A Semi-Plausible Axis Victory World

A one somewhat similar in theme to the previous one, inspired in this case by some of OttoVonSuds' maps and some Axis victory timelines such as the Anglo-American/Nazi War and Fatherland.

This timeline diverged from ours with 1) Halifax becoming Prime Minister instead of Winston Churchill and 2) Germany deciding to switch to total war scale of production a couple of years earlier than OTL. Britain and Germany managed to negotiate an armistice that resulted in leaving British possessions unmolested by the Italians. As a result, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa a few months earlier and with far more ease. Moscow fell by the end of 1941 but the Russians fought on for three years more under an increasingly paranoid Stalin who had Zhukov and Timoshenko shot. Pearl Habour still happened on schedule although Germany did not declare war on the US and Britain and the US focused on the war against Japan which ended after massive gas attacks and carpet bombings forced Japanese surrender in late 1944. Meanwhile as Adolf Hitler became increasingly overconfident Reinhard Heydrich successfully arranged his "death" in 1944 and successfully framed Heinrich Himmler, making Goring puppet Fuhrer but with him, Goebbels, and Speer enjoying all real power. Stalin met a similar fate to his enemy and Molotov and Heydrich negotiated an armistice that left Germany with all of the USSR west of the Urals. The genocide of Jews and Gypsies had been largely completed by this time but Heydrich decided against implementing Generalplan Ost for practical reasons and instead carved most of the annexed areas into some dozen puppet states (with some areas such as the Crimea becoming directly incorporated into the Reich) with regular conscription of labour, kidnapping of "Aryan" children, and wholesale execution of intelligentsia. The US developed the A-Bomb in 1945 but Germany had by this time already perfected V-2s fully equipped with poison gas aimed at Britain which prevented a renewal of the Second World War.

The Cold War gained steam when Germany developed its own Bomb in 1948 and various proxy conflicts began in Egypt, France, and the Urals. Decolonization movement in TTL was often of a fascistic rather than Marxist nature (Germany "persuaded" France and Italy to decolonize as Heydrich realized the potential of Third World support). By the 1950s most of the Middle East were German-allied and even India was increasingly leaning toward Germany. Despite this, the Oceanic Pact managed to get Kuomintang to purge its pro-German elements and quashed various fascistic movements in the Western Hemisphere outside of Argentina which became a full-fledged Nazi ally under Juan Peron by the 1950s Despite scares such as the Patagonian Missile Crisis of '64 and the Amsterdam Rebellion of '67, the Third Reich and the US had come to a détente by 1970 under President Joseph P Kennedy Jr. and Fuhrer Heydrich (Goring "retired" in 1957). The Space Race became more intense in TTL with the Nazis launching the first man in space in 1959 and landing on the Moon by 1966. The Americans succeeded in sending men to Mars in 1979 and by 2012 about two hundred people live in Outer Space with numerous bases around orbit and on Luna and a multinational base on Mars. By the 1970s the Nazis had completed the economic integration of Europe and the Middle East with the Reichsmark as a common currency forming the Eurasian Cooperative Co-Prosperity Sphere. The US and the "white" Commonwealth countries formed a similar economic union in 1983 with Korea, Chile, and Japan all eventually joining too. The Oceanic Pact fought a bloody guerilla war in South Africa through most of the '70s and into the '80s against both blacks and Boers in a vicious multi-sided civil war. US President Anderson elected in 1980 denounced the "Evil Reich" and ramped up military spending, crushed the Khmer Braun rebels with napalm strikes, and in an extraordinarily controversial move "intervened" in neutral (but German-friendly) Eire in 1986 resulting in the most vicious guerrilla conflict of the Gross Sitzkrieg. But the election of Jerry Brown in 1992 resulted in a Second Détente which lasts to this day. When Fuhrer Heydrich died at 93 in 1997, a brief power struggle broke out which resulted in Kurt Waldheim being installed as Fuhrer but the head of the Gestapo Karl Josef Steinhoff controlling the strings of power. Now new problems such as the growing strength and independence of China, the Indian development of nuclear weapons, and Global Warming are overshadowing the increasingly archaic Cold War…

