Post by eurofed on Jan 26, 2020 1:21:00 GMT
ITTL the Great Depression hit Western Europe somewhat worse than OTL. This and the political polarization caused by the Popular Front government’s efforts to enact left-wing reforms and intervene in the Spanish Civil War to aid the Republicans ultimately plunged France in a civil war between fascists and far-leftists much similar to the Spanish one. Secondary effects included the Low Countries turning almost as politically instable as France and Germany, with far-right parties seizing pluralities in the Dutch and Belgian elections, and the governments of Weimar Germany and democratic Austria being able to organize a political union of their countries just before a Nazi or clerico-fascist takeover. Unfortunately, the socio-economic backlash of the Great Depression largely neutralized the positive political effects of the Anschluss. The Nazis took over in enlarged Germany, consolidated their regime, and started German rearmament more or less the usual way.
A serious unexpected benefit came for Italy and Japan thanks to chance discovery of Libyan and Manchurian oilfields in the late 1920s and start of their exploitation thanks to cooperation with US companies. Oil money helped these countries to improve their economic situation, make themselves independent for their energy needs, and have the means to support a serious improvement of their armed forces. It also greatly increased their drive to consolidate and expand their hold on North Africa and the Far East respectively.
Growing French weakness, ideological affinities, and Anglo-French opposition to Italian conquest of Ethiopia with toothless but annoying economic and diplomatic sanctions persuaded Mussolini that alignment with Britain and France was worthless and fascist Italy should form a military alliance with resurgent Nazi Germany. Negotiations to form the Axis pact between Berlin and Rome proved fruitful after the two powers agreed to transfer the German-speaking population of South Tyrol to the Reich's and support each other's territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe. The deal also included an economic treaty that removed trade barriers between the two countries and granted Germany access to Libyan oil on favorable terms in exchange for Italian access to German licenses. This helped both states mechanize and increase the quality of their armed forces, improved Germany’s economic situation, and made it independent from non-Axis sources for its energy needs.
When the Spanish and French civil wars exploded, Germany and Italy took it as an excellent opportunity to enact their expansionist plans in Central Europe and the Balkans. They otherwise strived to support far-rightists in Spain and France to the best of their abilities. On their own, the Soviets did their best to support the far-leftists in the civil wars. As a result, pro-Axis fascists and pro-Soviet Communists soon became the dominant factions in the respective fronts in both countries.
Collapse of France left Britain alone and largely powerless to influence events in Europe overmuch since its power was concentrated on imperial control and naval supremacy and traditionally ill-suited to project force deep into the continent without the support of another great power. The natural alternative would have been a strategic partnership with the USA, but this proved impossible in practice because of American isolationism. The Great Depression brought President Roosevelt into power. Besides enacting his New Deal program of domestic reforms, he was an avowed interventionist and hostile to the Axis powers. However, American public opinion remained committed to isolationism, also because it had turned to regard intervention in WWI as a costly mistake engineered by the Entente powers and arms dealers. The seemingly irresistible collapse of democracy and spread of totalitarianism across Europe only reinforced this mood. It left many Americans persuaded the Old World was a lost cause and best left alone unless it directly threatened US security and interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.
Over time, events only reinforced the grip of isolationism on America. A series of scandals during FDR’s second mandate consumed his political capital (his ill-advised attempt to ‘pack’ the Supreme Court with supporters of his reforms, revelation of his poor health and marital infidelity, discovery of Soviet espionage’s infiltration of his Administration) and allowed a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats to seize control of the Congress. The resulting stress caused FDR’s death in 1939 by stroke, Vice President Garner who succeeded him was hostile to many of his policies, and the Democratic party stumbled in a nasty succession fight between supporters and opponents of New Deal. These events enabled Robert Taft, a dedicated isolationist, to win the Republican nomination and then eke out a narrow victory in the 1940 presidential election.
