While the Americans worked feverishly on new plans and projects to break the Soviet front, help came from an unexpected front.
July 4, 1945
While the Soviets congratulated themselves on weathering the worst, a fresh blow struck. American troops, operating in the Balkans, guarded Istanbul, while the mountains sufficed to protect Turkey's eastern flank. However, the Soviets were powerless to prevent the Turks from allowing a British landing force from crossing into the Black Sea. Thirty years after Gallipoli, the British Army crossed through the Dardanelles. Winston Churchill himself met the invasion force here, and was photographed solemnly laying a wreath on the beach where so many ANZAC troops had died in the last Great War. The force steamed on, and revealed itself to the Soviets by a massive bombardment of Sevastopol. Before Soviet troops could respond, the Royal Marines had landed north and south of the city. USAAF bombers neutralized the coastal defenses, and within a week the city had fallen. A second wave of Canadian and African troops arrived to bolster the invaders. Within a week, the Soviet Army in the Crimea had collapsed- Canadian forces braved intense fire to secure the mouth of the peninsula, and the British landed a second force at Kerch. In less than two weeks, the entire peninsula was solidly in Allied hands.
The narrow approaches to the Crimea favored the defensive now, and a Soviet counterattack was completely wiped out. Behind the Allied lines, the inhabitants of the Crimea rejoiced, treating the British troops as liberators. Encouraged, Allied propagandists loosed their most deadly weapon- the promise of freedom.
Leaflets- signed by Laval, Willkie, and Churchill- promised that the USSR would be reformed into the Russian Commonwealth. Overnight, the Crimean prisoner of war camps became recruiting grounds, as thousands of Ukrainians came forward to join the Army of Russian Liberation. Marines struck at Odessa and Azov before fading away. Bomber raids now hit the oilfields of the Caucausus, the factories of Kiev, the communication lines to the Balkan front. Just as the Soviets appeared ready to win a final victory, the Allies opened yet a new front, draining forces into garrisons and further demoralizing the Soviet Army.
As July ended, the war entered its most dangerous phase.
July 27, 1945
Alexandr Kovaliuk pulled out his pistol and shot the commissar in the back of the head.
A stunned silence fell over the platoon. One private whipped up his rifle and trained it on Kovaliuk, and two more jumped to wrestle him to the ground.
The silence stretched on uncomfortably. Kovaliuk still didn't know exactly what was happening. The commissar had started screaming at one of his men, calling him a traitor, calling him a swine. He threatened the gulag. And then the pistol.
"Lieutenant?" One of the sergeants was approaching, hand on his pistol. Kovaliuk blinked and nodded. He cleared his throat.
"Men, the commissar was threatening to send one of us to the gulag. For tripping over a stone." Kovaliuk gathered his thoughts- he still wasn't sure exactly where he was going. "But that's not the real reason. The real reason was that Anton is Ukrainian. Just like you. And you! And all the rest of us!" The platoon was staring hard, not daring to agree, not daring to breathe. Kovaliuk tightened his grip on the pistol. "I am Ukrainian. I am not a Soviet. None of us are Soviets, because we were never given a choice! Well, I will give you a choice. You can shoot me right now and be Soviets." He took a deep breath.
"Or you can come south with me and be Ukrainian. We will join the British. We will be free."
One private raised his hand. "Sir... that's... the 155th is between us and the British. Twenty thousand men." Kovaliuk raised his pistol.
"Then we will offer them the same choice."
The awful silence stretched further and further. Finally, one man stepped forward and raised his rifle over his head.
"I am Bohdan Pavelovitch Rasefsky! I am a free man! I am free!" The platoon erupted, roaring and laughing.
Singing, twenty men marched south to face twenty thousand.
July 28, 1945- Shanghai
General Joseph Stilwell stared hard at the five men around the table.
"Goddamn you." They winced and traded glares with each other, avoiding Stilwell's gaze.
