What if the Axis had won World War Two?

 In the genre of 'alternate fiction' there's probably no possibility more commonly pondered than how the Axis countries might have won WW2 and what the resulting world would have looked like. Many authors have tackled this subject and there's a wealth of information on hand one can use to try and piece together exactly what grand plans the Germans, Italians and Japanese might have had for their new world order. Wikipedia actually has an excellent page covering the genre and lists dozens of examples. Many such books (and even a few movies) come with world maps detailing this alternate world. I ended up letting my creativity run wild and made my own, but here are a few of my favourite examples that I took inspiration from.




'Fatherland' by Robert Harris
Set in a world where Hitler's armies had successfully defeated the Soviets by 1943, while shortly afterwards the Americans were able to defeat Japan. The Greater German Reich and the United States are both nuclear armed and are the two superpowers in the novel (set in 1964) which are engaged in an alternate cold war. Germany's borders stretch from France to the Ural mountains, beyond which a seemingly endless guerrilla war is being fought against the remnants of the Soviet Union, partly to 'keep the German people on their toes' as Hitler intended.




'In the Presence of Mine Enemies' by Harry Turtledove
Set in the modern day and featuring a much more complete Axis victory than Fatherland. The United States stayed neutral in World War Two, allowing the Germans and Japanese to divide Eurasia between themselves. Thirty years later they used nuclear weapons to devastate the US homeland, which is now under German occupation. The Germans and Japanese are the world's two greatest powers, and are locked in their own alternate cold war with the peace kept only by their respective nuclear arsenals. At the novel's end the Nazi party's declining support leads to a period of democratisation similar to the 'perestroika' period before the Soviet Union's collapse.


'The Man in the High Castle' by Philip K. Dick
Set in the 1960s, this book features an even more total Axis victory in a longer WW2 (1939-47). An isolationist US government allows the Axis powers to divide Eurasia between themselves. They attack the US soon afterwards. By 1947 practically the entire globe is under the direct rule or dominance of the Axis. Even South America has been partitioned between the Germans and Japanese, who are now engaged in an alternate cold war. Also, the Straits of Gibraltar have been damned and the Mediterranean drained to create even more Lebensraum for the Germans and Italians (this was once seriously proposed, Google 'Atlantropa'.

Now I wish no disrespect to an author as brilliant as Philip K. Dick, but I think he's exaggerating the practical extent of Axis control of the globe to a fair degree. Why on Earth would the Germans or Japanese even care who ruled the Amazon rainforest? Or the deserts of Central Asia? Maintaining an effective government over such a vast extent of territory and number of people is hardly practical. Some might argue that several Imperialist powers, such as the British and French, were in fact able to create such world spanning empires, but the difference is that this largely occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries. The British were able to rule a third of all Africans by 1914 mainly because Africa's population was relatively small and underdeveloped. Within fifty years most Europeans colonies in Africa had been abandoned because of resistance from a growing and increasingly educated population of locals. Such anti-colonial conflicts would no doubt have occurred after WW2 regardless of which side won it. Even if the Germans and Japanese had been utterly brutal in putting down such revolts this might have just worsened the problem. Case in point, the Americans weren't able to win in Vietnam post-WW2, why would the Japanese have fared any better?


People have suggested many possible ways for the Axis to win WW2, from the Germans winning the Battle of Britain by not switching to a terror bombing campaign against British cities to the Japanese actually catching the American aircraft carriers at anchor in Pearl Harbor. The way I'd suggest is a fairly simple one, and it doesn't count on good luck, just good foresight on the part of the Nazi leadership. Ultimately the Second World War was a battle of industrial might. Superior tactics and training may have given the Germans an edge in the early stages of the war, and differences in technology and leadership certainly played a role in various countries’ fortunes, but ultimately by the war's later stages all of the major combatants were on pretty much the same page with regards to these variables. Victory would lie with whichever side could produce the most tanks, guns and planes and could readily equip and train the most fighting men. It is not widely known to casual students of WW2 that Hitler did not in fact fully mobilize the Reich for war until the tide had already well and truly turned against Germany. Only after the Wehrmacht's disastrous defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 did the Nazis brace the population for total war. Hitler had originally believed the Russian campaign would last no more than a few months, so dismissive was he (not without some justification, Google 'Winter War') of the Soviet system. Despite increasingly destructive Allied bombing raids and the loss of vast stretches of resource-rich occupied territory, German war production increased all the way until late 1944. From 1940 until 1942 the Germans averaged just under a thousand aircraft produced each month, by 1944 this figure had jumped to over 3,000. Tank production rose even more dramatically, from a mere 500 a month in 1941 to over 2,000 by 1944. The Soviets and British mobilised their economies much quicker than the Germans did. British aircraft production for example, was actually higher than that of the Germans from 1940-43.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II

Of course the Allies' trump card in this armaments race was the industrial might of the United States. Of the nearly 800,000 aircraft (including fighters, bombers, land attack, reconnaissance, training, transport, etc) produced during World War Two over 300,000 were made by the Americans. American industrial power however only really made itself felt from 1944 onwards. A German victory on the European continent before then could have made both superpowers' homelands all but invulnerable to one another. German support could then have been used to aid Japan in its fight against the US.