The only viable alternative for Britain was to align with either the USSR or the emergent Axis bloc, but the hard choice left British elites and public opinion largely unable to pick a side while the French and Spanish civil wars raged on. The resulting diplomatic fumbling left British foreign policy paralyzed and ineffective for a good while. After their end, geopolitical concerns and traditional care for the balance of power might have driven the British into an alliance of convenience with the USSR, but this proved unfeasible. Too many opposed the move, arguing with good reason Soviet Russia was just as dangerous, untrustworthy, and aggressive as the Axis powers, and communism was as threatening and destructive as fascism. Clumsy and half-hearted alliance negotiations between the British and the Soviets utterly failed to produce results.
During the 1930s, Japan took over Manchuria from China as the client state of Manchukuo, supported an array of sympathetic Chinese proxies to expand its influence within China proper, engaged in a victorious war with the Soviets in the Far East, and backed the independence bid of Indochina during the French Civil War. Discovery of the Manchurian oilfields completely re-oriented the strategic interests of Japan towards establishing and defending its control of Manchuria at all costs, turning possible expansion in Southeast Asia or China proper into a secondary and opportunistic, if still important, objective. This stance drove Japan to engage in the seizure of Manchuria from China with the widespread consensus of its ruling elites. Once China proved too weak and divided to oppose the move, it enabled the Kodo-ha army faction to seize power and impose their foreign policy platform without excessive difficulty. The Hokusin-ron political doctrine they advocated stated that Manchuria and Siberia were Japan’s sphere of interest and that the potential value to Japan for economic and territorial expansion in those areas was greater than elsewhere. It called for a strategy of aggressive military confrontation, and potentially a preventive strike, against the USSR.
The result was a series of border incidents between Japan and the USSR that eventually escalated in a state of war. The Japanese found themselves in an advantageous situation about this conflict, thanks to their air-naval superiority, the better quality of their armed forces, the oil-fueled mechanization of their army that made them better able to deal with the poor logistics of the theater, and being able to fight relatively close to their centers of power. On the other hand, the large-scale purges taking place in the Red Army at the time wracked its fighting efficiency, and the Soviets had to fight at the end of a long and narrow logistic chain that was entirely reliant on the single-track Trans-Siberian Railway running dangerously close to the Manchurian border. As a result, the Japanese took over northern Sakhalin without any real difficulty, and with some more effort, the Maritime Province as well. Their interruption of the TSR in multiple points, first at Svobodny, then at Chita, utterly crippled the Red Army’s ability to defend Outer Manchuria, enabling the IJA to advance and occupy the entire region.
With some more effort, the Japanese then gradually expanded their strategic offensive to overrun the Trans-Baikal region. This also gave the Japanese an opportunity to occupy the Soviet client state of Outer Mongolia and the eastern portion of Chinese Inner Mongolia (the provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan) with the support of Mongolian collaborators. The war then mostly came to a strategic stalemate on the shores of Lake Baikal. After various Soviet counterattacks turned into costly failures, Stalin eventually decided to cut his losses and make peace with Japan. The peace treaty ceded the Trans-Baikal, Outer Manchuria, and North Sakhalin to Japan and recognized Japanese control of Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia. The Japanese directly annexed North Sakhalin (the island now being renamed Karafuto), gave Outer Manchuria to Manchukuo, and merged Outer Mongolia and eastern Inner Mongolia in another client state of theirs.
To recoup their losses and protect their eastern border against possible further Japanese encroachment, the Soviets annexed Tannu Tuva and Xinjiang, which were under control of pro-Soviet rulers. The USSR reacted to the defeat by engaging in an earnest drive to reform its armed forces. Although this eventually proved fruitful, it took some serious time and effort for the reform to display its full effects and for the Red Army to recover from the effects of the purges and the strain of the Far East conflict. The war gave the Soviet leaders added motivation to approach the situation in Europe with a mix of defensive caution and an opportunist wish to balance their losses and help protecting their borders from possible fascist aggression by territorial expansion in Eastern Europe. The war also considerably weakened their ability to provide support to the left-wingers in the French and Spanish civil wars, which significantly eased the progress to victory of the right-wingers.
The Soviet-Japanese War absorbed Japan’s attention and resources while it lasted. After its end, victory against the Soviets largely turned Japan into a satisfied power and made it prone to a moderate policy towards China. The war had been costly enough, its gains valuable enough, and the risk of a Soviet comeback serious enough to make the Japanese persuaded that getting involved in a total war with China on their own initiative was far too costly and risky. Therefore, they embraced a policy of seeking a détente with the Chinese Nationalists based on the post-war status quo and trying to expand their influence in China by supporting various pro-Japanese proxies inside and outside the KMT. They focused their military power on checking the Soviets.
