Post by eurofed on Apr 23, 2021 15:38:27 GMT
Let’s tackle a classical AH scenario, avoidance of WWII. For geopolitical reasons, I strongly favor the variant that leaves the Axis powers able to satisfy all their ‘reasonable’ territorial ambitions, retain great power status (as long as Europe stays disunited, anyway), and dismantle the Versailles order. Letting them have ‘sane’ right-wing authoritarian regimes seems the most familiar option and more importantly the path of least resistance to accomplish the ‘just right’ degree of expansionism. On the other hand, history tells liberal-democratic regimes may easily become as expansionist/imperialist as authoritarian ones in the right political circumstances, but stay nicer overall in various other matters. Therefore, the scenario might go either way as far as I am concerned, as long as it includes the revisionist powers getting their due. For political symmetry and alliance alignment reasons, however, I strongly favor the variant that lets all the Axis powers have the same kind of regime.
ITTL Japan modernized slightly earlier (say 10-15 years) and was able to exploit this head start to defeat China and Russia and annex Taiwan, Korea, Greater Manchuria, Sakhalin/Karafuto, and Hainan by the latter half of the 19th century. This enabled a successful political and to a lesser degree cultural assimilation of the Koreans and other native peoples in the overseas territories, even if some important cultural distinctiveness persisted. Early Japanese control of Greater Manchuria and the insular territories allowed preventing or removing any significant Han Chinese and Russian settlement. Japanese and Korean immigrants took their place, consolidating the grip of the Japanese Empire on these areas. The additional resources Japan gained this way mostly turned it into a satisfied power focused on defending its Northeast Asian empire from Chinese resurgence and Soviet ambitions. In the right circumstances, the opportunist Japanese would not mind grabbing a bigger piece of the Russian Far East and Siberia, seizing control of Southeast Asia, or gaining dominant influence on China if the USSR, the European powers, or the Chinese weakened enough. If favorable circumstances did not materialize, however, they had no serious urge to engage in all-out aggression to seize those territories. They were content to keep a defensive posture against the USSR and support sympathetic factions as proxies in disunited China and in the Asian anti-colonial movements.
Things in the rest of the world went much like OTL up to the 1920s. Timely discovery of the oilfields in Matzen, Libya, and Manchuria in the late 1920s, and their subsequent exploitation since the early 1930s made post-Anschluss Germany, Italy, and Japan considerably more self-sufficient about their fuel needs, financially secure, and able to invest in economic and infrastructure development as well as rearmament and modernization of their armed forces. It also helped Japan focus on defense of its empire and less tempted to engage in expansionist adventures in China or Southeast Asia.
The Nazi leadership got wiped out during the failed Beer Hall Putsch, leading to the collapse of the NSDAP. Its place in the German political spectrum got filled by an expansion of the DNVP or possibly a brand-new far-right party that closely imitated Italian-style fascism. In both cases, the party got the leadership of a charismatic and talented strongman such as Paul von Lettow-Forbeck or a surviving Manfred von Ritchofen. This lead to a right-wing authoritarian regime change in the early 1930s. The new regime restored the monarchy as a figurehead and broadly followed the Nazi playbook for domestic policies, rearmament, and foreign expansion up to the Munich Agreement, albeit often in a more sensible fashion. Their mistreatment of minorities never went any further than badmouthing the Jews and Roma in propaganda and imposing a few legal limitations on them. They pursued a more financially sustainable pace of rearmament, since their strategic aims were defensive military parity with France and the USSR and winning a war with Czechoslovakia and Poland.
After the settlement of the Sudetenland crisis, the German leaders realized they needed to leave Czechoslovakia alone for a while and pretend to respect the Munich Agreement to make Britain and France support Germany's claims on Poland. Therefore, they started a diplomatic offensive to try to get international support for Germany's claims on Danzig. They made the pro-German government of the Free City publicly agitate for union with the Reich. At the same time, the Germans tried to persuade the Poles to join into an anti-Soviet alliance.
Since Germany was apparently respecting the Munich Agreement and hence seemed trustworthy, Britain and France remained committed to appeasement and the British showed no willingness to give a military guarantee to the Poles. Nonetheless, Poland remained hostile to Germany's requests and proffers. The frustrated German leaders wished to be secure their action against Poland did not expose them to the danger against the Western powers or the USSR. Therefore, they decided to swallow their anti-Communist scruples and make a deal with the Soviets. They duplicitously planned to use Soviet expansionism as a tool to fulfill Germany's own claims and a bogeyman to pull Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence.