So lets say that in this alternate universe the German economy was fully mobilised for war beginning in 1940. By 1941 the Germans have massively expanded their armaments production. Preparations for operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, proceed much more swiftly and anticipate the possibility of a much longer and tougher war. Consequently the attack starts on its intended start date of May 18th, or five weeks earlier than in reality. Hitler also has the foresight to lay in ample stocks of winter clothing in case the fighting lasts longer than a few months. By Mid-August the Germans are ready to launch their final assault on Moscow (rather than the end of September). As German forces approach the city a state of siege is declared on September 6th (rather than 19th October). By the middle of September Moscow has been surrounded and the Germans are fighting their way into the suburbs. The fighting is fierce and both sides suffer heavily, but by the time full winter weather has arrived in November only a few pockets of resistance remain in the city. The Soviet Winter offensive barely makes an impact on the heavily entrenched Germans around Moscow due to a lack of Soviet reserve armies and equipment; nevertheless the two sides are locked in a stalemate until late next Spring. In May 1942 the Germans renew their offensive. The Caucasus is overrun by August and the next month the Siege of Leningrad ends with the eventual annihilation of all Soviet forces there. At roughly the same time Stalingrad falls in a matter of weeks and the Germans immediately establish bridgeheads across the Volga, with the Soviet Armies in a state of collapse. By the end of 1942 the Germans have advanced nearly all the way to the Urals and the Luftwaffe is within bombing range of Chelyabinsk, one of the few remaining centres of Russian industry and Stalin's new seat of government. The Germans continue their advance in 1943, capturing Chelyabinsk in June and advancing to Novosibirsk by September. The Germans are by now in control (except for considerable resistance movements which take many years to crush completely) of virtually all of European Russia. Stalin flees to Siberia, where he braces the remnants of the Red Army for a lengthy guerrilla campaign.
This chain of events necessitates that the situation on other fronts will have changed as well. Lets posit that the successful German offensive into southern Russia in 1942, plus a great deal of coercion on Hitler's part, brings Turkey into the war on the Axis side in say, September 1942. The Turkish Army, a quarter of a million strong, and backed by several Panzer Divisions and strong Luftwaffe support, descends upon the Allied Armies in Egypt that by this point have been driven back by Rommel's Afrika Korps almost to the port of Alexandria. By the end of 1942 the trapped Allied Armies have been crushed and the Axis is rapidly establishing itself in the Middle East. The simultaneous Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942 are pushed back after the Germans redeploy significant forces from the Eastern front and the Allies have to evacuate their troops from Morocco in February 1943.

Emboldened by this success, Hitler prepares a second attempt to invade the British Isles. With operations on the Eastern front coming to a close the bulk of the Luftwaffe is redeployed to Western Europe. The first 'thousand bomber raid' hits London in April 1943 (as opposed to Cologne in May). By July some 300,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on targets across southern England, five times more than in the first blitz, and almost a quarter of a million people have been killed. The Royal Air Force, even augmented with American air units, has been all but driven from the skies by June and the Royal Navy has been severely crippled. British armaments production declines by over a third in a matter of months. Combined with the U-boat campaign in the north Atlantic the British are just months away from starvation. In August the Germans, having achieved air supremacy, launch their seaborne invasion. Three amphibious and three paratrooper divisions take part in the initial landings. Hundreds of thousands more troops, equipped with thousands of tanks and other armoured vehicles, are not far behind. The small size of the German navy makes the operation very difficult, but the overwhelming might of the Luftwaffe holds off repeated Allied counter-attacks on the German bridgeheads west of Dover. By the end of September the Germans have fought their way into London's suburbs. By the end of the year the Allied frontlines have collapsed and Winston Churchill and his government have fled to North America. The last pockets of Allied resistance in Scotland and Wales are crushed by early 1944. The invasion still comes at a stiff price for the Germans, who suffer just over half a million casualties.

With Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in firm Axis control, events in 1944 turn to the Pacific theatre of war. Assuming that the Japanese are on the defensive by now as they were in reality following the Battle of Midway in June 1942, then by mid-1944 the Americans should be just months off retaking the Philippines, but have overall yet made only a modest dent in Japan's vast overseas empire and most of the Imperial navy is still intact. With the collapse of the British its less likely the Allies would have cracked Japanese naval codes as they did in reality, or let’s assume the Germans discovered the Enigma secret after they conquered Britain and have convinced the Japanese to change their codes as well. The invasion of Britain would also allow the Germans to deploy many of their hundreds of U-boats to the Pacific theatre rather than the handful that operated there in reality. Many thousands of aircraft could have been redeployed as well. The Germans would have had a definite interest in doing this. A United States dominant not just in the Americas but the Pacific and East Asia as well would have been a severe strategic threat to Germany.
With German air and naval support, the Axis forces decisively win the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944. German submarines and several squadrons of newly relocated Luftwaffe aircraft, combined with Japanese sea and land based aircraft, overwhelm the American defences and six of the fifteen American carriers in the Fifth Fleet are destroyed and hundreds of experienced American pilots are killed. The American amphibious invasion of Saipan, which began a week earlier, is put in Jeopardy since the supporting Allied naval fleet anchored offshore is now very vulnerable to further Axis sea and land attacks. Several more Allied vessels are destroyed before the troops on Saipan are withdrawn and the American Fleet retires to Hawaii. In September 1944 Japanese forces in Manchuria also move into Soviet territory, and by the end of 1945 have formed their own 'protectorate' over much of eastern Siberia as far west as Lake Baikal.

In a series of major naval battles throughout 1944 and 45 including the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (Oct '44) and the Battle of Fiji (Feb '45) the American navy, despite reinforcements from home, is badly mauled. The Axis has enormous numerical advantages in submarines and the proximity of land-based aircraft. By early 1945 German Naval activity threatens the East Coast of the continental US. This includes the first daylight bombing raid over New York, the 'Rudel Raid', involving forty aircraft on January 18th 1945 from a newly completed German aircraft carrier positioned 1500km off the American coast. In response most American naval forces are withdrawn from the western Pacific by mid-1945. Several dozen small bombing raids are carried out on East coast cities from January to November 1945, killing some 2,000 people and causing small amounts of damage. The raids prove too costly to the Germans for them to consider a full scale bombing offensive.

Meanwhile, by March 1945 the Japanese have expanded their area of operations far beyond its 1942 maximum extent by occupying New Caledonia, Fiji and Vanuatu. Bombing raids and naval bombardments against Australian cities grow increasingly frequent. On May 8th 1945 four Japanese divisions land between Cairns and Townsville, backed up by a large naval fleet including over one hundred warships and several times that number of supporting vessels. Despite counterattacks by the Allies, including many of the 200,000 or so American troops still stationed in Australia, the Axis forces are able to mobilize more quickly and soon have almost total air supremacy. By August nearly half a million Japanese soldiers, as well as several thousand German personnel, have arrived in Australia and are advancing towards Brisbane.