The Nationalist Chinese leaders were content for the time being to heed the status quo for their part, since it allowed them to avoid a confrontation with Japan and gave them room to focus on their efforts to eliminate the Chinese Communists, subdue the warlords, and build up the strength of their nation. At most, they planned for a possible military confrontation with Japan to enforce their claims in the long term. Moreover, Soviet seizure of Xinjiang reminded the Chinese that both of their stronger neighbors had claims that clashed with their own on border territories. China had its own ambitions on the lands it had once owned and Japan had recently conquered. It seemed preferable not to take sides in the Soviet-Japanese dispute and let Japan stay busy with defending the new status quo as long as China was weaker than its neighbors were.
Therefore, the Nationalist Chinese opportunistically agreed to a de facto recognition of Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia, suppressed anti-Japanese radicals, and went along with the Japanese bid to restore normal economic and diplomatic relations. They doubled down on their platform of nation building and suppression of domestic enemies. For all their newfound moderation, however, the Japanese still decided an intervention to support the independence bid of Indochina during the French Civil War was still worth the risk, especially when they realized Britain and the USA did not necessarily regard the move with disfavor.
Thanks to the eclipse of France during the civil war, the revisionist powers (Germany, Italy, and the USSR) more or less got a free hand to rewrite the map of Eastern Europe to their tastes. The Germans had already been able to remilitarize the Rhineland with impunity since France was already too politically instable to react with anything stronger than diplomatic protests. They strong-armed Czechoslovakia into accepting cession of the Sudetenland to Germany and Southern Slovakia to Hungary. Subsequently, they enacted a partition of the country, with Germany annexing Bohemia-Moravia and Hungary getting Slovakia. The USSR opportunistically intervened in the partition to annex Transcarpathia. Hungary, being grateful for the gains, hoping for more, and fearing further Soviet encroachments, eagerly joined the Axis pact, signing an economic assistance treaty and a military alliance with Germany and Italy.
Soon afterwards, the Germans started pressuring Poland to make territorial concessions about Danzig and the Corridor and accept joining the Axis. The collapse of France left Poland in a strategic bad place but its victory over the USSR a couple decades ago made the Poles confident they could resist Germany on their own, so they stubbornly resisted German demands. The Italians annexed Albania and collaborated with Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria to organize the destabilization of Yugoslavia by supporting the separatist activities of the Croats, Macedonian Bulgarians, and Kosovo Albanians. The Germans tired out of Polish defiance and started a conflict picking the status of Danzig as an excuse. The Wehrmacht quickly cut the Polish army to pieces and overrun most of the country. The Soviets again exploited the crisis as a good opportunity to grab spoils and sent the Red Army to occupy the Baltic nations and eastern Poland.
The Soviet intervention sealed the fate of the second Polish republic and briefly raised a threat of a German-Soviet military confrontation. It was ultimately avoided since neither side felt ready to fight the other and both powers shared an interest to divide the spoils of Poland. A hastily negotiated agreement established a new partition of the country: the USSR annexed the eastern territories and made them subject to brutal Sovietization like the Baltic states. Germany took the rest. It swiftly Germanized the western territories it had owned before 1914 with mass expulsion of their Polish and Jew inhabitants and their replacement by German settlers. A minority was able to stay at the price of forced cultural assimilation and the threat of death or deportation for noncompliance. The German leaders planned the same outcome for Bohemia-Moravia and the rest of Poland on a longer time schedule, by a mix of genocide, German settler colonization, and forced cultural assimilation.
