This is an essay instead of a proper Timeline, even if it has it's good chunk of text. The main thing with the current TL is, apart from it being unfnished (though pretty advanced, well into 1945) I feel my knowledge on the subject isn't good enough to write a properly detailed TL, hence why I created this thread. I want you to do a Plausibility Check of what I did write, add recommendations and suggestions, and also have fun reading what I did. I don't want to extend myself further, let's go with what I have as for now.
Introduction
WW2 can be considered more than a conventional war. It was a total war, one which not only involved countries or nations, but whole ideologies, a war of extermination. So it is surprising that despite the war's ideological component, not all fascist countries openly declared war to the Allies. Spain was the exception, ruled by Francisco Franco, a man that ruled the country with support of the falangist party which was a pseudo-fascist party, more similar to Mussolini's party rather than Hitler's one. Franco rose to power after a three year-long civil war which saw Spain being devastated, with massive starvation, no industry and a ruthless government in place. After that, Franco's neutrality was understandable, as Spain had no way to keep it's economy on a war footing and would depend heavily on German exports. Franco's position was awkward as he supported the Axis against the Soviet Union and the Allies against Japan while keeping a delicate balance between both sides in the Western Front. Franco was deeply anti-communist and even sent a volunteer legion to the Eastern Front called the "Blue Division", which against all odds defeated the Soviets multiple times despite being outnumbered and outgunnes, however, after Kursk, Franco re-considered his position and called back the Blue Division, not participating any further in the war.
Making Spain a viable Axis Power
In order to make Spain a viable Axis nation, we'd need a PoD during the civil war. However, removing it completely and having Franco seize power in the initial stages would butterfly WW2 (Germany would be weaker without weapon tests and Italy would be far stronger, maybe enough to see Hitler as an enemy and oppose the Anschluss). On April 20th 1938 Nationalist forces reached the Mediterranean south of the Ebro river cutting Catalonia from the rest of Spain. At the time Franco's advisors told him to push northwards and seize Catalonia, but he instead decided to push south for Valencia, giving the Republicans vital time to re-organise and launch an unsuccesful counter-offensive known as the Battle of the Ebro.
ITTL Franco attacks northwards and from the west. Republican forces were still disorganised from the previous attack and were unable to put enough resistance to stop a crossing of the Ebro in early May. The Republicans threw their reserves into the beach head, but with a disorganised army and lacking firepower (the Condor Legion assisted the nationalists providing them aerial coverage) the counter-attack failed and the Republican Northern Army disintegrated. The Republican government was at Catalonia at the time and left for France while Republican militias tried a last stand in Barcelona but they finally surrendered with few shots on June 3rd 1938. Catalonia had more than half of the Republican Industry at the time and it's fall caused a wave of defeatism through the Republican forces, with many purposing a truce while the far-left forces tried to hold as much as they could, hoping that WW2 would erupt and the Allies would rescue them. Secret negotiations happened between key Republican officials and Nationalist representatives happened. They led to no agreement, but they caused the break up of the Republican coalition and it collapsed in a civil war within a civil war in September 1938. On October 27th 1938 Franco entered Valencia and declared the war to be finished. From that moment to the time Spain sided with the Axis, Franco frantically tried to open Spain to foreign trade and get American enterprises help in rebuilding Spain (The US actually supported Franco). These, and the early fall of Catalonia result in a Spain slightly stronger than that of IOTL, with a big part of it's subsitance crisis solved and not so devastated.
Consequences of an early end of the Spanish Civil War
IOTL the Spanish Civil War affected World War II in a way that is mostly ignored by common people. It served as an essay for the war, with the first bombings of civilian population in the town of Guernika, it proved that armored thrusts could work against infantry and military experts took different lessons from it. The French saw the slow progress of the war as a sign that tanks were more a weapon of infantry support in short distance rather than the offensive, isolated approach the Germans took. The Soviets took the wrong lesson and disbanded their independent tank corps, restoring them in 1940, too late for Soviet tank formations to compete with the Germans.
In the economical field, the war completely ruined Italy, as it sent a lot of weapons to Spain without prior payment and once the war ended Italy barely received anything, except from thousands of casualties, a moral collapse (being defeated by guerrillas on open field) and a strong military pushback. Germany sent weapons more carefully and ensured a payment in the form of mineral resources such as Wolframium, which helped the Germans build the core of their ammunition and reinforce the armour of their tanks (aswell as later helping de-bug the Me-262). For the Soviets, the war was a huge boost, as the Republicans sent between 60 and 80% of the country's gold reserves (one of the top five of the world at the time) while sending loads of unadequate equipment that they didn't need. That gold later gave the Soviets enough hard-currency to pay for Lend-lease. The Poles also sent weapons to the Republicans at a grossly exaggerated prive and Mexico sent around 20.000 rifles (if I recall correctly).
In this Timeline, the Republicans already sent the gold to the Soviets, and the Point of Divergence was pushed as later as I could so the lead-up to WW2 doesn't butterfly away in an unpredictable way. The Italians are also bankrupt, though not as much. Let's suppose they use that "extra" currency into buying oil so their fleet doesn't end up stuck in harbour. The Germans do not have that much boost, but I consider that it's enough for the German Army to be competitive enough to be compared to the OTL German army of September 1939.
WW2: From Poland to France
Let's assume that the lead-up to the war is the same as IOTL and that Germany invades Poland on schedule on September 1st and Poland is completely defeated on October 6th with help from the Soviets. Germany invades Denmark and Norway in the same way and begins to prepare the invasion of France following the Manstein Plan. As the French Army and the BEF drive to Breda they are bypassed by the German panzers that reach the sea at Abbeville. At this time Spain and Italy begin to prepare their forces. Franco had begun preparations for an entrance in the war in March, while Mussolini thought Germany would take far more time to take down France and launched an uncoordinated attack on France when they were essentially defeated (losing, by the way). Franco decided to wait a bit and secure his position before entering the war. France surrenders on schedule on June 25th. Franco declares full mobilisation that same day and signs a series of treaties favorising Germany in secret as not to provoke the British into launching a pre-emptive attack.
The Spanish fleet of 1940 relied heavily on six cruisers, specially the heavy cruiser "Canarias" which was pretty on par with any British ships of such class. The air force was a mixed bag as well as the army, relying on German and Italian weapon exports as the Spanish industry was hurt, but during the civil war the Spamnish became pretty efficient at building weapons from scratch. The Spanish only had a few tanks of their own and lacked industry to build them. Such industry would be moved from Belgium and Northern France and sent to Spain in exchange for Spanish workers being sent to Germany to diminish their chronical shortage of manpower. The Spanish army had bad weapons but compensated it by being tough fighters with enough military experience and having some of the best army units of the world in the Army of Africa. Spain's geographical position greatly benefits the side in which Spain is fighting, controlling the entrance to the Mediterranean from the west and having harbours in Galicia and the Canary Islands that would greatly help either fleet in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Spain joins the Axis and the Battle of the Mediterranean
During the summer of 1940 and after the essential destruction of the British Army, Britain was extremely weak and vulnerable, having no proper armed forces to fight a great power like Germany and barely being on the level of the Spanish and the Italians during that time, until the Brits rebuilt their armed forces through autumn 1940. In this situation, Spain had to enter the war quickly or lose a great opportunity at hitting the British hard. During July German forces pour into Spain and take positions in Salamanca, Badajoz, Huelva and Malaga, preparing themselves to attack Gibraltar and/or Portugal should they enter the war. With German forces on the border, the Portuguese become much more amicable with the Axis and they are kind of forced to increase their exports to the Axis. On July 1940 the British created the "Force H", a fleet tasked with controlling the Mediterranean and being based on Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. Such fleet attacked the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir on July 3rd to avoid the fleet from falling into Axis hands, hurting relations between the Vichy government and the UK. The Spanish bid their time while preparing an attack on Gibraltar and begin sending reinforcements and supplies to the Canary Islands.
The attack finally materialises on July 17th. The Germans and the Spanish throw mines from planes to block the fleet on the harbour, and then proceed to drop a rain of bombs and artillery on the fortress. The ships are mostly destroyed or deliberately sunk on the harbour, greatly hurting James Sommerville's fleet and cutting the entrance to the Mediterranean, forcing his fleet to sail due east to Alexandria. After four days of constant boming, German forces launch the first attack after receiving weeks of training, followed by the Spanish Legion and regular troops. The battle for the city is a bloodbath that lasts for three days. The British retreat to the tunnels of Gibraltar, where they have supplies to resist for months, but they end up surrendering on July 30th under increasing pressure from the bombardment and the assaults. After 233 years the Spanish flag flies on Gibraltar once again.
The Battle of Gibraltar forces the Germans to center their efforts in the Mediterranean, at least temporarily as Hitler still considers the Mediterranean as a "secondary theater", wanting to fight the Soviets as soon as possible. The Spanish pressure the Germans to force Vichy France into ceding some territories to Spain. The French refused, but after some German arm-twisting they end up handing a piece of territory in northern Morocco to Spain, which also seized the Free City of Tangiers. The colony of Spanish Guinea can't be defended, and the mainland is invaded by the Free French in two days, with the island of Fernando Po being taken on August 18th after five days of fighting in the jungles and plantations of the island. In the Atlantic, the Spanish fleet launches a sortie haded by the "Canarias" which manages to capture 6 transport ships, including an oil cargo. After this initial success, the Spanish fleet would reclude itself in it's harbours, being unable to compete openly with the Royal Navy in the Atlantic. The ports of Ferrol, Cádiz and Santander are fortified in fear of a British attack. The Luftwaffe deploys a squadron in Galicia to defend the harbour, and the Regia Aeronautica also sends planes to Spain. German U-Boats are moved to Ferrol in order to have a forward base to hurt British naval traffic. With Gibraltar in Axis hands, the Italian fleet can leave the Mediterranean and add further pressure.
Meanwhile, Mussolini plans to launch an invasion of Yugoslavia around august, but ends up cancelling it. Meanwhile Hitler sends troops to Romania without warning Mussolini, which threatened his Balkan plans. Mussolini plans to launch a surprise attack on Greece, but eventually decides to attack Malta seeing the British weakness after the fall of Gibraltar. German planes and paratroopers are sent to Sicily through August, while the Italian navy gears up plans to invade the island. Operation Hercules is launched on September 21st. The battle for the island turns into yet another bloody mess, with paratroopers taking heavy casualties, and after 57 hours of fighting the British forces in Malta surrender. Now the only British base in the Mediterranean is Alexandria and to a lesser extent the port of Haifa in Palestine.
