The fact that the Axis & Allied powers had nations as mascots for the masses to cheer/boo for has done nothing but dull our collective perception of reality: it's corps all the way down, and They won.
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All of these answers are super interesting and well thought out. Many of them line up with I would think, except for one thing. Hitler was no spring chicken during the war. He was 56 years old when he died, under the total crushing stress of leading a nation at war, and being pumped full of a truly fascinating cocktail of drugs by his personal physician. Depending on factors (mostly the war, which you dont specify in your prompt how they won), I don't see him living much past 1945. And I don't see the Reich lasting as a stable state much past that.
I feel like people are overestimating the extent to which Hitler set his subordinates against each other, so that none could accumulate enough power to challenge him. He would kill or sacrifice allies when it became convenient or expedient (remember the night of long knives?) and he avoided appointing a successor. Many speculative fiction works put Albert Speer in this role, but I think its more likely that the Nazi state descends into infighting, and different people fight for the top spot before Hitler is cold.
The world loves eugenics, and it is considered "civilised" to kill disabled infants. Sterilisation programs of indigenous people and minorities are carried out across Europe, North America, and Asia.
A rule of power International order, where there are spheres of influence for the big players, Japan, Germany, USA, and maybe Russia and India.
A very racist USA that has annexed Canada and maybe more of Mexico, debates about reinstating slavery are a common part of political discourse.
UK is run by incompetent fascists, but the empire has collapsed so tensions build. I'm not sure who the "enemy" would be - maybe a violent revolution that leads to the end of the monarchy? Maybe German "Peacekeepers" on the streets to neutralise the communist subversive threat. Maybe invasion to reannex Ireland as Irish independence is blamed for things falling apart?
British intelligensia fled to Aus-NZ, causing demographic strife as the influx of new comers puts strains on the countries, but also an influx of ideas and they could evolve into a bastion of Liberalism, if not progressive ideas. Probably define selves as not Nazi, and will do a lot of soul searching (or just ignore) treatment of indigenous peoples.
South America probably more stable and more left wing without US meddling and the influx of Nazis. But my South American history is quite weak, so I know I'm not accounting for an awful lot. That, or the fascist US attempts to invade and has a Vietnam experience in Central America.
India as a fascist Hindustan, allied with Japan.
Imperial Japan controls much of Asia either directly or indirectly. The official story is that Japan is the liberator of Asia, having freed Asia from European imperialism, but life is hard for many people, especially ethnic minorities of China and Siberia who have few rights and are often sterilised while their culture is erased. Meanwhile wealth and value is extracted for the metropole.
Asia would certainly have some armed revolution movements, especially in western China and Northern Siberia. A much larger Mongolia, Tibet, unified Korea, Manchuko, and maybe some new nations in Southern China as indepent states, and maybe Turkistan.
Indochina would be wild. Not sure how it would end up, but the road would be very different.
Would Middle East be better off? Maybe. [Edit: Sykes Picot was 1st World War, stupid sleep addled brain] ~~The mess of Sykes-Picot wouldn't happen, and no installation of British/French puppets.~~ Turkey likes USSR's weakening, but now Germany is a worry.
German superstate may well invade to control oil in the 50s/60s though. Which would be very bad news for the Zionists, who are a group of Socialist Jews who run a smattering of self sufficient communities across the Middle East.
By a bizzare twist of fate the Kurds still end up without their own nation and as pawns in games between other powers.
Africa would be embroiled in the second scramble for Africa where Germany, Japan, and the USA fight via proxies if not directly for control over the former French and British colonies. Each side supporting partisans and independence movements against the other. Hindustan might join in too, but has to sort its (Edit: accursed autocorrect) home situation out first. Fascist Kingdom of Britain and Australia might do lots of espionage here against each other, seeing themselves as legitimate successor to the UK.
We’re about to find out
You may be interested in The Man in the High Castle it's both a novel by Phillip K. Dick and TV show on Amazon Prime that explores exactly that premise
I liked the basic premise that the East Coast of America would be controlled by the Nazis, and the West Coast by the Japanese, with the middle being a No-Man's Land, controlled by factions of American rebels.
At least, that's how I remember it. The size of America would make it difficult to fully control from coast to coast.
Wolfenstein: The New Order also explores this idea. Though I doubt it's as realistic.
To be fair Man in the High Castle has the assassination of FDR succeed because of time travel, right? It's super science either way. The MitHC Hitler studies postwar films and comes to the conclusion that he can't win if FDR guides America out of the Depression.
Maybe put a spoiler tag around that?
The book was published in 1962.
So? People haven't read it and maybe still want to watch the series. It's not LotR or Harry Potter where the ending is common knowledge
It's not the ending. It's not even an important part of the drama.
Let's assume that the Axis winning the war means they keep all territory they've had at the height of their expansion in our timeline but don't expand much more, at least not immediately.
- The EU does not exist but as most of Europe is either occupied by Germany or allied with it, there might be a similar organization with a way stronger Germany at its center.