Negotiations proved fruitful since the Soviets were eager for an opportunity to recover what Russia had lost after WWI. The two powers were able to agree on a deal to divide Eastern Europe in spheres of influence. As part of the agreement, Germany and the USSR started to deploy joint pressure on Poland for a cession of the territories both powers claimed. The British and the French were shocked at this apparent betrayal of anti-Communist solidarity. Setting up a resurgent Germany as an anti-Soviet bulwark had been a big part of the unspoken justification for appeasement besides lack of sufficient military preparedness and lingering war weariness from WWI.
However, this overt show of German-Soviet cooperation and the vast military resources of a Berlin-Moscow alliance of convenience also frightened Britain and France. They were reluctant to fight a powerful German-Soviet compact unless forced to, even more so for the questionable sake of the territorial integrity of Poland and the other states spawned by the Versailles treaty. They sent feelers to Italy for a possible alliance. However, Mussolini decided he would get better terms by staying true to Germany as long as Berlin supported Italian ambitions in the Balkans. Despite his anti-Communist ideological commitments, he realized that if the German leaders could put them aside for the sake of convenience and profit, he too could do the same.
The Germans proved open-minded to Italian feelers for a Balkans deal and agreed to joint action against Yugoslavia. They were eager to keep Italy on their side, even more so since it had turned into a major supplier of oil. Moreover, they realized this course would allow them to expand German influence in Eastern Europe by eliminating another pro-Entente spawn of Versailles. However, they vetoed an Italian action against Greece as too likely to provoke a British intervention. As it concerned the Soviets, they had relatively little interest in the Western Balkans and no problem acknowledging an Italian sphere of influence in the region. Bulgaria and Turkey proved to be more of a sticking point, but ultimately the three powers agreed to share influence in Bulgaria and support Soviet requests for a revision of the Bosporus regime. This paved the way to an extension to Italy of the German-Soviet sphere of influence agreement. It included a non-aggression pact, a defensive military alliance, and an economic cooperation pact. Because of the deal, Italy shifted its stance to diplomatic support of Germany and indirectly the USSR.
This realignment of the fascist and communist powers into an unholy alliance compact persuaded the British and the French that a costly and difficult general war against them for the sake of the Versailles states was not worth the effort. They acknowledged the new geopolitical situation made the Eastern European and Balkan states beyond their help and a lost cause for them, at least as long as German-Soviet-Italian cooperation stood strong. They kept important interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East because of their colonial assets and the British commitment to keep the routes to India safe but that was it. Therefore, they wrote off Eastern Europe and the Balkans and declared their strategic interests stopped at the Rhine, the Alps, and the Turkish Straits. Britain granted military guarantees to Greece and Turkey, but refused to do the same for Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. France likewise acknowledged its post-WWI alliance ties with Poland and the Little Entente states had lapsed in the new circumstances.
Germany and the USSR delivered a joint ultimatum to the Poles to move their borders to the 1914 line and the Curzon Line, respectively. The Poles realized their situation was hopeless and accepted the ultimatum. Germany annexed its 1914 territories and the USSR got the Kresy. As part of the deal, the Germans expelled the vast majority of the Polish population in the annexed territories. The USSR forcibly Sovietized the Polish areas it annexed.
The Germans covertly cooperated with Hungary to support separatist agitation of minorities within Czechoslovakia. When such unrest reached the breaking point, both powers picked it as an excuse to threaten intervention and force the Czechoslovaks to accept partition of their state. Germany annexed Bohemia-Moravia as a protectorate and seized control of its industrial resources. Hungary did the same with Slovakia. The USSR got Carpathian Ruthenia. Hungary eagerly joined an alliance with Germany and put pressure on Romania with Berlin's support to cede part of Transylvania. The USSR made its own move when it delivered Romania an ultimatum for the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Romanians deemed their situation hopeless and accepted Hungarian and Soviet demands. Hungary annexed Northern Transylvania, while the USSR got the areas it had claimed. Germany seized effective control of the areas inhabited by Transylvanian Saxons and Danube Swabians in central Transylvania and the Romanian Banat. It established them as an autonomous area and de facto protectorate under control of the local German community. The Hungarians, the Romanians, and the Danube Germans enacted a population exchange of their respective minorities. The Bulgarians exploited the situation to claim the restitution of Southern Dobruja from Romania.