By the same time the Indian people have risen up in revolt against the British, although few view the Japanese as the 'liberators' they claim to be. The chaos allows the Japanese to rapidly advance across the subcontinent, reaching Delhi by January 1945, Mumbai by April and Karachi by June. Sri Lankan falls to an amphibious invasion in May. However it cannot be said that the Japanese ever attain total control of the country. Certain areas in the south and several designated cities are occupied by large garrisons, but elsewhere rioting between rival factions such as Hindus and Muslims quickly spirals out of control.

In the North Atlantic American, German and Italian naval forces, as well as the surviving British warships, fight an ongoing battle to gain naval superiority. The Germans occupy Iceland in August 1944 and annex Greenland off the Danish government at the start of 1945. Several inconclusive naval battles rage in waters off the Canadian coast. The Allied surface navies are far stronger, but German air power and submarines are often able to tilt this balance. By mid-1945 both sides are exhausted from years of warfare. The situation is soon to change drastically.
After the Trinity test in Nevada in July, American leaders ponder how to make use of the newly invented atomic bomb. It would probably take dozens of such devices to throw back the Axis advance, which would take many months to construct. It is feared that German scientists are only a year or two off building their own bombs which they could use to devastate the US homeland. Several bombs are conserved to be used in a sudden barrage against both the Germans and Japanese. It is hoped this will bring them to the negotiating table.


Following several additional nuclear tests, including one off the coast of Alaska testing it's effect on ships, the Americans carry out their plan in November 1945. A powerful carrier group, consisting of four carriers and over fifty other vessels, sails through the north Pacific towards Japan. Four atomic bombs carried amidst a fleet of eighty aircraft are successfully dropped on Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata and Tokyo, killing over 300,000 people (although all the aircraft have to be ditched into the sea afterwards and the pilots rescued by boat as the bombers are too heavy to land back on the short length of the carriers). At the same time another, even larger carrier group consisting of most American naval forces in the Atlantic Ocean sorties in the direction of France. It is supplied with six atomic bombs with orders to use at least two of them on German cities once it has closed to near the French coast. The rest may be used to destroy any German naval vessels that approach to intercept the fleet.

The plan does not go so smoothly. A German submarine sinks one aircraft carrier on which two of the bombs are stored, resulting in their loss. The fleet comes under heavy air attack closer to France and runs into several German surface squadrons deployed at the entrance to the English channel. Two bombs are air dropped on German battleships, destroying them both and damaging several other vessels. Thousands of German sailors later die from radiation poisoning. Just a few hundred kilometres off the French coast some fifty bombers are launched against Germany in two formations aimed at Cologne and Hamburg, each one containing a single bomber loaded with an atomic bomb with the rest serving the role of decoys and heavily armed escorts. Both Hamburg and Cologne are successfully hit and over 200,000 people are killed. Landing heavy bombers back on an aircraft carrier is impossible, so the planes fly on to Norway where their crews are to bailout in the hopes of meeting up with local resistance fighters that have been contacted by the Americans. Of the 300 aircrew involved, 120 eventually make it back to the United States.

The bombings are a profound ideological shock o the Axis, who had thought total victory over the Allies was by now inevitable. Some Axis leaders however are secretly glad that an invasion of the US homeland is now off the table, since it's practically was always in doubt anyway. President Truman demands a meeting between Allied and Axis representatives to bring about an end to the war, hoping that many of the Axis conquests can be reversed diplomatically. In January 1946 Allied representatives meet with Axis leaders in Lisbon in neutral Portugal. Delegates from the United States, Canada and Australia are met by the Germans and Italians; however Hitler refuses to allow representatives from the British, French, Polish and other governments in exile to attend their meetings. This prompts the Americans to immediately walk out, and peace efforts temporarily break down. The Americans devote considerable efforts to building a larger nuclear arsenal, but difficulties in the construction process mean only about half a dozen bombs a month are being built. By February twenty more bombs are ready for use. Meanwhile the Germans and Japanese concentrate the majority of their submarine fleets, together numbering just under a thousand boats, along the western and eastern American coasts to intercept another carrier-based nuclear bombing attempt. Shelters are hastily constructed in Axis cities and millions of people are evacuated to country regions. Anti-air defences are dramatically expanded until every major Axis city is covered by thousands of Flak guns and hundreds of night-fighters. With every passing week the likely effectiveness of even a nuclear bombardment is reduced further. German scientists, who had largely stopped atomic research back in 1942 and only resumed it in early 1945, are given every possible resource to build their own bomb. It is estimated their efforts will take at least a year to bear fruit.

To bring the Axis back to the negotiating table the Americans launch a second sortie in March 1946. A powerful carrier fleet sails from San Francisco and is joined by further ships north of Hawaii. Axis submarines are led astray by decoy fleets and although several ships including one aircraft carrier are sunk, the four cruisers and two battleships actually carrying the eight weapons all remain intact. The fleet again sails through the north Pacific to Japan. Over a hundred aircraft are launched with eight carrying the bombs. Japanese air defences, augmented with German equipment including radar, have dramatically improved and two of the nuclear armed bombers are shot down en route. The other six hit their targets. Much material damage is caused, but the major cities have been largely evacuated so less than 100,000 people are killed, although at several times this number later die from radiation poisoning after they have returned to their homes. Both of the intercepted bombs are secretly recovered by the Japanese. As the Germans are much more advanced in their nuclear program than the Japanese the Japanese Government, very hesitantly, give one example to the Germans. Within weeks it has been transported back to Germany for study.

The somewhat disappointing results of the raid embolden the Axis, who still refuse to meet with the Allies on their terms. Secretly the Americans approach the Japanese through back channels and promise that, if Japanese forces are withdrawn from Australia within a month, the next nuclear raid will not occur against them. After a short deliberation, the Japanese reject the offer. Their armies, which had been halted in northern Australia since the first atomic raid five months earlier, renew their advance instead. Fighting soon begins for the city of Brisbane and drags on for months between Japanese, American and Australian forces Plans are even drawn up to invade the Hawaiian islands and launch bombing raids (with conventional bombs) against the American west coast.

