What if the US joined the Axis in World War II? 1945 & Post-war
Follow-up to this post: https://similarworlds.com/news/world-war/5037979-What-if-the-US-joined-the-Axis-in-World-War-II-1944 If you're behind, check it out if you want to see what leads up to the series of events detailed in this post.
To start from the beginning: https://similarworlds.com/news/world-war/5037835-What-if-the-US-joined-the-Axis-in-World-War-II-1939-1941
January 4 A modified B-29 takes off from Norway and drops "Little Boy" on Leningrad.
January 7 "Fat Man" is dropped on Smolensk. The two bombings kill more than 300,000 people.
January 8 Stalin is not particularly scared from this new weapon and orders unrestricted sarin usage. The fight in the East becomes even more bloody. Russia is not Japan. It is vast and the Red Army is still at full fighting capacity.
January 9 Americans land on Luzon and Corregidor Island.
January 19 US Marines invade Iwo Jima and Palawan. The Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest battle fought in the Pacific, takes place during this time.
March 26 Operation Overlord, the Invasion of Britain, is ready to be set in motion on this day. Nearly 120,000 troops, using 4,000 vessels will cross the English Channel. It will be the largest amphibious military operation in history. Before the landings, 1,000 bombers will drop 5,000 tons of bombs on the British defenses. The P-51 Mustang fighters are now protecting the American bombers. The use of atomic bombs will be considered as well, but only as a last-ditch effort. The Axis commits 40 divisions to the battle for England. 19 German, 16 American, 3 French and 2 Italian, totaling around 1 million troops. General Eisenhower is appointed commander of the expeditionary force and Rommel is named as commander of all the land forces involved in the invasion. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Axis conducted a misinformation campaign to lead the British into expecting an attack on Anglia.
The first wave of the landings will consist of eleven infantry divisions. Two infantry divisions on New Romney beach, codenamed Omaha; assigned to the Americans; two infantry divisions supported by three battalions of tanks on Rye beach, codenamed Utah, assigned to the Americans and French; two infantry divisions on Bexhill beach, codenamed Schwert, assigned to the Germans; and three infantry divisions on Cuckmere Haven beach, codenamed Juno, assigned to the Germans and Italians. The American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the German Brandenburg Regiment will land in Kent, north of Hythe to seize aerodrome at Lympne and to capture Folkestone. The second wave of eight Panzer and motorized infantry divisions will arrive some hours after the first landings. A third wave is formed of six further infantry divisions. The Strait of Dover will be blocked at both ends by mines.
However, despite all this careful planning, this timeline's D-Day never takes place...
March 27 In Great Britain, the situation has become untenable. The combined American/German navy caused the UK to be almost entirely blockaded. The US Navy is now larger than every other navy in the world combined. 6,780 ships including 28 aircraft carriers, 23 battleships, 10 escort carriers, 72 cruisers, 230 submarines, 380 destroyers. Bombers continue to hit England, especially London. The British Empire is lost. India is in open revolt, Canada and Egypt are occupied, there is disorder in the Middle East, South Africa is isolated and Australia is far away. Churchill, accepting responsibility for the dire situation Great Britain is in, resigns as prime minister, then the UK accepts the generous peace conditions offered by the US and surrenders. The King is allowed to remain, no reparations will be payed, there will be no loss of the fleet. Colonies will be free to follow the path they decide. The war in West Europe is over.
The peace conditions are very mild. The German and Italian leaders don't hide their dissatisfaction. Mussolini says "It is more an armistice than a surrender." But at the end, they have to accept the decisions of their powerful partner. There are reasons for these light peace conditions. First of all, the decision of the British to focus the Royal Navy on defending Great Britain would have made a landing very dangerous with a risk of disaster and the obvious risk of high casualties. It would be difficult to explain this to American public opinions, as most Americans are not fully convinced of the necessity of a war with the British. The RAF is still larger than what the Luftwaffe has in the west. The previous year, the UK stopped producing bombers and focused more on fighters. Airborne operations in this D-Day would have been far more chaotic than they were in our timeline's Normandy landings. But the main reason is that a defeated and invaded Britain would leave the whole of Europe to the Axis and the USA needs a strong UK to be turned into an ally after the war.
However, Hitler was never interested in a war with the UK and at the price for peace with the British, Hitler earns free hands in the East.
The Eastern Front had few operations after Kursk. The Soviets restarted their slow advance, but with no major offences. The Soviet Union still has the strongest land army in the world. They produce twice the artillery of Germany and USA combined. The same number of heavy tanks as US and Germany, more machineguns, more everything that is on the ground, literally. Bu their situation is worsening day by day. Hundreds of civilians die from starvation and diseases every day. In the Russian skies, the Axis has predominance. From the Turkish airfields, the US IX Bomber Command bombs the Baku oil fields. 80% of Soviet oil comes from the Caucasus. B-29's strike at the heavy industry in Siberia. The Soviets have difficulties intercepting these high altitude aircraft. The Germans never had this type of bomber and the combat the Eastern Front was generally at lower altitudes, so the Soviets never had the need for high altitude fighters. They had the very limited Mig-3 and in early 1944, they finished the trials of the I-211, armed with two 20mm cannons.
However, the damages from the bombings are limited. A strategic bombing could flatten a city, but it's ineffective for hitting an industry hidden somewhere in Siberia and the crews of the B-29's that are shot down rarely survive. With the UK out of the war, all Axis forces in Europe move to the Eastern Front, so there are around 1 million extra troops available compared to our timeline. US forces are starting to be deployed in Turkey the 10th US Mountain Division is in Finland. The Finnish Army is now able to cut off Murmansk.
