Flash fiction thread

Der Fuhrer ist Tot! - AKA Goering's War


On October 1st, 1939, one month after instigating the Second World War with his invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler is in the capital of that defeated nation. His trip to Warsaw brings Germany’s leader to witness a victory parade among the ruins of this city. His arrival is anticipated by more than just those in German uniform. Polish military officers who’ve managed to escape capture are waiting for him… with a bomb. His convoy passes the hidden location of a large explosive device and it is detonated at the most opportune moment. The blast is massive. Hitler is among the dozens killed outright, almost all of them German though with an unfortunate few Polish casualties too.

Der Fuhrer ist Tot!

News flashes back to Berlin that Hitler is no more. The Nazi top brass are informed and attention turns to the senior-most figures in the regime: Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess and the Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering. Which of these two will succeed Hitler? Hess would seem most likely to considering his long-standing dedication and his official position yet, on the day that war commenced, Hitler announced in a speech to the Reichstag (which Goering leads) that should ‘anything ever happen’ to him, he would want the Luftwaffe chief to be that successor. Others might desire to be in consideration for the leadership – the SS chief Heinrich Himmler especially – but neither has the positioning that Hess and Goering do. When word reaches Berlin that Hitler is no more, the two of them meet. Hess knows which way the wind is blowing. He declares his fidelity to Goering. There is no way that he can win a fight and a fight isn’t one which he wants either. Goering will never replace his beloved Adolf though it is clear that the future of a Nazi-led Germany will be safe in his hands.

Germany has a new leader. Goering speaks to the nation via a live radio address that evening, announcing the news which causes sharp intakes of breath throughout Germany and also many tears too. Hitler has been slain in Warsaw and, with the support of the party, and the people too, he, Goering, has stepped up where fate has called upon him to act in security for the Reich. Those responsible for the murder of the Fuhrer will be punished – without mercy too, he promises – and the war which Germany’s enemies have forced it into will carry on until there is a conclusion which ensures the future of the German race. Following the publicly declared will of Hitler for his succession, other influential German figures do as Hess does and support Goering. The new Fuhrer has the bare minimal of opposition to his rule and nothing which seriously troubles his regime. The transfer of power is complete and there is stability at the top of the Nazi war machine.

Despite declaring that the war will continue, Goering authorises efforts to be made to find a diplomatic way to end the month-old conflict. These are done on the quiet with behind the scenes talks attempted to see if the war with the British and the French can be concluded. Through contacts made via the Swedes and the Swiss – in separate efforts throughout October – there is an inability to move beyond the impasse which has come about. Those two countries (plus their empires) went to war over the matter of Polish sovereignty though the issues stretch back several years with regard to German actions elsewhere in Europe. German diplomats find encouragement with a desire from the Western Allies to end the conflict with it being said to them that in London and Paris it is believed that Goering is someone they might trust to keep their word on any agreement whereas that wouldn’t be the case with Hitler. However, an end to the fighting can only come should the conditions which the Western Allies have on the matters of Poland and Czechoslovakia be met. Full restoration of Polish sovereignty and a return to the status of Czechoslovakia agreed at Munich last year is what the British and French want.

These are conditions which Goering cannot meet. Czechoslovakia is already broken apart beyond a point of no return. As to Poland… it was Poles who just killed Hitler! Goering, urged on by Himmler to carry on what Hitler started, and now increased because of their culpability in the death of the Fuhrer, is busy overseeing the wholescale destruction of the Polish state. Death squads are running wild across the former nation while work is being done in every fashion to make sure that there will never be a Poland again. What the Western Allies want to see as the core elements of a peace deal to bring the war to an end are completely impossible for Goering to meet. There is no getting past this. The fight will go on for Goering-led Germany with Britain and France.