The next raid in May 1946 is against German-occupied Europe. The largest carrier group the Americans have yet assembled, consisting of 24 fleet and light carriers, several battleships, dozens of cruisers and hundreds of escort vessels, is once against deployed into the north Atlantic. It carries twelve atomic bombs, some with much greater yields ranging up to 100 kilotons of TNT equivalent. The combined Axis fleets fight desperately to sink the key ships of the Allied armada, especially by many hundreds of land-based aircraft once the fleet has approached France. Both sides suffer heavy losses but all twelve atomic bombs are transported safely. Following much the same procedure as before some three hundred bombers take off carrying the dozen nukes. Their targets are Berlin (three bombs), Munich, Rome (both two bombs), Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Milan and Naples. Nine of the bombs are successfully dropped. One en route to Berlin is shot down and Dusseldorf and Frankfurt are spared. As the cities were evacuated in advance only about 100,000 people are killed in Germany, though several times that number die of radiation sickness in subsequent years and much material damage to the Reich is caused. Italy's cities were far less prepared and about 250,000 are killed there. Panic spreads across Germany and Italy, especially the latter. Meanwhile peoples in the occupied countries cheer the Americans enthusiastically, despite millions coming to suffer from illnesses as a result the radioactive cloud that disperses across Europe in subsequent months. Hitler condemns the bombings as 'inhuman' from his safe house on the Baltic coast in Lithuania and vows that Germany is on the verge of discovering the secret of nuclear power for itself. Despite the captured nuclear bomb German efforts are still months away from bearing fruit, although the process has sped up considerably.

Having suffered heavy losses in the last two raids the Americans continue stockpiling more nukes, intending to unleash ever larger barrages upon the Axis until they return to the negotiating table. Various elements internationally and within the US are growing hesitant however. Many at home fear that continued nuclear war can only escalate until the Axis is able to retaliate and detonate nukes over the US homeland. Even the exiled governments of the occupied countries are beginning to lament the devastating effects of nuclear fallout on their homelands neighbouring Germany and Italy. Some fear the continuing escalation may result in the collapse of civilization itself.

By September the Americans are almost ready to launch another nuclear raid, this time with over twenty bombs, against the Axis when news arrives of a successful German nuclear test in the North Sea. Hitler vows that Germany is now a nuclear power and that the United States of America will be 'wiped off the face of the Earth' if it does not immediately come to the negotiating table. Millions of Americans flee the major cities in a panic. Under intense pressure the American leadership decides to participate in further peace talks, which this time take place in Dublin in neutral Ireland. In the meantime ceasefires are called on fighting fronts around the world in Australia and parts of Africa and India where Allied forces are still holding out.

In three months of negotiations a peace treaty is eventually agreed upon and signed on December 23rd 1946. German hegemony over Europe is recognised, as are the borders of the Empire of Japan in Asia. Notably the north-eastern corner of Australia is to remain in Japanese hands. The Americas are recognised by the Axis powers as being strictly within the United States' sphere of influence. The German-dominated 'European Community' is founded shortly afterwards consisting off the surviving states of Europe (most of which have been under German occupation) while the Japanese-dominated Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is recognised by the remaining Allies and diplomatic relations are eventually established. Shortly afterwards the remaining countries of the world not under Axis dominance found the 'United Nations' under American leadership. The world is effectively divided into thirds. In total slightly over a million people have been violently killed in 21 different atomic blasts, with around thrice that number later dying of radiation sickness. The Second World War has ended, however chaos continues in several parts of the globe including China and India where the Japanese are still violently expanding their holdings and annexing new territory, parts of Europe where Soviet resistors and other partisan groups haven't yet given up hope of overthrowing their new rulers and parts of Africa where the Germans and Italians are trying to assert their authority on millions of new subjects already long sick of colonial rule.

THE WORLD - 1947

Red - Greater German Reich
Pale Red - German colonial empire
Green - Greater Italy
Light Green - Italian colonial empire
Darker Yellow - Empire of Japan
Yellow - Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
Orange - Axis allies (Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania)
Grey - Portugal and colonies
Pink - Spain and colonies
Blue - Turkey
Light Blue - European Community (which also includes Axis Allies, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey)
Brown - Union of South Africa (apartheid state and German ally)
Dark Blue - United States
Purple - Other remaining 'Allied' countries (though Persia remains Neutral)
Dark Grey - German Siberian occupation zone
Light Grey - Japanese Siberian occupation zone

So to explain some of the finer points of this alternate world -

Germany has completely swallowed up Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria and Poland and taken strips of territory off France and Denmark and annexed the former Soviet Union up until somewhat beyond the Ural mountains. The eastern border is roughly near the city of Chelyabinsk. Greenland, Iceland, most of the Middle East and most of central Africa have been designated as parts of Germany's massive colonial empire. These borders are to roughly where I think Hitler ultimately wanted to expand his thousand year Reich as far as historical sources can tell us. In the end I don't think Hitler ever sought to unite the entire world under single one government. Even he would have seen how impossible a pipe dream that was. He wanted the hegemony of Europe and I suppose control of the world's oceans and trade routes to give Germany an unassailable strategic position.

Italy has also expanded its borders, albeit less so. It's seized territory off France, the former Yugoslavia and Greece as well as swallowing up all of Albania. This includes islands such as Corsica and Crete. It's been granted control over a vast colonial area by the Germans including almost the entire northern third of Africa and some of the middle east.

For its help in the war Turkey has been allowed to expand its borders over about half of Syria, the northern tip of Iraq, some former Soviet territory including Armenia and parts of Greece.

Finland and the other Axis allies have also been rewarded with extra territory.

Iran's borders are unchanged. It remained neutral in the war and due to its 'Aryan' heritage the Nazis respect its sovereignty.