Spain is more of an economic burden to the Axis, not being fully independent in food and livestock, relying on scarce German imports. A war economy was placed from the first day of the war, unlike in Germany and Italy. Spain also drains scarce oil to feed it's armed forces and industries while aporting troops and minerals to the Axis. The further drain of fuel pushes Axis efforts towards the Middle East oilfields further.
North Africa and the Middle East
The Spanish Army of Africa is sent to Libya in hope of reinforcing the Italian position. During September Italian forces under Graziani advanced into Libya capturing Sidi Barrani on September 16th. During September and October no further progress was made except for the Spanish building defense positions and the Italians doing the same in late October. Hitler agreed to send a German expeditionary force under Erwin Rommel, called the "Deutsches Afrika Korps" or DAK in short. During November Rommen reorganised his forces and launched an offensive on December 5th, 4 days before Archibald Wavell's planned offensive, nicknamed Operation Compass. British forces were surprised by the sudden offensive and Rommel's aggresiveness, forcing a retreat to Mersa Matruh, which was captured by the Germans on December 12th. Wavell's forces were pushed due east into a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Qattara depression. Wavell reorganised his forces between El Daba and El Alamein, from where he launched a counter-offensive in late December. The offensive was a disaster as the Axis troops held out and Wavell exhausted his forces in the fighting. The British had few troops to spare and Wavell was sacked from command, being replaced by Claude Auchinleck on January 2nd, but by that time the British Army of North Africa had been defeated.
Axis forces reached Alexandria and the Nile on January 8th. Egypt switched sides and the British troops in the country were trapped in a confuse war fighting Egyptian soldiers, civilians and Axis troops. British forces surrender in Alexandria five days later after destroying the harbour and forcing most ships through the Suez Canal. German forces took Cairo and Mussolini decided to do a military parade on the city which turned out to be a complete disaster as the temperature was too high and Mussolini decided to start it at 3 PM. Despite this humilliation the Axis suceeded in clearing Egypt of British troops by late January and prepared to launch an attack across the Suez Canal. The British had too few time to fortify it when the Axis attacked on March 3rd. British forces fought fiercely over the canal but were eventually pushed back to the Sinai. German paratroopers had taken key mountain passes such as the Mitla pass, cutting off the southern half of the British army in the Sinai. German panzers pushed through the northern Sinai plain capturing Gaza on March 16th and opening the path to Palestine. Britain reinforced and fortified the port of Aqaba as it was the only available port in the area (Basra and Kuwait were too far away to be reliable) but was futile as the Germans pushed into Jordan, effectively isolating it.
Meanwhile, Mussolini finally invaded Greece in December, with enough time to effectively organise the attack (IOTL he attacked with half of the planned divisions, two miserable weeks of preparations and in the middle of the rain season). With the British naval power in the Mediterranean weakened the Italians were capable of launching succesful landings on the eastern coast of Greece. The British sent soldiers to Greece which was part of the reason the Axis were so succesful in North Africa. By the end of 1940 all of continental Greece was in Axis hands and Italian forces had a beachead in western Crete but didn't advance further. Crete eventually fell when the British retreated back to Cyprus in mid-February.
Back in the Middle East, Rommel captured Jerusalem on March 23rd. Palestine erupted into a multi-sided civil war between the Axis, the British, the Arabs and the Jews. The Germans supported the Arabs, which unofficially allied with the Germans. Things went worse for the British when a coup in Iraq took control of the country on April 23rd. British forces were closed into pockets scattered through the Middle East barely connected by weak airlines which started to dwindle as German planes obtained bases in Syria and Palestine. Sections of the SS were sent to Palestine in order to capture the Jews and send them to concentration camps or execute them should they try to surrender. The Jews would fight a guerrilla war for months before being finally crushed. German commanders secretely commented how brave and good fighters the Jews were and that they felt sad for fighting them. German forces reached Baghdad in early May and at the end of the month the Axis captured Kuwait, effecitvely closing the Middle Eastern front. The British pulled off a second Dunkirk in Aqaba which rescued 45.000 soldiers.
With the Middle East in German hands international politics shifter. Turkey was now almost surrounded by Axis troops and was further pressured to trade and permit German forces to cross Turkish territory. Iran felt the pressure too, as many would love to see the British expelled from the country and nationalise the oil wells of the nation. The British feared just that and invaded Iran from India and the sea in May after the Shah ordered the nationalisation of the Abadan oil wells. The invasion didn't go far as the Germans entered Iran and stopped the British from capturing Kerman, pushing them back to a line from Bandar Abbas to the Afghan border as German logistics impeded any further advance. Under those circumpstances Turkey finally joined the Axis on May 14th and launched an invasion of Cyprus, taking the last British territory in the Mediterranean.
The German campaign in the Middle East and the adherence of Turkey and Iran to the Axis frightened the Soviets, fearing that an attack would come from too many fronts for them to handle. The British Ultra warned the Soviets several times of a possible German invasion in late April which didn't materialise. The British issued two new dates for May and they both missed (more due to the weather not being adequate for a German attack than being false info). Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis on March after a coup, and the German Army was fully in place to launch Barbarossa in May.
In other terms, Britain finally manages to scramble an army large enough to attack the Canary Islands as a forward base for a further attack on Morocco. German, Italian and Spanish forces have spent more than half a year reinforcing the archipelago in case of an attack. Hitler agreed to send an elite division of mountain troops, as well as a component of Italian Alpini as the geography of the islands was highly mountainous. Britain sent a carrier group including two aircraft carriers and several cruisers, destroyers and battleships to serve as an screening force. With the Axis in local aerial superiority the British attack had to seize an airport or air base quickly or be forced to resort to their aircraft carrier, which would have problems to sustain a prolonged attack on the islands without risking losing those carriers.
The British launch an attack on the island of Gran Canaria in February 12th hoping to seize the Gando air field. The main harbour of the island and the air field have been fortified and the initial landings are stopped dead on their tracks on the beachs. During the next weeks the British force control of most of the coastline using their naval superiority but their control of the air quickly deteriorates after failing to seize the air base and receiving attacks from the other islands. The British try to neutralise them by landing in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After weeks of fightings the British have asserted control of the coasts but their forces are tired and reinforcements start to be a problem as German U-boats concentrate around British supply routes. Spanish guerrillas constantly raid and attack British positions from the hills of the island's hinterland. By late March the British position on the islands becomes unsustainable due to the casualties and constant attacks, and the British pull out of the Canaries after being defeated.
Barbarossa
Without the Balkan Campaign the German invasion comes earlier than IOTL, starting on May 28th (it couldn't be earlier without being stopped dead on their tracks due to the muddy roads). The attack has a slightly different approach than IOTL as the German tanks of Army Group Center are well in their positions at the start of the operation and not lagging behind. This results in the initial German plan of a pincer maneuver in the Ukraine happining instead of the later plan to push the Soviets to the Black Sea. This causes the advance of Army Group Center to be far smoother than IOTL. capturing Kiev a month earlier and without Hitler sending tanks from Army Group Center. Without this the advance on the center is not temporarily stopped and the Germans keep pushing. The Germans close Soviet pockets in Vyazma and Bryansk and destroy them in September. Operation Typhoon is launched on October 3rd, smashing Soviet troops between them and Moscow. The Wehrmacht captures Klin and Serpukhov on October 8th and push east to complete a siege around Moscow, reaching and crossing the Moscow-Volga Canal north of Dimitrov on October 14th aswell as crossing the Moskova to the south around the same date. The German pincer closes on the Kljazma river on October 22nd.
The Germans bomb Moscow and close the siege forcing the Red Army to retreat to the city limits. The Wehrmacht builds defensive positions to the east of Moscow and consolidate the territory through November. The Soviets launch their winter counter-offensive around the same date as IOTL, but without Moscow to serve as a transportation hub and rather serving the Germans the offensive meets limited success. Soviet forces reach a peak advance of 10 km to Moscow, but Hitler throws his reserves into the fray not wanting to lose Moscow. By March 1942 both forces are exhausted and with Moscow still under a German ring of fire.
With Turkey on the Axis and German forces on the Iranian-Soviet borders the attack is also launched in the Caucasus. Soviet forces resist better in the Caucasus than in Europe proper, but they are pushed back aswell. Batumi is seized on the second day on the offensive followed by Yerevan. Turkish and German forces reach Tbilisi and the Kura river in mid-June, and win a decisive victory in Shirvan, allowing them to cross the Aras and threaten Baku. The city falls in German hands on June 28th, but the Soviets set all oil and gas fields ablaze before retreating from the city. Those would take at least a year to restore, but the loss of Baku greatly hurts Soviet industrial cappabilities. The Soviets attempt drilling prospecions in the Volga basin with some success, but not enough to compensate the fall of Baku. Overall the front stops on the Caucasus mountains around October as the first snows block mountain passes. Scarce fighting also happens in the Transcaspian Front between Soviet and German-backed Iranian forces. The Soviets attempt to capture Masshad and fail, retreating back to their border and allowing the Axis to take fringes of Soviet territory.
Japan attacks Pearl Harbour on schedule on December 7th 1941. Hitler and Mussolini declare war to the United States, but Franco and Inonu (the leader of Turkey) do not. The US declares war to Spain and Turkey anyways on December 11th and 12th respectively. The Battle of the Atlantic takes a new turn with the American entry into the war. German submarines destroy loads of American fleets but the UK begins to receive American supplies and soldiers. The US wants to launch a cross-channel invasion into Northern France, but the British prefer a periferical strategy around Africa and the Mediterranean, something that the US interpretates as "fighting a war for British colonialist interests". Eventually the British point of view prevails as an invasion of France would be too risky to pull off in 1942.
The war enters a kind of stop from March 1942 to May 1942. During this time Stalin plans an offensive to attack Moscow while Hitler plans a southern offensive to seize Ciscaucasia and Stalingrad as well as securing the Donbass industries (German advance is several dozens of kilometers further than IOTL) aswell as putting an end to the siege of Leningrad. Stalin's late spring offensive IOTL happens in Moscow instead of the Donbass. It doesn't break the siege. Without any kind of supplies except for very rare aerial deliveries, Moscow is completely occupied in early June 1942. The capture and siege of Moscow almost broke the Soviet supply system, as most railroads and cities passed through Moscow before taking a secondary branch to where they were needed in a sort of radial system. So when Moscow fell the system essentially collapsed as material couldn't be distributed to certain sectors of the front. This lack of supplies hurt the Red Army hard.
