An Alternate History in which World War II grinds to a stalemate following the defeat of the Soviet Union. By the time that full-scale fighting resumes in the early 1950s, the Third Reich has had the opportunity to implement much of its manifesto. A very different war resumes in a very different Europe, to put it mildly.

Now published by Sea Lion Press .

Read it here (or here without readers' comments, although these comments are useful to understand the story).

Ax-Crazy: Many Nazis involved in the war are complete psychopaths that are in it just to act out their violent urges, but the crowning achievement for this goes to Himmler, who orders his forces to destroy any towns they come across, along with killing any civilians they find while retreating, for the simple sake of sowing death and destruction.

Adult Fear: War, genocide, and Child Soldiers, this timeline has it all.

A Nazi by Any Other Name: How the Western Allies come to view the French and, later, the New Homeland youth movement.

The Alliance: During the titular war, Brazil, India, and the Vietnamese play important roles alongside the US and UK in Europe. Post-war, the Alliance is codified as the Atomic Four (A4): America, the UK, Australia, and Canada. The A4's snub towards India causes it to become a peaceful rival for global influence.

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Allohistorical Allusion: The most controversial decision of Harry Truman's presidency is not dropping the A-Bomb on Japan. (The remnants of the NKVD had managed to convince the Nazis that A-Bombs were not possible, and so the US didn't dare demonstrate otherwise to the Nazis until it was too late for the Nazis to develop their own nukes.)

Alternate History: The Nazis stalemate World War II... for a while. Alternate History  Nazi Victory: A more realistic and unique example. While the Nazis do defeat the Soviets, they don't go on to invade and conquer Britain and then the world. Instead, the war is stalemated and they hold control over continental Europe. Temporarily, at least.

Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Utterly averted. The Nazis become so hated that they aren't even welcome in South America.

Awesome, but Impractical: Hitler is fascinated by the flying-wing aircraft designed by the Horten brothers, which results in the Luftwaffe wasting years-worth of R&D as flying wings are too unstable to use in combat without artificial stability (which was impossible with 1950s computer tech).

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ArabIsraeli Conflict: Ultimately averted. Despite desires for a Jewish state in Palestine, the surviving European Jewish population is deemed too small and, after a failed plebiscite in 1963, the plans are shelved.

The Bad Guy Wins: Nazi Germany manages to defeat the Soviet Union and secure dominance over all of continental Europe...at least for a while.

Balkanize Me: Germany has been permanently divided into fifteen Administrative Regions as per the Treaty of Barcelona, forbidden to reunite on pain of being nuked

France is so devastated by the war that the relatively less-damaged region along the Channel coast chooses to become part of the UK. Martinique and Guadeloupe seek union with Canada, while French Guiana splits off and merges with Suriname and British Guiana. .

. Not only was the Soviet Union broken up into its constituent SSRs, but Ukraine is split in two, and Russia proper is divided between a restored Tsarist state in European Russia, a rump Soviet state in Siberia, and the US state of West Alaska .

. The Netherlands Antilles join the U.S. as a territory.

The Berserker: Some of the more fanatical Waffen-SS troops approach this, particularly those recruited from the Hitler Youth.

Big Bad: Nazi Germany. Hitler and Himmler in particular.

Bittersweet Ending: One the hand the Nazis were defeated, and much of the world has managed to prosper . On the other hand...tens of millions of Slavic civilians were slaughtered, so few Jews made it out of Europe, that Israel could not be established, much of Western Europe's cultural heritage and farmland were utterly trashed, and Germany was permanently broken apart .

Back from the Brink: Russia, Poland, the Baltic States, two Ukraines, Czechia and other long-dead states are restored after the end of the war.

Black and Grey Morality: Although the Allies' greyness is very pale in comparison to the pitch-blackness of the Reich. The morality of the Allies in the postwar world is open to a little more debate. The description of what the Nazis do to Europe once they've won the 1939-1943 war is terrifying and worse, all of it is what they planned to do in real life.

Blind Obedience: The German people display an almost incredible faith in the Nazi leadership, and many younger soldiers especially display a willingness to become suicide bombers. Even the nuking of a dozen cities doesn't shake that faith at all . Somewhat justified by the Nazis waging a mighty censorship campaign , and the ridiculously high standard of living enjoyed by the German people thanks to their government's wholesale plundering of Europe .

Break Out the Museum Piece: The Nazis do this after realizing they are going to lose the war, using obsolete or captured tanks (and in some cases obsolete captured tanks).

Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The internet, opened to civilian use in 1995, is referred to as "The Grid."

Cannon Fodder: The Reich's attitude towards the "Pan-European" soldiers conscripted from its client states.

Child Soldiers: Towards the end, the Reich resorts to drafting the Hitler Youth into the Waffen-SS.

Conditioned to Accept Horror: The A4 powers are entirely willing to inflict massive civilian casualties in order to avoid anything that might lead to WWIII. For instance, they kill 275,000 people in Stettin because they're rebelling in order to reunite Germany and the Allies are convinced, judging by what happened last time, that a reunited Germany will start World War III, leading to hundreds of millions of people dead.

Cool Plane: The best fighter plane of the war is the Focke-Wulf P-366.67 Raubvogel – a Mach 2.7 interceptor comparable to the real-world MiG-25. Fortunately, shortages of critical raw materials and a successful Allied airstrike against the underground factory producing it mean that just 75 of these superb aircraft end up facing thousands of Allied aircraft including English Electric Lightnings and pre-production F-4 Phantoms.

Cool Train: Post-war, the United States invests a great deal of money into creating a transcontinental maglev transit system for itself, Canada, and Mexico. This was done to develop and refine the technology needed for a mass driver, which offered the benefits of cheap space flight and a Moon-based kinetic bombardment weapon system .

Crapsack World and A World Half Full: Continental Europe is salted and burned during this timeline's titular war, with its cultural heritage intentionally destroyed by the retreating Nazis, and Japan suffers famine and depopulation from the protracted Pacific War, and God help you if you have the misfortune to be born in what used to be Germany.

However, large parts of the rest of the world are better off than our own. An unpartitioned India is the world's largest economy, while South America is much more politically stable with Brazil and Argentina being first-world economies. Open wars are less common due to the threat of A4 intervention, genocides are prevented, and Africa is less prone to civil wars and famines.

China avoided the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution... but is a population time bomb and a political mess, about to reach 2 billion people, and whose leaders have been compared unfavourably, per Word of God, to North Korea, known to engage into Unit 731 stuff and multi-generational sentences for dissenters.

Curb-Stomp Battle: Quite a few examples, usually with the Nazis on the receiving end of this trope. The standout is the Battle of Iceland, where three German aircraft carriers foolishly attempted to attack two Allied carrier groups. Allied casualties peaked out at 162 due to a boat hitting a mine, while the Kriegsmarine was effectively annihilated, exceeding 20,000 casualties.

Cutting the Knot: The Allies want to avoid a Stalingrad-style protracted urban combat meatgrinder, so the standard response when the Germans commit to the defense of a city is to simply pound the place to rubble.

Deadly Gas: As in real life, Hitler didn't like it ever since he was exposed to it in the battlefields of World War I, but unfortunately Acting Führer Himmler is rather fond of using it.

Defiant to the End: Joseph Goebbels dies in Berlin as the allied Polish troops raid his bunker, Himmler also commits suicide in another facility.

Dirty Communists: Averted. With the implosion of the Soviet Union during World War II, communism isn't feared that much anymore.

Disproportionate Retribution: The A4's postwar philosophy to war and non-A4 sanctioned space launches. For instance, to stop a pro-German unification insurgency in Stettin (which they had already almost defeated through conventional means), the A4 hit the city with a 10-ton kinetic round launched from a mass driver on the Moon, impacting with the force of 57.5 kilotons. Stettin and its 275,000 inhabitants are wiped from the map. After that demonstration , the entire pro-unification movement collapses.

Dropped a Bridge on Him: Albert Speer, who hids "in the wrong bunker at the wrong time" and most likely gets nuked to death. Considering what he did in our timeline and on this timeline, including organizing the Nazi slave labour system, it counts as a case of Asshole Victim. During the war, Himmler 's response to Italy's defection from the Axis and Molotov's slowdown of deliveries.

Dragon Ascendant: Heinrich Himmler takes control of the Reich after Hitler's death.

Driven to Suicide: Many Germans after Hitler's death and once it becomes apparent that the Nazis will lose the war.