The USSR delivered ultimatums for various territorial and military concessions to Finland and the Baltic states, and these nations reluctantly complied. Soon afterward, the Soviets escalated their demands to terms that meant annexation in short order. The Baltics capitulated, the Finns tried to resist; however, their previous concessions made their military situation bad enough that in a few weeks of fighting they were forced to surrender. The brief war showed the Red Army had various serious flaws that significantly delayed Soviet victory. However, ultimate success persuaded Stalin these initial setbacks were the fault of saboteurs and he ordered a new row of purges in the Red Army. The USSR annexed Finland and the Baltic states and brutally crushed resistance to Soviet rule. Germany exploited the situation to annex the Memelland with Soviet support.
Italy invaded and annexed Albania as a protectorate and cooperated with Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria to support the separatist agitation of various minorities within Yugoslavia. The fragile Yugoslav state fell into serious instability and the neighbor states picked it as an excuse to intervene and ‘restore order’. The Yugoslav army was quickly overwhelmed and the victor powers imposed a partition of Yugoslavia. Italy annexed coastal Dalmatia, almost all Adriatic islands, and central-southern Slovenia. It also got most of Kosovo and the northwestern portion of Macedonia on behalf of its Albanian protectorate. Germany got northern Slovenia. It seized the Serbian Banat and merged it with the Romanian Banat as an autonomous area and de facto protectorate under control of the local German community. Hungary annexed the Backa, Baranja, Medimurje, and Prekmurje regions. Bulgaria got most of Macedonia. Croatia became independent as a client state of Germany and Italy and got most of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Montenegro also became independent as a client state of Italy. Serbia became a rump state that only kept Central Serbia, northern Kosovo, and the eastern portion of Bosnia. An extensive forced population transfer strived to turn the new political borders into ethnic ones. Its most notable feature was the expulsion of the vast majority of the Serb population from the rest of former Yugoslavia into rump Serbia.
Satisfied with their gains and the outcome of their cooperation, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Croatia formed the Axis bloc. It included a military alliance and a trade pact. The USSR joined as well for similar reasons, although a significant divide lingered between the Soviets and the right-wing authoritarian states that tended to cluster together. Much as Berlin and Rome expected, Poland and Romania joined the Axis and within it and aligned closer to Germany and Italy, deeming it the least evil option to them in these circumstances. Bulgaria and Serbia chose the same course, but respectively pursued equidistance between the fascist powers and the USSR, or a closer relationship with Soviet Russia. Despite its anti-communist leanings, Spain too joined the Axis bloc and the fascist faction within it, out of gratitude for the help that Germany and Italy had provided to the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War and in the expectation cooperation with the Axis powers would help rebuild their war-torn nation. As much as certain Eastern European and Balkan states had reasons to resent their neighbors, the overwhelming supremacy of the Axis bloc in the area and the strategic withdrawal of the Western powers from the same made any other course but collaboration seem suicidal to their ruling elites.
ITTL Japan modernized slightly earlier (say 10-15 years) and was able to exploit this head start to defeat China and Russia and annex Taiwan, Korea, Greater Manchuria, Sakhalin/Karafuto, and Hainan by the latter half of the 19th century. This enabled a successful political and to a lesser degree cultural assimilation of the Koreans and other native peoples in the overseas territories, even if some important cultural distinctiveness persisted. Early Japanese control of Greater Manchuria and the insular territories allowed preventing or removing any significant Han Chinese and Russian settlement. Japanese and Korean immigrants took their place, consolidating the grip of the Japanese Empire on these areas. The additional resources Japan gained this way mostly turned it into a satisfied power focused on defending its Northeast Asian empire from Chinese resurgence and Soviet ambitions. In the right circumstances, the opportunist Japanese would not mind grabbing a bigger piece of the Russian Far East and Siberia, seizing control of Southeast Asia, or gaining dominant influence on China if the USSR, the European powers, or the Chinese weakened enough. If favorable circumstances did not materialize, however, they had no serious urge to engage in all-out aggression to seize those territories. They were content to keep a defensive posture against the USSR and support sympathetic factions as proxies in disunited China and in the Asian anti-colonial movements.
Things in the rest of the world went much like OTL up to the 1920s. Timely discovery of the oilfields in Matzen, Libya, and Manchuria in the late 1920s, and their subsequent exploitation since the early 1930s made post-Anschluss Germany, Italy, and Japan considerably more self-sufficient about their fuel needs, financially secure, and able to invest in economic and infrastructure development as well as rearmament and modernization of their armed forces. It also helped Japan focus on defense of its empire and less tempted to engage in expansionist adventures in China or Southeast Asia.
