but the Germans manage to avoid giving America a casus belli. Eventually, despite Churchill's resistance, public opinion in Britain turns against the war. In 1944, Churchill is defeated in a snap election. The new Prime Minister signs a peace treaty with the Reich that fall. The treaty is much more moderate than the Nazi ideologues hoped for - at least in the West. The pre-war borders are reinstated, despite the outrage of many German nationalists (especially concerning Alsace and Lorraine). In the East, Poland is sold out and the fourth partition of Poland is recognize by the Western governments. German troops withdraw from France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway even as Allied forces begin the bloody assault on the Japanese home islands.

Not long thereafter, to appease Himmler and his still-powerful allies, the junta annexes the General Government and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. Greater Germany takes on its final form:



And... then what? What do you, the viewers at home, think?
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