Decolonization in an Axis victory scenario

[Man in the High Castle]

Greetings to all. I am working on a scenario of victory for the Axis without World War II, that is, after a disaster at Dunkirk, France and Great Britain (which is not governed by Winston Churchill, since he died when HMS Nelson was sunk by the U- 56 in my timeline) sign peace with Germany and Germany has a free hand to build its colonial empire in Eastern Europe by going to war in 1941 against the Soviet Union.

The thing is that, unlike OTL, France and Great Britain would not have suffered the wear and tear of World War II and this would not have led to the weakening or questioning of their colonial empires. So my questions are:

How would an "absence" of World War II have affected the European colonial empires? Would there have been decolonization as in OTL? Would it have taken longer? Could we see in this timeline the European colonial empires still fully or partially intact in the 21st century?

Thank you very much for your time.

 

[Garrison]

Greetings to all. I am working on a scenario of victory for the Axis without World War II, that is, after a disaster at Dunkirk, France and Great Britain (which is not governed by Winston Churchill, since he died when HMS Nelson was sunk by the U- 56 in my timeline) sign peace with Germany and Germany has a free hand to build its colonial empire in Eastern Europe by going to war in 1941 against the Soviet Union.

And you are starting with the myth that Churchill was somehow the only one wanting to keep Britain in the war. To be clear he became PM because he was seen as being able to prosecute the war more vigorously. If he is not available it will be someone like Eden who becomes PM. If it were Halifax that becomes PM it would be purely on the basis that he was willing to fight. The British have zero interest in a peace deal with Hitler, not that Hitler actually had a coherent set of terms to offer. Also the British assumed that 30-50,000 troops could be rescued at best, and were still planning to fight on.

Now even if you have come up with some credible scenario for a 'disaster' at Dunkirk any armistice with the French is going to be pretty much the OTL one and if a final peace with France is agreed its still going to see the country gutted as the Germans take over the economy and dismantle their armed forces.
Pretty much all of your PODs have been discussed repeatedly and they do not stack up.

 

[Ogrelord420]

For Africa, the problem is population growth and technological advancement. After WW2 the population of Africa exploded, with some countries like Nigeria gaining tens of millions of people. Similarly, the technological gap between the Europeans and Sub Saharan Africans got smaller due to trade, thus eliminating the original cause of their success. I don’t really see any way for the colonial powers to keep their African colonies without them being given far more autonomy (similar to the Commonwealth system). Otherwise, they would be far too costly to keep subjugated.

 

[Ana Luciana II]

Colonial empires are doomed either way IMO it’s just a matter of how long they take to collapse and how many die in the process of decolonisation.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

And you are starting with the myth that Churchill was somehow the only one wanting to keep Britain in the war. To be clear he became PM because he was seen as being able to prosecute the war more vigorously. If he is not available it will be someone like Eden who becomes PM. If it were Halifax that becomes PM it would be purely on the basis that he was willing to fight. The British have zero interest in a peace deal with Hitler, not that Hitler actually had a coherent set of terms to offer. Also the British assumed that 30-50,000 troops could be rescued at best, and were still planning to fight on.

Well now that you mention that, you're right. The truth is that behind my time line there are many more reasons that lead Great Britain to sign a peace with Germany, but I did not want to dwell too much on this point and I thought that simply by mentioning the absence of Churchill (whose leadership, although there were more belligerents, it was critical to the Allied victory in World War II) it would suffice to get my point across, namely the absence of a protracted war between Britain and Germany.

Now even if you have come up with some credible scenario for a 'disaster' at Dunkirk any armistice with the French is going to be pretty much the OTL one and if a final peace with France is agreed its still going to see the country gutted as the Germans take over the economy and dismantle their armed forces.
Pretty much all of your PODs have been discussed repeatedly and they do not stack up.

I am well aware that the German peace terms were not going to be particularly generous to the French (at least they wanted them to experience conditions similar to those experienced by the Germans in 1918), but they were still willing to give them more leeway in terms of regarding the issue of its colonial empire (which could be very useful with a satellite France) and even in rather lax terms compared to the Treaty of Versailles.

This is not due, as many Nazi philosophies have once argued, to a genuine sentiment of "European unity against Bolshevism", but rather to the mere fact that the Nazis were not interested in gaining territory outside of Europe, and specifically outside of their own territory. projected Lebensraum in Eastern Europe (even on the issue of possible western annexations they were very lax and variable, not counting the issue of Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg).

