This is a joint post by myself and Kelpie.
OK, myself and Kelpie have been brainstorming possible ways the second world war could have played out, if you take Hitler winning the war in Europe as the end result. To make things easier to visualise, we have been using a Risk board. So I now present to you
a light hearted take on how things
might have played out in the latter years of the war:
Obviously this is very simplified, as there are only six colours of pieces in Risk, and the territories are not exact countries. Colours represent the following armies:
Green: Great Britain and Her Empire / Commonwealth.
Black: Germany / The Third Reich and Italy
Blue: The United States of America (and Brazil who fought in conjunction)
Red: The USSR
Gold: Empire of Japan
Silver: Neutral / other
The world as it was in 1942.
Germany defeats Great Britain and takes the remainder of western Europe. This is the turning point where things diverge from reality and enter the realm of speculation. But speculation based on what we do know about the different countries goals and alliances.
With Britain occupied the Government and military command structure is lost, enabling Germany to take out British troops in Egypt and subsequently begin to move through the middle east.
USA starts island hopping the Pacific. It seems logical that the Americans would continue to take revenge on the Japanese for Pearl Harbour. Historically, of course the USA was neutral in the war until they were attacked by the Japanese and had to be convinced by the Allies to prioritise fighting the German advancement. With their only Allied base of operation (Britain) now occupied by the Germans, it's reasonable to assume they would have retreated out of Europe and focussed all their efforts on the Pacific.
Germany removes remaining British forces in Africa. The last of British forces still fighting are defeated and the Germans take control of the Suez canal, Iran and Iraq and their resources and now have another way into the Soviet Union.
Germany takes out US military bases in Greenland and advances towards the USA. More as a buffer zone than as a serious invasion plan, as one of Hitlers main goals was to unite western Europe against Communism and likely had little interest in the USA itself. Meanwhile, the USA advances towards Japan.
1945: USA drops atom bombs on Japan, and they surrender. With the fall of Japan, the Soviet Union and China takes back areas of Japanese control in China/Mongolia previously handed over by treaty.
Throughout all this we have assumed that Russia is primarily concerned with self preservation and only taking back what Germany had taken from them. It seems likely that they would not attack the German Empire without backing from the allies.
By now, all sides would need to pause and regroup. To all intents and purposes, the war would be over. Germany needs to consolidate it's new empire, and crush any remaining resistance forces. Without the allies to supply them, the resistance movement would not last long.
It seems likely that Germany would install local sympathisers as leaders, such as Oswald Mosely in Britain.
This is as far as we have taken our "simulation" for now. From here on things get
very speculative. The USA and Germany would probably declare a truce.
This would lead to a short period of shakey "peace" such as that between the first and second world wars.
It is possible that maybe... just maybe... Germany and the USA might eventually unite against "the Communist threat". However, who could honestly say how that would play out? To try and map WWIII out on a Risk board, with nuclear weapons involved on all three sides, would probably end up like the scene in Blackadder Goes Forth, with Field Marshal Haig using a dustpan and brush to wipe the board clean!
What would happen to the remainder of the Commonwealth? Would the Royal family have escaped to somewhere like Canada? Would there have been any attempt to retake the British Isles? We have left all this out, as it is impossible to say.