The Nazi leadership got wiped out during the failed Beer Hall Putsch, leading to the collapse of the NSDAP. Its place in the German political spectrum got filled by an expansion of the DNVP or possibly a brand-new far-right party that closely imitated Italian-style fascism. In both cases, the party got the leadership of a charismatic and talented strongman such as Paul von Lettow-Forbeck or a surviving Manfred von Ritchofen. This lead to a right-wing authoritarian regime change in the early 1930s. The new regime restored the monarchy as a figurehead and broadly followed the Nazi playbook for domestic policies, rearmament, and foreign expansion up to the Munich Agreement, albeit often in a more sensible fashion. Their mistreatment of minorities never went any further than badmouthing the Jews and Roma in propaganda and imposing a few legal limitations on them. They pursued a more financially sustainable pace of rearmament, since their strategic aims were defensive military parity with France and the USSR and winning a war with Czechoslovakia and Poland.
After the settlement of the Sudetenland crisis, the German leaders realized they needed to leave Czechoslovakia alone for a while and pretend to respect the Munich Agreement to make Britain and France support Germany's claims on Poland. Therefore, they started a diplomatic offensive to try to get international support for Germany's claims on Danzig. They made the pro-German government of the Free City publicly agitate for union with the Reich. At the same time, the Germans tried to persuade the Poles to join into an anti-Soviet alliance.
Since Germany was apparently respecting the Munich Agreement and hence seemed trustworthy, Britain and France remained committed to appeasement and the British showed no willingness to give a military guarantee to the Poles. Nonetheless, Poland remained hostile to Germany's requests and proffers. The frustrated German leaders wished to be secure their action against Poland did not expose them to the danger against the Western powers or the USSR. Therefore, they decided to swallow their anti-Communist scruples and make a deal with the Soviets. They duplicitously planned to use Soviet expansionism as a tool to fulfill Germany's own claims and a bogeyman to pull Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence.
Negotiations proved fruitful since the Soviets were eager for an opportunity to recover what Russia had lost after WWI. The two powers were able to agree on a deal to divide Eastern Europe in spheres of influence. As part of the agreement, Germany and the USSR started to deploy joint pressure on Poland for a cession of the territories both powers claimed. The British and the French were shocked at this apparent betrayal of anti-Communist solidarity. Setting up a resurgent Germany as an anti-Soviet bulwark had been a big part of the unspoken justification for appeasement besides lack of sufficient military preparedness and lingering war weariness from WWI.
However, this overt show of German-Soviet cooperation and the vast military resources of a Berlin-Moscow alliance of convenience also frightened Britain and France. They were reluctant to fight a powerful German-Soviet compact unless forced to, even more so for the questionable sake of the territorial integrity of Poland and the other states spawned by the Versailles treaty. They sent feelers to Italy for a possible alliance. However, Mussolini decided he would get better terms by staying true to Germany as long as Berlin supported Italian ambitions in the Balkans. Despite his anti-Communist ideological commitments, he realized that if the German leaders could put them aside for the sake of convenience and profit, he too could do the same.
The Germans proved open-minded to Italian feelers for a Balkans deal and agreed to joint action against Yugoslavia. They were eager to keep Italy on their side, even more so since it had turned into a major supplier of oil. Moreover, they realized this course would allow them to expand German influence in Eastern Europe by eliminating another pro-Entente spawn of Versailles. However, they vetoed an Italian action against Greece as too likely to provoke a British intervention. As it concerned the Soviets, they had relatively little interest in the Western Balkans and no problem acknowledging an Italian sphere of influence in the region. Bulgaria and Turkey proved to be more of a sticking point, but ultimately the three powers agreed to share influence in Bulgaria and support Soviet requests for a revision of the Bosporus regime. This paved the way to an extension to Italy of the German-Soviet sphere of influence agreement. It included a non-aggression pact, a defensive military alliance, and an economic cooperation pact. Because of the deal, Italy shifted its stance to diplomatic support of Germany and indirectly the USSR.
This realignment of the fascist and communist powers into an unholy alliance compact persuaded the British and the French that a costly and difficult general war against them for the sake of the Versailles states was not worth the effort. They acknowledged the new geopolitical situation made the Eastern European and Balkan states beyond their help and a lost cause for them, at least as long as German-Soviet-Italian cooperation stood strong. They kept important interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East because of their colonial assets and the British commitment to keep the routes to India safe but that was it. Therefore, they wrote off Eastern Europe and the Balkans and declared their strategic interests stopped at the Rhine, the Alps, and the Turkish Straits. Britain granted military guarantees to Greece and Turkey, but refused to do the same for Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. France likewise acknowledged its post-WWI alliance ties with Poland and the Little Entente states had lapsed in the new circumstances.