Epic Fail: The St. Patrick's Day Raids. During a de facto ceasefire, the Germans send hundreds of super-heavy bombers and thousands of airmen on a transatlantic bombing raid that has no purpose at all except massacring American and British civilians. The Luftwaffe force is almost totally destroyed in a Curb-Stomp Battle, with only a small fraction of the bombers getting to carry out their attacks before being shot down. In the end, the Germans lose four airmen for every civilian killed on the ground, and directly results in a renewed war that ends with the Reich's total dissolution . The entire thing is so shockingly stupid that it is generally attributed to Hitler finally losing it.

Even Evil Has Standards: Hitler refuses to use chemical and biological weapons against the Allies. Heinrich Himmler has no such qualms.

Everyone Has Standards: After the nerve gas bombings in London , the Allies tell air crews that their next mission will involve civilian targets and they would permit anyone whose moral code would be violated to not take part. The Allied leadership expected a third of crews to drop out, but in the end less than one percent actually do.

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good/Psychological Projection: The Nazis are puzzled by the fact that "the English" deign to waste valuable medical supplies on the wounded among their Indian "slave troops", i.e, that the English don't treat them like Cannon Fodder, as the Nazis do with their own "Pan-European" auxiliaries. It just doesn't occur to them that the English don't actually buy into the whole "Master Race" bullshit.

Evil Colonialist: The Reich established colonies in Eastern Europe, with the treatment of the natives going from "medieval" to "extermination through work".

Expanded States of America: The Russian Far East becomes the US state of West Alaska, because the Soviet Union has collapsed into anarchy. Later on, the Marianas Islands become the 52nd state. It also incorporates the Netherlands Antilles and the Ogasawara Archipelago as territories, as well as a 99-year lease on Okinawa.

Failure Is the Only Option: Nothing that Vyacheslav Molotov could possibly have done would have saved the Soviet Union. By the time the Allies have secured France, there is nothing left that can prevent the Reich from losing the war. Of course they won't accept it.

False Flag Operation: The Nazis and their collaborators disguise themselves in Allied uniforms to massacre French civilians, to turn the French population against their liberators.

Feudal Overlord: Nazi officials and veterans have been given landed estates in the East, with Slavic serfs bound to work.

Final Solution: Almost fully implemented. The total number of surviving European Jews is in the low four figures.

For Want of a Nail: Hitler, in a moment of clarity, decides invading North Africa would be a bad idea. So the 250,000 Axis troops who would have been used up in the Axis' doomed campaign in North Africa ended up at the Battle of Stalingrad so the Nazis, not the Soviets, won. So this leads to the Nazis defeating the Soviet Union in 1943.

From Bad to Worse: Repeatedly. Especially for the Soviet Union and France, and poor, poor Poland.

Generation Gap: By the 2000s, European teens in the former Reich protest the unfairness of them being held to account for the crimes of their grandparents. When the Prussian wing of this movement makes an armed bid for independence and reunification, they convince the A4 to bomb them from orbit.

Ghost Cities: Berlin and Nuremberg, rendered uninhabitable by British anthrax bombing. They won't be safe until the later half of the 23rd century, if ever.

Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: The Allies are utterly baffled by the Nazis' viciousness and brutality when they destroy much of Western Europe in a massive scorched earth policy.

Hand Wave: The author willingly admits that the Reich's victory over the Soviet Union is a bit of a stretch, even given Stalin's enraged purge of his generals after losing at Stalingrad, but there would be no story otherwise, so...

Hate Sink: Unsurprisingly, the Nazis, due to their mindlessly destructive and cruel actions. It is little wonder that the Allies forcibly broke the German nation up postwar . At one point, a nuclear commander resigns when his request to drop a nuke on Hitler's funeral is denied .

He Who Fights Monsters: It's open for discussion whether the A4 post-war have themselves become monsters. At the very least, they've become extremely cynical. The author himself has described the A4 as nanny-style dictators in both the best and worst senses . Author's ending words: "Is safety, security and peace worth having a nanny watching you all the time?" The significant portion of the readership that answered in the negative often referred to Benjamin Franklin's warning: "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." The Allies are at their nastiest when, after the Nazis unleash bioweapons and chemical weapons on Britain and kill tens of thousands of people (including the Queen Mother), the British respond with a MASSIVE attack of anthrax on Berlin and Nuremberg. Afterwards, it's estimated that those cities won't be inhabitable for centuries – the author described them as making Chernobyl "look like a broken water main".

Hiding the Handicap: Hitler has a brain death shortly after the war is re-ignited.

Hopeless War: For nearly everybody involved.

