WWII becomes an Axis-Soviet isolated conflict

I welcome everybody's opinions about how this scenario is likely going to unfold, as long as they take a constructive approach (trolls and naysayers need not apply). As it concerns the rest of the world, I guess Egypt and Syria-Iraq continue to agitate and pressure the Western powers for decolonization with increasing degrees of success, much like it happens with India. Hard to tell in these circumstances if India eventually achieves self-rule as a united federation or the partition occurs, although they probably stay a Dominion for longer. Almost surely decolonization takes a rather slower and more managed course than OTL. With France not involved in the war and Italy and Spain only to a limited extent, there is a good chance North Africa (especially Libya and the coastal areas) build up enough of an European settler population to stay politically bound to Europe for all time. Southeast Asia is probably too advanced in its anticolonial awakening for its decolonization to be delayed for too long, although the process likely is still slower than OTL. On the other hand, Africa is still far too backward and disorganized for its decolonization becoming a serious perspective in the short- and medium-term future. Given the circumstances, almost surely Italy eventually manages to crush Ethiopian resistance to its colonial rule by bloody repression. South America is not much different from OTL, except for fascism and communism both staying viable options for extremists. With large-scale immigration of European Jews to Palestine, the Zionists inevitably manage to conquer all of Mandatory Palestine in the struggle with the Arabs, and quite possibly add valuable border areas such as the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Southern Lebanon, and the East Bank of the Jordan Valley to their booty, creating Greater Israel. The Arab population almost entirely flees or is expelled to swell the ranks of the refugees in the Arab countries.

Ok, let's try to address your points as best as I can. You may notice the scenario explictly states TTL Germany postpones the partition of post-Munich Czechoslovakia until after the Eastern War has started, and then nobody really notices or cares. So the Germans burn no bridges, Britain does not feel betrayed and remains in appeasement mode, and does not care to give Poland any military guarantee. I also see no problem with Germany avoiding Plan Z and u-boat build-up, and sticking to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Precisely because Britain remains non-confrontational about Poland, and Germany is preparing for a land conflict in the East, the German leaders decide naval build-up is an unnecessary provocation and a serious waste of resources, so they postpone it, and when the Eastern War starts, it gets entirely scrapped.

I work from the assumption ITTL the prevailing assessment in Western public opinion is appeasement worked, the Axis powers left Western Europe and China alone and got busy fighting the equally troublesome Soviets. So Churchill's arguments are discredited (giving Germany what it wanted did not pave the way to it attacking the Western powers) and he remains the marginal, powerless, and controversial political figure he was during the early and mid 1930s, only more so since he looks like the boy crying wolf. But if you wish to err on the safe side, it is child's play to add a nasty accident during the 1930s that claims Churchill's life - the scenario already assumes the first PoD occurs in early 1936 to provide for the avoidance of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It is not any really difficult to extend it backwards to 1931 and ensure that car accident near-miss instead killed Churchill, or come up with an unknown ATL lethal accident in 1936-39.

Italy was looking very hard on the *Western Balkans*, not Greece alone or even as first choice. As a matter of fact, IOTL Mussolini's original target after Albania was Yugoslavia, he only changed it when Hitler made a veto (until the anti-Axis coup in Belgrad occured, that is). ITTL the German veto does not take place since Berlin and Rome agree to exchange German support for dismantlement of Yugoslavia for Italian support for Barbarossa. Italy does much better against Yugoslavia than against Greece for several reasons (better logistics, this is the war the Italian army long prepared for, Hungary's and Bulgaria's help, Croat, Macedonian, and Albanian separatist groups acting as a fifth column) and wins the war, leading to a 1941-style partition. Depending on circumstances, the Wehrmacht may or may not get directly involved in the conquest of Yugoslavia, but it is irrelevant. This success makes Mussolini satisfied enough he leaves Greece alone, and then Italy shifts gears to support Germany when the Eastern War starts. As far as I can tell, the Western powers cared relatively little about the integrity of Yugoslavia (IOTL they gave it no militay guarantee, unlike Poland, Romania, and Greece), so I doubt they would greatly upset from its demise, especially if the Axis states covertly support separatist groups and the crisis seemingly starts because of Yugoslavia's domestic instability.