The United States with 280 million people under President John Edwards is still the world's largest economy but is not a hyperpower like OTL. With a smaller Baby Boom due to a milder World War II and without the liberalized 1964 Immigration laws, the US population is smaller, older, and whiter than OTL despite a somewhat higher birth-rate to whites thanks to fewer women working outside the home and more social conservatism. Civil rights were about a decade later than OTL but OTOH there was no inner city decay and blacks are closer to economic parity with whites resulting in a overall less cynical and radical black culture which has attitudes more resembling OTL's Asian-Americans (the straight-A black student is practically a stereotype these days). The US is more socially conservative in other ways too: abortion is legal in only four states, politicial correctness and sexual harassment are unheard of terms, domestic partnerships for homosexuals are only now starting to be recognized, only about 50% of women work outside the home, extreme violence, using God's name in vain, and any sort of nudity are unheard of in movies, TV, or AmericaNet. OTOH, marijuana was decriminalized and homosexuals were allowed into the military under the Anderson administration. The Republican Party is a hawkish, anti-German, socially liberal, and pro-free market party who annoys many peace advocates when some ultra-hawkish candidates (like Al Franken and Russ Feingold)_ start circulating smuggled pictures of Auschwitz and Buchenwald during Election Season. The Democratic Party remains the party of the welfare state and accomadation with Germany (which does not make it popular with Jews) along with social conservatism by its Evangelical, Roman Catholic, and black voters. There was a milder and somewhat later Sexual Revolution in TTL however but counterculture here was far more strongly influenced by Norse neopaganism and the philosophy of Julius Evola than by Eastern mysticism. Puerto Rico and the District of Colombia are both states in TTL.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is somewhat better off than OTL economically thanks to an influx of skilled workers when the Reich allowed emigration from occupied Europe and without competition from the Continent. It is divided between a pro-détente Conservative Party (who consider Halifax to be a brilliant statesman who prevented an invasion of Britain) and a hawkish Labour Party led by Prime Minister Christopher Hitchens (whose brother, Peter, is a prominent Tory MP). In addition it is suffering from a chronic and severe terrorist problem by the IRA after the British occupation of all of Ireland in 1986. The British retain a few more colonies than OTL including Cyprus and Malta and the Commonwealth has more formal ties with Britain. The main problem spots for the Commonwealth are former South Africa (divided into four black republics and a white-dominted Cape Free State) where the Afrikaaner Republikan Army is still active in the Veldt.

Japan is somewhat poorer than OTL without the Korean War and less American aid post war. United Korea is on par economically with Japan and is one of America's strongest allies in the Pacific. The rump Soviet Union officially dumped Communism in 1985 and is quite wealthy being better off than OTL Russia thanks to the massive mineral and oil wealth of Siberia. Vietnam became a socialist but pro-American democracy (think Lula's Brazil) under Ho Chi Minh which helped Cambodia and Laos crush its fascist insurgencies. Burma is a wealthy state while Malaysia, and Singapore are all relatively similar to OTL. In Latin America Brazil, Chile, and Colombia are the most reliable American allies and the region is overall more prosperous than OTL due to more trade and aid flowing south rather than across the Atlantic. Canada is strongly Anglophone having banned Quebecois activism due to Nazi support for it while Australia and New Zealand are more or less identical to OTL (if somewhat more conservative socially). In the Middle East Saudi Arabia is much as OTL and Iran is a wealthy and powerful American ally now a full democracy.