After the Soviet attempt to take Moscow and wasting most of it's reserves in the offensive, the Axis launched an attack on the southern part of the front. The Germans launch a general offensive from the Donbass and the Caucasus in late July, conquering Stalingrad in a coup de main on August 12th as the Soviets couldn't rush defenders to the city. Hitler ordered the city to be renamed as "Hitlerstadt". Astrakhan was captured on the 26th and the Caspian Sea had been reached before September. Soviet troops trapped in the Ciscaucasus tried to hold on but they were crushed by early November. With this almost all Soviet oil wells were in Axis hands and the Soviets had lost over a million troops between wounded, dead and captured. Stalin blamed the defeat on his generals, executing both Zhukov and Timoshenko and starting a second purge of the army. Stalin still believed he could defeat the Nazis and continued in the war through 1942, albeit with a vastly diminished force and led by incompetents.
Allied Reorganisation
During 1942 the Allies didn't launch a serious attack on Axis held positions, but rather a series of minor attacks to distract troops and train their forces. The first of these was a second Anglo-American invasion of the Canary Islands in November 1942 (comparable to Torch landings IOTL). Axis forces refused to surrender under any term and fought a guerrilla warfare that caused headaches to local commanders. By January 1943 the Canaries had been cleaned of Spanish troops and were used as a forward base to Allied ships. The loss of the port of Santa Cruz diminished the danger of U-Boats as they lost their base in the mid-Atlantic. The British set up a Republican government out of exilees in Britain.
Another attack came from Africa. When Italian East Africa was totally conquered in 1941 the Axis had already crossed the Suez Canal and Italian troops started to march up the Nile. Aswan was captured on February 24th but the Italians had troubles going further from the first cataract of the Nile. This gave the British a roost and forces under William Gott to reinforce their positions so when the Italians attacked Sudan they were defeated and pushed back to Aswan, which was retaken by the British on March 1942. The British also had to spend time there to reinforce their army and send supplies (having to send them all the way around Africa really makes things slow). The British would follow up the attacks with a Nile campaign in between August and October which drove them to Cairo, but the city resisted the attacks.
A minor attack also happened in Iran which drove the British Indian Army to Bandar Abbas, re-opening the Hormus Strait. However India wasn't calm as in November 1942 the "Quit India" campaign reached it's peak in activity. British losses forced them to rely further on Indian manpower in the Middle East and Africa and many Indians didn't want to fight for the British. The Axis formed a small "Free Indian Division" and stated that they would recognise Indian independence and would not attack India should it secede from the British Empire (this despite of Hitler's deep admiration of the British Empire in India).
Gott launched a second attack on Cairo in late December 1942 which captured the city from it's Italian occupiers in January 7th. Gott continued pushing north until reaching the Mediterranean east of Alexandria on January 13th. Axis forces (almost all of them Italian) retreated east to the Suez canal and west to Alexandria, city which would be sieged from February 17th. Spain refused to send forces to help as they felt an Allied landing in Western Africa was nearing and he needed his forces there. Alexandria surrendered in late March and Axis troops mounted an spectacular defence in El Alamein in a mimic of the (failed) British defence of the area. The Second Battle of El Alamein lasted nine days and resulted into a stalemate. British offensives also continued in Iran, conquering most of the Persian Gulf coast and some lands in the Zagros by July 1943.
The Allies launched Operation Windward on June 24th 1943, landing at several points along the Moroccan and Saharan coast. Spanish legionary forces and the Army of Africa opposed these landings. Vichy forces initially averted combat and wait for a side to gain superiority for then to switch sides. Spanish forces were reinforced by a panzer division from mainland Spain. The Vichy commander ultimately decided to fight for the Axis seeing the Allied failure to break past the beacheads in northern Morocco, though some forces defected to the Allied side. By August 1943 the Allies had secured southern Morocco and started a push northwards, capturing Casablanca on September 13th.
Turning Point
Hitler knew 1943 would be the key year of the war at least in the East. He had to knock the Soviets out of the war or he would ultimately lose a two-front war to the Allies. In order to do so Hitler decided to put an end to Allied supplies to the Soviet Union. Those were mainly delived through the Arctic ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The latter was out of Axis reach, but the first was at a mere 60 km from the frontlines. Another major porblem for the Axis was that Leningrad was still holding. Hitlered ordered the city to be bombed to the ground on a daily basis and then launch an attack. The Germans took heavy casualties in the continued assaults but the city fell on May 2nd. With a "clear" path to the north, German forces assisted the Finns and broke the Soviet front in Karelia, capturing Kem and isolating 10 Soviet divisions in the Kola Peninsula. Allied ships managed to tranport 8 of those 10 divisions from Murmansk to Arkhangelsk before the city was captured.
The Soviets had lost much in the war, more than half of their pre-war population was either dead or controlled by the Axis, it's industries had been hurt and diminished, their oil reserves were gone, and confidence on an ultimate Soviet victory disappeared. Stalin kept building an army in the Urals, but Russian manpower was becoming scarce and the Soviets had to rely on Central Asian soldiers. The Germans attacked east from Moscow in early June 1943. Stalin had to send his reserves to slow down the German advance, throwing them into the fray before they were ready. The Soviets tried a fighting withdrawal and implemented a scorched earth policy. The Germans advanced three hundred kilometers into Russia, threatening the middle Volga by September.
At this point Stalin had enough. The Allies hadn't opened a second front and were barely active fighting the Axis in Africa. At this point he knew that even if Germany was ultimately defeated with the Soviets still in the war, the Soviet Union would be too hurt to compete with the Allies in a race to Berlin. Or worse, the war ending with Allied troops in pre-1939 Soviet territory. Stalin decided to bid his time. Through embassies in Sweden Soviet diplomats contacted their German counterparts and signed a truce on October 12th 1943. This was a shock to the Western Allies which interrupted Lend-Lease to the Soviets as they were not a active belligerant. Neither Hitler nor Stalin felt the truce was to last forever. Hitler expected to defeat or at least sign a peace deal with the Western Allies and then shift east to conquer the rump Soviet Union. Stalin hoped for the Axis and the Allies to blood themselves dry so the Soviets could pick the leftovers and maybe have a chance of resurging as a great power. No matter what, the end of the war in the East was crucial for the Germans, as they could now shift soldiers to Africa, the Middle East and Europe and, more importantly, shift war production giving priority to fighters, bombers and other aircraft so the Allies wouldn't achieve air supremacy.
Now the war enters a point where neither side can directly hurt the other much. One could arguably that by November 1943 on this TL WW2 has become a stalemate. I could really make the war go either way except for some events such as Japan being crushed anyways. So I decided to write two different scenarios leading to initially different consequences, let's call them "Axis Victory" and "Allied Victory".
Peace with Honour - "Axis Victory"
When the Soviets dropped out of the war the war entered a no-go point for the moment. The Allies could win, but the bloodbath would be too big and too risky. Unconditional surrender was considered the only way to go. With the Japanese it seems to be working, however the Nazis have enough resources to continue fighting for years. And worse, there is no way to ensure a landing to liberate Europe is to succeed. Hitler has always been open to a peace deal with the Allies, never being interested in a war with the western powers. Hitler begins sending peace proposals. Those fall on deaf ears and the war continues as a stalemate. German forces are sent to Africa to keep the Anglo-Americans at bay at El Alamein and Rabat respectively. By February 1944 the air war in Europe has reached a stalemate as Germany finally placed a war economy which could match US production, at least on the air field.
Hitler's peace signals continue. Eventually the Allies listen to them sometime around spring 1944. Hitler promises the Allies a restoration of the countries they occupied in Western Europe in change for a free hand in Eastern Europe. The British still refuse, but some in the US begin to question the war. The Germans defend themselves without launching attacks or offensives to convince the Allies that they really want to sign a peace treaty. (I really have no way for the Allies to accept something other than unconditional surrender, so let's just asume out of nothing that a defintive peace deal is signed in July 1944). The treaty states that Germany will leave the BeNeLux, France, Denmark and Norway and the pre-war governments were to be restored. Everything east of Italy and Germany is left to the Axis. Axis colonies except for Libya and the Rif are taken by the Allies which now include a Spanish Republic and a restored Ethiopia. The British leave Persia and the Axis leave the Sinai in return, allowing the British to de-facto control the Suez Canal. The rest of the Middle East is a mixed bag of puppetised Arab kingdoms.
Hitler still wants his Lebensraum, nothing west of the Urals is acceptable for him, and Stalin knows it. In April 1945 Germany attacks the rump Soviet Union. Stalin's year-and-a-half of training and producing war machinery proved mostly futile as the Soviet industry had to reconvert factories to supply what the Lend-Lease did for them. The Wehrmacht reaches the Upper Volga in June 1945, and after months of fighting over the river they manage to cross it. The Soviet government retreats from their temporary capital of Kyubyshev to Omsk as the Nazis capture the city. By October 1946 the Wehrmacht controls (at least in theory) everything west of the Urals. The war continues, but with the Germans not wanting to go past the Urals and with the Soviets uncapable of counter-attacking with their industrial heartland now under Axis air range. The war gradually dies down until one could arguably say it stops in 1951 after the death of Stalin.
In 1947 Germany implements Generalplan Ost fully, starting the largest ethnic cleansing in history. This frightens even their own allies, which fear what Hitler could do in the future. WW2 in Europe ended before the Germans could be nuked, but that vulnerability ended with the Valkyrie Test in a nuclear installation in Thuringia on February 18th 1952. Nuclear weapons spread through the world, with the Soviets testing it in 1954 and the UK in 1956. Hitler's health gradually deteriorates until he dies in 1948. Göring takes power of a weak government, at least until Himmler launches a failed coup d'état with this SS which sets Germany ablaze. The civil war lasts for three months, but that is enough to fatally wound the Reich. Göring ultimately won, but had to use support from army conservatives and non-Nazi elites. Being a toxycoman Göring gradually loses judging cappacity and the actual control of the state falls in the hands of some other member of the Nazi hierarchy.