Japan was the trickiest country to decide, since their plans were perhaps even more ambitious then the Germans yet never got as far along in reality. They sought to create a 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' (I've dropped the 'east' in this post as I think by the time they're conquered places like India it would have been a bit redundant). The name was apparently to encourage the conquered peoples of East Asia to in fact view the Japanese as liberators from colonial European oppressors (you can't deny they've got something of a point, some did view the Japanese as such despite their brutality and scorn even against fellow Asians). In the end I've included within the borders of the 'Empire of Japan' itself Korea, Manchuria, much of Eastern China, Indochina, Taiwan, the Philippines, New Guinea and most other islands in the western Pacific, Sri Lanka, the southern tip of India and the north-eastern corner of Australia which they'd conquered before the war ended. The defining of their territory in India has some historical basis, apparently they wanted to directly rule the tip of the subcontinent south of a line roughly at the latitude of the Portuguese city of Goa (which I'm going to presume remains in Portuguese hands here since they're not a member of the Allies).

As for the other states making up the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere I don't think there's any way of knowing exactly what borders they'd have ended up having. Since Thailand quickly caved to Japanese threats and joined their side during the war when they faced the prospect of invasion they would probably have been rewarded with additional territory, but I haven't undertaken to reflect that here. Given how vast China, India and Russia were it would probably take a number of years for the Axis to fully assert their authority over them, and many millions would no doubt have died in the resultant ethnic cleansing. So the remaining parts of those three countries can basically be assumed to consist of a mix of Japanese-occupied areas, collaborationist local governments and rival factions fighting each other as much as the Japanese. With the collapse of the Soviet Union Mao Zedong's influence is unlikely to have ever grown all that strong, let along capable of throwing off the Japanese and taking power over all of China like in reality.

Russia is a special case. The Japanese have annexed an area around Vladivostok and occupied a vast but largely empty area of eastern Siberia. Presumably this rump state is eventually given its own Japanese-dominated government and turned into just another member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. As for central Russia neither the Germans nor the Japanese have decided to annex all of it, at least not straight away. In the meantime it is divided into respective German and Japanese occupation zones. The main reason Hitler invaded Russia in the first place was to use its territory as Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. So much like the Spanish, British and French did earlier in history the first step in this process of colonisation is killing off the local population. Hence a German victory on the Eastern front would have been followed by the systemic murder of around one hundred million people. Hitler only got round to killing 20 million or so Soviet citizens in reality. He'd also only killed off about half of Europe's twelve million strong pre-war Jewish population. The Japanese similarly killed off upwards of twenty million people in Asia, especially China, during their relatively brief occupation of those countries. Many more would presumably have died under prolonged Japanese rule. The Japanese also intended to ultimately colonise Australia with millions of their own settlers. In this reality where they have only partly conquered Australia a smaller version of this plan would probably be implemented.

As for the 'free world', the United States would remain dominant over Latin America, whose countries in this alternate reality make up the bulk of the United Nations along with Australia and New Zealand. Also take note of the only non-Axis country left in Africa. Liberia was founded by the Americans as a place to return freed slaves in the early 1800s. I'd imagine that American troops would be stationed in the country if it were threatened by the Axis, as it indeed would be in this reality following the Axis seizure of all British and French colonies in Africa. Its awkward position could, like Cuba since the communist revolt there in 1959, have made it a geopolitical hot potato.

So there you have it, the world following an Axis victory in WW2 as I'd imagine it. There are many more variables you could put in here. The Americans might have rejected the concept of the atomic bomb as far-fetched, allowing the Germans to develop it first. The Germans, even after emerging victorious in Europe, may have decided not to help their Japanese 'allies' and let the Americans finish them off instead. The Axis may one day have even attempted an invasion of the United States, although I doubt that would ever have happened.

I might post an expanded timeline later on detailing what might have happened to this world. Will the German-Japanese alliance last? How long will Europe and Asia remain suppressed? Will communism ever rise from the ashes again? Stay tuned...

Think this about sums it up

Might Objectivism become the Communism of the 21st Century?

Political movements tend to come in cycles, especially when switching between extremes. The further to the left or right a country or other group heads in one generation, then often the further they'll swing to the opposite in the next few. Germany for instance, was utterly taken over by Nazism, one of the most right-wing ideological movements in all history, in the 1930s but following WW2 the Germans have basically turned into near-Pacifists now, as if they're trying to make up for their history by being as progressive as possible today. In any democracy this pattern should be evident as well. No matter how successful a government, people's attitudes eventually change and the political tides sweep the other way.

Technological change comes hand in hand with this process. Modern systems such as capitalism and representative democracy were hardly possible before the invention of the printing press. How can you have elections, or stock markets or a currency when 99% of the population can't read or write? Many people these days wonder why authoritarian systems like monarchies and theocracies dominated human society for so long. Why were people so complacent about such an undemocratic system? Didn't they want to rise up and let their voices be heard? Well the answer is that it's simply very difficult to harness people power with medieval technology. Most people rarely travelled more than a few kilometres beyond the village where they were born. Famines and plagues would sweep through a population and kill off a significant portion of it every few years or decades at best. Giving everyone the vote in 1500 AD would be, to put it harshly, akin to giving six year olds the vote today. The results could have been disastrous and led to a much less efficient and versatile system of government then simply having a small, connected royal court make decisions, despite the flaws and corruption inherent to that order. Once large portions of the population began to be educated, it was the perfect breeding ground for a new wave of ideas.

The hyper religious institutions that dominated Europe up until the 17th century saw the rising tide of modernism sweep aside their dominance with the coming of the enlightenment and later movements from about the 1770s onwards. Imperialism and nationalism, tied in with religion more often than not, were particularly strong movements in the 18th and 19th centuries. Atrocities from the conquest of Tenochtitlan to the Boer War were often fundamentally justified on the basis that the Europeans, being a 'superior' civilization to all others in the world, could basically do whatever they pleased regardless of how many millions died as a result. Of course while the wiping out of the American Indians and Australian aborigines was somewhat inevitable, many later imperialist atrocities certainly were not. The millions slaughtered in the Belgian Congo or who died of manmade famines in British India were innocent victims of an unnecessarily harsh system based heavily on racism. It's no wonder that anti-colonialism became so widespread as the 20th century progressed.