Hypocrite: The Nazis call the Allies "butchers" for bombing ( and nuking and anthraxing ) Germany, but ignore their own crimes against humanity across the continent of Europe and don't bat an eye at murdering entire German towns for "cowardice" (i.e. trying to surrender).

I Love Nuclear Power: With the lack of nuclear taboo combined with a desire to maintain a domestic reserve of oil in the event of another major war, the US and its allies embrace nuclear power.

I Reject Your Reality: In July 1959, when the Allies are closing in on Berlin, Himmler offers a "Peace with Honor", which would force the Allies to recognize all Nazi claims in the East and accept that no trial would occur for crimes perpetrated by the Reich . Naturally, the Allies reject the offer.

If I Can't Have You...: The Nazis destroy culturally-significant cities, including Paris , in preference to them falling into Allied hands. Paris is not just destroyed but its region rendered uninhabitable by biological agents, so that post-war, the French capital has to be moved to Lyon. Hitler had planned to do this in our timeline. The key difference is that the Heer general governing Paris in our timeline was unwilling to carry out the order, unlike the SS in this one.

It's Personal: The 2nd (Free Polish) Fusiliers regiment. When faced with the 53rd SS Grenadiers, they unsurprisingly gave the Nazis no quarter. Most importantly the 2nds troops were not engaged in the same war as their allies; they were engaged in a Holy Crusade against those who had massacred their entire people.

Kick the Dog: The Nazis do it constantly. Highlights include the massive destruction and depopulation of most of Eastern Europe, an almost total Holocaust, the destruction of Paris and many parts of Western Europe, and the use of chemical and biological agents with no regard to the collateral damage.

Kill It with Water: The Nazis destroy the dike system that protects the Netherlands from the North Sea, contaminating much of their farmland with salt water and destroying their economy.

Les Collaborateurs: The various European governments had to collaborate with their Nazi overlords. When the Allied forces came, most of them secretly surrender to the Allies while trying to avoid annihilation by the Reich. The trope namer had to continue the charade since the Vichy French Head of State was executed by the Gestapo.

Made a Slave: The Nazis enslaved the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe, and worked to death Soviet forced laborers sent by Molotov.

Monumental Damage: In their retreat from occupied Europe, the Nazis deliberately target landmarks and other cultural artifacts for destruction so as to deprive postwar Europe of its cultural heritage.

Murder-Suicide / Pater Familicide: Many German families are the victims of these when the war starts ending.

Never My Fault: Following the Operation Victory nerve gas bombings, Himmler publicly puts the Allies at fault for the deaths and demands a surrender and reparations to prevent further attacks.

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: The Nazis have secured domination over Europe and pressured the Allies into accepting a de facto ceasefire. Then they launch the St. Patrick's Day Bombings and reignite the war. The German razing of Paris and the USSR ultimately leads to the rest of the world severing ties with the regime with Spain, Portugal and Turkey all declaring war on the Third Reich.

Nuclear Option: After the Saint Patrick's Day Bombings, the US and UK decide against immediately counterattacking the Reich with nukes because there's no guarantee it will defeat them and, worse, might give the Reich enough time to develop their own nukes before an invasion can be put together. Eventually, once the Western Allies do start nuking the Reich, their fears about a lack of surrender are proven right. Thankfully it's too late for the Nazis to develop their own bombs. Five years into the Korean Revolution , America drops four low-yield nukes onto their last remaining columns. While controversial, it proves to bring A4 casualties down by 95% and bring an end to the conflict.

Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Thoroughly averted in-universe. Nuclear weapons aren't treated as overly special weapons, and radiation doesn't gain the aura of danger it does OTL in the popular imagination. Their future development and use is, however, restricted by fiat to A4 members, although India maintains her own stockpile as a deterrent.

Omnicidal Maniac: Horrifyingly, the Nazis become this when pushed far enough. Unlike Hitler in real life, acting Führer Heinrich Himmler is under no delusion that the war is winnable once the Allies start steamrolling them out of France, and so he gives the order for all SS military forces to basically flee out of France across the Rhine and destroy everything and everyone unfortunate enough to be in the way as they leave, for the simple sake of it. Several irreplaceable cultural landmarks and artifacts are destroyed in their rampage along with tons of vital civilian infrastructure, and that's not mentioning the massive civilian loss of life.

Offing the Offspring: Just like OTL, Joseph Goebbels try to kill his whole family to prevent them from "living in a world without national socialism". Fortunately for his daughters, they are now fully grown up and some escape their father's ire. Also a case of Terrifying Rescuer since the allied troops that discover them are the Poles who suffered massively at the hands of the Nazis and thus are out for their blood.