"You stupid damn fools, and don't say a word, cause I'm talking to all of you. In three months, you've lost thirty thousand square miles and three hundred thousand men. I won't be surprised if you've gone and lost all of China. And you're still more interested in fighting each other than in fighting the Soviets."
Zhang Xueliang slammed his fist on the table. "I tried to make Chiang see-"
Stilwell cut him off. "And he arrested you, and then Chiang is killed and you're set free and still no one listens to you. Well, you can forget the holy act. I know for a damn fact you sent three divisions into a death trap because you didn't trust the commanders." Stilwell spat on the floor. "Well, this is over right now. If you can't agree which of you is in charge of China, then none of you are." Stilwell rapped on the door and a squad of armed US Marines marched in, standing stiffly at attention.
"Under General Order 3-114 of May 1941 of the Allied Co-Operation Council, I hereby charge you with dereliction of duty, insubordination, endangerment, and a number of other charges I'll finish typing up later on. You're all under arrest, and command of your armies will be transferred from the Nationalist Government to the Allied commander in this theater. That's me, folks." Stilwell raised his hand to stop the eruption of protest. "I don't give a tin shit about your greedy, petty feuds, and I don't intend to watch you play warlord while millions of people die because you didn't get your head out of your ass." Stilwell's translator rubbed his hands anxiously, trying to communicate the tone Stilwell's speech had taken. It didn't matter. The Nationalist generals got his message.
Zhang stood and saluted, with just the right mix of dignity and insulting precision. The other four generals attempted the same with mixed results. Stilwell returned the salute and left the building, walking down to his car. He sighed as the trip back to his headquarters began.
"Lord Jesus, but I just got myself in hot water."
August, 1945
With the German front tied up in a deadly stalemate and India and China on the verge of collapse, the Allies pinned their hopes on the Crimean beachhead. British and American submarines poured into the Black Sea, and commando raids erupted from Bulgaria to the Caucasus. Everywhere the Allies landed, they left arms and ammunition for the disgruntled locals. In Romania, a full-scale guerrilla war developed, further disrupting communications with the Balkan front. In the Caucasus, British agents arrived just as Stalin began the mass deportations of ethnic groups he deemed "unreliable." The result was a bloody guerrilla war in Daghestan, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan. In Armenia, troops revolted against their commanders, and the local government struck a deal with the Allies, allowing Commonwealth troops to move in from Turkey so long as the Turks were kept off Armenian soil. As Stalin poured more troops into suppression of the Caucasus revolt, the frontline in Persia collapsed. Soviet armies withdrew from the siege of Ishafan and pulled back to the border in the east. Muslim rebels in Afghanistan and occupied India stepped up their resistance, aided by British gun-running expeditions. Stalin, hoping to send a message to Tibet, sent paratroopers to occupy Sinkiang, a region long under Soviet influence. The Tibetans took note and forbade Allied flights over their territory.
Zhukov was forced to strengthen his garrisons, draining his frontline. The delay was enough- INA troops were beginning to bolster the shattered British line. Somberly, Zhukov sent orders to entrench at the current position.
In China, the Communist forces continued their march south, arriving at the northern approaches to Beijing on August 12th. General Joseph Stilwell, who had assumed command of the fractured Nationalist Army, cobbled together a makeshift defense force around a nucleus of two US Marine divisions. Ten Chinese militia divisions, an ANZAC brigade, and two French regiments took part in the defense. The ragtag Chinese militia performed spectacularly, rallying several times despite heavy losses. The Soviets and Communist Chinese halted their advance, gathering strength.
This was exactly the breathing space the Allies needed. Under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur, a joint force of Japanese veterans and US Marines landed at Vladivostok. MacArthur immediately occupied the landing fields, sending B-17s on raids throughout Siberia. Strongpoints were overwhelmed by airborne troops. Within a week, the entire Soviet position along the Pacific coast had collapsed. Several divisions of Soviet troops rebelled and defected, and the natives of Yakutsk declared their independence of Moscow behind the shield of US airpower.