No description of the 20th century would be complete without looking in detail at Communism. Modern conservatives often use the atrocities committed under communist regimes as a political football to attack their progressive opponents, branding any mildly left-wing policies as anti-business and inflating their significance greatly until much of the public is convinced that another 'Cultural Revolution' is imminent. An excellent example is the way Republicans in the US have branded Democrat's recent attempts to reform healthcare as trying to import 'radical socialist' ideas to America. This is so far removed from the reality that such attacks should be treated with scorn, yet a great number of Americans have fallen for such propaganda. One wonders why the Democrats don't retaliate with mirroring accusations. If fining people for not buying health insurance is just a stone's throw from the Holodomor, then isn't helping large corporations crush the union movement a modern Night of the Long Knives?

Generations of peasants and young revolutionaries in Russia grew increasingly discontented with the rule of the Russian royal family as the 19th century went on. Unlike in western Europe where fledging democratic systems allowed the people's voices to be heard as the power of royalty faded, Russia remained an absolute monarchy right up until the 1917 revolution. The First World War of course, split wide open the cracks in an already ailing system. The Tsar sent millions of young men to pointlessly fight and die, ill-equipped and ill-led, on the eastern front. Such conditions were the perfect breeding ground for left-wing ideals to spread. Men in the trenches on all fronts began to feel greater solidarity with the poor, wretched souls just across No Man's Land than with their own upper-class officers sitting comfortably in their headquarters tens of miles behind the front.

In understanding the difference between left and right-wing ideologies, the simplest description is to simply ask whether a policy encourages maximising either cooperation or competition. The left believes in the former. It seeks an end to prejudices such as racism and sexism, champions democracy, equal opportunity, the welfare state and as far as possible pacifism. The right believes in the latter, championing free markets, ethical egoism, self-reliance and a sympathy for hierarchical government systems.

Just as tens of millions of people were killed by right-wing ideological ideas in the 18th and 19th centuries, the opposite occurred in the 20th as well. Stalin, through manmade famines or purges, killed some 20 million people between the 1920s and the 1950s. Mao in China arguably killed a lot more. Regimes such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the still existing North Korean regime caused millions more deaths, deliberately or at least unnecessarily. The total death toll due to Communism in the 20th century is probably upwards of 50 million. However it is worth noting that even this enormous figure is well under half of the 200 odd million deaths due to wars and genocides between 1900 and 2000. The World Wars, caused of course by right-wing nationalism or fascism coming to power in Europe and Japan, killed around a hundred million people between them. Colonial conquests were still ongoing early in the century, by the British in South Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the Germans in Tanzania and Namibia and the Americans in the Philippines. Anti-colonial wars later swept through many of the same countries and caused millions more deaths. No matter how you balance the numbers, the Communists killed far fewer people than the right-wing regimes they competed with during the 20th century.

Nearly all modern western countries do not, despite what some may think, lean heavily towards the left or the right politically. They are a mix of both. They have a democratic voting system overseeing a regulated free market alongside a generous welfare state. Political power is not greatly concentrated in any institution, be it left or right wing, and this makes large scale genocides and fundamental structural problems in society rare. The greatest threat to the prosperity of such nations is not terrorism or climate change, it is their own ideological extremes becoming mainstream and suddenly finding themselves in a position to greatly reform society at their whim. Such processes, once they have begun, tend to gain momentum as they progress and as such can be very hard to stop, let alone reverse. This can be seen historically with such events as the French Revolution in the 1780s, the October Revolution in 1917 and Hitler's coming to power in 1933. Bloody turmoil of one form or another commonly follows.

This little history lesson brings us to today's topic. It concerns a growing movement which most people are only just starting to wake up to the existence of, namely the far right-wing philosophy that has so firmly taken power over many conservatives in the US and increasingly elsewhere lately, that of 'Objectivism'. Just as Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in the 1840s as a critique of 19th century capitalism, Ayn Rand, a women born in Russia who in her youth lived through the chaos of the Russian revolution, wrote a series of novels in the 1940s and '50s criticising 20th century Communism. Chief among them are the fiction books 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. Her philosophy champions individualism, ethical egoism and flatly rejects any notion that collectivised action is ever worthwhile.

Just as Marx's ideas took decades to permeate through the social consciousness and several generations before serious political movements and governments began to rely on them, Objectivism has been festering for quite a while on the American political scene. Republicans have for the better part of a century been more wary of increasing government power than Democrats, but over the last thirty years or so, notably since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 on a platform proclaiming that 'government is the problem, not the solution', this wariness has turned into outright hostility. In just a few short years the implementation of many facets of this newfound ideological movement has severely impaired the American economy. Clinton's surplus when he left office in 2000 quickly disappeared in the face of the Bush tax cuts and the War on Terror. Financial deregulation contributed to the severity of the 2008 financial crisis, and the election of Barack Obama did little to stem the flow of events due to Republican obstructionism in congress. Only for 14 weeks did the Democrats have a filibuster proof majority in the senate, during which they managed to slip through a greatly watered down healthcare reform bill and, well, not much else.

Regardless of who wins the 2012 presidential election (and it's still looking likely to be Obama) it's inevitable that a Republican will once again win the Whitehouse before long. Whether it happens this year or in 2016 or even 2020, the political winds will eventually shift back, and it seems likely that Obama's presidency will have only halted the march of Objectivism temporarily, not reversed it's course, and of course this phenomenon is not unique to America. Conservatives in many countries, from Margaret Thatcher in Britain to Tony Abbott (currently leader of the opposition here in Australia) are increasingly taking their cues from their big brothers across the pond. Conservative parties in many western governments face much the same electoral challenges. Chief among these, and this may be the main driver of their dramatic ongoing shift to the right, is a demographic one. Conservative voters tend to be older, whiter, and less educated than the general population. These are the exact groups which are being increasingly marginalised as university education becomes more common, and the population grows younger and more multicultural due to immigration from overseas. The specifics of this shift may differ, Latinos for instance are now the largest minority group in America, while in Australia it's Asians and in many Europeans countries Muslims and Africans, but the underlying reality is the same. A similarly unwelcome shift has occurred in an economic sense. Most western countries have a rapidly ballooning welfare state, looking after their growing populations of elderly as medical technology has improved, and the chronically unemployed as their jobs have headed overseas because of cheap third world labour.

