New Reality Seeds

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I was watching Timeghost or rather their World War Two Week by Week documentary series and they made the point that Anglo-French actions in the winter of 1940 nearly led to a Nazi/Soviet alliance to make war against the Western Allies. How likely this is I can't say but what a nightmare scenario.

Meaning the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact turned from a neutrality agreement to an actual alliance? Something similar happened in my Five Earths thread, but that was due to extra-terrestrial pressures (or inter-terrestrial, more accurately). How likely it is in a worldline closer to actual history is another matter. Given that it was Germany who broke the M-R Pact first in our history, I suggest that a difference in German leadership would be needed. Hitler was a maniac who hurt his own side pretty badly and pretty often (to the point that the general rule is that once Hitler is in power, you don't kill him, you get rid of the competent people who put up with him, if you want to disrupt Nazi Germany), while a more pragmatic leader would likely have done things differently. Not sure who to suggest, but there undoubtedly were Nazis who would put military advantage ahead of ideology for long enough periods to matter.

This situation would be rather horrible for the Finns, who were having enough trouble just with the Soviets (sure, they did exceptionally well in the Winter War, but it was AFAICT a serious strain).

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Meaning the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact turned from a neutrality agreement to an actual alliance? Something similar happened in my Five Earths thread, but that was due to extra-terrestrial pressures (or inter-terrestrial, more accurately). How likely it is in a worldline closer to actual history is another matter. Given that it was Germany who broke the M-R Pact first in our history, I suggest that a difference in German leadership would be needed. Hitler was a maniac who hurt his own side pretty badly and pretty often (to the point that the general rule is that once Hitler is in power, you don't kill him, you get rid of the competent people who put up with him, if you want to disrupt Nazi Germany), while a more pragmatic leader would likely have done things differently. Not sure who to suggest, but there undoubtedly were Nazis who would put military advantage ahead of ideology for long enough periods to matter.

Hitler, like Stalin, always planed betrayal. So this is simply another way that each of the two dictators can exploit their "Ally" before betrayal. So I don't see a need to be rid of Hitler immediately.

This situation would be rather horrible for the Finns, who were having enough trouble just with the Soviets (sure, they did exceptionally well in the Winter War, but it was AFAICT a serious strain).

That's a massive understatement.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Instead of attacking West in 1940, Hitler decides that it's more profitable to strike South. Assume that Hitler has figured out that Paul Reynard was desperate not to fight on French soil. This would let Hitler secure Balkan resources and make a grab for the near East. He's offer Stalin the Dardanelles(an ancient Russian obsession) , Anatolia, and Iran. Germany would take Iraq, the Levant, Arabia, and Egypt. Stalin, sees it as Hitler overextending himself, and thus taking down both Germany and the Western allies, and agrees.

Allow a blitzkrieg success to the Mediterranean, then let the Western allies and the Nazis fight for the Eastern Mediterranean sea and shores.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Not sure who to suggest, but there undoubtedly were Nazis who would put military advantage ahead of ideology for long enough periods to matter.

Göring, certainly,

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Göring, certainly,

The most dangerous replacement for Hitler, at least if you want Germany to stay in the fight and have a chance to win.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The most dangerous replacement for Hitler, at least if you want Germany to stay in the fight and have a chance to win.

Yeah. Several of my alternate history ideas have involved Göring taking over, though not always with him having full de facto power (sometimes he's a figurehead for a government run by Wehrmacht generals, or a democratically elected Chancellor or President with only the legal powers of that office under the post-Versailles German Constitution).

[PTTG]

Nazi victories in WWII are so overplayed that I think the genre pre-dates the war. Japan is the go-to replacement, and then you get the USSR. I already did a bit on Italian victory (which required the direct intervention of rather confused Roman gods), so that's out. The one major combattant who is exceedingly rarely depicted as the sole superpower victor of WWII may be China, but no matter which China wins, you still end up with a dogmatic China that leaps onto the world stage even earlier.

So who's unusual, yet plausible among the minor combattants?

I've got it- the low countries!

A fantastical victory will probably rely on some hidden Dutch technology or magic, whereas a more practical one would probably depend on a different closing to the war in the diplomatic field.

I imagine that both of those would only come into play after the occupation, which makes us imagine Frisian Freedom Fighters somehow overcoming the entire Nazi war machine.

Ok, relevant changes: First, the major powers are dramatically weakened. I propose that somehow, nuclear secrets are leaked or otherwise stolen by the USSR, Germany, and Japan. However, few weapons are made by any one side before the war's end. Enough for Stalingrad, London, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, Paris (Hitler's idea), and (via suicide submarines) Washington D.C., LA, San Fransisco, and several other coastal US cities. Nuclear waste contaminates several industrial cities in China (used for Japanese bomb production), and as the cities fell one-by-one, many major urban centers are practically abandoned.

However, the heart of Europe, from France to Poland, is an occupied zone, and none of the rare and precious nukes are used there. The occupying armies, for their part, find their home territories in internal civil war (Neither the Nazis nor the Soviets had a strong plan of succession).

