Axis victory without Barbarossa and the multipolar Cold War

Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, the Flanders, northern-central Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, western-central Poland, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia, Carniola, Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia. The Nazi leaders gave up their plans for colonial expansion in the Soviet space as unfeasible, and instead turned Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia into their new version of Lebensraum. Under Goering, Nazi Germany adopted a racial policy that deemed most Slavs who accepted forced Germanization fit for assimilation into the Reich. It earmarked the ones who resisted Nazi rule or clung to their national identities for extermination or deportation. Germany also got a vast tract of Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Ubangi-Shari, Gabon, French and Belgian Congo, Angola, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, and northern Mozambique) as its new colonial empire of Mittelafrika.

Italy annexed Nice, Savoy, southern Switzerland, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, coastal Dalmatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, northwestern Macedonia, Malta, Tunisia, Chad, South Sudan, British Somaliland, Uganda, and Kenya. Spain got Gibraltar, Portugal, and French Morocco. France annexed Wallonia, western Switzerland, and the British and Portuguese colonies in West Africa. Bulgaria annexed most of Macedonia, southern Dobruja, and the western portion of Eastern Thrace; Greece got Cyprus and swapped the Dodecanese for the Ionian Islands with Italy. Hungary annexed southern Slovakia, northern Transylvania, and Backa. Europe was bound into the European League, a fascist equivalent of the EU/NATO system with an economic and monetary union and an integrated military alliance. It included Germany as its undisputed leader, Italy as second-in-command, France and Spain as the other members important enough to have a say, and Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece as the minor member states.

The USSR annexed Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, Bukovina, the Turkish Straits, eastern Anatolia, northwestern Persia, Xinjiang (renamed East Turkestan), and Mongolia as several SSRs. Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, the Arab United Republic (a union of Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states) were turned into various Communist client states. The Raj lands west of the Indus were partitioned between Afghanistan and Iran. Egypt with North Sudan, Mandatory Palestine, and the Hejaz became a client state of the European League. The resistance of the Chinese Nationalists was crushed by a combined Soviet-Japanese offensive; China proper was divided between a pro-Soviet western area ruled by the CCP, and a pro-Japanese eastern region controlled by a collaborationist faction of the KMT.

Japan annexed northern Sakhalin (ceded by the Soviets for concessions elsewhere), most of Manchukuo (Jehol was returned to East China), Hainan, and New Guinea. The Han inhabitants of Manchuria and Hainan were largely expelled and replaced with Japanese and Korean settlers. The Japanese established East China, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaya, and Indonesia as client states of theirs bound in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Axis states invariably established a fairly uniform policy of colonization, forced assimilation, and ruthless suppression of dissent for their annexed territories. In the conquered territories that were not planned for ultimate ethno-linguistic assimilation imposition of client-state status, brutal repression of dissent, and economic exploitation were the standard. Political opponents, members of the resistance, and hostile nationalists got killed, sent to the concentration camp system and often worked to death, or deported to distant and inhospitable corners of the Axis empires. In several cases the victorious powers did not bother to try and absorb the subject populations deemed too difficult or troublesome to assimilate or undesirable for racial reasons. They were subject to summary mass deportation and replacement by the conquerors’ settlers. This policy was deployed with some more leniency and flexibility in Western Europe, with rather more brutality in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, with varying degrees between these two extremes in East Asia, but was the standard across Axis Eurasia and Africa.

Germany got involved into an extensive effort to absorb the West and South Slav lands through a mix of nativist policies, settler immigration, forced cultural assimilation, mass deportation, and genocide. The other European powers established a very similar policy for their North African colonies – Spain for Morocco, France for Algeria, and Italy for Tunisia and Libya. As a matter of fact, the demographic effort to find enough settlers for the colonized lands got serious enough that the EL established a common policy of opening the Eastern European and North African colonies to immigrants from Europe at large, provided the settlers were subject to political and cultural assimilation from the nation that owned the area.

