US/England are the "bad guys" of WWII

matashowski

So i recognize this topic is a bit out there, but i'm really curious about alternative alliences in WWII. A post about Italy being the bumbling, not-too-powerful member of the Axis got me thinking. In OTL, the Allies are definitively the good guys (who i know did their fair share of evil, but we can all agree the swastika is the universal symbol for evil). What if you reversed the poles, so to speak, so that the Anglo-sphere descended into fascism? A different great depression, perhaps that triggers some kind of Military takeover in America. The decent drags Britain into the fray. How they reach this point (and i'd say several decades is long enough to do it) isn't really my concern, because i know that it means ridiculous butterflies. So with the last fifty years altered beyond repair, who would be the interesting alliances that form to keep them at bay?

I can imagine a socialist Germany and Russia teaming up to repel invasions of their homeland, with perhaps a reluctant Japan on their team. The invasion of Normandy looks pretty similar to OTL, just with entirely different meaning behind it. Of course, i don't know what goals the US and England would have. This is just an idea i can't really let go of.


And it also begs the question. If the US and British Empire really decided to say, around 1935, take over the world, would any collection of people be able to stop them?
 

Alex1guy

The USA and Britain? Together in 1935? I dont think there's an alliance in the world who could resist that if they really set their minds to it :eek:, that's a stupid amount of manpower and resources, not to mention the US industry.
 

Riain

Banned
German/Soviet alliance would possibly be unconquerable in the core of the Eurasian landmass. The US/UK probably wouldn't be able to field many more than 300 divisions compared maybe 500 German/Soviet divisions and the distances in Eastern Europe are enormous for a mechanised army being supplied ultimately by sea.
 

MattII

Would require a complete reversal of national policies so that Japan isn't ruled by a bunch of racist expansionists, Stalin never makes it into the big league, and Hitler isn't elected. Perhaps harder will be making the UK/US aggressive, ultra-repressionist (even more so than they were) and near-genocidal.
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

lycan said:
The Klan was quite powerful in the 1920's, IIRC
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Yes, but the problem you face is that they're insular in mindset. I'm not sure even a Klan-associated Woodrow Wilson figure on steroids would work in terms of making the US the bad guys in a WWII context.
 

Lee-Sensei

matashowski said:
So i recognize this topic is a bit out there, but i'm really curious about alternative alliences in WWII. A post about Italy being the bumbling, not-too-powerful member of the Axis got me thinking. In OTL, the Allies are definitively the good guys (who i know did their fair share of evil, but we can all agree the swastika is the universal symbol for evil). What if you reversed the poles, so to speak, so that the Anglo-sphere descended into fascism? A different great depression, perhaps that triggers some kind of Military takeover in America. The decent drags Britain into the fray. How they reach this point (and i'd say several decades is long enough to do it) isn't really my concern, because i know that it means ridiculous butterflies. So with the last fifty years altered beyond repair, who would be the interesting alliances that form to keep them at bay?

I can imagine a socialist Germany and Russia teaming up to repel invasions of their homeland, with perhaps a reluctant Japan on their team. The invasion of Normandy looks pretty similar to OTL, just with entirely different meaning behind it. Of course, i don't know what goals the US and England would have. This is just an idea i can't really let go of.


And it also begs the question. If the US and British Empire really decided to say, around 1935, take over the world, would any collection of people be able to stop them?
Click to expand...

It's pretty hard to see it. Unlike the Axis countries, Britain and the US don't really need to expand.
 

Riain

Banned
The motives don't exist, but it is an interesting 'total war fighting potential' question of the type that we routinely use to shut down questions about how the axis is virtually doomed to fail.

As for strategy, I'd be using total war fighting potential stats in reverse to organise world conquest. I'd start with Italy in maybe 1937, then send the RN/USN directly to the Japanese home islands next while building up for the invasion of France from multiple points. By then I think Germany and the Soviets would be well and truly allied.
 

zoomar

Lee-Sensei said:
It's pretty hard to see it. Unlike the Axis countries, Britain and the US don't really need to expand.
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Key point. If you dominate a global empire or already control much of the world's economy, your main focus will be on maintaining what you have, not grabbing more. I could see a hypothetical situation in which the Anglosphere is oppressive in maintaining its existing power base (not all that different than OTL, actually), but it would be unlikely to be eager to start wars of aggression. Even if the "socialist/communist" states of Europe were not particularly oppressive, they would be the ones most likely to foment wars or revolutions to destabilize the Anglosphere and expand their own influence or ideology. More likely something like 1984, with both sides being "evil", possibly neither as bad as Nazis.
 
wcv215

wcv215

Lee-Sensei said:
It's pretty hard to see it. Unlike the Axis countries, Britain and the US don't really need to expand.
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This ultimately is the main issue. Neither country has a motive to expand, and giving them a motive requires changes that extend back into probably the 1800s. The U.S. at this point still has enormous amounts of unused land, control of many natural resources, and is already the preeminent industrial power. Britain controls honestly too much territory in the long-run already.

Not to mention that an expansionist United States would see Britain as a rival, or possibly subordinate, not an ally.
 

Lee-Sensei

zoomar said:
Key point. If you dominate a global empire or already control much of the world's economy, your main focus will be on maintaining what you have, not grabbing more. I could see a hypothetical situation in which the Anglosphere is oppressive in maintaining its existing power base (not all that different than OTL, actually), but it would be unlikely to be eager to start wars of aggression. Even if the "socialist/communist" states of Europe were not particularly oppressive, they would be the ones most likely to foment wars or revolutions to destabilize the Anglosphere and expand their own influence or ideology. More likely something like 1984, with both sides being "evil", possibly neither as bad as Nazis.
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Agreed. And much like in the Italian thread, it would need a complete change of American and British society for them to go to lengths where they'd be comparable to Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union in World War 2.
 

hx87

The USA alone mobilized ~270 divisions during WWII, so UK+USA wouldn't necessarily be at a quantitative disadvantage compared to Germany + USSR. A lots depends on whether and how much British India and China can contribute. Either country has more people than the 4 major participants put together. A fully mobilized Chinese military equipped by the USA would be difficult for even the Soviets to handle.
 