When Yugoslavia exploded in civil war because of various separatist uprisings occurring concurrently, it gave Italy a perfect excuse to intervene with the support of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The Italians put the ongoing improvement of their army thanks to oil revenues to good use and easily crushed a Yugoslav army weakened by civil war and multi-front invasion. Their success allowed the Axis powers to impose a partition of the country. Italy got central Dalmatia, many Adriatic islands, most of Kosovo, northwestern North Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Slovenia. Germany annexed northern Slovenia and took southern Vojvodina as an exclave under the control of its sizable ethnic German community. Hungary annexed northern Vojvodina, Medimurje, and Prekmurje. Bulgaria took most of North Macedonia. Croatia became independent as a fascist client state of the Axis and got most of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Croat fascists genuinely appreciated the deal they got and eagerly joined the Axis pact. Unlike Croatia, however, Serbia mostly kept the stance of a defeated enemy, cowed but resentful and potentially hostile. Therefore, the Axis powers reorganized central Serbia with north Kosovo and eastern Bosnia into a de facto military occupation zone behind the thin façade of a collaborationist government. The Serbs in the rest of former Yugoslavia became subject to genocide or mass deportation into Serbia. Bulgaria mostly aligned its foreign policy with the Axis bloc and joined its economic zone but did not sign its military alliance, largely because of its traditional pro-Russian sentiment and willingness to stay neutral in any Axis-soviet clash.
The French and Spanish civil wars raged for a while on both sides of the Pyrenees but the fascists eventually won them for various reasons. These included better cohesion and organization, most of the professional military siding with them, the Axis powers being more able to provide support to them than the Soviets could do with the Republicans, and the Soviet-Japanese War absorbing the attention and energies of the USSR. The far-right regimes that took over in France and Spain were naturally inclined to align with the Axis out of ideological affinity, gratitude for the support they received during the civil war, and perception of a common ground with the other fascist powers against communism and Western democracy.
The German and Italian leaders felt tempted during the French civil war to exploit the situation to annex a few border territories, but declined the option since they realized the genuine friendship of France would eventually yield them much greater strategic and economic benefits. The only price the Axis powers claimed for their aid was cession of a few colonies, which took place on relatively friendly terms and with a broad promise of future territorial compensations. Italy got Tunisia and French Somaliland, and Germany got its old colony of Cameroon. The deal included French Congo and Gabon in the territory ceded to Germany to make up for the other former German colonies that remained under French or British rule. Britain refused German requests for the return of other former German colonies, especially Tanganyika.
France and Spain joined the Axis pact and signed its economic assistance treaty and a military alliance with Germany, Italy, and the other member states. Much like the previous deal between Germany and Italy, the treaty established a removal of trade barriers between bloc members and granted France access to Libyan oil on favorable terms, in exchange for Italy getting French licenses. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy adjusted their strategic stance, their ideology and propaganda, and their imperialist plans to account for a friendly France. Much the same way, the new French regime downplayed traditional hostility between France and Germany, celebrated solidarity with the other fascist Western European nations, and identified Communism and the democratic powers as the real enemies of France. During the civil war, Jose Sanjurjo gradually consolidated its leadership as the dictator of Spain, with Francisco Franco emerging as the other most important figure of the regime. In France, Marshal Petain became supreme leader, with Pierre Laval and Francois Darlan as its most influential collaborators in the civilian and military fields.
Much like it had previously happened in Germany and Italy, the new fascist regimes ruthlessly and efficiently purged political opposition by killing, imprisoning, or driving it into exile. The new French leaders were able to keep control of the French fleet and most French colonies without too much trouble. As a rule, the French professional military, colonial administrators, and the settler community mostly sympathized with the far-rightists and aligned with them during the civil war or at least stayed neutral during the conflict and recognized the fascist regime as legitimate after its victory. The French forces suppressed all the attempts of Arab nationalists to stage an uprising in Syria. The French West Indies and Indochina were the main exceptions. The governor of Guadeloupe, being a Black man, had reason to fear and resent a fascist regime aligned with Nazi Germany. He refused allegiance to the new regime and his stance was instrumental in encouraging the British to occupy the French West Indies, which they did with the support of the USA.
An uneasy front of Indochinese nationalists and leftist revolutionaries tried to exploit the situation soon after the French civil war went into full swing to start an anti-colonial uprising. The French forces in the colony contained and to a degree suppressed the rebellion, even if some residual unrest persisted. The monarchist and right-wing nationalist wing of the anticolonial movement decided to salvage their situation by making an appeal to Japan for intervention. The Japanese leaders initially hesitated, but became open-minded once they perceived the UK did not seem hostile to a Japanese intervention. The British turned indifferent it became clear the French civil war would likely ensue in a takeover by fascists or communists. Even the USA reluctantly accepted it. The Japanese forces landed in the colony and occupied it without excessive effort. They defeated the French garrisons and the leftist militants and set up Indochina as a nominally independent confederation of the Kingdoms of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In practice, it was another client state of the Japanese Empire like Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia.