While the world was still digesting this news, France announced that Italy would regain its long-delayed independence. A new government was installed, operating for the moment under a French-imposed constitution (a constitutional convention and free elections would await the war's end). A purged and retrained Italian military immediately began forming behind the lines at Venice, under the overall command of Charles De Gaulle's Italian Theater. De Gaulle declared, with good reason, that within three months he would be able to put thirty fresh divisions on the Italian border. The French also began recruiting in Argentina, announcing that nation would regain its independence by year's end. Plans were laid for 75,000 Argentine soldiers to join the French lines.
As the summer of 1945 faded, so too did Soviet hopes. The edges of Soviet empire were crumbling, and their only advantage- their vast pool of manpower- was fast eroding. In northern Germany, the Army of Russian Liberation received reinforcement from 100,000 Latin American soldiers. The partisans in Yugoslavia, Romania, and the Caucasus were gaining strength daily.
Cornered, Stalin issued fateful orders. On September 3, 1945, Case Ten began.
September 3, 1945- CASE TEN
The state of the Soviet military fifteen months into the war was extremely poor. Nearly a third of the USSR's military strength was devoted to holding Germany, through a corridor fifty miles wide. Insurrection threatened to end Soviet rule in the Caucasus, and while the Siberian armies were tied down in China, the Americans had swept through eastern Siberia. The British foothold in the Crimea left huge swaths of the Soviet Union open to bombing and further destabilization. In the Balkans, in India, China, Scandinavia- everywhere, the Soviet Union was checkmated, and the Allies were producing a new division every day. Within a few months, the Soviet Union would be doomed.
Stalin decided to implement Case Ten. Drawn up by the Soviet High Command six months earlier, Case Ten called for abandonment of the offensive and withdrawal to more defensible lines. In Asia, Stilwell's New Nationalist Army and the Indian National Army were unable to launch a credible offensive. In addition, the People's Republic of China (following a coup, now under the leadership of Zhou Enlai) served as an excellent buffer. The September withdrawal in Asia went smoothly, as Zhukov pulled back to shorter lines and the PRC was given control over land conquered by the Soviets. The troops freed up were poured into Afghanistan to crush the uprising there and to bolster forces in Siberia, where a winter offensive to expel the Americans was planned.
In Europe, however, Case Ten was an unmitigated disaster.
The withdrawal was planned to reconcentrate Soviet forces along a line from the Danzig corridor to Istanbul. This would have doubled the concentration of Soviet troops along the line. In addition, the Allied troops would be exhausted by a rapid march forward and stretched wider. In theory, Case Ten would have allowed the Soviets to launch a devastating series of local offensives against the Allies, re-establishing an insurmountable advantage in manpower. Things went wrong, however, almost from the beginning.
Konev, in receipt of the Case Ten orders, was stunned. He had to pour three million soldiers on foot through a fifty-mile wide corridor, in the face of Allied airpower. He immediately began planning to make the best of the situation. Using American POWs as envoys, Konev informed Patton that he intended to move his troops out of Germany- along the entire width of Patton's northern salient. Patton was given an ultimatum- either withdraw to Danzig or face eight-to-one-odds.
Patton's reply was delivered by Allied cryptographers who broke into the Soviet communications frequencies.
"KONEV- GO SHIT IN YOUR HAT. REGARDS, GEN. GEORGE S. PATTON, JR."