Politically Incorrect Villain: The Nazis.

Sanity Has Advantages: Explored. Some of the most formidable troops for the Axis are in fact the remnants of the Heer who participated in the initial invasion of Europe in the 1940's, pressed back into service in their forties and fifties by 1958 with mostly obsolete weapons they used back then. Their methodical and rational approach to battle means that despite these disadvantages, the "old bastards" manage to perform well, even sometimes impressively against superior Allied forces. Meanwhile the SS and Hitler Youth forces made up of young men and kids brainwashed by Nazi propaganda and armed with modern weapons fight like maniacs with little regard for their safety or tactics, being scary to face but easy to beat.

Shown Their Work: Hell yes. The author went out of his way to research every nook and cranny for the timeline.

The Sociopath: Many Nazis are this, but Heinrich Himmler is arguably the worst, treating the many genocides of Nazism as normal, day-to-day affairs.

Spin-Off: An Anglo-American Nazi War ISOT , where the Nazis from in-universe, prior to the St. Patrick's Day Raids, are transported to our world in 2014.

Stepford Smiler: After the Nazi's ill-advised attack on Britain and America, many European civilians happily celebrate the "strategic blow" against the Allies to avoid being seen as defeatist. Privately, these citizens were horrified by the Nazis willingness to pick a fight with two major powers.

Suicide Attack: As the Allies steamroll through occupied Europe, the increasingly desperate and irrational Nazis begin employing suicide bombers. Some are the more fanatical SS troops, and horrifically, some are members of fascist youth organisations as young as 12 years old. The latter become known as "Banzai Bunnies" to Allied troops.

Tank Goodness: The Chamberlain tank certainly qualifies. To put in context, during the liberation of France 14 Chamberlains were employed by the 26th Tank Battalion to rout an SS tank group three times their size with only minor damage to one tank's tracks. Said tank still scored 26 kills.

Also keep in mind that at this time, the Nazis are using Panther Mk.IIIs as their main battle tank. Not Panzer IIIs, Panther Mk.IIIs. A heavy armor and armament upgrade to the already fearsome and one of the most well known WWII Nazi tanks that would have made it HELL for the Allies in the original timeline. The Panther III still performs respectably in tank combat in this timeline, and early encounters with it were what persuaded the Allies to delay the invasion of France until they had built some comparable heavy tanks of their own.

Eleven Maus tanks appear near the death throes of Nazi Germany. They're quickly beaten once their glaring performance and armor weaknesses are discovered.

The Plague: Bioweapons have been used by the Reich, and Britain used anthrax on Berlin and Nuremberg.

The Purge: With no Cold War, the American occupying Japan could afford to purge numerous Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals.

The Resenter: France becomes this toward the allies after the war. Once a Sixth Republic takes power, albeit through what's widely seen as a sham election , they begin regularly opposing and decrying the A4, calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the return of the Channel coast, which they refer to as "Occupied France."

Vestigial Empire: The Soviet Union becomes this due to first being defeated and utterly emasculated by the Nazis and then losing the Russian Far East (which becomes West Alaska) and Central Asia after the Nazis bomb their capital of Krasnoyarsk and the civil war which follows. By the "present day", the USSR is reduced to Western and Central Siberia.

Villainous Breakdown: The Nazi leadership all undergo one when the reality of their imminent defeat at the hands of the Allies compromises their ability to believe their own propaganda. Unfortunately, this comes with apocalyptic consequences for the people of western Europe.

War Is Hell: The Four Horsemen gallop through Japan into 1946, then throw quite a hell of a party in Europe until 1960 .

Watching Troy Burn: The Reich televises the wholesale destruction of Paris, and some of it intentionally gets broadcast to Britain.

Well-Intentioned Extremist: The A4 (post-war alliance of the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia) will do just about anything to prevent World War III. There will be peace, even if it is enforced at the end of a sword.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Somehow, the author manages to maintain this, despite the Viet Cong and US Marines fighting together against the SS in Nazi-occupied France.

Worthy Opponent: The Western Allies have this reaction to Heer veterans once they're called out of retirement to defend the Reich, and not just because of their obvious mental advantage over the SS.

Zerg Rush: Many inexperienced commanders (especially on the Nazis' side) employ this tactic.