*

On April 2nd, 1940, the attack in the West is launched. Germany invades France and also attacks neutral Belgium, Luxembourg & the Netherlands too. The moment chosen is when a feint is undertaken to distract attention to the north in Scandinavia yet there isn’t really that much surprise with what Germany is doing overall. Since the war began last September, it has been clear to all that there will come an offensive in the West where Goering will try to do what the Kaiser failed in the last war and knock France out of the fight. Britain will be pushed off the Continent too and then, hopefully, there can come a final conclusion to all of this.

Parachute engineers operating in gliders, men who serve in Goering’s favoured Luftwaffe (his duties as head of state have seen him hand over control yet not influence), are a major part of the attack. They launch a daring assault in Belgium against Fort Eben-Emael to open the way for the panzers to go across the Albert Canal and deeper into the Low Countries where enemy forces are expected to be met in battle. There are many more paratroopers who air-drop or who are flown in so as to secure landing sites across the Netherlands. Brandenburger commandos make behind-the-lines attacks at key sites all over the place too. The British and French have their armies in Northern France but Germany is well aware of their plans to move through Belgium as they expect Goering to send his armies that way too. France’s Maginot Line – an impressive series of fortifications – cover the Franco-German border but leave the Belgian route into France exposed. The Dutch are neutral in this war like their Belgian & Luxembourg neighbours, but they stand in the way of the drive into France. Moreover, Goering wants access to air facilities in the Netherlands so that the Luftwaffe can make much use of them for operations against the British mainland.

An almighty clash of arms occurs on Belgian soil. Belgium joins the Western Allies though, just like the Dutch, are overawed by the German war machine. Goering throws everything at this fight, following the advice of his generals who tell him that the French are weak and the British not here in enough strength. Using the tactics of the fight in Poland, but on a bigger scale with important lessons learnt, panzers and the Luftwaffe storm forward. Brussels falls. Most of the Belgian Army is lost in battle or forced to retreat in panic. The Dutch drop out of the war when panzers link up with the paratroopers in what should have been Fortress Holland. German tanks push past French ones to reach the French border near Lille. A gap is soon opened up between the bulk of the British and French armies and it is one which the Germans exploit. Hundreds of Luftwaffe aircraft pound those on the ground to widen that gap leading to a ‘dash to the sea’. The English Channel is reached near to Abbeville thirteen days into the offensive. Extensive counterattacks try to close this off but fast-moving German infantry reach the panzers who have made it this far and there is continuous air cover too. South of the Somme Estuary, the shattered French fall back further into their country. To the north, there are more of them now cut off and alongside the British Expeditionary Force too. Royal Navy warships shell German units when they are spotted near to the shore-line – the Germany Navy is nowhere to be seen – but this doesn’t stop a push up the coastline. The Germans seek to cut off those still fighting here for their supply lines and external support by advancing on the Boulogne-Calais-Dunkirk axis.

Attacked on three sides, and from above, those caught in the trap across the Pas-de-Calais region are in trouble. They hold onto parts of Belgium but these are rapidly abandoned as the order comes to fall back towards the coast. There is ongoing political drama in both London and Paris due to the disaster which has befallen those on the battlefield here but to those in the war of the German war machine, their concerns are their own survival. Boulogne falls despite a furious effort to save it from capture. It is clear with that defeat that all is lost unless an evacuation can be completed. The trapped British and French armies need to be pulled out via ships or they will be destroyed here. The order to do that comes. Warships are joined by impressed civilian vessels in beginning to do this. The Luftwaffe interferes and while they meet strong resistance from the RAF who are able to operate over Calais, Dunkirk is levelled by their air strikes. German tanks are still some distance away but Dunkirk is of little use to the now underway seaborne evacuation because it has been shattered from their air. All eyes turn to Calais.