The Reich can't compete with the Allies in economic or military terms past the civil war, but they still have nukes as a way of keeping them out. Insurgency never stopped in the occupied eastern territories and German settler demands prove too excessive as barely anybody moves there. This forces the Germans to put an end to their mass extermination as the few German settlers become landowner elites a-la CSA. Germany would have collapsed economically in the late 50's if not for Speer's reforms. The totalitarian governments of the Axis gradually become less authoritarian as "Allied" influence spreads across the border. Mussolini dies on 1965 and is succeded by Ciano, who reforms the Italian system in the early 70's and officially installing a democratic government in 1978. Franco's death in 1975 causes confusion in Spain. The exiled Republicans claim they are the legitimate government opposed to Franco's successor in Juan Carlos I. Both sides agree to sign a pact and a referendum is called on October 17th 1977 which results in the victory of the monarchist faction with a 61% percent of the votes. All parties are legalised and Spain is reunified under a neutral, democratic government.
Things in Germany are not that easy as the country is split between conservatives, die-hard Nazis and democrats. When Göring's second succesor dies in 1984, the first non-Nazi "Führer" is placed in charge. He gradually alters the German system and finally calls for elections in 1997 (though the KPD is still banned). The German monarchy is restored with support from the army in 1987.
We shall fight on the beaches - "Allied Victory"
When the Soviets dropped out of the war the Western Allies had to face the full might of the Axis. Still, the Allied industry and population outmatched that of the Axis and they could replenish their losses and fully supply their forces, unlike the Axis which struggled to fulfill food and oil demands, as well as having to distribute troops across Europe to ensure the occupation. The Germans retreated 50 divisions from the Soviet Union to mainland Europe, placing some in Anti-aircraft guns and lifting pressure on industries as those manning the guns were sent to military factories as labour force. The Allies insisted on unconditional surrender or nothing and stayed in the war hopingo bring down the reign of terror the Reich imposed over Europe.
The Allies kept pushing in Africa. As a follow-up to Operation Windward the Allies launched a secondary landing north of Rabat to isolate the city and push northwards. The Spanish Army of Africa retreated to their pre-war positions in the Rif mountains abandoning French Morocco. Local Vichy forces switched sides once the Spanish left, starting a chain reaction in French North Africa. The Allies pushed northeast through Fez and Taza, ultimately capturing Al-Hoceima on November 27th 1943. Spanish legionaries repelled two Allied attacks into Tetuan through December but eventually retreated back to Ceuta. The Spanish Army of Africa was air shipped back to Spain on February 12th 1944. By that date the Allied push east became a cascade without major Axis forces in the way. Oran was liberated on January 2nd and Algiers itself on January 18th serving as provisional capital for the Free French under De Gaulle. In Eastern North Africa Gott finally broke Axis lines at El Alammein on October 21st 1943 and kept pushing west repelling the Italians (Rommel is still in the Middle East). The Axis were kicked out of Egypt on November 2nd and Gott stopped his advance temporarily on El Agheila on December 8th. The Italian army under Graziani retreated to Tripoli and Tunis and began an evacuation to Malta, Sardinia and Sicily. The last Axis forces on Africa would surrender north of Sfax on March 1st 1944.
The Middle East also saw Allied gains with the recovery of the Abadan oil fields in December 24th 1943, followed by a crossing of the Shat-al-Arab waterway in early January which resulted in the capture of Basra on January 17th. American forces marched north from Kerman heading for Teheran, but in their way they met with Rommel's panzers, which surrounded them going through a harsh mountain pass and then forcing the Americans back to Kerman. The Nazis briefly recaptured the city before being forced to pull off from that salient on March. By spring the Allies had captured Baghdad and were fighting with Turkish troops over control of Mosul and Raqqah. British and Canadian forces under Bernard Montgomery crossed the Suez Canal after weeks of preparations (the Axis thoroughly mined the Canal during late 1943). German control over Palestine was already tenous and a Jewish Battalion captured Jerusalem on February 12th. The Axis would start an overall retreat to the Turkish border in April, with Damascus being captured on February 28th and Aleppo on March 17th. Teheran was captured on early April and Iran officially switched sides after a coup deposed it's current monarch.
Liberating the Middle East was a huge boost for the Allies as they recovered the oil wells and, more importantly, denied them to the Axis. Still, the battlefronts were far away from the Axis center of power, thousands of kilometers away from Germany. Seeing it's position threatened, Turkey started negotiations with the Allies. This triggered a German invasion, called Operation Gertrude. German forces conquered Thrace in a matter of days and landed in Anatolia, conquering a large chunk of western Turkey but failing to take Ankara and being gradually pushed back to the sea over the autumn of 1944 as their supplies were tenuous and had to face guerrilla attacks. The Axis reinforced their side of the Bosphorus so the Allies wouldn't step on European soil. And that's what the Americans wanted to do. They purposed a massive landing in Normandy on June 1944 nicknamed Operation Overlord. After harsh discussion the plan was rejected as it was deemed too risky in prospect of having to fight the full force of the German Army over the Channel. The US had to continue with Britain's policy of fighting a peripheral war during the rest of 1944 and early 1945.
The Battle of the Mediterranean: Round 2
The next Allied campaigns were a series of islan-hopping attacks in the Mediterranean, capturing Cyprus on July 1944 and Malta on August 1944. The main allied effort was an invasion of mainland Europe through the south. The invasion was to take place in southern Spain. There were several points studied for a landing, the most promising of them being the area around Huelva and the beaches of Marbella, Estepona and San Pedro Alcántara. Operation Swordfish started on November 21st 1944 with Allied forces landing in the aforementioned towns. The Spanish and their German allies resisted to the best of their abilities, keeping the beachead contained through November and December. The Allies gathered enough forces to break the frontline on early January capturing Ronda on January 14th and Malaga on the 18th. The Allies fought a hard and confusing battle over the Baetic Range and laying siege to Cadiz and Gibraltar in February. American forces under George Patton launched a daring drive to the north capturing Alcolea and crossing the Guadalquivir on March 6th. The Spanish position in Andalusia folded under Allied pressure and Seville was captured on March 28th after a brutal week of fighting.
The Allies kept moving upstream through the Guadalquivir capturing Cordoba on April 8th and crossing the Despeñaperros Pass five days later, entering the Castillian Plateau. To the east the Allies pushed along the coast, capturing Granada on March 16th and Almeria on the 27th. After months of naval buildup the Allies were ready to launch another landing. They chose the Mediterranean islands. Operation Husky was the invasion of Sicily on February 14th 1945. German forces there fought hard and some Italian units did but most decomposed in battle under Allied firepower. Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearics were also invaded between February and March. Sicily fell in Allied hands on February 27th. The King of Italy deposed Mussolini and stated that his country was no longer fighting for the Axis. This caused a German invasion similar to that of Turkey, capturing Mussolini in a coup de main and putting him in charge of the Italian Social Republic. The Allies stepped in and invaded southern Italy before being stopped by the Germans just south of Rome on mid-March.
Minor Allied offensives seized Crete, the Dodecanese and other Aegean Islands through the spring. Back in Iberia, the Allies pushed north towards the Tajo-Turia line. The Battle of Toledo would rage from April 29th to May 4th as Spanish troops entrenched themselves in the castle. Allied forces rushed across the Mediterranean coast capturing Valencia on May 17th. The crossing of the Tajo resulted in the beginning of the Battle of Madrid on May 26th. The battle for the city would last a little under a month but finally on June 19th American, British and Spanish Republican flags flied over the former Royal Palace of Zarzuela. Franco refused to surrender, but Spain was in chaos as the fall of Madrid allowed Spanish Republican guerrillas and partisans to rise up through the country, starting a farily confuse war in Catalonia and the Atlantic Coast.
The Grimmest of wars
The Allies attempted to build the logistics for a cross-channel invasion in 1945 but with Operations Swordfish and Husky those became impossible to achieve before October, too late for a succesful landing in France as weather difficulted it. However during the summer of 1945 the Allies achieved a great leap forward in technology. The atom bomb. On July 16th the Trinity Test detonated a nuclear device in the Alamogordo facility test in New Mexico. The explosion was kept as a state secret as the Allies kept building more bombs to launch them over Germany. On September 4th 1945 a flash destroyed the industrial district of Bremen, followed by another nuclear explosion three days later in Düsseldorff. Hitler refused to surrender and actually retaliated by using his own weapons of mass destruction, including Anthrax, Tabun and Sarin bombings over Britain. These initially caused panic and some casualties but the population had been trained to wear gas masks and the effect was minimised except for those cases in which the gas could intoxicate a body through the skin. The Allies resorted to their own chemical weapons stockipile, turning WW2 into a grim conflict with an abundance of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Allies ran out of nuclear weapons for several months as the process to build them was still slow, and the next bombs would be ready by December 1945 or even 1946. However chemical or biological weapons were easier to produce and the Allies wouldn't restrain their use after the German chemical bombings on Britain.
Britain had a stock of biological weapons ready from 1944 in preparation of Operation Vegetarian, a plan designed by Churchill to drop Flax cakes with Anthrax over Germany so the cattle would eat them. The cattle would either die naturally or be consumed by humans, which would then absorb the infection from the cattle and get sick too. Casualty stimations were around five million people due to the disease outbreak and famine caused by the death of a major portion of the German livestock. Allied planes flied over Germany, mainly over Hesse, Franconia and surrounding farmlands in November. The plan worked even better than expected and the German famine of 1945-1946 killed six million people and left parts of Hesse and Franconia uninhabitable. Accidentally Anthrax spores fell over Frankfurt which caused the Germans to evacuate the city. Eventually an international commision deemed Frankfurt inhabitable again in 1983, but the city wasn't resettled massively, only having around 20.000 inhabitants as for now as a symbol of what human progress can do when used wrong. Both Allies and Axis kept launching chemical and biological attacks through the rest of the wars, inflicting horrible casualties on each other. However, the use of nuclear weapons in Europe and having the Soviets out of the war means a completely different outcome in the Pacific, which I will explore now.
Downfall
Long story short: The Pacific war goes mostly as IOTL. Even if fronts and units might be different, the overall going of the war is similar enough for us to simply skip the whole war until now. However, as mentioned early, by nuking Germany and not having the Soviets to open a second (or third, or fourth... or whatever) front to the Japanese, it means Japan is still on the war, and will be for quite some time. When the Pacific War ended, the Allies were planning an invasion of Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra from the west, continued attacks against Japanese pockets in the Philippines and Micronesia, aswell as a decisive operation to landin the Japanese Archipelago itself. We'll go first with the operations in the south and later jump to the north. This is where the essay properly ends, the next paragraph is a compilation of Allied and Japanese operation plans in the Pacific.