A serious unexpected benefit came for Italy and Japan thanks to chance discovery of Libyan and Manchurian oilfields in the late 1920s and start of their exploitation thanks to cooperation with US companies. Oil money helped these countries to improve their economic situation, make themselves independent for their energy needs, and have the means to support a serious improvement of their armed forces. It also greatly increased their drive to consolidate and expand their hold on North Africa and the Far East respectively.
Growing French weakness, ideological affinities, and Anglo-French opposition to Italian conquest of Ethiopia with toothless but annoying economic and diplomatic sanctions persuaded Mussolini that alignment with Britain and France was worthless and fascist Italy should form a military alliance with resurgent Nazi Germany. Negotiations to form the Axis pact between Berlin and Rome proved fruitful after the two powers agreed to transfer the German-speaking population of South Tyrol to the Reich's and support each other's territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe. The deal also included an economic treaty that removed trade barriers between the two countries and granted Germany access to Libyan oil on favorable terms in exchange for Italian access to German licenses. This helped both states mechanize and increase the quality of their armed forces, improved Germany’s economic situation, and made it independent from non-Axis sources for its energy needs.
When the Spanish and French civil wars exploded, Germany and Italy took it as an excellent opportunity to enact their expansionist plans in Central Europe and the Balkans. They otherwise strived to support far-rightists in Spain and France to the best of their abilities. On their own, the Soviets did their best to support the far-leftists in the civil wars. As a result, pro-Axis fascists and pro-Soviet Communists soon became the dominant factions in the respective fronts in both countries.
Collapse of France left Britain alone and largely powerless to influence events in Europe overmuch since its power was concentrated on imperial control and naval supremacy and traditionally ill-suited to project force deep into the continent without the support of another great power. The natural alternative would have been a strategic partnership with the USA, but this proved impossible in practice because of American isolationism. The Great Depression brought President Roosevelt into power. Besides enacting his New Deal program of domestic reforms, he was an avowed interventionist and hostile to the Axis powers. However, American public opinion remained committed to isolationism, also because it had turned to regard intervention in WWI as a costly mistake engineered by the Entente powers and arms dealers. The seemingly irresistible collapse of democracy and spread of totalitarianism across Europe only reinforced this mood. It left many Americans persuaded the Old World was a lost cause and best left alone unless it directly threatened US security and interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.
Over time, events only reinforced the grip of isolationism on America. A series of scandals during FDR’s second mandate consumed his political capital (his ill-advised attempt to ‘pack’ the Supreme Court with supporters of his reforms, revelation of his poor health and marital infidelity, discovery of Soviet espionage’s infiltration of his Administration) and allowed a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats to seize control of the Congress. The resulting stress caused FDR’s death in 1939 by stroke, Vice President Garner who succeeded him was hostile to many of his policies, and the Democratic party stumbled in a nasty succession fight between supporters and opponents of New Deal. These events enabled Robert Taft, a dedicated isolationist, to win the Republican nomination and then eke out a narrow victory in the 1940 presidential election.
The only viable alternative for Britain was to align with either the USSR or the emergent Axis bloc, but the hard choice left British elites and public opinion largely unable to pick a side while the French and Spanish civil wars raged on. The resulting diplomatic fumbling left British foreign policy paralyzed and ineffective for a good while. After their end, geopolitical concerns and traditional care for the balance of power might have driven the British into an alliance of convenience with the USSR, but this proved unfeasible. Too many opposed the move, arguing with good reason Soviet Russia was just as dangerous, untrustworthy, and aggressive as the Axis powers, and communism was as threatening and destructive as fascism. Clumsy and half-hearted alliance negotiations between the British and the Soviets utterly failed to produce results.