It will be called ‘the miracle of Calais’ afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of British and French troops, plus much of their equipment too, manage to escape via sealift from the port (and the nearby smaller Gravelines). The RAF keep the Luftwaffe at bay – immense arguments occur in Britain with the fear that the nation’s air defences are being gutted – while a huge sacrifice by infantrymen on the ground hold back the panzers. Those tanks aren’t just stopped by that though despite what the stories of heroism will say afterwards. Fuel shortages cause them to be first held up allowing for their infantry opponents to dig in and then once they do come forward, this time the Western Allies are ready for them. In Belgium and when they first appeared in Pas-de-Calais, the massed panzers brought about fright and fleeing from those who faced them. They are no longer so feared. Delays getting German infantry forward see the tanks in terrible trouble when they are unable to break free to advance across undefended ground like beforehand. Goering cuts through the chain-of-command (infuriating his generals) to demand that Germany’s tanks get into Calais and destroy the only means of escape for those trapped here but his words mean nothing. Two weeks following the loss of Dunkirk see Calais used for the greatest of all escapes. Belgium meanwhile falls and there is fighting along the Somme where Germany has success. However, Calais is a stain on the victory being won.

In a final attack, Calais falls on April 30th. The evacuation has been completed the day before. There is a rear-guard of both British and French soldiers who fight to the very end but in a final hurrah, panzers reach the port. What has survived weeks of partial air attacks was blown up this morning. There is nothing of use here. The successful trap to break the British Expeditionary force and the French armies apart worked wonders but this final end result has been the greatest of humiliations. Goering’s Luftwaffe has played a major part in that failure but they will escape his rage. It is his army generals who’ve let him down. The time for settling scores on that is not yet here though. There remains for of the fighting against France to be had.

*

Winston Churchill is now in power in London, replacing Neville Chamberlain. The miracle of Calais hasn’t saved Chamberlain, not when the British Expeditionary Force was forced into a retreat and then the RAF lost hundreds of aircraft over France. Whenever Goering wants to turn his bombers loose on Britain, the RAF will have few fighters to stop them. Churchill has formed a wartime coalition government and he is as much as an implacable enemy of Goering as he was of Hitler. The Nazi war machine has overrun parts of Europe and Churchill wants to throw them back over their borders. He goes to Paris during the end of the evacuation out of Calais and into meetings with the new French government. There has been a change over here in the City of Lights. Prime Minister Reynaud has resigned and his government has fallen with him. Into the void has come the old war hero Marshal Pétain. Promising to keep on fighting, and turn the tide, Churchill is encouraged by such an outlook. Yet, the facts on the ground make a mockery of such bold remarks from Pétain. Calais is finished with and the full attention of Germany is turned to finishing off France.

At the beginning of May, Goering sends his armies south. On the right, the advance is made towards the Seine Valley. On the left, the Germans move to cross the Aisne and towards the Marne. And in the middle, the panzers head for Paris. Strong French resistance is encountered in many places where the renewed German attack – aided by reinforcements who’ve marched all the way from Germany – is even stopped cold. However, elsewhere that determined opposition is absence. French forces are pounded with everything that the Germans can throw at them and, like up in Belgium, they break in many places. German forces are adept at seizing the initiative and exploiting such local collapses. They pour through them, getting behind those still resisting who find themselves now surrounded. In three days, the whole French line from inland near to Luxembourg at the end of the Maginot Line and over to the sea near to Abbeville falls apart. Selective German units which have raced ahead and faced annihilation if the French had held now keep on going. The panzers are on the rampage again. Behind them, POWS fall into German captivity en masse while those who escape will share their tales of woe far and wide.

Churchill is back in London when he receives a phone call from Pétain telling him that Paris is being abandoned. The War Cabinet in London is in the final stages of agreeing to put together a second British Expeditionary Force ready to go to France, entering via Brest and Cherbourg along with French troops evacuated from Calais. Now the French government is fleeing from their capital. The spanner is well and truly thrown into the works with this news arriving. The notion that Paris might fall isn’t something alien due to the speed and ability of German forces but it hadn’t been considered that the French might not make a fight for it. Everything that has been assumed about the willingness of Pétain to show the steel that France had in the last war dissipates this time. After Paris, things only get worse. German forces cross the Seine and race through Normandy on towards both Brittany and the lower reaches of the Loire Valley far beyond. Those further British forces which London plans to send to France are seeing their disembarkation ports under threat ahead of them sailing. On the Marne, where back in 1914 the French held back the Germans, this time around a major defeat is incurred. The panzers sent by Goering tear forward towards Central France. There are no reserves that France can send into battle due to those guarding the Maginot Line under attack from the front… if the Germans wish to, their forces victorious on the Marne can race to get behind them too.