The European powers drew grandiose plans to eventually extend this colonization policy to Sub-Saharan Africa and eventually turn vast tracts of it into a settler colony. In practice the colonization of Eastern Europe and North Africa absorbed enough of the demographic resources of Europe that such plans were earmarked for the distant future. In the meanwhile, fascist Europe imposed an extremely harsh regime of serfdom and economic exploitation on its African colonies. In practice it established slavery in all but name and made the infamous conditions of the old Congo Free State the standard across the continent. In South Africa a pro-Axis far right faction took over, established a racist police state, and aligned the country with the EL in foreign policy. South Africa annexed the rest of Southern Africa (South West Africa, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Swaziland, Southern Rhodesia, southern Mozambique), and strived to imitate brutal Axis colonial policies for its own Black population.

Decisive defeat utterly discredited the cause of the British Empire for the White Dominions and drove them to sever all political bonds with Britain. They got frantic to find protection from renewed totalitarian aggression, so they picked political union with America as the only safe course to bind the USA to their defense. Even a close alliance of republics was deemed too risky and uncertain a course in the dramatic period following WWII. The outcome of the war at last awakened America from its isolationist spell, but by then it could do little more than rearm, accept the petitions for union of the Dominions, and pursue a policy of armed defense of the Western Hemisphere and Australasia.

Alaska, Hawaii, the Australian states, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and almost all Canadian provinces became US states. Prince Edward Island got merged with Nova Scotia for reasons of insufficient population for statehood. Yukon merged with Alaska. The Canadian Northwest Territories and Australian Northern Territory initially became US territories, but eventually the former fused with Alaska, and the latter got enough population from immigration to qualify for statehood. Quebec and Iceland negotiated a status of associated states with the USA, with self-rule in most domestic issues and Washington managing foreign policy, defense, and the economy. They got their non-voting representatives in the Congress.

America annexed the European possessions in the Western Hemisphere and Oceania with the acquiescence of local authorities; it kept Greenland, the Caribbean islands, and the Pacific islands as territories, but it ceded the rest to various Latin American states. Argentina got the Falkland Islands, Guatemala took British Honduras, and the Guyanas were partitioned between Venezuela and Brazil. Out of its wish to secure undisputed strategic control of the Caribbean region, the US government bribed the ruling elites of several states in the region (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama) to accept political union with America with offers of economic and monetary compensations. They became associated states of the USA and Puerto Rico got the same status. Japanese supremacy in Southeast Asia drove the American and Filipino leaders to abandon all plans for independence of the Philippines. The two sides negotiated an extension of the Commonwealth of the Philippines associated-state bond with the USA to indefinite duration with a few adjustments. The union of the USA with its associated states became commonly known as the American Commonwealth. Over time the US island territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific got self-rule as associated states of the USA and joined the AC system.

In a few years after victory in WWII, relations between the fascist and communist powers again degenerated from allies of convenience to rivals and potential enemies. The main causes were a mix of insufficiently threatening common enemies, resurgent imperialist competition and ideological tension, and mutual suspicion. Nonetheless the leaders of two sides remained cautious and practical enough to shun escalation into an armed conflict. They deemed their wartime gains extensive enough and the effort of assimilating and managing their empires complex enough to avoid the risk of further expansionist adventures. They resorted to watchful containment, armed defense, and the usual Cold War means of competition to preserve their interests from external threats. More or less the same conditions settled in place between the USA and the totalitarian powers.

In a few years, near-simultaneous development of nuclear weapons, extensive WMD arsenals, and intercontinental bombers by all the great powers (USA, German-led Europe, USSR, and Japan) cemented MAD into place. India picked a course of opportunist neutrality that wavered between drifting closer to the USA, Europe/Japan, or the USSR depending on which political faction got in power and what seemed more convenient at the time. The Japanese at times drifted between a more autonomous foreign policy when tensions with the Soviets and the Americans toned down, and closing ranks with fascist Europe when antagonism with their powerful neighbors flared up. ‘Britization’ became a word to define the policy of a weaker country that strived not to challenge its more powerful neighbors in foreign policy while maintaining independence and its own political system.