CaesarCzech

Banned
hx87 said:
The USA alone mobilized ~270 divisions during WWII, so UK+USA wouldn't necessarily be at a quantitative disadvantage compared to Germany + USSR. A lots depends on whether and how much British India and China can contribute. Either country has more people than the 4 major participants put together. A fully mobilized Chinese military equipped by the USA would be difficult for even the Soviets to handle.
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Eeeh You have Nacionalist and you have Communist in China not bloody likely to get Entire China Nationalist without Normandy landings in China to support Nationalists.
 

pattersonautobody

Perhaps Germany falls to socialism after WW1, but it is a NEP-type of socialism and not genocidal. So, France is obviously threatened by the EUrasian Bolshevik menace and is aggressive to Germany. The German-Russian Axis shocks the world and defeats the Anglo-French alliance in short order. The Axis, which now includes Italy, funds anti-colonial movements and is very active in supporting uprisings militarily to spread Communism.

The British are brutal in putting down rebellions, killing tons of African and Arab subjects. A rebellion in India is put down killing hundreds of thousands of people. The US joins the war against the Axis to prevent revolutions in Latin America, particularly Argentina. At this time, the US has concentration camps where they are brutalizing people of German and Italian descent, especially after Wobblie general strikes were organized to prevent the occurrence of this. Hundreds of thousands die in the Arizona and New Mexico desert to quell dissent.

The US and the UK, with Japanese assistance (who in exhange have been given a free hand in Asia) have isolated the Eurasian COmmunist block. Further, they can outproduce the Reds by a large margin, and are bombing German and Russian cities into rubble. Millions are dead. Atomic weapons are not being used simply because German rockets armed with gas pointed at London are a sufficient deterrent. For this reason, the "liberation of France" is necessary.

The French, after making peace with the Reds, are mostly self-governing and were not looking to be liberated. Anglo-US bombings of Paris, which have killed tens of thousands, sent the French in to the arms of the Reds volunteering in record numbers. Nonetheless, Anglo-American control of the skies is too powerful and it is only a matter of time a successful invasion of the French coast can be held. There are some whispers that an invasion through a neutral country, such as Spain or even Greece, may even be in the works in order to contain Communism once and for all.
 

matashowski

^Thats basically what i was looking for. After i posted this, i figured that a different socialism would be the ticket for motive. While the Anglos don't necessarily require resources or land, they do both have massive globe spanning empires to maintain. Their wars are not ones of conquest in the traditional sense, but one of ideas. Especially if in this TL, socialism is a viable option. There would be kinks of course, but this is operating on the best case scenario. No Stalin, and the German revolution goes in an entirely different direction. That would create an at least semi-prosperous socialist state. The US/England can not have that spreading around the globe, so you might see a proto-cold war conflict, except way bloodier and way hotter. Rather than the CIA backed coups of OTL, Latin America would probably be a string of (more, longer) occupations.
 

MichaelF

I don't think it's possible to have concentration camps for people of German and Italian descent in the United States for one very simple reason- by 1920, there were too many of them. And hundreds of thousands dying is unlikely- there was an incredible amount of prejudice against the Japanese in Pearl Harbor and most of them survived the internment camps.
 
Baconheimer

Baconheimer

pattersonautobody said:
Perhaps Germany falls to socialism after WW1, but it is a NEP-type of socialism and not genocidal. So, France is obviously threatened by the EUrasian Bolshevik menace and is aggressive to Germany. The German-Russian Axis shocks the world and defeats the Anglo-French alliance in short order. The Axis, which now includes Italy, funds anti-colonial movements and is very active in supporting uprisings militarily to spread Communism.

The British are brutal in putting down rebellions, killing tons of African and Arab subjects. A rebellion in India is put down killing hundreds of thousands of people. The US joins the war against the Axis to prevent revolutions in Latin America, particularly Argentina. At this time, the US has concentration camps where they are brutalizing people of German and Italian descent, especially after Wobblie general strikes were organized to prevent the occurrence of this. Hundreds of thousands die in the Arizona and New Mexico desert to quell dissent.

The US and the UK, with Japanese assistance (who in exhange have been given a free hand in Asia) have isolated the Eurasian COmmunist block. Further, they can outproduce the Reds by a large margin, and are bombing German and Russian cities into rubble. Millions are dead. Atomic weapons are not being used simply because German rockets armed with gas pointed at London are a sufficient deterrent. For this reason, the "liberation of France" is necessary.

The French, after making peace with the Reds, are mostly self-governing and were not looking to be liberated. Anglo-US bombings of Paris, which have killed tens of thousands, sent the French in to the arms of the Reds volunteering in record numbers. Nonetheless, Anglo-American control of the skies is too powerful and it is only a matter of time a successful invasion of the French coast can be held. There are some whispers that an invasion through a neutral country, such as Spain or even Greece, may even be in the works in order to contain Communism once and for all.
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I think this is the best bet. Maybe a POD is Russian Victory in the Russo-Polish War, leading to Communist Poland. This leads to Germany falling to Communism. Assuming the Great Depression still happens, maybe more Communist activity in the Balkans, and Soviet support for Italian Communists is what starts the war out.

I guess the rest of the Americas would be US-British allies.
 
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