France is falling.

May 7th sees Paris entered. Without a shot being fired, the French capital is taken by the Germans. Pétain and his government are long gone – they are temporarily down at Tours – and aren’t present to witness this earth-shattering event. Goering announces the capture to the German people that night, calling it one of the greatest victories ever won. Other German forces are a long way past Paris though as they spread further across France. Only in a very few places now are the French able to put up any real resistance to the invasion. There is no longer any recognisable frontline. Bypassing is done of those scattered islands of French resistance. This includes Tours where the Germans reach two days after taking Paris. Soldiers fight for France there but their government has already gone. Meanwhile, the British reinforcements haven’t come. Cherbourg is lost and there are panzers heading towards Brest, somewhere that the Luftwaffe has already heavily attacked. British forces in France are leaving instead of arriving. There are those who weren’t cut off up in Pas-de-Calais back in April and the intention had been for them to link up with those reinforcements. Now, they escape via French Atlantic ports such as St.-Nazaire and La Rochelle. This is order by London with the knowledge gained that Pétain has secretly authorised the opening of contact with the Germans with regard to a ceasefire. Churchill has been given ambiguous answers coming from Bordeaux (where Pétain is now) about this. Those British troops left in France aren’t ones he wants to see interned if France gives in.

Those talks are happening. Meeting near Reims, on French soil where the Germans Army has a forward headquarters for their army of conquest, Pétain has sent intermediaries. Negotiations take place without any pause in the German offensive. Goering’s instructions for the demands made by Germany are harsh yet ones designed to allow the French to accept them. His aim isn’t to destroy France as a nation, just as a military power which challenges the nation whose leadership he had inherited. There will be territorial changes, military restrictions and such like but France will survive this. Pétain himself is amenable to an end of the fighting, one encouraged by the news which reaches him several days after the talks begin that Dijon has been taken. German tanks racing from the Marne are heading for the Swiss border aiming to cut off all of those in the northeast of France. Italy enters the war the same day (May 12th) as Dijon is taken. Benito Mussolini wants a place at the victor’s table. Italian troops go on the offensive in the Alps which Mussolini boasting that soon they will be conquering the French Riviera. It is believed in Rome that this war will soon be over and the strategic situation that entering the war puts Italy in with regard to elsewhere – North Africa and East Africa – matter for nought because the British will, like the French, come to the negotiating table too. Time will tell if he is right or wrong here.

A deal is struck in Reims the following evening with a ceasefire coming into effect early on the morning of May 14th. Pétain tells the British what is going on, owning up far too late for anyone’s liking. Churchill is furious… but, then again, he was always going to be. France’s leader feels that he has no choice though. The defeat undertaken in the past six weeks is one so significant that no words can describe it. Nearly half of France is occupied and its armies beaten. The German terms for an end to the fighting are a kick in the teeth but could be far worse. Pétain formally breaks the alliance with Britain and out of the war France drops. Goering is back speaking to the German people again, telling them all of the great achievement won by German soldiers. There are celebrations nationwide in Germany where the humiliation of the last war has been undone. All eyes now turn to ending the war with Britain too and bringing an end to the conflict which has gone on for the last nine months. Goering believes that the British will see sense just as the French have done. There is no way that they can be so stupid as to continue after the defeat of France.

Surely not!?

Thank you.
I have bigger ideas for it all but, for now, this is all that it is.