Info: Operation Downfall (November 1 1945), Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night (September 22 1945, part of the larger Operation PX), Operation Jurist (Landing at Penang, Malaysia), Operation Mailfist (Singapore, this one and the latter part of the greater Operation Zipper), Operation Culverin (landing in Northern Sumatra).
Introduction
WW2 can be considered more than a conventional war. It was a total war, one which not only involved countries or nations, but whole ideologies, a war of extermination. So it is surprising that despite the war's ideological component, not all fascist countries openly declared war to the Allies. Spain was the exception, ruled by Francisco Franco, a man that ruled the country with support of the falangist party which was a pseudo-fascist party, more similar to Mussolini's party rather than Hitler's one. Franco rose to power after a three year-long civil war which saw Spain being devastated, with massive starvation, no industry and a ruthless government in place. After that, Franco's neutrality was understandable, as Spain had no way to keep it's economy on a war footing and would depend heavily on German exports. Franco's position was awkward as he supported the Axis against the Soviet Union and the Allies against Japan while keeping a delicate balance between both sides in the Western Front. Franco was deeply anti-communist and even sent a volunteer legion to the Eastern Front called the "Blue Division", which against all odds defeated the Soviets multiple times despite being outnumbered and outgunnes, however, after Kursk, Franco re-considered his position and called back the Blue Division, not participating any further in the war.
Making Spain a viable Axis Power
In order to make Spain a viable Axis nation, we'd need a PoD during the civil war. However, removing it completely and having Franco seize power in the initial stages would butterfly WW2 (Germany would be weaker without weapon tests and Italy would be far stronger, maybe enough to see Hitler as an enemy and oppose the Anschluss). On April 20th 1938 Nationalist forces reached the Mediterranean south of the Ebro river cutting Catalonia from the rest of Spain. At the time Franco's advisors told him to push northwards and seize Catalonia, but he instead decided to push south for Valencia, giving the Republicans vital time to re-organise and launch an unsuccesful counter-offensive known as the Battle of the Ebro.
ITTL Franco attacks northwards and from the west. Republican forces were still disorganised from the previous attack and were unable to put enough resistance to stop a crossing of the Ebro in early May. The Republicans threw their reserves into the beach head, but with a disorganised army and lacking firepower (the Condor Legion assisted the nationalists providing them aerial coverage) the counter-attack failed and the Republican Northern Army disintegrated. The Republican government was at Catalonia at the time and left for France while Republican militias tried a last stand in Barcelona but they finally surrendered with few shots on June 3rd 1938. Catalonia had more than half of the Republican Industry at the time and it's fall caused a wave of defeatism through the Republican forces, with many purposing a truce while the far-left forces tried to hold as much as they could, hoping that WW2 would erupt and the Allies would rescue them. Secret negotiations happened between key Republican officials and Nationalist representatives happened. They led to no agreement, but they caused the break up of the Republican coalition and it collapsed in a civil war within a civil war in September 1938. On October 27th 1938 Franco entered Valencia and declared the war to be finished. From that moment to the time Spain sided with the Axis, Franco frantically tried to open Spain to foreign trade and get American enterprises help in rebuilding Spain (The US actually supported Franco). These, and the early fall of Catalonia result in a Spain slightly stronger than that of IOTL, with a big part of it's subsitance crisis solved and not so devastated.
Consequences of an early end of the Spanish Civil War
IOTL the Spanish Civil War affected World War II in a way that is mostly ignored by common people. It served as an essay for the war, with the first bombings of civilian population in the town of Guernika, it proved that armored thrusts could work against infantry and military experts took different lessons from it. The French saw the slow progress of the war as a sign that tanks were more a weapon of infantry support in short distance rather than the offensive, isolated approach the Germans took. The Soviets took the wrong lesson and disbanded their independent tank corps, restoring them in 1940, too late for Soviet tank formations to compete with the Germans.
In the economical field, the war completely ruined Italy, as it sent a lot of weapons to Spain without prior payment and once the war ended Italy barely received anything, except from thousands of casualties, a moral collapse (being defeated by guerrillas on open field) and a strong military pushback. Germany sent weapons more carefully and ensured a payment in the form of mineral resources such as Wolframium, which helped the Germans build the core of their ammunition and reinforce the armour of their tanks (aswell as later helping de-bug the Me-262). For the Soviets, the war was a huge boost, as the Republicans sent between 60 and 80% of the country's gold reserves (one of the top five of the world at the time) while sending loads of unadequate equipment that they didn't need. That gold later gave the Soviets enough hard-currency to pay for Lend-lease. The Poles also sent weapons to the Republicans at a grossly exaggerated prive and Mexico sent around 20.000 rifles (if I recall correctly).
In this Timeline, the Republicans already sent the gold to the Soviets, and the Point of Divergence was pushed as later as I could so the lead-up to WW2 doesn't butterfly away in an unpredictable way. The Italians are also bankrupt, though not as much. Let's suppose they use that "extra" currency into buying oil so their fleet doesn't end up stuck in harbour. The Germans do not have that much boost, but I consider that it's enough for the German Army to be competitive enough to be compared to the OTL German army of September 1939.
WW2: From Poland to France
Let's assume that the lead-up to the war is the same as IOTL and that Germany invades Poland on schedule on September 1st and Poland is completely defeated on October 6th with help from the Soviets. Germany invades Denmark and Norway in the same way and begins to prepare the invasion of France following the Manstein Plan. As the French Army and the BEF drive to Breda they are bypassed by the German panzers that reach the sea at Abbeville. At this time Spain and Italy begin to prepare their forces. Franco had begun preparations for an entrance in the war in March, while Mussolini thought Germany would take far more time to take down France and launched an uncoordinated attack on France when they were essentially defeated (losing, by the way). Franco decided to wait a bit and secure his position before entering the war. France surrenders on schedule on June 25th. Franco declares full mobilisation that same day and signs a series of treaties favorising Germany in secret as not to provoke the British into launching a pre-emptive attack.
The Spanish fleet of 1940 relied heavily on six cruisers, specially the heavy cruiser "Canarias" which was pretty on par with any British ships of such class. The air force was a mixed bag as well as the army, relying on German and Italian weapon exports as the Spanish industry was hurt, but during the civil war the Spamnish became pretty efficient at building weapons from scratch. The Spanish only had a few tanks of their own and lacked industry to build them. Such industry would be moved from Belgium and Northern France and sent to Spain in exchange for Spanish workers being sent to Germany to diminish their chronical shortage of manpower. The Spanish army had bad weapons but compensated it by being tough fighters with enough military experience and having some of the best army units of the world in the Army of Africa. Spain's geographical position greatly benefits the side in which Spain is fighting, controlling the entrance to the Mediterranean from the west and having harbours in Galicia and the Canary Islands that would greatly help either fleet in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Spain joins the Axis and the Battle of the Mediterranean
During the summer of 1940 and after the essential destruction of the British Army, Britain was extremely weak and vulnerable, having no proper armed forces to fight a great power like Germany and barely being on the level of the Spanish and the Italians during that time, until the Brits rebuilt their armed forces through autumn 1940. In this situation, Spain had to enter the war quickly or lose a great opportunity at hitting the British hard. During July German forces pour into Spain and take positions in Salamanca, Badajoz, Huelva and Malaga, preparing themselves to attack Gibraltar and/or Portugal should they enter the war. With German forces on the border, the Portuguese become much more amicable with the Axis and they are kind of forced to increase their exports to the Axis. On July 1940 the British created the "Force H", a fleet tasked with controlling the Mediterranean and being based on Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. Such fleet attacked the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir on July 3rd to avoid the fleet from falling into Axis hands, hurting relations between the Vichy government and the UK. The Spanish bid their time while preparing an attack on Gibraltar and begin sending reinforcements and supplies to the Canary Islands.
The attack finally materialises on July 17th. The Germans and the Spanish throw mines from planes to block the fleet on the harbour, and then proceed to drop a rain of bombs and artillery on the fortress. The ships are mostly destroyed or deliberately sunk on the harbour, greatly hurting James Sommerville's fleet and cutting the entrance to the Mediterranean, forcing his fleet to sail due east to Alexandria. After four days of constant boming, German forces launch the first attack after receiving weeks of training, followed by the Spanish Legion and regular troops. The battle for the city is a bloodbath that lasts for three days. The British retreat to the tunnels of Gibraltar, where they have supplies to resist for months, but they end up surrendering on July 30th under increasing pressure from the bombardment and the assaults. After 233 years the Spanish flag flies on Gibraltar once again.
The Battle of Gibraltar forces the Germans to center their efforts in the Mediterranean, at least temporarily as Hitler still considers the Mediterranean as a "secondary theater", wanting to fight the Soviets as soon as possible. The Spanish pressure the Germans to force Vichy France into ceding some territories to Spain. The French refused, but after some German arm-twisting they end up handing a piece of territory in northern Morocco to Spain, which also seized the Free City of Tangiers. The colony of Spanish Guinea can't be defended, and the mainland is invaded by the Free French in two days, with the island of Fernando Po being taken on August 18th after five days of fighting in the jungles and plantations of the island. In the Atlantic, the Spanish fleet launches a sortie haded by the "Canarias" which manages to capture 6 transport ships, including an oil cargo. After this initial success, the Spanish fleet would reclude itself in it's harbours, being unable to compete openly with the Royal Navy in the Atlantic. The ports of Ferrol, Cádiz and Santander are fortified in fear of a British attack. The Luftwaffe deploys a squadron in Galicia to defend the harbour, and the Regia Aeronautica also sends planes to Spain. German U-Boats are moved to Ferrol in order to have a forward base to hurt British naval traffic. With Gibraltar in Axis hands, the Italian fleet can leave the Mediterranean and add further pressure.
Meanwhile, Mussolini plans to launch an invasion of Yugoslavia around august, but ends up cancelling it. Meanwhile Hitler sends troops to Romania without warning Mussolini, which threatened his Balkan plans. Mussolini plans to launch a surprise attack on Greece, but eventually decides to attack Malta seeing the British weakness after the fall of Gibraltar. German planes and paratroopers are sent to Sicily through August, while the Italian navy gears up plans to invade the island. Operation Hercules is launched on September 21st. The battle for the island turns into yet another bloody mess, with paratroopers taking heavy casualties, and after 57 hours of fighting the British forces in Malta surrender. Now the only British base in the Mediterranean is Alexandria and to a lesser extent the port of Haifa in Palestine.