During the 1930s, Japan took over Manchuria from China as the client state of Manchukuo, supported an array of sympathetic Chinese proxies to expand its influence within China proper, engaged in a victorious war with the Soviets in the Far East, and backed the independence bid of Indochina during the French Civil War. Discovery of the Manchurian oilfields completely re-oriented the strategic interests of Japan towards establishing and defending its control of Manchuria at all costs, turning possible expansion in Southeast Asia or China proper into a secondary and opportunistic, if still important, objective. This stance drove Japan to engage in the seizure of Manchuria from China with the widespread consensus of its ruling elites. Once China proved too weak and divided to oppose the move, it enabled the Kodo-ha army faction to seize power and impose their foreign policy platform without excessive difficulty. The Hokusin-ron political doctrine they advocated stated that Manchuria and Siberia were Japan’s sphere of interest and that the potential value to Japan for economic and territorial expansion in those areas was greater than elsewhere. It called for a strategy of aggressive military confrontation, and potentially a preventive strike, against the USSR.
The result was a series of border incidents between Japan and the USSR that eventually escalated in a state of war. The Japanese found themselves in an advantageous situation about this conflict, thanks to their air-naval superiority, the better quality of their armed forces, the oil-fueled mechanization of their army that made them better able to deal with the poor logistics of the theater, and being able to fight relatively close to their centers of power. On the other hand, the large-scale purges taking place in the Red Army at the time wracked its fighting efficiency, and the Soviets had to fight at the end of a long and narrow logistic chain that was entirely reliant on the single-track Trans-Siberian Railway running dangerously close to the Manchurian border. As a result, the Japanese took over northern Sakhalin without any real difficulty, and with some more effort, the Maritime Province as well. Their interruption of the TSR in multiple points, first at Svobodny, then at Chita, utterly crippled the Red Army’s ability to defend Outer Manchuria, enabling the IJA to advance and occupy the entire region.
With some more effort, the Japanese then gradually expanded their strategic offensive to overrun the Trans-Baikal region. This also gave the Japanese an opportunity to occupy the Soviet client state of Outer Mongolia and the eastern portion of Chinese Inner Mongolia (the provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan) with the support of Mongolian collaborators. The war then mostly came to a strategic stalemate on the shores of Lake Baikal. After various Soviet counterattacks turned into costly failures, Stalin eventually decided to cut his losses and make peace with Japan. The peace treaty ceded the Trans-Baikal, Outer Manchuria, and North Sakhalin to Japan and recognized Japanese control of Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia. The Japanese directly annexed North Sakhalin (the island now being renamed Karafuto), gave Outer Manchuria to Manchukuo, and merged Outer Mongolia and eastern Inner Mongolia in another client state of theirs.
To recoup their losses and protect their eastern border against possible further Japanese encroachment, the Soviets annexed Tannu Tuva and Xinjiang, which were under control of pro-Soviet rulers. The USSR reacted to the defeat by engaging in an earnest drive to reform its armed forces. Although this eventually proved fruitful, it took some serious time and effort for the reform to display its full effects and for the Red Army to recover from the effects of the purges and the strain of the Far East conflict. The war gave the Soviet leaders added motivation to approach the situation in Europe with a mix of defensive caution and an opportunist wish to balance their losses and help protecting their borders from possible fascist aggression by territorial expansion in Eastern Europe. The war also considerably weakened their ability to provide support to the left-wingers in the French and Spanish civil wars, which significantly eased the progress to victory of the right-wingers.
The Soviet-Japanese War absorbed Japan’s attention and resources while it lasted. After its end, victory against the Soviets largely turned Japan into a satisfied power and made it prone to a moderate policy towards China. The war had been costly enough, its gains valuable enough, and the risk of a Soviet comeback serious enough to make the Japanese persuaded that getting involved in a total war with China on their own initiative was far too costly and risky. Therefore, they embraced a policy of seeking a détente with the Chinese Nationalists based on the post-war status quo and trying to expand their influence in China by supporting various pro-Japanese proxies inside and outside the KMT. They focused their military power on checking the Soviets.