I wrote in a flurry but, thinking on, it, there are so many changes resultant from this scenario.
No Denmark and Norway operation but a naval feint. That may cause many naval losses to each side.
On the weather with the Western Front, the OTL May attack was delayed several times. So the Germans did plan to go earlier than they did.
No 2nd BEF and a Calais evac using ships being loaded. So a lot of gear would have come out. Maybe much ammo and some equipment gets left behind but this evac. is bigger than Dunkirk. The RAF have covered it too, losing many fighters. That will effect the whole BoB.
I'm thinking a whole different France ceasefire, especially with Petain there far ahead of the collapse of resistance. A very different outcome!
Hitler did anoint Goering on September 1st 1939 so he must have believed he would follow through the Nazi policies. Whether he does that, or goes in a different direction is up for debate. 

Do you believe in magic, Prime Minister?

Asleep in her bed above Downing Street, the British Prime Minister was awoken in the middle of her sleep by one of the senior staff doing the graveyard shift downstairs. It took a lot for the call to be made which would disturb her and her husband but this was rather important. Dressed and hurried, the PM left the family-sized flat above No. 11 (she lived there: her Chancellor called the smaller flat above No. 10 home) and went below ground to one of the secure Cabinet Office briefing rooms which contained extensive communications. Those were underneath that building with connections to other structures sitting on Downing Street and Whitehall. When in the COBRA conference, at three o’clock in the morning, she was asked that question. It was a half serious one.

The matter which had caused her sleep to be interrupted and brought down to COBRA, along with other ministers and officials arriving, was that of a ‘nuclear security incident’. This concerned British nuclear weapons, not those of another country. There were weapons missing, the Prime Minister and the others were told. How many, she asked, have gone walkabout?

The reply was that it was all of them. Yes, every single one which Britain had.


Several hours beforehand, there had been an ‘incident’ at the Coulport munitions depot in the West of Scotland. Lights and noise had overwhelmed all present personnel leaving them dazed and disorientated. The power and the alarms had all gone dead on cue. Once recovered somewhat, those working there at the storage location of warheads for Trident missiles had discovered the secure magazine bunkers empty of weapons. They were gone with no sign of how or where they had been taken nor by whom. The lights and sounds were unexplained and neither was the loss of electrical power plus the silence from the (multiple) independent alarms. Coulport, like the nearby Glen Douglas conventional weapons store and the Faslane submarine base, both unaffected, were in complete lockdown in response. Specialist Royal Marines, those with 43 Commando – formerly known as the Comacchio Group –, were everywhere now in the hunt for those who had struck at Coulport. It wasn’t just there though that British nuclear weapons could be found… well, before tonight anyway. Down in Berkshire, warheads were at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. They were regularly sent to Burghfield for refurbishment on convoys going up and down the country every few months under tight escort and attracting protesters. Those which should have been at Burghfield were gone too. The facility had been hit with the same issues which effected Coulport, right at the exact same moment as well.

Those briefed on this didn’t listen in silence. The Deputy PM, the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary all had questions and comments. There was anger that something like this had been allowed to happen though also grave worry expressed as well. It was clear that the country’s nuclear weapons had been stolen. Someone had done that and there were no answers which could come to them from those in uniform, as well as the senior spooks who turned up to, as to who that might be. The politicians wanted answers and were far from happy with the shrugs of shoulders given. It was her deputy who posed that question concerning the supernatural. He meant it with irony and directed it in reality towards the military officers and intelligence chiefs. He wanted to know if she believed in magic because, from what they were getting out of everyone else, the Deputy PM stated that it must have been magic that was used to steal all of those nuclear weapons in such a fashion. It couldn’t have been just rank incompetence on the part of the Royal Navy, could it?

That cutting irony didn’t last that long. An hour or so later, news which they had been waiting on arrived for those attending COBRA. The Royal Navy had been in contact with the lone Trident-armed submarine at sea. Deep below the North Atlantic, on a lonely and (hopefully) uneventful patrol, HMS Vengeance received an emergency communication using an Extremely Low Frequency broadcast. She came to the surface, took the full message broadcast at Ultra Low Frequency and made the urgent check demanded that she did. Information was sent to the Prime Minister: none of the warheads which should have been inside her carried missiles were now there. There was a method of checking this using radiation sensors aboard rather than a physical search, but that was enough for the negative to be given confidently on the status of her warheads. The Vengeance was toothless. With that, there were no more sarcastic remarks. Jaws dropped and deep breaths were taken.