Spain is more of an economic burden to the Axis, not being fully independent in food and livestock, relying on scarce German imports. A war economy was placed from the first day of the war, unlike in Germany and Italy. Spain also drains scarce oil to feed it's armed forces and industries while aporting troops and minerals to the Axis. The further drain of fuel pushes Axis efforts towards the Middle East oilfields further.
North Africa and the Middle East
The Spanish Army of Africa is sent to Libya in hope of reinforcing the Italian position. During September Italian forces under Graziani advanced into Libya capturing Sidi Barrani on September 16th. During September and October no further progress was made except for the Spanish building defense positions and the Italians doing the same in late October. Hitler agreed to send a German expeditionary force under Erwin Rommel, called the "Deutsches Afrika Korps" or DAK in short. During November Rommen reorganised his forces and launched an offensive on December 5th, 4 days before Archibald Wavell's planned offensive, nicknamed Operation Compass. British forces were surprised by the sudden offensive and Rommel's aggresiveness, forcing a retreat to Mersa Matruh, which was captured by the Germans on December 12th. Wavell's forces were pushed due east into a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Qattara depression. Wavell reorganised his forces between El Daba and El Alamein, from where he launched a counter-offensive in late December. The offensive was a disaster as the Axis troops held out and Wavell exhausted his forces in the fighting. The British had few troops to spare and Wavell was sacked from command, being replaced by Claude Auchinleck on January 2nd, but by that time the British Army of North Africa had been defeated.
Axis forces reached Alexandria and the Nile on January 8th. Egypt switched sides and the British troops in the country were trapped in a confuse war fighting Egyptian soldiers, civilians and Axis troops. British forces surrender in Alexandria five days later after destroying the harbour and forcing most ships through the Suez Canal. German forces took Cairo and Mussolini decided to do a military parade on the city which turned out to be a complete disaster as the temperature was too high and Mussolini decided to start it at 3 PM. Despite this humilliation the Axis suceeded in clearing Egypt of British troops by late January and prepared to launch an attack across the Suez Canal. The British had too few time to fortify it when the Axis attacked on March 3rd. British forces fought fiercely over the canal but were eventually pushed back to the Sinai. German paratroopers had taken key mountain passes such as the Mitla pass, cutting off the southern half of the British army in the Sinai. German panzers pushed through the northern Sinai plain capturing Gaza on March 16th and opening the path to Palestine. Britain reinforced and fortified the port of Aqaba as it was the only available port in the area (Basra and Kuwait were too far away to be reliable) but was futile as the Germans pushed into Jordan, effectively isolating it.
Meanwhile, Mussolini finally invaded Greece in December, with enough time to effectively organise the attack (IOTL he attacked with half of the planned divisions, two miserable weeks of preparations and in the middle of the rain season). With the British naval power in the Mediterranean weakened the Italians were capable of launching succesful landings on the eastern coast of Greece. The British sent soldiers to Greece which was part of the reason the Axis were so succesful in North Africa. By the end of 1940 all of continental Greece was in Axis hands and Italian forces had a beachead in western Crete but didn't advance further. Crete eventually fell when the British retreated back to Cyprus in mid-February.
Back in the Middle East, Rommel captured Jerusalem on March 23rd. Palestine erupted into a multi-sided civil war between the Axis, the British, the Arabs and the Jews. The Germans supported the Arabs, which unofficially allied with the Germans. Things went worse for the British when a coup in Iraq took control of the country on April 23rd. British forces were closed into pockets scattered through the Middle East barely connected by weak airlines which started to dwindle as German planes obtained bases in Syria and Palestine. Sections of the SS were sent to Palestine in order to capture the Jews and send them to concentration camps or execute them should they try to surrender. The Jews would fight a guerrilla war for months before being finally crushed. German commanders secretely commented how brave and good fighters the Jews were and that they felt sad for fighting them. German forces reached Baghdad in early May and at the end of the month the Axis captured Kuwait, effecitvely closing the Middle Eastern front. The British pulled off a second Dunkirk in Aqaba which rescued 45.000 soldiers.
With the Middle East in German hands international politics shifter. Turkey was now almost surrounded by Axis troops and was further pressured to trade and permit German forces to cross Turkish territory. Iran felt the pressure too, as many would love to see the British expelled from the country and nationalise the oil wells of the nation. The British feared just that and invaded Iran from India and the sea in May after the Shah ordered the nationalisation of the Abadan oil wells. The invasion didn't go far as the Germans entered Iran and stopped the British from capturing Kerman, pushing them back to a line from Bandar Abbas to the Afghan border as German logistics impeded any further advance. Under those circumpstances Turkey finally joined the Axis on May 14th and launched an invasion of Cyprus, taking the last British territory in the Mediterranean.
The German campaign in the Middle East and the adherence of Turkey and Iran to the Axis frightened the Soviets, fearing that an attack would come from too many fronts for them to handle. The British Ultra warned the Soviets several times of a possible German invasion in late April which didn't materialise. The British issued two new dates for May and they both missed (more due to the weather not being adequate for a German attack than being false info). Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis on March after a coup, and the German Army was fully in place to launch Barbarossa in May.
In other terms, Britain finally manages to scramble an army large enough to attack the Canary Islands as a forward base for a further attack on Morocco. German, Italian and Spanish forces have spent more than half a year reinforcing the archipelago in case of an attack. Hitler agreed to send an elite division of mountain troops, as well as a component of Italian Alpini as the geography of the islands was highly mountainous. Britain sent a carrier group including two aircraft carriers and several cruisers, destroyers and battleships to serve as an screening force. With the Axis in local aerial superiority the British attack had to seize an airport or air base quickly or be forced to resort to their aircraft carrier, which would have problems to sustain a prolonged attack on the islands without risking losing those carriers.
The British launch an attack on the island of Gran Canaria in February 12th hoping to seize the Gando air field. The main harbour of the island and the air field have been fortified and the initial landings are stopped dead on their tracks on the beachs. During the next weeks the British force control of most of the coastline using their naval superiority but their control of the air quickly deteriorates after failing to seize the air base and receiving attacks from the other islands. The British try to neutralise them by landing in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After weeks of fightings the British have asserted control of the coasts but their forces are tired and reinforcements start to be a problem as German U-boats concentrate around British supply routes. Spanish guerrillas constantly raid and attack British positions from the hills of the island's hinterland. By late March the British position on the islands becomes unsustainable due to the casualties and constant attacks, and the British pull out of the Canaries after being defeated.
Barbarossa
Without the Balkan Campaign the German invasion comes earlier than IOTL, starting on May 28th (it couldn't be earlier without being stopped dead on their tracks due to the muddy roads). The attack has a slightly different approach than IOTL as the German tanks of Army Group Center are well in their positions at the start of the operation and not lagging behind. This results in the initial German plan of a pincer maneuver in the Ukraine happining instead of the later plan to push the Soviets to the Black Sea. This causes the advance of Army Group Center to be far smoother than IOTL. capturing Kiev a month earlier and without Hitler sending tanks from Army Group Center. Without this the advance on the center is not temporarily stopped and the Germans keep pushing. The Germans close Soviet pockets in Vyazma and Bryansk and destroy them in September. Operation Typhoon is launched on October 3rd, smashing Soviet troops between them and Moscow. The Wehrmacht captures Klin and Serpukhov on October 8th and push east to complete a siege around Moscow, reaching and crossing the Moscow-Volga Canal north of Dimitrov on October 14th aswell as crossing the Moskova to the south around the same date. The German pincer closes on the Kljazma river on October 22nd.
The Germans bomb Moscow and close the siege forcing the Red Army to retreat to the city limits. The Wehrmacht builds defensive positions to the east of Moscow and consolidate the territory through November. The Soviets launch their winter counter-offensive around the same date as IOTL, but without Moscow to serve as a transportation hub and rather serving the Germans the offensive meets limited success. Soviet forces reach a peak advance of 10 km to Moscow, but Hitler throws his reserves into the fray not wanting to lose Moscow. By March 1942 both forces are exhausted and with Moscow still under a German ring of fire.
With Turkey on the Axis and German forces on the Iranian-Soviet borders the attack is also launched in the Caucasus. Soviet forces resist better in the Caucasus than in Europe proper, but they are pushed back aswell. Batumi is seized on the second day on the offensive followed by Yerevan. Turkish and German forces reach Tbilisi and the Kura river in mid-June, and win a decisive victory in Shirvan, allowing them to cross the Aras and threaten Baku. The city falls in German hands on June 28th, but the Soviets set all oil and gas fields ablaze before retreating from the city. Those would take at least a year to restore, but the loss of Baku greatly hurts Soviet industrial cappabilities. The Soviets attempt drilling prospecions in the Volga basin with some success, but not enough to compensate the fall of Baku. Overall the front stops on the Caucasus mountains around October as the first snows block mountain passes. Scarce fighting also happens in the Transcaspian Front between Soviet and German-backed Iranian forces. The Soviets attempt to capture Masshad and fail, retreating back to their border and allowing the Axis to take fringes of Soviet territory.
Japan attacks Pearl Harbour on schedule on December 7th 1941. Hitler and Mussolini declare war to the United States, but Franco and Inonu (the leader of Turkey) do not. The US declares war to Spain and Turkey anyways on December 11th and 12th respectively. The Battle of the Atlantic takes a new turn with the American entry into the war. German submarines destroy loads of American fleets but the UK begins to receive American supplies and soldiers. The US wants to launch a cross-channel invasion into Northern France, but the British prefer a periferical strategy around Africa and the Mediterranean, something that the US interpretates as "fighting a war for British colonialist interests". Eventually the British point of view prevails as an invasion of France would be too risky to pull off in 1942.
The war enters a kind of stop from March 1942 to May 1942. During this time Stalin plans an offensive to attack Moscow while Hitler plans a southern offensive to seize Ciscaucasia and Stalingrad as well as securing the Donbass industries (German advance is several dozens of kilometers further than IOTL) aswell as putting an end to the siege of Leningrad. Stalin's late spring offensive IOTL happens in Moscow instead of the Donbass. It doesn't break the siege. Without any kind of supplies except for very rare aerial deliveries, Moscow is completely occupied in early June 1942. The capture and siege of Moscow almost broke the Soviet supply system, as most railroads and cities passed through Moscow before taking a secondary branch to where they were needed in a sort of radial system. So when Moscow fell the system essentially collapsed as material couldn't be distributed to certain sectors of the front. This lack of supplies hurt the Red Army hard.