A necessary component of this scenario is to assume TTL Hitler for whatever reason trusts France won't attack Germany while it is busy fighting Russia. It needs to happen, or the scenario falls apart. I think the best I can offer you in this regard is to assume the Eastern conflict does not start because Germany does a planned and prepared purposeful attack as OTL. Rather, it is a local crisis in Eastern Europe that escalates beyond Hitler's and Stalin's immediate plans and intentions, probably something the USSR does during the implementation of its expansionist agenda and Hitler perceives as a Soviet violation of the M-R Pact. It might be Soviet occupation of Lithuania, or perhaps even better TTL Romania does not accept the Soviet ultimatum, and the Red Army invades Bessarabia and Bukovina. Hitler acknowledges Soviet conquest of Bukovina as a violation of the pact, gets worried Stalin may seize the Romanian oilfields, and orders the Wehrmacht to support the Romanians. Stalin feels Germany broke the deal, and orders the Red Army to invade Poland. Germany and the USSR are now locked in a state of war. Since the war occurs before the timetable Hitler planned, he didn't have time to make up his mind about France, whether to trust it would stay neutral and leave it alone, or engage in a pre-emptive invasion of Western Europe. Now however events make the decision for him, the Eastern war has already started so Germany cannot absolutely afford a two-front conflict if they can avoid it, it was its doom in WWI. Hitler was aware of this and keen to avoid a two-front war in 1939-40, it was the very point of the M-R Pact. So ITTL he has to make the best of the situation and rely on the neutrality of Britain and France. Howover, events soon show Britain and France perceive the situation as satisfying and have no intention of getting involved.

This kind of event sequence likely requires the Eastern War starts sometime in 1940 by Germany and Russia stumbling into it rather than in 1941 by a Barbarossa-style attack. Germany does not have the resources of Western Europe to plunder, but it has free access to world markets, nobody is imposing a blockade or embargo on the Axis powers. It lacks the experience of the Battle of France, but also did not waste anything fighting it, nor BoB or Weseberung for that matter. It also has full support from the undivided military power of Italy (it is not fighting in the Med and North Africa) and of Japan (it is not fighting in China, Southeast Asia, or the Pacific). The Red Army is still its Winter War crappy self, since the war occurs in 1940. Its only real advantage is Germany and Italy may need to leave some forces to shield their Western border against France and the Wehrmacht is less experienced. On the other hand, there is no military or economic support for the Soviets from the Western Allies, and the Japanese open a second front in the Far East. Yugoslavia in all likelihood is a relatively quick affair (at most if the Wehrmacht is not directly involved it takes a few months instead of a few weeks) and then the Axis forces at most only have occupation duties in the Western Balkans and Manchuria besides the Eastern and Far Eastern fronts.

As an aside, ITTL nobody in the Western world but Jews and Communists has a good reason to think of Nazi Germany as more dangerous and evil than Soviet Russia. From their perspective, Germany just pursued its long-known list of irredentist claims, by heavy-handed means but with some good justifications, and then it stumbled in an all-out war at most it bore only half of the blame for with a just as nasty totalitarian power. ITTL its reputation as a reckless recidivist aggressor is much diminished or almost non-existent. TTL strategic and international PR circumstances also drive it to accept Vichy Poland, the Baltic states, and the Ukrainians as short-term allies of convenience in the Axis coalition no matter what its true long-term intentions of racial colonization, and to dispose of the Jews by sending them to Palestine. War in Eastern Europe, peace with the Axis, and international pressure force the British to tear up the White Paper and open the gates to large-scale Zionist immigration. Therefore, a lot of the genocidal racist nastiness is much diminished, also because with full access to world markets the Axis war machine has much less need to exploit occupied areas to the bone to feed itself.