The Prime Minister asked whether this really was magic?


It wasn’t just Britain that this happened to.

The other eight global powers likewise armed with nuclear weapons – the United States, Russia, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea & Pakistan – all had their entire stockpiles of nuclear weapons disappear at the very moment those from UK control vanished. All around the world, those in storage, deployed to combat forces or under development/refurbishment were gone in an instant. No explanation was given that could make any more sense than what Britain’s leader could point to: magic. Tens of thousands of the most powerful weapons ever developed were no more.

It was worse than that. The knowledge to make more went too. Documentation in physical and electrical form inexplicitly vanished no matter where it was. What was in the minds of scientists and engineers went too. They could recall the basics of nuclear weapons construction but nothing else. Their minds were foggy thinking on it even when (in North Korea) given ‘treatment’ to help them remember. It was crazy and difficult to believe… but it was real. Nuclear weapons were a thing of the past.

Within a few months, World War Three erupted. No nukes were used.

With nukes, there will be conflict given the right spark.
I was thinking chemicals and germs aplenty but I, and the bored ASB, had each forgotten about nuclear waste. Dirty bombs on ICBMs?

The World of 2020

One hundred and twenty-one internationally-recognised, sovereign nations form the global community in the year 2020. There are just over a dozen unrecognised countries with limited sovereignty as well. Six of the former are widely-regarded as being the Great Powers whose influence spans the globe.

The Kingdom of France is one of the six. It is a constitutional monarchy in Western Europe with territory expanding from the Low Countries, eastwards over the Rhine & the Alps and down below the Pyrenees too. Only twenty years beforehand, what is now the People’s Republic of Algeria was part of the French Kingdom too before a peaceful transition to independence... which soon turned not very peaceful after the French departure. A vibrant democracy with its capital in Paris, France has a population of seventy million. It is a rich, first world country with high rates of human development. French military forces have a global footprint with much of that dependent upon overseas territories scattered around the globe. However, on the European Continent is where France is really dominant with many peace-keeping missions scattered throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe: its naval fleets and nuclear weapons have the presence but not the experience of action like French peacekeepers do.

The Russian Republic is a dictatorship in the near-Monarchical form with its current president being the grandson of the nation’s founder (whose son followed him). St. Petersburg is the Russian capital yet the nation stretches south and eastwards away from where the capital is located on Europe’s edges. Russia has more than double France’s population with many of them held under subservience through military force rather than any democratic will. The country is rich on paper but Russian subjects are generally poor with little access to education, healthcare and social mobility beyond the bare basics which St. Petersburg is willing to provide. Russian troops are fighting during 2020 in wars against rebels throughout Central Asia and inside what was until only a few years beforehand the Chinese Empire. The China War has left Russia with few international friends but no one is willing to intervene. Russia is a land power with a limited navy; it has a large and advanced nuclear capability as well.

The Turkish Federation stretches from the Danube in the Balkans to the deserts of Libya to the borders of Persia and into the Caucasus. A successor of the old Ottoman lands, Turkey controls the homelands of Arabs and Egyptians with the justification that its rule is religiously ordained. Istanbul is the capital of the Turkish Federation with its president in theory chosen by the heads of the many entities that form the federation and with checks-&-balances on his rule. That is fiction though with a succession of Turkish generals leading the federation since inception with near-absolute power for themselves & favourites. Close to two hundred million subjects are within the federation with the Turks not even being a plurality among them. Just as its rival the Russian Republic is, Turkey is currently engaged in combatting both internal rebellion and engaged in a costly foreign war: the latter being inside Persia. Persia is putting up more of a fight than China is and there is covert Russian support for that country as well. A nuclear power with a large army and an impressive navy too, Turkey has a strategic military alliance with Britain who have naval access rights through the Suez Canal.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (always known as ‘Britain’) is the smallest in terms of territory of the six Great Powers. A constitutional monarchy like her great rival France, Britain has a royal head of state yet Parliament is supreme. London is the nation’s capital and where the financial heart of the country is located. Nearly seventy million (just less than France) live in the United Kingdom in a democracy where there is rule of law and outstanding human development figures. Much of Britain’s strength comes from the Commonwealth, once the British Empire. Extremely close ties are maintained with North America, United India, Australia and New Zealand in terms of trade as well as security. Britain hasn’t fought a major war in nearly forty years though that was a great victory which put an end to the combined desires of the foes-turned-allies in Californian and Tejas to take North American territory away from that Commonwealth country. Nuclear weapons and a global military role, even with a far smaller Royal Navy than there once was, keep Britain as one of the premier world powers. That comes alongside economic might aided by those Commonwealth allies.