- If a NATO-like alliance forms, it excludes most of Europe, mainly consisting of the USA, Canada and UK, maybe Spain and Portugal
- The Soviet Union is way weaker than in our timeline with most of Eastern Europe being under German control. They still have control over Central Asia, probably more than in our timeline.
- The Allies still control Gibraltar and are able to intercept ships passing through the English Channel, making the west of France the only safe access to the Atlantic for the Axis.
- Wernher von Braun and other rocket scientists stay in Germany, giving the USA and Soviet Union a massive disadvantage in the development of ICBMs. The USA may have nuclear bombs but their only way to threaten Germany with them would be UK-based bombers which are way slower and easier to defend against. On the other hand, a failure of the Manhattan Project might be the whole reason why the Axis wins the war. Everyone will figure it out eventually but as we see from real life, it might take decades.
- No proper cold war as there are no two super powers exercising mutually assured destruction with ICBMs but probably ongoing tensions along the German-Soviet border. The USA probably stays out of it to avoid becoming a target for either side.
- Italian East Africa (Somalia) becomes the most important rocket launch site in the world, as it is the only Axis-controlled territory that is close to the equator and has open ocean to the east. Some smaller rockets may launch from Japan. French Guiana might be under Axis control but shipping rockets over the Atlantic is dangerous when they could get intercepted by foreign ships. Without competition, manned spaceflight develops a lot slower, maybe not at all.
- Without manned spaceflight and the threat of a nuclear war, there is less incentive to develop computers and the internet.
Great answer, do you see any internal tensions within the Axis that could foreseeably have caused collapse comparable to say Soviet communism's collapse in the real world? How dependant were they on Hitler and Mussolini as individuals?
Not OP, but Germany was likely going to experience a deep recession after the war. However, it is likely that the Nazis would push the cost of the economy shrinking to its enslaved peoples. There would likely be French deindustrialization, a Polish genocide, and building of cruel colonial networks around Germany. The Nazi Party could probably survive Hitler; I suspect the political functioning would be similar to China's Politboro but with a more independent military.
Italy could possibly see the fascist government fall. Mussolini wasn't in control of Italy the same way that Hitler was of Germany. I could see a political crisis occur in Italy where the Italian government falls apart, Germany stabilizes Italian possessions, then Germany keeps the Italian possessions after the new government doesn't adequately swear fealty to Germany.
Thank you, those are some interesting perspectives!
Hard to say. I'm not a historian, so I can only speculate. I would assume that Hitler would eventually select a successor and there is no way of telling how good that person would be at keeping the Reich in order.
comparable to say Soviet communism’s collapse in the real world
As far as I understand it, the fall of the Soviet Union was preceded by at least a decade of economic struggle that was caused by a multitude of factors. Basically the only thing they had to export was oil and weapons and the only nations they could trade with were relatively poor. When their oil production cost kept rising, they just couldn't keep their exports high enough to import enough food and luxury goods to keep their population happy. This was a prime driver for unrest in regions that bordered the west, especially East Germany who of course got news of what life in West Germany was like. The Soviets were eventually forced to open the Berlin Wall and from there, there was nothing they could do to keep people from just leaving and fully collapsing the economy in the process. To this day, 35 years after the reunion, former East Germany is way behind the rest of the country even though on paper they have the same chances as everyone else, just because there has been a massive brain drain.
So overall, the collapse of the Soviet Union was less a failure of communism itself and more a failure to counteract their economic weaknesses as well as a result of their isolationism. The USA didn't win the Cold War because of the inherent superiority of capitalism but because the world drinks Coca Cola, wears jeans, watches Hollywood movies and works with IBM-compatible PCs. If the Soviet Union had pivoted their economy to those kinds of goods and had managed to export them to the west, they might have become what China is today.
So it all comes down to the question if alternate-history Germany manages to do that. With technology advancing slower overall and therefore becoming less of a factor in global markets, and at the same time keeping a lot of top scientists who in the real world left for the other superpowers, they could probably do it.
Thanks for another great answer. I realise now that the comparison with Soviet wasn't very thoughtful of me. I just wanted to imagine something that would have broken up the Nazi German hegemony from the inside.
Another thought is that American products and culture probably are popular partly because they were winners in World War 2.
American culture was a major export during the Great Depression, so it is likely that American culture would continue to be an export unless the USA ceased to exist.
I would just expect Nazi Germany to censor and control some of America's cultural exports. Hitler liked Disney movies, for instance. However, jazz was banned.
Another thought is that American products and culture probably are popular partly because they were winners in World War 2.
Absolutely. American soldiers being stationed all over the world was fantastic PR. Being stationed long term, they brought along much of what they were used to in the USA. Those luxuries were traded with the locals and of course, if the locals wanted to be seen as fashionable, they just had to have those things.
We'd be speaking in German on lemmy, wondering what all those weird English memes are that sometimes pop up on the timeline
SPRICH
DEUTSCH
DU
ANGELSACHSE
The Man in the High Castle has a pretty good take on this.
The book Fatherland by Robert Harris was good as well! But I’m more interested in personal individual takes, since all of us have distinct unique outlooks on things.
Like Russia today.
Or the US today