Good question. I think ITTL Germany backed by the rest of fascist Europe and the USSR are sufficiently equal in resources to make their wartime alliance of convenience a true diarchy, and even when they get estranged rivals during the Cold War the two empires are balanced enough to keep their relationship stable until the withering of their totalitarian systems changes the whole picture. Due to the superior economic efficiency of fascism to communism, and the common interest of the European powers to cooperate for economic integration, defence from Soviet Russia (once the convenience of wartime alliance expires with victory) and anti-colonial America, and exploitation of their colonial empires, Germany won't need much coercion to keep the rest of Europe bound to the EL system, unlike OTL USSR with the Warsaw Pact. Fascist Europe has more than enough demographic and indistrial resources, not to mention a bigger know-how, to balance Soviet Russia and democratic America, even more so since it can ruthlessly exploit captive Africa for resources. On the other hand, Soviet Russia has more natural resources in its core territory, and a smaller empire (the Middle East, Central Asia, western China) whose resources it can ruthlessly exploit even if it shall be more restive to control than Europe because of the greater inefficiencies of its system and the character of its subject populations. ITTL neither Germany nor Europe at large nor the USSR suffered the vast majority of the damage they experienced in our version of WWII. Victory over the British Empire was relatively easy, and the war was mostly fought in the air, at sea, and in the Muslim lands. If anything Britain itself experienced the worst damage that left it a broken, impoverished, exhausted middle power cowed into Finlandization. Its empire was entirely seized by victorious Axis powers, nationalist Indians, opportunist Americans, and turncoat South Africans.

Of course, the population of the annexed territories shall not be happy with their lot, but given the practical character of TTL Nazi racial policies, I think a lot of people in those areas shall accept forced cultural assimilation and integration with the conquerors' settlers when it is offered, and the opponents shall be largely wiped out, since the alternative is to be killed, sent to the concentration camp system, or deported far away from home. In certain places the victorious powers did not bother to attempt forced cultural assimilation and enacted mass forced transfer of the original populations and their replacement with their own settlers immediately after victory. If the totalitarian regimes stay in power long enough, I expect the ethno-linguistic map of Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and Northeastern Asia shall experience many extensive and irreversible changes, even if their eventual decline and fall might leave several troublesome areas into place that look like Scotland or Catalonia at best, like the Basque Countries or Northern Ireland at worst. As it concerns the occupied areas of the Axis empires at large, the victorious Nazis and Stalinists are efficient and brutal enough in their repression policies, the would-be members of the resistance mostly cut off from any external help, and their situation looks desperate enough, that any organized resistance shall cease or be crushed by the late 1940s or early 1950s at the latest.

Over time, organized mass resistance may revive in the unassimilated subject areas of the totalitarian empires that face severe oppression and exploitation, such as Sub-Saharan Africa for the EL, Middle East for the USSR, China proper for Russia/Japan, if they can get enough external support from the other superpowers. The strain from repressing such resistance might be a serious cause of trouble and decline for the Commienazi empires. I'm honestly uncertain if over time Southeast Asia shall turn out more like the quiet cores of the Euro/Russo/Japanese empires or their troublesome peripheries. The other major cause for their decline, of course, would be the emergent flaws and inefficiencies of the totalitarian powers in their natural evolution and competition with America. Apart from this, I expect this tripolar system, once established, shall be stable enough to last a long time, in all likelihood as much as OTL Cold War if not more.

Even for Eurofed this is a dystopic scenario. I wonder how much the population of the old world hemisphere is going to drop during the following decade or so?

I find it highly unlikely you would get the MAD deterrent proposed however. For one thing nuclear weapons development is likely to be significantly delayed in TTL. For another once one of the dark empires gets the weapon, especially given the secrecy involved, its likely that would move quickly to crush one of its neighbours. Highly doubtful Japan would be in the running so we're talking about sudden strikes by either German or the Soviets on the other. [Given the nature of the regimes they would fear that the other might develop such weapons and also see a monopoly over them as an idea opportunity to crush the enemy they fear and distrust more than any other. This is different from the OTL situation where a democratic state was the 1st to gain nuclear weapons and its major rival was a former wartime ally].