Konev's reply was equally as eloquent. A rolling artillery barrage announced the beginning of the push east. Simultaneously, Soviet troops pulled out of their positions along the French lines and the North Sea coast, burning everything behind them. Konev was determined to leave nothing in Germany the Allies could use. As city after city fell under the torch, the French stepped up their pursuit and bombers raked the retreating columns unmercifully. The Soviets, demoralized by the constant destruction, retreat, and their own losses, finally broke. At Bremen, the commander of the 10th Army, formerly responsible for holding the Netherlands and the North Sea, announced that he would disobey the pillage order. Given a taste of disobedience, his soldiers stopped moving, and before long, Bremen was the center of a virtual civil war, Communist diehards battling mutineers. Many of the mutineers simply melted away, several thousand declaring for the Army of Russian Liberation once they were safely north. The panic and the strife spread quickly, as panicky NKVD officers liberally applied summary execution to speed the evacuation. Within a week, the western Soviet flank had completely collapsed. A lawless, uncontrolled mob, one million strong, was rushing straight at Konev's eastern front, pillaging, raping, and looting as it went. Behind the wave of destruction remained hundreds of thousands of stragglers- some destined for POW camps, others to wear the blue armband of the Army of Russian Liberation.
Konev's offensive failed miserably. Despite his heavy numeric superiority and the discipline that still held on his eastern front, his soldiers lacked the stomach to charge into Patton's lines, and fell back time and again. Patton was forced to give ground in many instances, but he was never truly in danger. Entire Soviet divisions on the southern tip of his salient simply abandoned their positions, marching through Dresden to the east.
On September 21st, the two Soviet columns met. The western flank troops slammed into Konev's eastern lines like a hurricane, looting supplies, disrupting movement, and spreading demoralization like a disease. Konved was forced to turn around his artillery and fire upon the advancing hordes, and soon his entire force was in a state of collapse. On September 27th, Konev gave in to the inevitable. Taking with him a core of disciplined troops, Konev fought his way through the mob, organizing a chokepoint at Dresden. Barely one in six of the Soviet troops in Germany marched through Konev's lines in order. Some remained behind, raising the flag of the Army of Russian Liberation and acting as local authorities. Many more simply turned to brigandage, and packs of Russian bandits were still being rooted out of Germany well into 1947.
In one month, the Russian military had lost three million men without facing any serious combat. The news was too massive to suppress, and soon the entire Soviet sphere was alive with rebellion. In the Ukraine, a Free Ukranian Army sprang up to match the ARL, and soon the Red Army was pulling back from the Crimea. Cossack units in the Don and Kuban joined the growing Caucasus rebellion. In the Balkans, the Soviets were unable to move their troops out- partisans blocked their advance. As the Soviets tried to push through, the Americans moved out of their lines, striking them hard along the rear. The Red Army's will to fight was gone. In a matter of weeks, the entire Balkan line had collapsed, and a million more Soviet soldiers had been lost.
On October 12th, Konev managed to cobble together new defensive lines, farther east than Case Ten had called for- roughly from Memel to Constanta. Instead of seven million men, he had four. In the vacuum he'd left behind, the Allies were delayed by the need to establish order. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania regained their independence. The new governments were weak and disorganized, and banditry by Soviet stragglers and local bullies remained a severe problem. The chaos prevented any Allied offensive- as a matter of fact, it was five months before Andrews could move battle-ready American troops up to the Case Ten lines.
As it turns out, he didn't have to.
October 1945- The End
With the Red Army in chaos, Stalin's rule teetered on the edge. While the newly reconcentrated Soviet forces scored significant successes against partisans in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the fire of rebellion seemed to spark up everywhere at once. In Finland, an uprising forced Soviet troops to retreat to the outskirts of Helsinki while Allied transports dropped supplies and arms to the partisans. The Cossack units, swelled by Red Army deserters, gained power in the Kuban, coordinating strikes with the RAF at Sevastopol. Ukrainian partisans took Odessa, and Royal Navy battleships guarded the city. The Siberian offensive never materialized, as troops refused to march east. Allied propaganda units were hard at work breaking into Soviet transmissions, dropping leaflets, and helping to coordinate the growing resistance.
It was starkly apparent that Allied airpower and technology sorely outclassed Soviet capabilities. American jet fighters destroyed entire air bases before interceptors could launch. American bombers, flying above the range of Soviet anti-aircraft guns, now ranged as far as Minsk and Leningrad. One air raid under the legendary Jimmy Doolittle dropped bombs on Moscow, destroying a troops barrack and shattering windows in the Kremlin itself. Once the Red Army refused to fight, the Soviet regime was doomed.