The Nationalist Chinese leaders were content for the time being to heed the status quo for their part, since it allowed them to avoid a confrontation with Japan and gave them room to focus on their efforts to eliminate the Chinese Communists, subdue the warlords, and build up the strength of their nation. At most, they planned for a possible military confrontation with Japan to enforce their claims in the long term. Moreover, Soviet seizure of Xinjiang reminded the Chinese that both of their stronger neighbors had claims that clashed with their own on border territories. China had its own ambitions on the lands it had once owned and Japan had recently conquered. It seemed preferable not to take sides in the Soviet-Japanese dispute and let Japan stay busy with defending the new status quo as long as China was weaker than its neighbors were.
Therefore, the Nationalist Chinese opportunistically agreed to a de facto recognition of Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia, suppressed anti-Japanese radicals, and went along with the Japanese bid to restore normal economic and diplomatic relations. They doubled down on their platform of nation building and suppression of domestic enemies. For all their newfound moderation, however, the Japanese still decided an intervention to support the independence bid of Indochina during the French Civil War was still worth the risk, especially when they realized Britain and the USA did not necessarily regard the move with disfavor.
Thanks to the eclipse of France during the civil war, the revisionist powers (Germany, Italy, and the USSR) more or less got a free hand to rewrite the map of Eastern Europe to their tastes. The Germans had already been able to remilitarize the Rhineland with impunity since France was already too politically instable to react with anything stronger than diplomatic protests. They strong-armed Czechoslovakia into accepting cession of the Sudetenland to Germany and Southern Slovakia to Hungary. Subsequently, they enacted a partition of the country, with Germany annexing Bohemia-Moravia and Hungary getting Slovakia. The USSR opportunistically intervened in the partition to annex Transcarpathia. Hungary, being grateful for the gains, hoping for more, and fearing further Soviet encroachments, eagerly joined the Axis pact, signing an economic assistance treaty and a military alliance with Germany and Italy.
Soon afterwards, the Germans started pressuring Poland to make territorial concessions about Danzig and the Corridor and accept joining the Axis. The collapse of France left Poland in a strategic bad place but its victory over the USSR a couple decades ago made the Poles confident they could resist Germany on their own, so they stubbornly resisted German demands. The Italians annexed Albania and collaborated with Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria to organize the destabilization of Yugoslavia by supporting the separatist activities of the Croats, Macedonian Bulgarians, and Kosovo Albanians. The Germans tired out of Polish defiance and started a conflict picking the status of Danzig as an excuse. The Wehrmacht quickly cut the Polish army to pieces and overrun most of the country. The Soviets again exploited the crisis as a good opportunity to grab spoils and sent the Red Army to occupy the Baltic nations and eastern Poland.
The Soviet intervention sealed the fate of the second Polish republic and briefly raised a threat of a German-Soviet military confrontation. It was ultimately avoided since neither side felt ready to fight the other and both powers shared an interest to divide the spoils of Poland. A hastily negotiated agreement established a new partition of the country: the USSR annexed the eastern territories and made them subject to brutal Sovietization like the Baltic states. Germany took the rest. It swiftly Germanized the western territories it had owned before 1914 with mass expulsion of their Polish and Jew inhabitants and their replacement by German settlers. A minority was able to stay at the price of forced cultural assimilation and the threat of death or deportation for noncompliance. The German leaders planned the same outcome for Bohemia-Moravia and the rest of Poland on a longer time schedule, by a mix of genocide, German settler colonization, and forced cultural assimilation.
When Yugoslavia exploded in civil war because of various separatist uprisings occurring concurrently, it gave Italy a perfect excuse to intervene with the support of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The Italians put the ongoing improvement of their army thanks to oil revenues to good use and easily crushed a Yugoslav army weakened by civil war and multi-front invasion. Their success allowed the Axis powers to impose a partition of the country. Italy got central Dalmatia, many Adriatic islands, most of Kosovo, northwestern North Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Slovenia. Germany annexed northern Slovenia and took southern Vojvodina as an exclave under the control of its sizable ethnic German community. Hungary annexed northern Vojvodina, Medimurje, and Prekmurje. Bulgaria took most of North Macedonia. Croatia became independent as a fascist client state of the Axis and got most of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Croat fascists genuinely appreciated the deal they got and eagerly joined the Axis pact. Unlike Croatia, however, Serbia mostly kept the stance of a defeated enemy, cowed but resentful and potentially hostile. Therefore, the Axis powers reorganized central Serbia with north Kosovo and eastern Bosnia into a de facto military occupation zone behind the thin façade of a collaborationist government. The Serbs in the rest of former Yugoslavia became subject to genocide or mass deportation into Serbia. Bulgaria mostly aligned its foreign policy with the Axis bloc and joined its economic zone but did not sign its military alliance, largely because of its traditional pro-Russian sentiment and willingness to stay neutral in any Axis-soviet clash.