The Greater German Reich encompasses all of former Germany, Austria, along with Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia-Moravia, Eupen-Malmedy, General Government Poland, Memel, and various enclaves in Russia. It has some 180 million residents of whom 160 million are Germans (including various assimilated Frenchmen, Poles, and Czechs) and the remainder are some fifteen million unassimilated Poles and Czechs, and five million other "Aryans" and immigrants most notably the Japanese who were allowed to immigrate to Germany after World War II in exchange for limited emigration by people in Occupied Europe in 1944 (most notable of whom was Yukio Mishima, later general of the Waffen SS Division Oda Nobunga). Germany has a fairly healthy birthrate and despite extensive immigration by Kurds and Arabs, very few people have fears of "Eurabia". The Reich maintains laws against "race-mixing", discrimination against Slavs, and eugenics laws mandating abortion and sterilization of "defectives" but no longer bothers to execute the few remaining and surviving Jews and instead allow them to emigrate. It has became less ideological and more akin to the People's Republic of China to-day under Heydrich (who also closed and destroyed all evidence of concentration camps which only slowly leaked out).

Virtually all Continental European countries except Switzerland and Sweden are allies or "allies" of the Third Reich. The most prominent among them is Alessandra Mussolini's Italy with some 70 million people which is surprisingly progressive socially and economically quite wealthy. The third among Continental states is Jean-Marie Le Pen's France quite poor with only about 55 million Frenchmen and never experienced anything like OTL"s growth after World War II. It is quite restive thanks to surviving Free French elements in the Americas and Africa. Among other Axis states probably the best off are Norway and Denmark which are quite liberal and Spain which is fairly independent and free thanks to a monarchy. The Dutch are a different story however after a failed revolt in the '60s and the Belgians were split into Wallonia and Flanders. In the East Ustashe Croatia and Iron Guard Romania are the most oppressive fascist states on the planet still practicing mass murder of "undesirables" and even the Germans are increasingly wary of their fanaticism. Hungary, Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria are all Axis puppets. In the former Soviet Union, after the initial plans for total genocide and enslavement were ruled down by Fuhrer Heydrich, a process of carving several different puppet republics occurred (Muscovy, the Volga Free State, Transcaucasia, Cossack Republic). Conditions vary ranging from the fairly well treated areas like the Cossacks to rebellious hellholes like Muscovy. Much of the Middle East is allied to the Reich including Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Lebanon. Most of these regimes are fascist dictatorships (except Turkey) akin to the Baathist regimes of Saddam Hussein or the Assads but rather more competent and less corrupt. These regimes have succeeded in suppressing Islamist, socialist, and democratic movements and promote pan-Arabism. Other Axis allies in the Third World include Uganda, Hausaland, and Songhay. These don't include the various Axis-friendly or leaning powers (much akin to Soviet leaning states like India in OTL) in Africa, and Latin America. Argentina is the only true Axis state in the Western Hemisphere which upsets the US tremendously.

China is an up and coming superpower which worries both the US and the Reich. It is essentially a one-party democracy under the Kuomintang akin to PRI Mexico or Japan under the LDP. It is twenty years ahead of OTL China and has already surpassed the Reich in economic size (though not the entire Reichsmark Zone) and is projected to exceed the US by 2020. Rather like OTL India or Pakistan it accepts support from both powers as it suits them. It has waged brief border wars with Vietnam and Burma in the 1970s. Most analysts consider China to be on the brink of becoming the third superpower in the Cold War which will change completely the geopolitical balance.

There are several neutrals in the world ranging from Switzerland and Sweden to poor hellholes nobody cares about in Africa. Many of the Third World neutrals are increasingly cozying up to China most notably Turkey in Asia, Palestine and Egypt in the Middle East and the Congo Federation in Africa (which is far better off than OTL's DRC).

Technology is somewhat advanced of our OTL especially in military, and aerospace technology with missile defence programs by the Germans and Americans, extensive space programs, and highly advanced weapons. Biological technology is roughly equivalent to OTL (while the Nazis were far more ruthless in experimentation much of their research were based on insane or idiotic premises hampering it) while areas like personal electronics are far behind our own world-cell phones and the Internet are only at mid-90s levels and highly regulated.

Overall both high and popular culture are probably better off than OTL. Popular fiction includes Tom Clancy like military thrillers and hard science fiction. Alternate history is also rather more popular and far more plausible than OTL's published stuff. Anime was developed by Japanese immigrants to the Reich and have included adaptations of Norse/Germanic mythology such as the acclaimed Nieblungen manga series.