While this would be more probable if there was a cease-fire between an end of WWII with local Nazi domination of Europe followed by the nuclear WWIII, in this worldline the nuclear exchange is, for whatever reason, considered a continuation of WWII.

The nuclear conflict is not a single strike, but rather a series over the course of the last several years of the war. During this time, Japan and the USSR fight to a bloody stalemate, the US population is horrified of further war and global involvement, and the UK has suffered through the atomic blitz as well as assisting in the liberation of Europe. The low countries, however, were oddly isolated in all this. Too unimportant to nuke, yet populous, well-positioned, and ready to resist, they throw off the unsupported Nazis in the area and act as the main transit hub for the retaking of Europe.

This is parlayed into a major role for the postwar reconstruction. Nuclear weapons are banned and atomic research is treated like biowarfare research; you may find a few morbid people looking into it, but they are the first to explain that their efforts are how to understand and prevent its use. Nuclear power is probably not going to be a thing in this world.

Holland, Denmark, and Belgium would have a dramatically outsized effect on the shape of the world in the second half of the 20th century. What exactly it would look like, I don't know.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Nazi victories in WWII are so overplayed that I think the genre pre-dates the war.

Holland, Denmark, and Belgium would have a dramatically outsized effect on the shape of the world in the second half of the 20th century. What exactly it would look like, I don't know.

Nazi victory alternate timelines do predate WWII. I read one first printed in 1937? But that future got closed down by the inventor's cat knocking a piece of equipment off of a shelf. This fried the inventor and Hitler. I don't remember anything else.

As to the behavior of the Low Countries toward a world under their power, just look at their colonies. Belgium's treatment of the Congo was vile. King Leopold was probably a major inspiration to both Hitler and Stalin. Look up King Leopold and the Congo, but not on a full stomach. As to the Dutch, finding solid data on the Dutch rule of Indonesia is like pulling teeth, your own! Neither the Dutch nor the Indonesians seem to want to say anything about it. That may be a hint.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I propose that somehow, nuclear secrets are leaked or otherwise stolen by the USSR, Germany, and Japan. However, few weapons are made by any one side before the war's end.

The problem with this is the amount of industrial effort necessary to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Germany spent the money that could have funded it on the V-2. Japan never had the money. The USSR had most of the Manhattan Project's secrets with a few months' delay after their discovery, due to espionage, but did not put serious resources into nuclear weapons until after the war.

I think you need some much easier way of making nuclear weapons, and then you have to explain why the USA didn't build lots of them.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The problem with this is the amount of industrial effort necessary to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Germany spent the money that could have funded it on the V-2. Japan never had the money. The USSR had most of the Manhattan Project's secrets with a few months' delay after their discovery, due to espionage, but did not put serious resources into nuclear weapons until after the war.

I think you need some much easier way of making nuclear weapons, and then you have to explain why the USA didn't build lots of them.

Hmm... suppose that an imaginative Nazi manages to convince Hitler of the power of atomic weapons circa 1939. The crazed dictator falls immediately in love with the idea of such a powerful weapon and it becomes his obsession. Only his more grounded associates manage to keep Germany functioning as a war machine while Hitler pursues his Atomic dreams.

The Nazis being exceptionally terrible at espionage as in OTL, the secrets quickly make their way to the USSR, the UK, and Japan even as the research is performed. Japan's spies provide far more up-to-date information than the official channels.

This is in essence a worst-case-scenario Nazi Nukes story, with the (somewhat more reasonable) note that the Nazis neither have an effective delivery system nor effective information security, plus they do not have a steady supply of weapons.

Then we just adjust things so that the Low Countries get the better of the consequences. Instead of Hitler putting his toxic refineries in Coppenhagen, he uses his hated Polish slaves as disposable workers. Instead of using nukes to cow mutinous Hollanders, he goes for special targets of his rage like London or Paris.

The nuclear weapons used by the Axis might be almost exclusively Nazi-built, depending on if Japan can get u-boat deliveries of a few nukes to be used to weaken US involvement in the war (or just sow "revenge.") This would lead further to a world that rejects nuclear weapons as too terrible to use, and if the USA happens to agree and the USSR is too weak to argue against it, there might even be lasting political will to make it stick.

Sweden, Finland, and Norway, in contrast, were faced with a USSR that either built or captured nukes from Nazi designs, probably resulting in them being generally worse for the wear in the best case scenario. Who else... Oh, Italy. Not likely they'd be able to build a nuclear weapon at all, and I don't think Hitler would ever trust them enough to give them a nuke while the giving was good. Maybe one as more of a trophy or a way to brag about his power.

This worldline still needs a lot of work. The UK, even with London destroyed (which requires the luftwaffe to be unusually successful), remains the major world power unless there's overwhelming resentment from all the colonies. Does India manage to rebel? Or could the nation conceivably be forced to concede major ground to anyone else simply because of the destruction of its capital?