First of all, thank you very much for answering and helping to enrich the topic.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

For Africa, the problem is population growth and technological advancement. After WW2 the population of Africa exploded, with some countries like Nigeria gaining tens of millions of people. Similarly, the technological gap between the Europeans and Sub Saharan Africans got smaller due to trade and exchange, thus eliminating the original cause of their success. Therefore, I don’t really see any way for the colonial powers to keep their African colonies without them being given far more autonomy (similar to the Commonwealth system). Otherwise, they would be far too costly to keep subjugated.

That's a very good point. It seems that the material conditions meant, from a rational perspective, that political decolonization was inevitably carried out (not economic, since Africa today continues to be economically subject to its former colonizers and even to new emerging powers).

Perhaps we would see a much slower and bloodier decolonization take place in the colonial empires belonging to the allies and satellites of Germany and Italy.

Thank you very much for answering.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

Colonial empires are doomed either way IMO it’s just a matter of how long they take to collapse and how many die in the process of decolonisation.

So I see that you are in the same vein as @Ogrelord420. And it is, for the moment, the option that seems most rational to me.

Thanks for answering.

 

[Garrison]

Well now that you mention that, you're right. The truth is that behind my time line there are many more reasons that lead Great Britain to sign a peace with Germany, but I did not want to dwell too much on this point and I thought that simply by mentioning the absence of Churchill (whose leadership, although there were more belligerents, it was critical to the Allied victory in World War II) it would suffice to get my point across, namely the absence of a protracted war between Britain and Germany.

By mentioning the absence of Churchill all you've really done is imply that you are relying on cliches to build your TL, and cliches that are far removed from reality. Britain is not going to make peace in 1940 because Churchill isn't PM. If you want to enrich the topic I would suggest having a thorough browse of the myriad of other TL's that have tried to use this as a springboard to understand why it doesn't stack up.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

By mentioning the absence of Churchill all you've really done is imply that you are relying on cliches to build your TL, and cliches that are far removed from reality. Britain is not going to make peace in 1940 because Churchill isn't PM. If you want to enrich the topic I would suggest having a thorough browse of the myriad of other TL's that have tried to use this as a springboard to understand why it doesn't stack up.

As I told you before, it doesn't just come down to the absence of Churchill, but there are more factors that I didn't want to mention because it's not the subject I'm asking about. Precisely, after years of reading tl's on this page (since 2018) and more information that I have acquired from different sources, I am well aware of the most common clichés in Victory Nazi tl's (such as ignoring the logistical complications of Barbarossa and thinking that the Germans could reach the Urals in only one or two campaigns, or the myth of a fully mechanized Wehrmacht, among others).

I appreciate the recommendations, about which I surely know many of them. Anything in particular that you can recommend? A greeting and thanks for answering.

 

[Ana Luciana II]

Building on what others have said might I ask what your POD is? I don’t think an end to the Western War after disaster at Dunkirk is impossible but I think it might be worth doing further reading into German tactics and strategy as well as Anglo-French counter-strategies. In my experience after doing reading on these subjects PODs and ideas suggest themselves.

 

[Garrison]

As I told you before, it doesn't just come down to the absence of Churchill, but there are more factors that I didn't want to mention because it's not the subject I'm asking about. Precisely, after years of reading tl's on this page (since 2018) and more information that I have acquired from different sources, I am well aware of the most common clichés in Victory Nazi tl's (such as ignoring the logistical complications of Barbarossa and thinking that the Germans could reach the Urals in only one or two campaigns, or the myth of a fully mechanized Wehrmacht, among others).

I appreciate the recommendations, about which I surely know many of them. Anything in particular that you can recommend? A greeting and thanks for answering.

You're fundamental issue is that the more you change the scenario from OTL to justify Britain making peace the harder it becomes to address the topic you want to discuss in any meaningful way as we can't take any cues from the politics of OTL.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

You're fundamental issue is that the more you change the scenario from OTL to justify Britain making peace the harder it becomes to address the topic you want to discuss in any meaningful way as we can't take any cues from the politics of OTL.

On that I fully agree with you. Well, seeing that your knowledge on the subject is extensive (although I really like this period, I am more educated in the Modern Age), under what circumstances would you see an Anglo-German peace treaty possible in 1940-1941?