This chain of events bears some remarkable similarities to the earliest incarnations of socialism and communism a century or so ago. Increasingly sick of right-wing disasters such as the First World War, Imperialist conquests and growing inequality, the downtrodden 'working class' overthrew the 'bourgeois' and sought to impose their strict worldview on society and then spread it globally. The opposite now appears to be happening. Fed up with the perceived dangers of a growing welfare state, a progressive taxation system, not to mention secularism and multiculturalism, the Objectivists along the far right seek to dismantle all forms of 'big government' and replace it with, well what exactly? Just how bad could things get?

Some 30,000 people already die every year in the US because they lack health insurance, and a similar number die of firearm related deaths. Both phenomenon are almost entirely preventable, as evidenced by the fact that every single other developed country in the world has long since introduced universal healthcare and such a system has, put simply, worked wonders, being vastly more efficient then one where private options do not have to compete with a public one. The US, once one of the world's most liveable countries, has plunged to 49th in life expectancy. Firearm related deaths are 5-10 times the average among western countries, as is the incarceration rate. 2.5 million people are now in jail in the United States. Almost one in a hundred. More than half of them are there having committed no violent crimes. About a quarter of the total because of mere drug offenses. It's right-wing social engineering to an extent not historically seen in decades.

The next Republican president, unless the situation changes quite dramatically, would be constrained into a very narrow ideological straitjacket to satisfy his Randian base. Further tax cuts would cause the deficit to balloon further without noticeably stimulating the economy, as has been the case under Regan and Bush. The influence of big corporations would continue to increase, the wealth gap would continue to skyrocket, military spending could not be allowed to decrease from the dazzling highs it reached following the massive overseas deployments involved in the war on terror, vote-rigging in elections, already common, could become the norm, and any foreign governments thinking of defying US business interests overseas would be playing a very dangerous game. Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected left-wing president of Venezuela (yet labelled a tyrant by conservatives) might be targeted by the Republicans as the next target for an American-led invasion. Sounds implausible? Americans have been persuaded to enter into far more pointless and disastrous wars, such as Vietnam and Iraq. And what would give the Americans the right to carry out such brutal actions? It's the old European excuse. We consider ourselves superior to the rest of the world, so that gives us the right to do as we please. Sound familiar?

America under Objectivism could follow a roughly similar path to Russia once Communism had taken hold. Shunned yet feared by the international community, opposed by western democratic governments and third world countries alike. Given their history of interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, it's hardly likely that the Americans would hesitate to try and export their ideology overseas. Already right-leaning countries like Japan and Britain might be quick to adopt it, through coercion or not. America's vast military might, including a navy more powerful than the rest of the world's combined, would give real backbone to such movements, just as Communism spread to a multitude of countries after the Soviet Union's colossal victory in the Second World War. Judging by American actions during the cold war, left-leaning populist governments worldwide should be ever more wary in future of US-backed coups.

Whereas ordinary right-wing governments are usually content to simply ignore the plight of the poor and weak in society, a common feature of Objectivist ranting is to take the fight to the 'takers' in society and end their exploitation of the 'makers'. And no, that is not the old communist rhetoric of the bourgeois living off the blood and sweat of the working class, but completely the other way round. In the objectivist worldview, prosperity comes not from the spending of consumers or the hard work of labourers, but from the leadership of the wealthy elite. I hate to break Godwin's rule so easily, but doesn't such dire anti-collectivist rhetoric mirror the message of the Nazi party in Germany above all others? The idea that a new holocaust could take place in a modern western country may sound absurd, but indeed stranger things have happened. Europe at the start of 1914 had no idea that within a year millions of it's finest young men would have died in a terrible slaughter the likes of which civilization had never seen. Similarly, many impartial observers in 1900 thought of Germany as among the most prosperous and enlightened societies in the world, yet within 40 years it was committing genocide on an unprecedented scale. One mustn't forget that even as late as 1939 Hitler did not intend to physically wipe out the Jews and other 'untermenschen', but merely to deport them and destroy their influence over the rest of society. Things escalated from there.

Should the modern 'untermenschen' in America, and perhaps other societies, be worried? Who does the Tea Bagger crowd hate the most? Homosexuals are surely on the list, just as they were in Europe for many centuries and in Nazi Germany in particular. Immigrants, from Latinos to Muslims, are most definitely up there as well. Scientists, environmentalists, unions, atheists and the poor have to round out the most despised groups in Bible Belt America. The hatred felt by many conservative Americans for such groups is readily visible. Polls show for instance that racism in America, despite protests to the contrary, is still alive and well. More than 40% of Mississippi Republicans still do not believe that interracial marriage should even be legal. This is a society where as recently as a generation ago, black people had to sit at the back of the bus. Such prejudice dies hard.

Of course none of this scenario would be plausible if it weren't for the western world's current economic woes. Even when running a budget deficit of over $1 trillion a year, unemployment in America has been stuck over 8% for over three years, and underemployment, perhaps a more useful figure, is closer to 15%. More than half of all Americans now live off some form of welfare. Societies stuck in such doldrums for long can turn into absolute powder kegs, as the aftermath of the Great Depression showed. Many Americans seem to sense that widespread social unrest across the country may be imminent. There are now 90 guns per 100 people across America. By comparison the average among western countries is only 10-20 and the second highest rate in the world is found in war-torn Yemen, and is still only 50 guns per 100 people. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests across the country since 2009 may be only just the beginning.

How was Communism defeated? By better example. It is somewhat ironic that Communist revolts began to occur just as worker's rights were starting to be taken more seriously in many countries. Though of course a lot of the progress made by labour movements in the western world no doubt owed it's success to fears that a full-blown Communist revolt could take place if their demands were not met. By the 1980s it was realised, even in die-hard Communist circles, that a mix of socialism and capitalism produced better results than just one or the other. It could take generations before far-right Objectivists learn the same lesson. This is true regardless of whether they remain on the fringes of society or fully progress to the mainstream, though the latter is unfortunately looking more likely with every passing year.