Of course, stuff such as mass killing of Soviet political commissars and massacres of Soviet, Yugoslav, and Ethiopian partisans and their sympathizers is still going to happen, but I doubt the West is going to lose much sleep over it or even notice overmuch. Especially once the advancing Axis armies start gathering evidence of Stalinist atrocities and publicize them to the world with their propaganda machine to feed a moral equivalence narrative. As it concerns Japan, ITTL it avoids the invasion of China, so the bulk of its war crimes does not happen, and its intervention in the conflict takes place in low-populated northern Manchuria, Mongolia, and Russian Far East. At most, some serious mistreatment of Soviet PoW and hostile civilians in conquered areas is going to happen, but again not stuff the West is going to notice or care for overmuch, given its stance about the occupation of Manchuria. Circumstances are favorable to the Western democracies embracing a narrative and stance about the Axis-Soviet conflict that is much similar to the one they picked for the Iran-Iraq War.

I did not explictly state it in the scenario, but I share your opinion in these circumstances, an Axis success is in the cards. As far as I can tell the most likely outcome in 2-3 years the conflict has been pretty exhausting for both sides but the Axis forces are where they stood in 1941-42, have seized Leningrad, and are painfully closing on Moscow, Stalingrad, and the Caucasus. Then Stalin offers favourable peace terms out of desperation to save the Soviet regime like Lenin did in 1918. Britain and France start to make saber-rattling rumors since they fear an Axis total victory. Out of concern for a two-front war with the bulk of the Wehrmacht still tied down in Russia, Hitler reluctantly accepts a Brest-Litovsk 2.0 peace and Japan seizes the Russian Far East.

In Doylist terms, yes, we sidestep the “France could backstab Germany” point because it would harm the story. In Watsonian terms, it gets irrelevant because of the event sequence that starts the Axis-Soviet conflict. We need to put aside the assumption it begins with a Barbarossa-style German attack. Instead, during one step of the Soviet expansionist program (broadly speaking, Romania > Lithuania > Finland > Turkey in order of likelihood) something happens that Germany interprets as a Soviet violation of their pact, and the Germans react to by providing military support to the victims of Soviet aggression. The Soviets in turn interpret this as a German violation of their pact, and escalate by attacking in Poland. The conflict quickly spreads across Eastern Europe at the border between Axis-aligned states and the USSR, beyond either side's plans and expectations, and before the belligerants are truly prepared to fight it. From the outside, it basically looks like the Soviets attack, and the Germans successfully defend and counterattack. This happens before the Germans can make up their mind whether France can be safely trusted or not to stay neutral in case of a German-Soviet conflict, and act accordingly. The flashpoint and escalation also happen well before any planned German (or Soviet for that matter) attack.

At this point, the very best Germany can do is to fight the Soviets with as many resources and allies they can muster, protect itself from a possible French attack with as little forces they can safely afford, and try to keep France appeased by diplomatic and PR means as best as they can do. Remember, Britain, France, and America are democracies that up to the PoD and ITTL beyond were in a strong appeasement/isolationist and pacifist mood for years out of the painful memories of WWI. Their leaders cannot start pre-emptive wars on a whim out of abstract balance of power concerns without provocation, a plausible casus belli, sufficient political consensus, suitable propaganda preparation of public opinion, and so on.

In this regard, it is wrong and misleading to treat the likes of Churchill and Roosevelt as all-powerful political gods or dictators that could bring their countries in whatever wars their whims dictated out of coercion or sheer charisma. Neither their countries ever worked as monolithic entities that would automatically act aggressively when some abstract balance of power criteria gets violated by some foreign power, regardless of circumstances. It was never so, up to a point a large and influential portion of the elites and public opinion in their countries supported appeasement or isolationism, and up to a point they were politically dominant. This is why in 1937-41 FDR was utterly unable to bring America in a war with Germany and Japan before Pearl Harbor despite blatantly wishing for one, and why Britain supported appeasement up to occupation of Czechoslovakia, and why Churchill did not become PM until the Battle of France.