Greetings and thanks for answering.

 

[Garrison]

On that I fully agree with you. Well, seeing that your knowledge on the subject is extensive (although I really like this period, I am more educated in the Modern Age), under what circumstances would you see an Anglo-German peace treaty possible in 1940-1941?

Greetings and thanks for answering.

The problem is I don't really see one short of German troops marching through Whitehall. The British can't trust Hitler, Hitler doesn't have a coherent set of proposals to offer and Sealion is impossible. if you can come up with a good scenario that holds together in Post-1900 then kudos to you.

 

[Vabasion]

Greetings to all. I am working on a scenario of victory for the Axis without World War II, that is, after a disaster at Dunkirk, France and Great Britain (which is not governed by Winston Churchill, since he died when HMS Nelson was sunk by the U- 56 in my timeline) sign peace with Germany and Germany has a free hand to build its colonial empire in Eastern Europe by going to war in 1941 against the Soviet Union.

The thing is that, unlike OTL, France and Great Britain would not have suffered the wear and tear of World War II and this would not have led to the weakening or questioning of their colonial empires. So my questions are:

How would an "absence" of World War II have affected the European colonial empires? Would there have been decolonization as in OTL? Would it have taken longer? Could we see in this timeline the European colonial empires still fully or partially intact in the 21st century?

Thank you very much for your time.

Even Halifax didn’t want peace with Germany that goes beyond peace of Amiens. Difference between Halifax and Churchill is willingness to sacrifice the empire to win a war. Churchill was willing Halifax was not. He’d still jump in to fight when war with Soviets break out.

That said it depends on how accepted nazism is and their ideology. I could easily see Africa be turned into a quarantine zone and then have biological and chemical weaponry dropped till Africans are dead.

On other end it could just be too much effort to keep it so it might decolonize regardless with some white states created

 

[anotherlurker]

Colonial empires are doomed either way IMO it’s just a matter of how long they take to collapse and how many die in the process of decolonisation.

Siberia, Xinjang and everything west of the Appalachinas would like to have a word with you. With enough settlers or if there's no one left to rebel against foreign rule than there's no decolonization. Should Africa end up under Germany and Italy i'd expect a continental scale genocide with just a few million left to serve as slaves. The best you can hope for then is white successor states should Germany and Italy collapse.

 

[Tanc49]

In Algeria OTL, the FLN was defeated militarily, but the French metropolitan population was fed up with fighting.
Likewise, in Africa, as far as I recall there were no major military pushbacks to independance, it was a political decision.

However, I find it unlikely that a fascist aligned France would let go that easily. I'd think you'd have a scenario closer to Angola, with a long protracted war, very bloody on either side.

On the other hand, since there is no democracy to please, France and similar Axis-aligned countries might just go all in and start using poison gas and aviation on anyone raising an eyebrow in the colonies.

For UK colonies, you now have a major incentive to stay in a closely aligned Commonwealth, lest they get attacked by Axis-aligned countries. Plus the UK will need more resources if it needs to be prepared against round 2, so will try to get those colonies closer than OTL. This can be done either violently or through heavy political concessions. I don't know enough to say which way it'd go

The main question for me is Indochina. Who controls it in your TL?

EDIT: the Block 109 comics goes with @anotherlurker 's scenario. Absolute mass death and slavery, with some Free French trying to battle it out in the jungles of the Congo

 

[Man in the High Castle]

Building on what others have said might I ask what your POD is? I don’t think an end to the Western War after disaster at Dunkirk is impossible but I think it might be worth doing further reading into German tactics and strategy as well as Anglo-French counter-strategies. In my experience after doing reading on these subjects PODs and ideas suggest themselves.

Well, it's a story I've been working on for the Alternative History Wiki in Spanish (I'm Spanish, so I apologize if my English is very bad) since I was 18 years old.

At first it was completely full of clichés (super-technological Germany, Hitler changes his mind based on ASB, the German generals were all good strategists, the Soviets and Americans only won by numerical superiority, etc...) but as the passing of the years and delving into both historiographic readings and well-constructed alternative histories (especially like the ones in this forum), I polished it the best I know how to make it as realistic and rational as possible.