March 30-April 2 The Soviet Central Front takes Kharkov, but at a high price. In the south, Von Kleist launches an assault on Rostov, but the Soviets hold the line, again, with high losses. The Red Army has already lost millions of men. War has become very unpopular with the Soviets, but Stalin pledges to keep fighting to the bitter end.
April 11 Stalin is killed after a time bomb hidden in a suitcase detonates beneath him during a speech in Moscow. It's never made clear if his assassination was a plot by the Germans or done from within Stalin's own circle who were fed up with his insistence on continuing the war. A military junta led by Zhukov, Konev, Rokossovsky and Khrushchev seizes power and immediately starts negotiations for an armistice.
July 16 Japan is under heavy bombing by air and sea. The American submarines blockade Japan. Few raw materials arrive from Indonesia and China where a bloody guerilla war costs Japan too many resources. The Japanese increase the use of kamikazes, but they cannot stop the American advance.
July 21 McArthur announces that The Philippines has been taken. The Japanese Empire is cut in half.
August 6 USA has another three nukes ready. This time, it's Japan's turn. B-29 bombers drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kitakyushu, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
August 9 One of the peace conditions imposed on the Soviets is that they have to declare war on Japan in 90s days after the armistice, the time they needed to shift the required number of troops from the European Front to the Pacific. Exactly on schedule, 90 days after the war ended in Europe, the Soviets entered the war. A battle-hardened one million strong Soviet force wipes out the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria in three weeks.
August 15 Emperor Hirohito issues a radio broadcast announcing the surrender of Japan. The Second World War is over. The conflict caused 75 million deaths, half of them in Russia and China.
August 17 The Potsdam Conference begins under Hitler, Mussolini, Pétain and Truman (Roosevelt died in April). The goals of the conference is the establishment of post-war order and spheres of influence.
Spain obtains Gibraltar.
Finland retakes the territories lost in the Winter War with the Soviet Union and some lands in Karelia.
Romania obtains Moldova and Odessa, but loses part of Transylvania to Hungary and Dobruja to Bulgaria.
The Netherlands maintain their colonies, at least for a few years.
Bulgaria retakes the lands lost after WW1 and Macedonia.
Italy gain Montenegro, part of Dalmatia and the British Somaliland.
Yugoslavia is split between Serbia and Croatia.
Canada, despite part of the American establishment asking for its annexation, remains independent with a Puerto Rico-like confederal status and a military occupation for some years.
In France, Alsace becomes a free zone, as was Danzig. France is divided into two occupation zones until 1947, but they maintain their colonies.
The Germans agree to leave Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but the US has to accept the German annexation of Luxembourg.
Germany is free to build its empire in the East as the Soviets did in our timeline. The Lands Germany lost after WW1 are returned to Germany.
The Baltic States, Poland, Byelorussia and Ukraine all become German puppet states. Other Eastern countries are also under German influence.
Japan loses all their possessions in Asia, as in our timeline.
Korea is not split in half.
After the war, Britain is almost the only destination for the Marshall Plan and rises rapidly, but the British Empire is no more.
India becomes independent right after the war, soon followed by all the other British colonies.
The Chinese Civil War ends with a complete Communist victory, there will be no Taiwan.
In the Soviet Union, Khrushchev becomes the First Secretary of the Communist Party.
In the French elections of 1948, in which no Communist parties are allowed, Pétain wins the elections by a few votes. France remains a part of the Axis.
In Norway, Quisling remains head of the Pro-German government. Rudolf Hess is handed over the Germans. He is executed in 1947.
The Holocaust happens the same as in our timeline, but thanks to American intervention, in considerably lower numbers. And, with Germany being on the winning side, it will be almost forgotten, as happened to all of Stalin's massacres of Ukrainians, Baltic peoples and political opposition in our timeline.
The US is able to negotiate with Germany to allow around a million Jewish refugees to relocate to Israel during and after the war. The Germans are happy to let them go. In 1940, they even thought to relocate all the Jewish population to Madagascar.
Not long after the war, the messy reality of United States' alliance with the Axis being a matter of convenience and pragmatic rather than ideological becomes glaringly obvious. A Cold War between the Axis and the US soon begins. The United States creates the World Treaty Organization (WTO) in 1949 in response to the Axis Alliance. Both sides and the Soviet Union have the atomic bomb.
There are various regional conflicts: Vietnam, Chinese civil war, Cuban Crisis, fights in India between Hindus and Muslims, a civil war in Korea, Arab-Israeli conflicts, revolts in the Italian, French and Dutch colonies, and discontent in the German-dominated Eastern countries. The world will not be a boring place in the coming decades. Since France is on the German side, perhaps the Vietnam War will be fought by the Germans. Perhaps the first man on the moon will be a German since Germany was further ahead in missile and jet technology. Who will win the Cold War? Or will it become World War III in this timeline and if so, will it be a nuclear war or will it be a final three-way clash between the US, Germany and the Soviets?
How would the US army cross the Atlantic in the face of the RN and RCN? Their losses would be astronomical, and their previous attempts to conquer Canada ended in abject failure. They'd be tied down trying to subdue Canadian resistance, committing vast numbers of men. They'd be bled dry by the Canadian ulcer alone.
@Ducky Oh - some would have managed the crossing, but the RN veterans would have sunk a huge tonnage of US ships on the passage. Remember what the U boats did in their happy time of 42? Before the RN and RCN taught the USN how to fight? US public would have been shocked at the losses.
@sarabee1995 I did not. I got it from a YouTube video that’s well over an hour long. But I found it so interesting, I just had to recreate it here in a way I feel is more accessible to those who might feel daunted by a lengthy YouTube video, lol.