After the Soviet attempt to take Moscow and wasting most of it's reserves in the offensive, the Axis launched an attack on the southern part of the front. The Germans launch a general offensive from the Donbass and the Caucasus in late July, conquering Stalingrad in a coup de main on August 12th as the Soviets couldn't rush defenders to the city. Hitler ordered the city to be renamed as "Hitlerstadt". Astrakhan was captured on the 26th and the Caspian Sea had been reached before September. Soviet troops trapped in the Ciscaucasus tried to hold on but they were crushed by early November. With this almost all Soviet oil wells were in Axis hands and the Soviets had lost over a million troops between wounded, dead and captured. Stalin blamed the defeat on his generals, executing both Zhukov and Timoshenko and starting a second purge of the army. Stalin still believed he could defeat the Nazis and continued in the war through 1942, albeit with a vastly diminished force and led by incompetents.
Allied Reorganisation
During 1942 the Allies didn't launch a serious attack on Axis held positions, but rather a series of minor attacks to distract troops and train their forces. The first of these was a second Anglo-American invasion of the Canary Islands in November 1942 (comparable to Torch landings IOTL). Axis forces refused to surrender under any term and fought a guerrilla warfare that caused headaches to local commanders. By January 1943 the Canaries had been cleaned of Spanish troops and were used as a forward base to Allied ships. The loss of the port of Santa Cruz diminished the danger of U-Boats as they lost their base in the mid-Atlantic. The British set up a Republican government out of exilees in Britain.
Another attack came from Africa. When Italian East Africa was totally conquered in 1941 the Axis had already crossed the Suez Canal and Italian troops started to march up the Nile. Aswan was captured on February 24th but the Italians had troubles going further from the first cataract of the Nile. This gave the British a roost and forces under William Gott to reinforce their positions so when the Italians attacked Sudan they were defeated and pushed back to Aswan, which was retaken by the British on March 1942. The British also had to spend time there to reinforce their army and send supplies (having to send them all the way around Africa really makes things slow). The British would follow up the attacks with a Nile campaign in between August and October which drove them to Cairo, but the city resisted the attacks.
A minor attack also happened in Iran which drove the British Indian Army to Bandar Abbas, re-opening the Hormus Strait. However India wasn't calm as in November 1942 the "Quit India" campaign reached it's peak in activity. British losses forced them to rely further on Indian manpower in the Middle East and Africa and many Indians didn't want to fight for the British. The Axis formed a small "Free Indian Division" and stated that they would recognise Indian independence and would not attack India should it secede from the British Empire (this despite of Hitler's deep admiration of the British Empire in India).
Gott launched a second attack on Cairo in late December 1942 which captured the city from it's Italian occupiers in January 7th. Gott continued pushing north until reaching the Mediterranean east of Alexandria on January 13th. Axis forces (almost all of them Italian) retreated east to the Suez canal and west to Alexandria, city which would be sieged from February 17th. Spain refused to send forces to help as they felt an Allied landing in Western Africa was nearing and he needed his forces there. Alexandria surrendered in late March and Axis troops mounted an spectacular defence in El Alamein in a mimic of the (failed) British defence of the area. The Second Battle of El Alamein lasted nine days and resulted into a stalemate. British offensives also continued in Iran, conquering most of the Persian Gulf coast and some lands in the Zagros by July 1943.
The Allies launched Operation Windward on June 24th 1943, landing at several points along the Moroccan and Saharan coast. Spanish legionary forces and the Army of Africa opposed these landings. Vichy forces initially averted combat and wait for a side to gain superiority for then to switch sides. Spanish forces were reinforced by a panzer division from mainland Spain. The Vichy commander ultimately decided to fight for the Axis seeing the Allied failure to break past the beacheads in northern Morocco, though some forces defected to the Allied side. By August 1943 the Allies had secured southern Morocco and started a push northwards, capturing Casablanca on September 13th.
Turning Point
Hitler knew 1943 would be the key year of the war at least in the East. He had to knock the Soviets out of the war or he would ultimately lose a two-front war to the Allies. In order to do so Hitler decided to put an end to Allied supplies to the Soviet Union. Those were mainly delived through the Arctic ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The latter was out of Axis reach, but the first was at a mere 60 km from the frontlines. Another major porblem for the Axis was that Leningrad was still holding. Hitlered ordered the city to be bombed to the ground on a daily basis and then launch an attack. The Germans took heavy casualties in the continued assaults but the city fell on May 2nd. With a "clear" path to the north, German forces assisted the Finns and broke the Soviet front in Karelia, capturing Kem and isolating 10 Soviet divisions in the Kola Peninsula. Allied ships managed to tranport 8 of those 10 divisions from Murmansk to Arkhangelsk before the city was captured.
The Soviets had lost much in the war, more than half of their pre-war population was either dead or controlled by the Axis, it's industries had been hurt and diminished, their oil reserves were gone, and confidence on an ultimate Soviet victory disappeared. Stalin kept building an army in the Urals, but Russian manpower was becoming scarce and the Soviets had to rely on Central Asian soldiers. The Germans attacked east from Moscow in early June 1943. Stalin had to send his reserves to slow down the German advance, throwing them into the fray before they were ready. The Soviets tried a fighting withdrawal and implemented a scorched earth policy. The Germans advanced three hundred kilometers into Russia, threatening the middle Volga by September.
At this point Stalin had enough. The Allies hadn't opened a second front and were barely active fighting the Axis in Africa. At this point he knew that even if Germany was ultimately defeated with the Soviets still in the war, the Soviet Union would be too hurt to compete with the Allies in a race to Berlin. Or worse, the war ending with Allied troops in pre-1939 Soviet territory. Stalin decided to bid his time. Through embassies in Sweden Soviet diplomats contacted their German counterparts and signed a truce on October 12th 1943. This was a shock to the Western Allies which interrupted Lend-Lease to the Soviets as they were not a active belligerant. Neither Hitler nor Stalin felt the truce was to last forever. Hitler expected to defeat or at least sign a peace deal with the Western Allies and then shift east to conquer the rump Soviet Union. Stalin hoped for the Axis and the Allies to blood themselves dry so the Soviets could pick the leftovers and maybe have a chance of resurging as a great power. No matter what, the end of the war in the East was crucial for the Germans, as they could now shift soldiers to Africa, the Middle East and Europe and, more importantly, shift war production giving priority to fighters, bombers and other aircraft so the Allies wouldn't achieve air supremacy.
Now the war enters a point where neither side can directly hurt the other much. One could arguably that by November 1943 on this TL WW2 has become a stalemate. I could really make the war go either way except for some events such as Japan being crushed anyways. So I decided to write two different scenarios leading to initially different consequences, let's call them "Axis Victory" and "Allied Victory".
Peace with Honour - "Axis Victory"
When the Soviets dropped out of the war the war entered a no-go point for the moment. The Allies could win, but the bloodbath would be too big and too risky. Unconditional surrender was considered the only way to go. With the Japanese it seems to be working, however the Nazis have enough resources to continue fighting for years. And worse, there is no way to ensure a landing to liberate Europe is to succeed. Hitler has always been open to a peace deal with the Allies, never being interested in a war with the western powers. Hitler begins sending peace proposals. Those fall on deaf ears and the war continues as a stalemate. German forces are sent to Africa to keep the Anglo-Americans at bay at El Alamein and Rabat respectively. By February 1944 the air war in Europe has reached a stalemate as Germany finally placed a war economy which could match US production, at least on the air field.
Hitler's peace signals continue. Eventually the Allies listen to them sometime around spring 1944. Hitler promises the Allies a restoration of the countries they occupied in Western Europe in change for a free hand in Eastern Europe. The British still refuse, but some in the US begin to question the war. The Germans defend themselves without launching attacks or offensives to convince the Allies that they really want to sign a peace treaty. (I really have no way for the Allies to accept something other than unconditional surrender, so let's just asume out of nothing that a defintive peace deal is signed in July 1944). The treaty states that Germany will leave the BeNeLux, France, Denmark and Norway and the pre-war governments were to be restored. Everything east of Italy and Germany is left to the Axis. Axis colonies except for Libya and the Rif are taken by the Allies which now include a Spanish Republic and a restored Ethiopia. The British leave Persia and the Axis leave the Sinai in return, allowing the British to de-facto control the Suez Canal. The rest of the Middle East is a mixed bag of puppetised Arab kingdoms.
Hitler still wants his Lebensraum, nothing west of the Urals is acceptable for him, and Stalin knows it. In April 1945 Germany attacks the rump Soviet Union. Stalin's year-and-a-half of training and producing war machinery proved mostly futile as the Soviet industry had to reconvert factories to supply what the Lend-Lease did for them. The Wehrmacht reaches the Upper Volga in June 1945, and after months of fighting over the river they manage to cross it. The Soviet government retreats from their temporary capital of Kyubyshev to Omsk as the Nazis capture the city. By October 1946 the Wehrmacht controls (at least in theory) everything west of the Urals. The war continues, but with the Germans not wanting to go past the Urals and with the Soviets uncapable of counter-attacking with their industrial heartland now under Axis air range. The war gradually dies down until one could arguably say it stops in 1951 after the death of Stalin.
In 1947 Germany implements Generalplan Ost fully, starting the largest ethnic cleansing in history. This frightens even their own allies, which fear what Hitler could do in the future. WW2 in Europe ended before the Germans could be nuked, but that vulnerability ended with the Valkyrie Test in a nuclear installation in Thuringia on February 18th 1952. Nuclear weapons spread through the world, with the Soviets testing it in 1954 and the UK in 1956. Hitler's health gradually deteriorates until he dies in 1948. Göring takes power of a weak government, at least until Himmler launches a failed coup d'état with this SS which sets Germany ablaze. The civil war lasts for three months, but that is enough to fatally wound the Reich. Göring ultimately won, but had to use support from army conservatives and non-Nazi elites. Being a toxycoman Göring gradually loses judging cappacity and the actual control of the state falls in the hands of some other member of the Nazi hierarchy.
The Reich can't compete with the Allies in economic or military terms past the civil war, but they still have nukes as a way of keeping them out. Insurgency never stopped in the occupied eastern territories and German settler demands prove too excessive as barely anybody moves there. This forces the Germans to put an end to their mass extermination as the few German settlers become landowner elites a-la CSA. Germany would have collapsed economically in the late 50's if not for Speer's reforms. The totalitarian governments of the Axis gradually become less authoritarian as "Allied" influence spreads across the border. Mussolini dies on 1965 and is succeded by Ciano, who reforms the Italian system in the early 70's and officially installing a democratic government in 1978. Franco's death in 1975 causes confusion in Spain. The exiled Republicans claim they are the legitimate government opposed to Franco's successor in Juan Carlos I. Both sides agree to sign a pact and a referendum is called on October 17th 1977 which results in the victory of the monarchist faction with a 61% percent of the votes. All parties are legalised and Spain is reunified under a neutral, democratic government.
