Alternate history AKICOLJ

[philmophlegm]

Help me out with an alternate history scenario.

Alternate histories where Germany won the Second World War are pretty common - off the top of my head I can think of Robert Harris's 'Fatherland', Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle' and that Star Trek episode with Joan Collins in it*. However, the scenario I need help with is one where Germany won the First World War.

What has happened is that the war of attrition of 1915 to 1917 dragged on into a stalemate. The United States stayed out of the war. The Russian Revolution happened as it had happened in our timeline. Germany was able to reduce British industrial capacity through Zeppelin raids. German U-Boats cut off the flow of raw materials from the British Empire. And slowly Germany was able to advance through France.

Britain and what is left of France and the rest of the allies surrender to Germany in 1934. Southern Britain is a lawless place with much of its infrastructure destroyed. Many people have fled to the north. The Royal Family has moved to Canada. Under the terms of the surrender, Ireland has been granted independence, guaranteed by Germany. Large parts of France have been carved off as vassal states of Germany, most notably Burgundy. The same has happened to Italy, with Lombardy now a separate kingdom subject to the German Kaiser.

That's about as far as I got. My question is: what does the world look like in 1935, with Germany the dominant European power?







* Well, ok that isn't actually set after a German victory, but it does show how the non-death of an American pacifist leads to German victory.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually read/seen that scenario, either. I think there are a number of ways it could actually go. I think Wilhelm might see himself as a new Holy Roman Emperor, but I'm not sure his ministers would go along with it. Considering the land grab in Africa just before the Great War, I suspect that Germany would have annexed a number of the more profitable French, English and Belgian colonies. They might well over-reach themselves there if they didn't keep their hands off the long-established and heavily settled ones. In fact, I could see the Canadians asking for US help, and that country finally fulfilling its long-held ambition to take over at least the Anglophone parts of that Dominion.

The Great Depression started in the US but I don't think Germany would be as deeply affected as it was in our time-line (being bankrupted by the allies as a consequence of the Treat of Versailles) and I don't think Hitler would be a figure of any consequence, with Fascism certainly rising but in Italy, Spain, France and the UK.

All this supposes that, seeing its great rival in chaos, Germany did not take on the Russian Communists...

It's a interesting area of speculation.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can definitely see Germany taking the choicest (i.e. most easily manageable and richest in raw materials) colonies of the defeated powers, but as you say, that might stretch their capabilities. Perhaps this is what would push them into peace with the USSR.

I think a US that stayed out of the war would be one where the overwhelming sentiment was to avoid imperial entanglements. But would that change in response to a German victory? Hmmm...

Since Germany comes out of the war with preferred trade access to most of Europe and the ability to get raw materials cheaply from the defeated powers and their colonies, you could imagine that Germany would become quite prosperous in the years following the war. (In this scenario, the war has not long finished, but we'd be going in that direction.) German nationalist types would rejoice in the victory of the old regime, and would be unlikely to pursue National Socialism. So would the main opposition to Wilhelm's rule come from communists or democrats? That might depend on the situation in the USSR.

And if, as you say fascism and extreme nationalism rises in Italy, Spain, France and the UK, to what extent is that tolerated by Germany?

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

If the US stayed out of the war, the German-speaking element of the population might have retained closer ties with the old country - there used to be numerous German language newspapers etc. which ended around the time of WW1.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point. In my scenario, I'm assuming no Lusitania.