As it concerns FDR, it is easy to add an event sequence to the scenario that gets him and his associates out of the White House by 1940, and replace them with an Administration that shall stick to a non-interventionist agenda for the duration of the Axis-Soviet War. Let’s just assume TTL Roosevelt doubles down with his OTL schemes to 'pack' the courts and enact a political purge in the 1938 midterm Democratic primaries to get rid of New Deal opponents. This explodes in his face worse that OTL, getting an even stronger Conservative Coalition of Republicans and conservative democrats in control of the Congress that opposes his policies. The sheer stress of this setback accelerates the decline of his health and heightened scrutiny brings all kinds of skeletons in his closet to the surface (his poor health, his marital infidelity, Communist infiltration of his Administration, his underhanded schemes to bring America in a war) as scandals that discredit him and his platform, reducing the influence and popularity of his faction. He dies by stroke in 1939-40 and his death throws the Democratic party in disarray with a succession fight between supporters and opponents of his policies. These events send wind in the sails of the isolationist faction of the GOP, either Taft or Lindbergh wins the Republican nomination and then the Presidency in 1940, and you have an hardcore isolationist in the White House with anti-interventionists in control of the Congress. 

As it concerns Britain, TTL Churchill has been dead since 1931 and the appeasers remain in full control of British political agenda. IOTL Baldwin and Chamberlain seriously considered declaring British strategic interests in Europe stopped at the Rhine (and the Turkish Straits). TTL British government sticks to that standard, because they realize they are powerless to influence events in Eastern Europe if Germany and Russia fight over it or collude to impose their preferred course on it, short of fighting both powers at once in a war they cannot win, and/or the effort drastically accelerating their decline as imperial great powers. The appeasers stay in power because, as long as neither Germany nor Russia seizes a decisive victory, appeasement worked just as planned by tying the Germans and the Russians in a conflict that makes them too busy to threaten Western strategic interests in Western Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East. Pretty much the same point applies about Italy, the Balkans, and the Med.

Sure, they are going to make some sensible contingency preparations in the case the crisis somehow goes out of control, such as continuing their rearmament and deploying more troops and assets in France or their holdings in the Middle East or Southeast Asia. A deployment of Entente forces in neutral countries such as Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, Greece, or Turkey instead is not realistically going to happen since their governments would refuse it to protect their neutrality and avoid provoking the Axis powers or the USSR and forceful entry would be an unjustified act of war with obvious repercussions. Sure, they would get alarmed and start to make pressure on the winning side dangling the threat of their intervention if it seems to win too much, such as say the Axis forces getting close to Leningrad, Moscow, or Stalingrad, or the Soviets crossing the 1914 border. But as long as the belligerent powers are still fighting it out relatively close to prewar borders with no clear winner yet, the Western powers have no reason whatsoever to take sides.

This most definitely includes TTL Germany, which up to this point basically enforced its long-standing and not so unreasonable irredentist agenda everybody knew about since before the ink on the Versailles treaty was dry, and then stumbled in a conflict with Russia which the Soviets are at least just as guilty of starting. If Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia were collateral victims of this vast conflict too bad, but shit happens; blame the flaws of the Versailles settlement. Nothing the Entente powers can do about it, any intervention of theirs would either fail or upset the strategic balance, making the geopolitical situation worse for the West. Conspiracy theories about the German generals using the Nazis as puppets to conquer the world are not going to find much credence in this context, and shall stay marginal until something like the Battle of France happens.

I may point out that precisely because TTL Nazi Germany has a need to keep Britain and France neutral and appeased, it embraces certain moderate policies its OTL counterpart did not. This includes avoidance of an overt GPO approach for Eastern Europe and instead ostensibly accepting Vichy Poland, the Baltics, and the Ukrainians as allies, scrapping Plan Z, limiting its gains from Poland to the 1914 borders and otherwise restoring a collaborationist Polish state, settling the Jew problem by sending them to Palestine, and so on. For the same reason, once the Axis powers are really getting close to a decisive victory because of favorable circumstances, and the Entente powers really start making unhappy, saber-rattling rumors, the Axis leaders are quite likely to accept a Brest-Litovsk-type peace deal, rather than pressing for a total victory and risking a Western intervention and a troublesome two-front war.