The Japanese Empire is the hegemonic power in East Asia and the Pacific. It is a nation which controls a great chuck of territory where hundreds of millions more live under the dominance of the hundred and thirty million in the Japanese islands (from Sakhalin down to Formosa). Led by an imperial dynasty though with a significant warrior class of military officers who have a lot of power, Japan had long controlled China through economic ties until the ‘Chinese problem’ forced a withdrawal out of that one-sided partnership. Japanese internal democracy movements brought this about and weakened the authoritarian government enough for China to be fully let go. That democracy – the Japanese Spring – has now been taken over by events and is no more. Russia and British-led Commonwealth efforts into China and South-East Asia respectively have weakened Japan’s international role: Tokyo is uncomfortable with those former subservient vassal states to the southwest now asserting their true financial independence. Japan is a rich country and but many of its people are held back in life with those at the top holding onto what they have without sharing the wealth. With nuclear weapons and a huge military, especially a powerful navy, Japan could – and has done in the past – fight to defend the empire far beyond its island homelands moving away from Tokyo’s orbit but has failed to do so in recent years. The Japanese Spring is a thing of the past but its consequences, even in defeat, have changed Japan for good.

Lastly, the sixth Great Power is the Hispanic Republic. This country stretches from the frontier with Tejas on the Rio Grande down to Patagonia: it includes the non-Brazilian region of the Amazon. Once part of the Spanish Empire in the New World, the Hispanic Republic has its capital in Bogota. It is a huge nation encompassing the dominant Hispanic population as well as plethora of indigenous peoples. A democracy led by a president with free elections, the Hispanic Republic is a populist nation. To hold sway over hundreds of millions of people, leaders of the republic forever revert to giving their people what they want… or seem to do that anyway. Debt ridden and always mortgaging resources after resources, the Hispanic Republic is often said to be on the verge of collapse. It retains itself though, all these many long decades after formation. Poor the people are with their wealthy elite rulers managing to keep what they have while pretending to share. Alliances with Britain and Japan have been had in the past while traditional enemies have long included Brazil, California and Tejas. Nuclear-armed though without the best military forces, wars have been won and lost: the last being against Brazil where the then regime in Bogota saw Uruguay gain independence with Brazilian backing. North American economic influence into the Hispanic Republic is strong in recent years with the government up in Richmond, supported by the Commonwealth, extending credit and opening more trade links. This, naturally, has come at the expense of California & Tejas, leaving the Hispanic Republic once more coming close to being the plaything of other Great Powers. It might not survive the future as one of those six.

There's no real POD but just several ideas I had. North America is Ontario-Quebec, the 13 Colonies and quite a bit inland: yep, Tejas (Texas) and California are big. I was thinking that North America never saw the mass immigration which the OTL United States did. The Richmond-led government isn't especially strong so the 'provinces' had much power and that hasn't seen real strength. Of course, by making it economically strong, I have a big contradiction there.
The Hispanic Republic received much immigration and is a fading power: people talk of it like they did the Ottoman states in its last days.
Japan is another one I was all over the place with too. I'm thinking they did knock out Dutch and other European colonial efforts and have long fought wars with Russia to that they have a vassal state in the OTL Russian Far East as well which is settled by ethnic Chinese.