A small cabal of Soviet leaders, led by Lavrenti Beria of the NKVD, decided that the Soviet Union's only hope lay in removing Stalin and opening negotiations. Beria trusted very few outside his immediate circle, and the October 15 Plot was almost solely an NKVD affair. At 9:12 am, Joseph Stalin was killed by a suitcase bomb left by Beria. Beria himself immediately called for an emergency session of the Supreme Soviet, but was arrested by army troops loyal to Stalin.
Zhukov immediately left the Asian front, summoning top leaders of the Red Army to a summit in Stalingrad. There, he issued the Stalingrad Declaration on October 20, placing the Soviet Union under military rule. Despite some initial resistance, the collapse of the NKVD left Zhukov as the only legitimate leader. Zhukov announced an immediate cease-fire on all fronts, calling on the Allies to open negotiations.
The news of Stalin's assassination and the assumption of power by Zhukov caused widespread chaos. In several areas, the Red Army collapsed entirely. In Scandinavia, General Voroshilov announced a unilateral withdrawal, pulling out of Norwegian and Swedish territory, and then out of Finland. In Persia, General Tarasov's own troops killed him and then retreated north. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia declared independence, and Red Army deserters began marching to their homes. NKVD troops launched a revolt in Moscow itself, battling with Red Army troops in and around the Kremlin. In Siberia, General Galitskii declared for the Army of Russian Liberation and opened his borders to the American/Japanese force at Vladivostok. General MacArthur, riding in a special train, rode west to Okhotsk, brashly appearing at every stop to make speeches to locals.
Faced with the utter collapse of authority, Zhukov accepted the inevitable. On October 30, 1945, Zhukov surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The Soviet experiment- and World War II- had come to an end.
Epilogue
The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union caught the Allies unprepared. Stilwell hounded the Communist forces in China, not accepting the final surrender of Zhou Enlai until April 12, 1948. (While some historians call this the end of the Second World War, most accept the October 30, 1945 date.)
It soon became apparent that the world was horribly unstable. The French and British Empires had suffered mortal blows- France no longer had the strength to dictate to its colonies, and Britain had been forced to promise independence to India. The USSR, China, and to a lesser degree, Eastern Europe, were on the verge of anarchy. Konev and other Red Army leaders maintained small pockets of order, but were little more than warlords.
President Willkie had made George Marshall his Secretary of State, and on November 18, 1945, announced the Marshall Plan. In order to combat the rising tide of anarchy and rebuild the former Communist states, the United States announced a massive aid program. Over the next ten years, billions of dollars were spent on reconstruction of Europe, the USSR, and China.
Too much is radically different from our world for me to create a really convincing history of the last few decades right now. What stands out:
The re-emergence of stable Chinese and Russian democracy under American tutelage created a massive pool of cheap, skilled industrial labor. As a result, the American economy never became the industrial powerhouse of our world. America does remain the sole superpower- but based on a technological and computer revolution that occurred faster.
France and Britain took a somewhat slower route to decolonization, assisted by the removal of Communism as a guiding light and helping hand to nationalist movements. Also, without an external enemy to combat, America and France were much more eager to support democratic rule in Latin America. The Third World, while still poor, isn't the desperate place we know. Argentina, Brazil and Chile are world-class economic powers, and Uruguay serves as a sort of Latin American Singapore.
Pierre Laval left office in 1946, but served as the first Chair of the European Community's Presidency. He later became something of a recluse, emerging only for the inaugural session of the European Parliament in 1966. He died the next week.
Joseph Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Rumors of John Kennedy's infidelities prevented him from running, haunted by the ostracism of Roosevelt after the revelation of his affair. Robert Kennedy never became President, either, but won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for his work as Chair of the US Development Agency.