Even more likely I would expect that war would occur before any of the three developed such weapons. There is too much hatred plus once Britain is forced to make peace no real incentive to maintain the 'alliance'. This puts the Soviets in the greatest peril in an early war as Germany will probably have greater overall strength early on, plus the alliance against Japan and a 'crusade' against Bolshevism is one thing that would gain significant support amongst Germany's subject nations. However if war doesn't break out until the late 40's the greater efficiency [or should I say lesser inefficiency] of the Soviet system will give it an increasing edge over the shambling mess that will be the Nazi empire. Plus by that point Japan is probably faltering over its attempts to try and hold its empire in China, SE Asia and probably parts of India.

The best option under Eurofed's conditions is say a war starting in ~44-46 that is tight enough that there is no overall winner and all three empires collapse under their own weight. After that its possible that some degree of democracy and civilisation could start to recover although the loss in human life and society would be appalling.

If we assume that only the 1st two conditions are met, i.e. the western powers attacking Russia over the Winter War and Hitler's sudden death then there is a more logical and optimistic alternative. Under those circumstances with France falling in 1940 and the British so thinly stretched I can't see them continuing beyond late 40 or early 41 at the latest. Especially once its clear that the US won't offer serious support. Egypt might well be held because of the problems of logistics for both the fascists and communists, plus the poor quality of the Red Army at this point and more importantly most of the rest of the empire in Africa when Britain makes peace. There are likely to be concessions made, such as returning the Canaries to Spain and possibly also even Egypt although probably not much more. As such a large chunk of Africa will stay outside the control of the dictators and Britain will stay largely independent. Also, vitally, Britain will be at peace before Japan is in a position to attack in the Pacific. As such it would have a much greater problem winning a war in SE Asia and possibly, with German control of the Dutch East Indies, not need to do so.

The down side for this is that Germany is likely to seek to strike to attack Russia very quickly and also seek to pressurise Japan into supporting it. As I say above the Soviets are very likely to lose a war at this period, although the Japanese are likely to play only a minimal role because their manpower intensive form of ground conflict is going to make little progress against Soviet firepower.

However if the war is delayed a couple of years its likely to be a lot more even, especially if Nazi 'education' policies continue and there is growing discontent with Goring's leadership,both of which are fairly likely. As such the dictatorships are likely to bleed each other white and Britain, especially if the US wakes up and allies with it, could step in and end at least some of the bloodshed fairly quickly, especially if they have nukes and a suitable delivery system by then.

Alternatively if the democracies get the bomb 1st then under those circumstances they could well use them and the additional military strength developed to decisive effect, at least against the European fascists. Or possibly the Nazis and Soviets are lead to bled each other dry if Japan still blunders into a war with Britain, especially if as likely the latter has US support.

There are still likely to be tens of millions of additional deaths compared to OTL and a Soviet state may survive but at least things won't be as bloody and destructive as in Eurofed's nightmare TL.

Steve

I wonder if he is still the same person as he was in OTL.

So he might be the drugs addict of OTL, that will end well.

I see no problem in this timeline so carry on.

  Eurofed and me are old opponents, being pretty much polar opposites.  He prefers massive and brutal empires while I tend more towards the advantages being with liberal states and more rights for people.  Therefore as he says his TLs tend to have the SW empires win and suppress all alternative viewpoints, whereas I'm very happy with multiple powers surviving and existing in relative harmony.  I believe the future is with heterogeneous societies that can not just tolerate but enjoy new idea and questions.

  There is a side issue in that he thinks that the main [or sole?] reason why Europe wasn't united under some nationalistic empire was the independent of a British nation.  Hence he tends to have especially unpleasant fates in his TLs for Britain.  Apart from rubbing me the wrong way of course, this is rubbish as I have pointed out numerous times.  However he prefers to believe that, I think because it makes his own desired empires more likely.  [From his point of view remove/cripple Britain and Europe falls to some conqueror.  Of course while Britain played a significant role the reason Europe was never united was overwhelmingly it was the united efforts of many peoples who defeated each such would be conquerors].