Story Idea Thread: post your ideas here!

Perhaps I did overstep my bounds in regards to my personal views but I do object to it being called a "wish idea" - I really don't want a war with China, I don't want China to ever try to take Taiwan, and I certainly don't wish to lose a war with China due to incompetent leadership. All of these would be catastrophic for everyone involved and the losses would greatly outweigh any sort of short-term political gain.

In any case, a more fleshed-out idea

A Broken Axis - The German-Japanese War of 1970
A pretty bog-standard AH concept but something I've thought of on-and-off. A slightly more plausible version of the Axis Victory Germany-Japan Cold War concept seen in things like Man in The High Castle or The Ultimate Solution.

Definitely ripping off a few concepts from other Axis victory TLs. Pretty broad strokes at the moment, but some crucial PoDs:

- Main PoD is that the US collapses into civil war in the 1920s or 1930s as the result of widespread incidents of political and economic violence like the Bonus Army and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Despite the successful reunification of at least the continental United States under a right-wing military dictatorship led by MacArthur, Patton, or some similar figure by 1939, the US is far too invested in the reconstruction effort to bother with any sort of foreign entanglement

- A second Amritsar-type massacre occurs in India around the same time period - Gandhi killed, Indian nationalism takes a turn towards violent resistance. Eventually develops into country-wide insurgency, a British Vietnam of sorts.

- With the US essentially withdrawing from the world due to ongoing civil war, Japan embarks on aggressive expansion throughout Pacific, particularly in the previously American-held Philippines - as a result of naked and unpopular Japanese aggression the Anglo-Japanese Treaty self-destructs in the 1920s/1930s despite the differing circumstances

- Japan successfully avoids war with China despite the seizure of Manchuria, instead focuses on a potential war with Britain and the USSR

- War in Europe starts similar to OTL but Dunkirk ends in a massacre of British forces - Churchill is removed and replaced with Halifax or someone similar, Britain withdraws from the war in Europe after a negotiated peace that heavily favors the Nazis. 

- Taking advantage of Britain still reeling from Dunkirk and the ongoing insurgency in India, Japan go to war in the Pacific in 1941-1942 but after horrendous losses in Singapore, Hong Kong, and a Japanese-sponsored uprising by the Azad Hind in India eventually withdraw from that theatre as well. Japan is able to dominate the Pacific, so far sans it's OTL gains in China 

- Germany is able to concentrate nearly all of it's resources on the Eastern Front, Case Blue is successful in capturing Azeri oil reserves - no risk of RAF raids to take it out, Soviet air force largely defeated

- Moscow falls in 1943, Stalin and much of his inner clique killed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid - Japan revokes Neutrality Pact and invades Soviet Far East, Siberia, Mongolia - USSR collapses, is divided into German and Japanese spheres of influence.


By the 1960s, Eurasia and much of Africa are now dominated by the former Axis Powers. Emphasis on "former" as the main three parties of the alliance - Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Japanese Empire - are all now adversarial to one extent or the other, in a somewhat similar vein to how relations between the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Red China developed in our OTL Cold War.

The Nazis dominate continental Europe from Lisbon to the Urals - either by direct conquest or by creating puppet states ala the Warsaw Pact - but is locked in competition with Italy in Africa and the Mediterranean. 

The Germans have an even more adversarial relationship with Japan, however, in the former Soviet Union and in China, where the German-backed government of Chiang Kai-Shek is on the brink of open war with the Japanese. Japan is also beginning to make inroads into the Middle East and Africa, upsetting both the Germans and the Italians who view that area as their rightful sphere of influence. 

These poor relations are definitely influenced by the racial ideologies of both the Nazi Germans and Imperial Japanese - the Nazis have decided that their former Japanese allies, formerly "honorary Aryans" are now a "yellow horde" that threatens to overrun Asia and (in their mind inevitably) the white world. The Japanese meanwhile continue to present themselves as liberators aiming to downtrodden Asian, African, and Arab populations from white colonialist rule as they did OTL. 

The British Empire is in a state of freefall. The Home Islands are wracked by domestic crises, the few remaining overseas colonies in Africa are being torn apart by competing groups of German and Italian-sponsored rebels, and the White Dominions are gaining increasing political independence. 

Meanwhile in the United States, things are looking up. The period of military dictatorship has officially come to an end, though the recent elections were 100% rigged and the new "civilian" government is entirely populated by former military regime figures.Civil rights are eons behind OTL (segregation is still the law of the land; the civil rights movement was deemed "Jap-sponsored subversion" and crushed) but America made a significant economic and military comeback and is a world power once more. 

The US now dominates much of the former British Empire (i.e. CANZUK), is a key ally of Italy, and is actively competing with Germany and Japan for influence in Latin America - to the point that the US and Germany nearly went to war over a border conflict between US-allied Brazil and Nazi-allied Argentina.

The US, Germany, Italy, and Japan have all developed nuclear weapons by the mid-1950s, which is what has kept the situation peaceful, until...

After some flashpoint (likely in the former Soviet Union), war breaks out between the Greater German Reich and the Empire of Japan. Despite racial fanaticism and apocalyptic propaganda on both sides, those in power in both Berlin and Tokyo have the sense to keep the conflict conventional for the time being...though their fingers are never far from the proverbial button, and hardliners on both sides advocate loudly for preemptive atomic attack.

The United States is neutral and content to let their largest enemies destroy one another, though both sides are trying to bring the Americans in on their side - the Nazis in particular are urging an "International White Alliance" to destroy "Asian barbarism" (similar to how Kosygin OTL sought a US-Soviet alliance against Red China at least in part on racial/ethnic grounds), while some in American foreign policy circles are urging an alliance with Japan to defeat the "greater threat" posed by Nazi Germany (shades of Nixon-Mao). Italy also remains officially neutral though they hope to use the conflict to expand their own empire. 

In the meantime, great naval battles are waged in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Leopards and Type 74 tanks clash across the Arabian deserts and Central Asian steppes, and Messerschmidt and Mitsubishi jets dogfight in the skies above as two of the most brutal empires in history clash. 




TL;DR: Sino-Soviet Split but with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and it goes hot