Germany and the USSR delivered a joint ultimatum to the Poles to move their borders to the 1914 line and the Curzon Line, respectively. The Poles realized their situation was hopeless and accepted the ultimatum. Germany annexed its 1914 territories and the USSR got the Kresy. As part of the deal, the Germans expelled the vast majority of the Polish population in the annexed territories. The USSR forcibly Sovietized the Polish areas it annexed.
The Germans covertly cooperated with Hungary to support separatist agitation of minorities within Czechoslovakia. When such unrest reached the breaking point, both powers picked it as an excuse to threaten intervention and force the Czechoslovaks to accept partition of their state. Germany annexed Bohemia-Moravia as a protectorate and seized control of its industrial resources. Hungary did the same with Slovakia. The USSR got Carpathian Ruthenia. Hungary eagerly joined an alliance with Germany and put pressure on Romania with Berlin's support to cede part of Transylvania. The USSR made its own move when it delivered Romania an ultimatum for the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Romanians deemed their situation hopeless and accepted Hungarian and Soviet demands. Hungary annexed Northern Transylvania, while the USSR got the areas it had claimed. Germany seized effective control of the areas inhabited by Transylvanian Saxons and Danube Swabians in central Transylvania and the Romanian Banat. It established them as an autonomous area and de facto protectorate under control of the local German community. The Hungarians, the Romanians, and the Danube Germans enacted a population exchange of their respective minorities. The Bulgarians exploited the situation to claim the restitution of Southern Dobruja from Romania.
The USSR delivered ultimatums for various territorial and military concessions to Finland and the Baltic states, and these nations reluctantly complied. Soon afterward, the Soviets escalated their demands to terms that meant annexation in short order. The Baltics capitulated, the Finns tried to resist; however, their previous concessions made their military situation bad enough that in a few weeks of fighting they were forced to surrender. The brief war showed the Red Army had various serious flaws that significantly delayed Soviet victory. However, ultimate success persuaded Stalin these initial setbacks were the fault of saboteurs and he ordered a new row of purges in the Red Army. The USSR annexed Finland and the Baltic states and brutally crushed resistance to Soviet rule. Germany exploited the situation to annex the Memelland with Soviet support.
Italy invaded and annexed Albania as a protectorate and cooperated with Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria to support the separatist agitation of various minorities within Yugoslavia. The fragile Yugoslav state fell into serious instability and the neighbor states picked it as an excuse to intervene and ‘restore order’. The Yugoslav army was quickly overwhelmed and the victor powers imposed a partition of Yugoslavia. Italy annexed coastal Dalmatia, almost all Adriatic islands, and central-southern Slovenia. It also got most of Kosovo and the northwestern portion of Macedonia on behalf of its Albanian protectorate. Germany got northern Slovenia. It seized the Serbian Banat and merged it with the Romanian Banat as an autonomous area and de facto protectorate under control of the local German community. Hungary annexed the Backa, Baranja, Medimurje, and Prekmurje regions. Bulgaria got most of Macedonia. Croatia became independent as a client state of Germany and Italy and got most of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Montenegro also became independent as a client state of Italy. Serbia became a rump state that only kept Central Serbia, northern Kosovo, and the eastern portion of Bosnia. An extensive forced population transfer strived to turn the new political borders into ethnic ones. Its most notable feature was the expulsion of the vast majority of the Serb population from the rest of former Yugoslavia into rump Serbia.
Satisfied with their gains and the outcome of their cooperation, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Croatia formed the Axis bloc. It included a military alliance and a trade pact. The USSR joined as well for similar reasons, although a significant divide lingered between the Soviets and the right-wing authoritarian states that tended to cluster together. Much as Berlin and Rome expected, Poland and Romania joined the Axis and within it and aligned closer to Germany and Italy, deeming it the least evil option to them in these circumstances. Bulgaria and Serbia chose the same course, but respectively pursued equidistance between the fascist powers and the USSR, or a closer relationship with Soviet Russia. Despite its anti-communist leanings, Spain too joined the Axis bloc and the fascist faction within it, out of gratitude for the help that Germany and Italy had provided to the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War and in the expectation cooperation with the Axis powers would help rebuild their war-torn nation. As much as certain Eastern European and Balkan states had reasons to resent their neighbors, the overwhelming supremacy of the Axis bloc in the area and the strategic withdrawal of the Western powers from the same made any other course but collaboration seem suicidal to their ruling elites.