After years of collecting World War II information from OTL and other more realistic alternative histories of an Axis victory, I have come to the conclusion that any PoD after the failure of Operation Barbarossa can lead to nothing more than reproducing a different version of OLT (that is, unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers) or a peace agreement that leads only to a status quo ante bellum, which would then be reproducing a world quite similar to ours only with a better standing Germany.

In addition, since the Second World War is such a complex event, a single PoD is not enough for everything to go well for the Axis, but I have opted for a Butterfly Effect by which a series of PoDs is triggered that I consider necessary for the Axis, which already started from a bad enough material and strategic situation to win a war of attrition like World War II, at least achieves its most realistic objectives. These P0D, in general terms and summarizing a lot, are the following:

1.- 1932: Japan discovers the oil fields of Daqing and Liaohe (Manchuria). This will lead to a greater motorization of the Imperial Japanese Army and a strengthening of its influence against that of the Imperial Navy, triumphing over the idea of Hokushin-ron (北進論, "Northern Expansion Doctrine" or "Northern Way") against the Nanshin-ron (南進論, "Southern Expansion Doctrine") of the Navy.

2.- 1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara.

3.- 1936: During the Xi'an Incident, Chiang Kai-shek is assassinated.

4.- 1937: The Marco Polo Bridge Incident does not occur, so the Second Sino-Japanese War does not break out.

5.- 1939: The Nomonhan incident or Battle of Jaljin Gol (which is won by the Japanese) triggers a Second Russo-Japanese War or Soviet-Japanese War.

6.- 1939: Winston Churchill dies when HMS Nelson is sunk by U-56.

7.- 1940: During the French Campaign, there was no break in the siege of Dunkirk, for which the German victory was even more complete and crushing by capturing all the French troops and almost all of the BEF.

8.- 1941: Due to the Dunkirk debacle, the entry of Spain into the war and the lack of military successes (absence of Operation Compass in Egypt, along with the seizure of Gibraltar by Spanish-German forces), Great Britain signs peace with the Axis powers in the face of generous German offers and US disinterest in entering the war.

Thanks for answering.

 

[Ana Luciana II]

That said it depends on how accepted nazism is and their ideology. I could easily see Africa be turned into a quarantine zone and then have biological and chemical weaponry dropped till Africans are dead.

Wholesale genocide of the African continent is unjustifiably expensive. I don’t doubt leading Nazi ideologues would want to; Hitler had a fanatical hatred for the Khoisan due to his affinity for the Boers. What I can see is more selective genocides of ‘troublesome’ ethnic groups - the afformentioned Khoisan as well as Herero and Namaqua if Germany regains South-West Africa for example.

 

[Sol Zagato]

8.- 1941: Due to the Dunkirk debacle, the entry of Spain into the war and the lack of military successes (absence of Operation Compass in Egypt, along with the seizure of Gibraltar by Spanish-German forces), Great Britain signs peace with the Axis powers in the face of generous German offers and US disinterest in entering the war.

8: entry of Spain into the war requires the death, sidelining, or apprehension of Wilhelm Canaris. He was working for the British, and the Spanish practically telegraphed that he was the reason they didn't join the war.

 

[Man in the High Castle]

The main question for me is Indochina. Who controls it in your TL?

Same situation as OTL, that is, de jure domain of France but factual Japanese occupation.

In Algeria OTL, the FLN was defeated militarily, but the French metropolitan population was fed up with fighting.
Likewise, in Africa, as far as I recall there were no major military pushbacks to independance, it was a political decision.

However, I find it unlikely that a fascist aligned France would let go that easily. I'd think you'd have a scenario closer to Angola, with a long protracted war, very bloody on either side.

On the other hand, since there is no democracy to please, France and similar Axis-aligned countries might just go all in and start using poison gas and aviation on anyone raising an eyebrow in the colonies.

For UK colonies, you now have a major incentive to stay in a closely aligned Commonwealth, lest they get attacked by Axis-aligned countries. Plus the UK will need more resources if it needs to be prepared against round 2, so will try to get those colonies closer than OTL. This can be done either violently or through heavy political concessions. I don't know enough to say which way it'd go

I fully agree with what you state. I see decolonization as inevitable in a world dominated by liberal democracies, but in the face of fascist powers, although material reasons could lead to abandonment sooner or later, I believe that it would occur much later and as a result of wear and tear from colonial wars.