As it concerns the Balkans, rather than generic assumptions about British and French behavior being shaped by abstract balance of power calculations, I prefer to base my own assumptions on specific OTL evidence. First, Britain and France hardly showed any real reaction to Italian annexation of Albania in 1939, also because the area had been a well-known expansionist objective of Italy for generations and in its sphere of influence for a couple decades. ITTL it is surely going to happen the same way. Second, to the degree they showed a reaction, it got conflated with the one to German seizure of Czechoslovakia, which happened in the same period and involved Britain giving military guarantees to Poland, Romania, and Greece, but NOT Yugoslavia. The absence is telling, and IMO decisive to adjudicate British reactions to a crisis in interwar Yugoslavia. The British never really cared much about the Serbs and their ambitions for a little empire, either before or after WWI. Yugoslavia was almost entirely a creation of Serbian/Panslav nationalism and France striving at Versailles to set up a chain of pro-Entente states in Eastern Europe to bind Germany. By the late 1930s, the French had almost entirely given up this approach and passively followed the lead of Britain.

As it concerns the British, sure they had relevant strategic interests in the Med, but they were essentially focused on their imperial holdings in Egypt, the Middle East, Central Asia, and India, by extension a drive to keep the Turkish Straits free from Russian control, and hence Greece and Turkey. The inland depths of the Balkans, nowhere so much. Pretty much the same point applies for France and their colonies in North Africa and the Middle East. For these reasons, I am quite skeptical Britain and France are going to be upset so much for the downfall of Yugoslavia as to take serious action against its authors. Especially since (contacts and plans existed for this in the interwar period) ITTL the downfall occurs as a result of the Axis states covertly supporting separatist groups of restive nationalities (Croats, Macedonian Bulgarians, and Kosovo Albanians) into starting an uprising and then all the neighbor states intervene to impose a partition as a peacekeeping settlement. At that point, it would seem Yugoslavia collapsed because of its own domestic instability, and nobody in the region but the Serbs wanted it to survive. If the Italians first get busy with Albania and Yugoslavia, then with fighting the Soviets, they never get to threaten the *real* Anglo-French interests in the Med, which is rather convenient for London and Paris and spares them the considerable effort of taking down a second-tier great power.

I expect the Axis-Soviet War to start sometime between end of 1939 and middle 1940, so German annexation of Bohemia-Moravia and full exploitation of its industrial and financial resources would start more or less a year later than OTL. To some degree, part of it would likely be feasible before than that, since Czechoslovakia turned into a client of Germany after Munich. Yes, this is going to have some significant negative effect on the German war machine. So would also the fact Germany cannot loot conquered Western Europe for resources. On the other hand, another important factor in the Axis’ favor you seem oblivious of is they have full access to world markets. Nobody is going to impose blockades or embargoes on them. This would be a game changer for the Axis powers, as much as or more than the above factors you emphasized. Not to mention the fact that, being at peace with the Western powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan can spare building a lot of ships, submarines, and A-A defense, and use the extra resources to build more tanks and trucks. They shall have lot of fuel for them, thanks to lack of blockade, and all the planes they can build go to the Eastern front.