Things in Germany are not that easy as the country is split between conservatives, die-hard Nazis and democrats. When Göring's second succesor dies in 1984, the first non-Nazi "Führer" is placed in charge. He gradually alters the German system and finally calls for elections in 1997 (though the KPD is still banned). The German monarchy is restored with support from the army in 1987.
We shall fight on the beaches - "Allied Victory"
When the Soviets dropped out of the war the Western Allies had to face the full might of the Axis. Still, the Allied industry and population outmatched that of the Axis and they could replenish their losses and fully supply their forces, unlike the Axis which struggled to fulfill food and oil demands, as well as having to distribute troops across Europe to ensure the occupation. The Germans retreated 50 divisions from the Soviet Union to mainland Europe, placing some in Anti-aircraft guns and lifting pressure on industries as those manning the guns were sent to military factories as labour force. The Allies insisted on unconditional surrender or nothing and stayed in the war hopingo bring down the reign of terror the Reich imposed over Europe.
The Allies kept pushing in Africa. As a follow-up to Operation Windward the Allies launched a secondary landing north of Rabat to isolate the city and push northwards. The Spanish Army of Africa retreated to their pre-war positions in the Rif mountains abandoning French Morocco. Local Vichy forces switched sides once the Spanish left, starting a chain reaction in French North Africa. The Allies pushed northeast through Fez and Taza, ultimately capturing Al-Hoceima on November 27th 1943. Spanish legionaries repelled two Allied attacks into Tetuan through December but eventually retreated back to Ceuta. The Spanish Army of Africa was air shipped back to Spain on February 12th 1944. By that date the Allied push east became a cascade without major Axis forces in the way. Oran was liberated on January 2nd and Algiers itself on January 18th serving as provisional capital for the Free French under De Gaulle. In Eastern North Africa Gott finally broke Axis lines at El Alammein on October 21st 1943 and kept pushing west repelling the Italians (Rommel is still in the Middle East). The Axis were kicked out of Egypt on November 2nd and Gott stopped his advance temporarily on El Agheila on December 8th. The Italian army under Graziani retreated to Tripoli and Tunis and began an evacuation to Malta, Sardinia and Sicily. The last Axis forces on Africa would surrender north of Sfax on March 1st 1944.
The Middle East also saw Allied gains with the recovery of the Abadan oil fields in December 24th 1943, followed by a crossing of the Shat-al-Arab waterway in early January which resulted in the capture of Basra on January 17th. American forces marched north from Kerman heading for Teheran, but in their way they met with Rommel's panzers, which surrounded them going through a harsh mountain pass and then forcing the Americans back to Kerman. The Nazis briefly recaptured the city before being forced to pull off from that salient on March. By spring the Allies had captured Baghdad and were fighting with Turkish troops over control of Mosul and Raqqah. British and Canadian forces under Bernard Montgomery crossed the Suez Canal after weeks of preparations (the Axis thoroughly mined the Canal during late 1943). German control over Palestine was already tenous and a Jewish Battalion captured Jerusalem on February 12th. The Axis would start an overall retreat to the Turkish border in April, with Damascus being captured on February 28th and Aleppo on March 17th. Teheran was captured on early April and Iran officially switched sides after a coup deposed it's current monarch.
Liberating the Middle East was a huge boost for the Allies as they recovered the oil wells and, more importantly, denied them to the Axis. Still, the battlefronts were far away from the Axis center of power, thousands of kilometers away from Germany. Seeing it's position threatened, Turkey started negotiations with the Allies. This triggered a German invasion, called Operation Gertrude. German forces conquered Thrace in a matter of days and landed in Anatolia, conquering a large chunk of western Turkey but failing to take Ankara and being gradually pushed back to the sea over the autumn of 1944 as their supplies were tenuous and had to face guerrilla attacks. The Axis reinforced their side of the Bosphorus so the Allies wouldn't step on European soil. And that's what the Americans wanted to do. They purposed a massive landing in Normandy on June 1944 nicknamed Operation Overlord. After harsh discussion the plan was rejected as it was deemed too risky in prospect of having to fight the full force of the German Army over the Channel. The US had to continue with Britain's policy of fighting a peripheral war during the rest of 1944 and early 1945.
The Battle of the Mediterranean: Round 2
The next Allied campaigns were a series of islan-hopping attacks in the Mediterranean, capturing Cyprus on July 1944 and Malta on August 1944. The main allied effort was an invasion of mainland Europe through the south. The invasion was to take place in southern Spain. There were several points studied for a landing, the most promising of them being the area around Huelva and the beaches of Marbella, Estepona and San Pedro Alcántara. Operation Swordfish started on November 21st 1944 with Allied forces landing in the aforementioned towns. The Spanish and their German allies resisted to the best of their abilities, keeping the beachead contained through November and December. The Allies gathered enough forces to break the frontline on early January capturing Ronda on January 14th and Malaga on the 18th. The Allies fought a hard and confusing battle over the Baetic Range and laying siege to Cadiz and Gibraltar in February. American forces under George Patton launched a daring drive to the north capturing Alcolea and crossing the Guadalquivir on March 6th. The Spanish position in Andalusia folded under Allied pressure and Seville was captured on March 28th after a brutal week of fighting.
The Allies kept moving upstream through the Guadalquivir capturing Cordoba on April 8th and crossing the Despeñaperros Pass five days later, entering the Castillian Plateau. To the east the Allies pushed along the coast, capturing Granada on March 16th and Almeria on the 27th. After months of naval buildup the Allies were ready to launch another landing. They chose the Mediterranean islands. Operation Husky was the invasion of Sicily on February 14th 1945. German forces there fought hard and some Italian units did but most decomposed in battle under Allied firepower. Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearics were also invaded between February and March. Sicily fell in Allied hands on February 27th. The King of Italy deposed Mussolini and stated that his country was no longer fighting for the Axis. This caused a German invasion similar to that of Turkey, capturing Mussolini in a coup de main and putting him in charge of the Italian Social Republic. The Allies stepped in and invaded southern Italy before being stopped by the Germans just south of Rome on mid-March.
Minor Allied offensives seized Crete, the Dodecanese and other Aegean Islands through the spring. Back in Iberia, the Allies pushed north towards the Tajo-Turia line. The Battle of Toledo would rage from April 29th to May 4th as Spanish troops entrenched themselves in the castle. Allied forces rushed across the Mediterranean coast capturing Valencia on May 17th. The crossing of the Tajo resulted in the beginning of the Battle of Madrid on May 26th. The battle for the city would last a little under a month but finally on June 19th American, British and Spanish Republican flags flied over the former Royal Palace of Zarzuela. Franco refused to surrender, but Spain was in chaos as the fall of Madrid allowed Spanish Republican guerrillas and partisans to rise up through the country, starting a farily confuse war in Catalonia and the Atlantic Coast.
The Grimmest of wars
The Allies attempted to build the logistics for a cross-channel invasion in 1945 but with Operations Swordfish and Husky those became impossible to achieve before October, too late for a succesful landing in France as weather difficulted it. However during the summer of 1945 the Allies achieved a great leap forward in technology. The atom bomb. On July 16th the Trinity Test detonated a nuclear device in the Alamogordo facility test in New Mexico. The explosion was kept as a state secret as the Allies kept building more bombs to launch them over Germany. On September 4th 1945 a flash destroyed the industrial district of Bremen, followed by another nuclear explosion three days later in Düsseldorff. Hitler refused to surrender and actually retaliated by using his own weapons of mass destruction, including Anthrax, Tabun and Sarin bombings over Britain. These initially caused panic and some casualties but the population had been trained to wear gas masks and the effect was minimised except for those cases in which the gas could intoxicate a body through the skin. The Allies resorted to their own chemical weapons stockipile, turning WW2 into a grim conflict with an abundance of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Allies ran out of nuclear weapons for several months as the process to build them was still slow, and the next bombs would be ready by December 1945 or even 1946. However chemical or biological weapons were easier to produce and the Allies wouldn't restrain their use after the German chemical bombings on Britain.
Britain had a stock of biological weapons ready from 1944 in preparation of Operation Vegetarian, a plan designed by Churchill to drop Flax cakes with Anthrax over Germany so the cattle would eat them. The cattle would either die naturally or be consumed by humans, which would then absorb the infection from the cattle and get sick too. Casualty stimations were around five million people due to the disease outbreak and famine caused by the death of a major portion of the German livestock. Allied planes flied over Germany, mainly over Hesse, Franconia and surrounding farmlands in November. The plan worked even better than expected and the German famine of 1945-1946 killed six million people and left parts of Hesse and Franconia uninhabitable. Accidentally Anthrax spores fell over Frankfurt which caused the Germans to evacuate the city. Eventually an international commision deemed Frankfurt inhabitable again in 1983, but the city wasn't resettled massively, only having around 20.000 inhabitants as for now as a symbol of what human progress can do when used wrong. Both Allies and Axis kept launching chemical and biological attacks through the rest of the wars, inflicting horrible casualties on each other. However, the use of nuclear weapons in Europe and having the Soviets out of the war means a completely different outcome in the Pacific, which I will explore now.
Downfall
Long story short: The Pacific war goes mostly as IOTL. Even if fronts and units might be different, the overall going of the war is similar enough for us to simply skip the whole war until now. However, as mentioned early, by nuking Germany and not having the Soviets to open a second (or third, or fourth... or whatever) front to the Japanese, it means Japan is still on the war, and will be for quite some time. When the Pacific War ended, the Allies were planning an invasion of Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra from the west, continued attacks against Japanese pockets in the Philippines and Micronesia, aswell as a decisive operation to landin the Japanese Archipelago itself. We'll go first with the operations in the south and later jump to the north. This is where the essay properly ends, the next paragraph is a compilation of Allied and Japanese operation plans in the Pacific.
Info: Operation Downfall (November 1 1945), Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night (September 22 1945, part of the larger Operation PX), Operation Jurist (Landing at Penang, Malaysia), Operation Mailfist (Singapore, this one and the latter part of the greater Operation Zipper), Operation Culverin (landing in Northern Sumatra).