History shows that the status quo in any society can often unravel with frightening speed. America's future may proceed without great disruption. But if we're unlucky, can it really be denied that such an Objectivist revolution could occur within the next few years or decades, and plunge much of the world into chaos for generations as happened after Russia fell to the Communists in 1917? Only time will tell. The 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were all far bloodier than the preceding time periods. Why should the 21st century be the one to break the trend?

The Children of Space

(The reflections of a psychologist after visiting an orbital habitat around the Earth in about a century's time, when the first generations of children born in space are growing up).

Jason never ceased to be amazed at the limits of people’s naivety. Despite the best education possible, despite even thousands of hours spent in VR, there was still no substitute for physically travelling to and from space. The journey up or down a space elevator was like some mysterious sieve that some perceptions simply couldn’t penetrate.

Newcomers from Earth always needed a period of adjustment in space. Something as simple as walking was naggingly different on the inside of a rotating Orbital habitat. Your sense of balance took some time to adjust; it took maybe a few weeks for people to stop thinking they were falling over with every step. The air, the ground and the watercourses, all were so unfailingly fresh. They lacked the billion year tinge so deeply ingrained in everything on Earth. Your surroundings lacked a fundamental taste your subconscious missed deeply. Something was wrong here!

For those born in space, as had been the case for millions of people over the last thirty-odd years, the change was infinitely stranger. Compared to an Orbital’s sterile environs the Earth was one great big wild sweaty jungle. How could harmless phenomenon like wind or rain or distant quakes in the ground hurt people? Preposterous!

Jason recalled a seemingly innocuous but deeply unsettling visit to an orbital elementary school a few years back. He’d looked in on a few classes with the principal, talking to teachers and students. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Then he’d come across one class, it’s pupils no older than ten, who’d been asked to spend an afternoon drawing scenes from the Earth, a place almost none of them had yet visited. Jason had stood there, fascinated, as their creative little minds went to work.

There were drawings of forests and rivers, towns and beaches. Many were perfectly fine, especially those depicting things that were also dotted about most Orbitals. But some looked truly bizarre to Jason, having been born and lived on Earth for nearly a century and having travelled their frequently since. There was a distinct lack of sunsets, mountains, clouds and oceans, things that were too big or unwieldy to recreate in space. For the most part the children’s knowledge was limited, but not too wildly wrong.

Then there was one boy who’d decided to draw a small armada of earthbound vehicles of various types. Planes, trains, boats and so on. It was so riddled with obvious errors Jason couldn’t help but stand there, rooted to the spot, and watch the boy draw. The train he’d drawn in a transparent tunnel as all modern vactrains were, yet it was a steam train, busily belching out clouds of black smoke. Modern maglev trains could only accelerate to many thousands of K’s a second without great friction by travelling along sealed tunnels with most of their air evacuated, but this detail seemed lost on the boy. He also didn’t seem to notice how quickly his passengers would suffocate.

Then there were the airplanes he’d drawn, which Jason was quite sure wouldn’t be flyable in a terrestrial atmosphere. They didn’t just have a pair of horizontal wings, but a pair of equally large vertical ones as well. This gave them the cross-section of a plus sign when viewed head on. The boy’s thinking quickly dawned upon Jason. While he may never have flown in an airplane, the closest thing he’d experienced was probably an inter-orbital shuttle or maybe even an inter-planetary Liner. Practically all spaceships were vertically and horizontally symmetrical. They had a front and back, but no need for a top or bottom. Space lacked a definite up. Why should planes follow any different rules?

Jason was quickly reminded of the old perceptions people back on Earth used to have of spaceships. Jason was old, but had still been born half a century after Star Wars came out. He’d seen it of course, and at the time couldn’t help but laugh whenever the millennium Falcon banked as it turned, or gaze in astonishment at the glass cockpits and bridges every vessel seemed to have, which while perfectly necessary on an Earthbound aircraft, would have been suicidally vulnerable in any kind of space battle. Ever earlier on was perhaps the most poorly conceived spacecraft of all time, the Space Battleship Yamato, from a Japanese comic series. It was literally a spacecraft built around the WW2-era wreck of the Yamato, and could hardly have been more impractical in space. Space battles in 20^th century science-fiction always seemed to resemble a battle from the Pacific War. Large cruisers and aircraft carriers lumbered about while tiny fighters darted and dogfighted around them. The Battle of Endor might as well have been labelled ‘The Battle of Midway in space’.

Going even further back he had recalled the Martian’s invasion vessels in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. They were not rockets, which hadn’t advanced beyond small fireworks in Wells’ time, but large capsules fired by an enormous gun on Mars and aimed at the Earth. The crushing acceleration the inhabitants of such capsules would experience when the gun was fired had seemed lost on Wells, and also Jules Verne now Jason thought about it. Even wise men, Jason had to remind himself quickly, could have utterly impractical visions of the future and other things they'd never laid eyes on.

Jason could perhaps have forgiven the boy for his mistakes so far, but he couldn’t help but crack an oddly horrified smile at the boy’s attempt at drawing a sailing ship. He’d tried to apply the same rules here as he had to the plane. The shape of the hull was about right, and it had a trio of rather well-drawn mainsails on it’s top, but that was where practically ended and the boy’s ignorance began. He’d also tried to drawn the same trio of sails three more times, on the ship’s sides and, best of all, it’s bottom. You could hardly have designed anything more impractical.

While there were numerous pools, ponds, rivers and even lakes on most Orbital habitats and the boy had surely learned how to swim, the vast difference between the skin of Earth’s atmosphere and the depths of it’s oceans seemed to have been completely lost on him. Jason had immediately taken a photograph of the drawing, much to the boy’s confusion and delight, and always brought it out whenever he was giving a lecture on the psychology of children born in space. It was just the kind of snapshot into people’s basic emotions he truly valued.