France turning fascist and supporting the Axis in its anti-Soviet crusade with Britain and the USA sticking to neutrality is an interesting scenario of its own, but a different one from the one we are discussing here, and one actually not so original as WWII variants go. It is basically the tale of Britain being forced to make peace sometime between the Fall of France and the start of Barbarossa. It can easily happen if say 1) a total disaster at Dunkirk, invasion panic, and Churchill not being around scare Britain into peace after the Fall of France. Alternatively, 2) Germany avoiding the BoB in favor of a Med strategy, Italy performing well, and efficient Axis strategic coordination get Britain kicked out of Med and the Middle East and losing the will to fight. Or 3) the USSR temporarily joins the Axis before Barbarossa because of Operation Pike or successful Axis-Soviet alliance negotiations in 1940, or even more decisively, 2) and 3) happening simultaneously. If Britain drops out of the war in 1940 or early 1941, it would be exceedingly difficult for the British rejoining it after being defeated as long as the Axis seems winning, Japan is not going to do any Pearl Harbor since it would suffer no embargo or it would have no teeth, and the USA would lack any realistic casus belli or strategic platform to intervene in Europe. I did not pursue this kind of scenario here because it seemed less original and made things almost too easy for the Axis.

By the way, France having turned fascist and pro-Axis for good after the armistice and Petain's takeover is an important geopolitical factor that people often forget when discussing a possible Anglo-German peace in 1940-41. Before things started going really bad for the Axis, the Vichy regime had a lot of popular backing, international and domestic legitimacy, and support from the colonies in 1940-42, in everything that mattered it was France. The mainland resistance was a fringe, De Gaulle was an insignificant rogue that recruited the grand total of 7,000 people for his army, and almost all the colonies aligned with Vichy until the British conquered them. The one significant exception was French Equatorial Africa whose governor despised Nazi Germany for obvious reasons since he was Black. Even if Britain makes peace and the Wehrmacht pulls out from France, the Vichy regime is going to stay and be even stronger from the Axis' victory.

Another aside point, the argument Japan could not afford to leave the US Pacific Fleet or the Phiippines alone if it makes a drive to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia is only valid if one makes the wrong assumption FDR was a dictator that could bring America in a war according to his whim. The Japanese made this very mistake in their strategic calculations because they wrongly projected their own authoritarian system on America and assumed it worked the same way. They failed to understand the real workings of American democracy and the complexity of its political system. In practice, FDR would have had very serious difficulties persuading the isolationist-minded American people to declare war on its own initiative to Japan in a quest to preserve European colonial empires in Asia if US territory had been left intact. The same reasons would have applied why he was utterly unable to bring America in a war against Japan or Germany in 1937-41 despite his blatant wish to do so and underhanded schemes to create a pretext.

Last but not least, France going fascist and pro-Axis in the interwar period is actually an interesting and original idea. Broadly speaking, I think a good way of enacting it would be the occurence of a civil war, Spanish Civil War style, between French far-leftists and far-rightists. Possible PoDs might be the things going pear-shaped for France in the postwar period (economic collapse, the Soviets winning in Poland and making a grab for Europe, bungled invasion of the Rhineland) or the Popular Front causing so much polarization it explodes in any armed conflict by pushing too hard, too soon for socialist reforms Allende-style and trying to intervene in Spain on the side of the Republicans. I assume it would require a somewhat more nuanced and complex foreign-policy approach on the part of the UK than simply going "Allies smash" on the fascist powers with the USA in tow. If nothing else because a full-fledged 'Carolingian' fascist coalition of France, Germany, and Italy would be utterly undefeatable for Britain alone and one cannot simply take for granted America is always going to turn interventionist, anti-fascist, Anglophile, and pro-Soviet in any case. The British could attempt a "Napoleonic Wars"-style alliance with the Soviets but it would have its obvious disadvantages and it is far from certain or even likely it would be able to win. Heck, giving the full resources of an intact and willing France to the Axis coalition would make much more difficult and costly even for the OTL Allies to win (far from impossible, surely, thanks to the USA's vast resources, but democratic nations may lose the will to fight). Or the British might actually write off democracy in the continent as a lost cause for the current generation or two, avoid creating hostility from the fascist bloc with its own hostile attitude, let it pick a fight (in Cold War or armed fighting terms according to circumstances) with the USSR, and let the totalitarians stew in their own juices until their systems wither, decay, and collapse.