The French and Spanish civil wars raged for a while on both sides of the Pyrenees but the fascists eventually won them for various reasons. These included better cohesion and organization, most of the professional military siding with them, the Axis powers being more able to provide support to them than the Soviets could do with the Republicans, and the Soviet-Japanese War absorbing the attention and energies of the USSR. The far-right regimes that took over in France and Spain were naturally inclined to align with the Axis out of ideological affinity, gratitude for the support they received during the civil war, and perception of a common ground with the other fascist powers against communism and Western democracy.
The German and Italian leaders felt tempted during the French civil war to exploit the situation to annex a few border territories, but declined the option since they realized the genuine friendship of France would eventually yield them much greater strategic and economic benefits. The only price the Axis powers claimed for their aid was cession of a few colonies, which took place on relatively friendly terms and with a broad promise of future territorial compensations. Italy got Tunisia and French Somaliland, and Germany got its old colony of Cameroon. The deal included French Congo and Gabon in the territory ceded to Germany to make up for the other former German colonies that remained under French or British rule. Britain refused German requests for the return of other former German colonies, especially Tanganyika.
France and Spain joined the Axis pact and signed its economic assistance treaty and a military alliance with Germany, Italy, and the other member states. Much like the previous deal between Germany and Italy, the treaty established a removal of trade barriers between bloc members and granted France access to Libyan oil on favorable terms, in exchange for Italy getting French licenses. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy adjusted their strategic stance, their ideology and propaganda, and their imperialist plans to account for a friendly France. Much the same way, the new French regime downplayed traditional hostility between France and Germany, celebrated solidarity with the other fascist Western European nations, and identified Communism and the democratic powers as the real enemies of France. During the civil war, Jose Sanjurjo gradually consolidated its leadership as the dictator of Spain, with Francisco Franco emerging as the other most important figure of the regime. In France, Marshal Petain became supreme leader, with Pierre Laval and Francois Darlan as its most influential collaborators in the civilian and military fields.
Much like it had previously happened in Germany and Italy, the new fascist regimes ruthlessly and efficiently purged political opposition by killing, imprisoning, or driving it into exile. The new French leaders were able to keep control of the French fleet and most French colonies without too much trouble. As a rule, the French professional military, colonial administrators, and the settler community mostly sympathized with the far-rightists and aligned with them during the civil war or at least stayed neutral during the conflict and recognized the fascist regime as legitimate after its victory. The French forces suppressed all the attempts of Arab nationalists to stage an uprising in Syria. The French West Indies and Indochina were the main exceptions. The governor of Guadeloupe, being a Black man, had reason to fear and resent a fascist regime aligned with Nazi Germany. He refused allegiance to the new regime and his stance was instrumental in encouraging the British to occupy the French West Indies, which they did with the support of the USA.
An uneasy front of Indochinese nationalists and leftist revolutionaries tried to exploit the situation soon after the French civil war went into full swing to start an anti-colonial uprising. The French forces in the colony contained and to a degree suppressed the rebellion, even if some residual unrest persisted. The monarchist and right-wing nationalist wing of the anticolonial movement decided to salvage their situation by making an appeal to Japan for intervention. The Japanese leaders initially hesitated, but became open-minded once they perceived the UK did not seem hostile to a Japanese intervention. The British turned indifferent it became clear the French civil war would likely ensue in a takeover by fascists or communists. Even the USA reluctantly accepted it. The Japanese forces landed in the colony and occupied it without excessive effort. They defeated the French garrisons and the leftist militants and set up Indochina as a nominally independent confederation of the Kingdoms of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In practice, it was another client state of the Japanese Empire like Manchukuo and Greater Mongolia.