Radical Islam remains a problem for the world, as do the problems of global warming, environmental damage, and nuclear proliferation. But in this world- unscarred by a fifty-year Cold War, firmly under democratic rule, and where the divide between the rich and poor is smaller- there is a greater degree of optimism and hope.
As President Joe Kennedy said, "Ask not what the world can do for you- ask yourself, what I can do for this world?"
Stay tuned to learn more about the fates of your favorite characters.
*points to blackboard* As you can see here, the Soviet Union expelled several million German civilians after they overran Central Europe. Konrad Adenauer's Germany ratified peace treaties with the Allies (and with the new Russian Federation) which forever renounced all claims to Memel, the Sudetenland, Austria, and nearly all of Silesia. However, the Germans were slower to accept the expulsion of Germans from East Prussia and Danzig. After three years of negotiations and much behind-the-scenes bargaining, Germany and Poland reached the separate Prussian Accords. Poland was allowed to keep East Prussia and Danzig (although some adjustment of the borders with Lithuania and Belarus were made), as an autonomous area. Germany was granted some extraterritorial rights in the former East Prussia.
While we're discussing changes to the map, you may want to examine the Middle East here, to look at the Republic of Israel-Palestine. As you can see, the nation has been divided into a number of cantons on the Swiss model. Several European states, in the wake of the dark revelations about Nazi atrocities, have also taken care to ensure the civil rights of their Jewish minorities. France and her former pupil state of Italy have led the way, with model civil rights statutes that were widely copied, especially by the Ukraine, which along with Israel-Palestine and the United States is a major center of Judaism.
Civil rights- that reminds me. Joe Kennedy, like most of the war hero presidents to come (such as G.H.W. Bush, 1976, and Bob Dole, 1980), ran as a Republican. To pass his sweeping 1963 Civil Rights Act, Kennedy relied heavily on the support of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Senate Majority Leader. Johnson's ambitions for the presidency died in 1963, as the Democrats shattered on the rock of civil rights into northern and southern wings. In 1986, the split was finalized when the New Democrats (the liberal northern wing) merged with the Green Party. The southerners kept the Democratic name, forming a conservative populist party. The Republicans remain pro-business and pro-civil rights, largely because Southern Baptists never bolted the Democratic Party in this world. The Republicans and Democrats each hold approximately 45% of Congress, and the Greens a crucial 10%.
Over here, it hardly need be said, the US never withdrew from the Kyoto treaty.
Ho Chi Minh went back to college after the war and died peacefully in his sleep after his election as Leader of the Opposition in the Indochina Parliament. He was under consideration at the time for a Nobel Peace Prize, for his work in helping to devise the constitutional agreements that prevented the secession of Laos and Cambodia.
Kim Il Sung was arrested by the Republic of Korea and sentenced to ten years of hard labor for his postwar activities with the Communist Party. He was later rehabilitated, standing unsuccessfully for the Korean Congress several times. A month before he died, he was given Korea's highest military decoration for his resistance to the Japanese during the war. (His collaboration with the Soviets was largely forgotten by this point.)
Mikhail Gorbachev was a bank president.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a crusading newspaper editor, who became a minor international celebrity for his exposes of corruption in the Argentine government and his adamant opposition to the remnants of French influence. His flamboyant appearance and long hair shocked many, and he became a familiar face in America (via satellite television, he was sought after as a commentator).
Pierre Laval, as already mentioned, stepped down as President of France after ten exhausting years, and died in 1967. He left a personal fortune of nearly a billion dollars. A hundred million went to his family, and the remainder to the World Health Organization's vaccination campaigns. He was a softie at heart.
Colonel Jean Gaspard retired from military service in 1968, following a stint as adviser to Algeria's government during its 1960-64 war with Muslim fundamentalists and the foiling of an assassination plot against Egypt's President Nasser. (He had actually been promoted to General, but was prevented from revealing this for national security reasons.)
Jean Denel broke his morphine habit. His Communist past caused him some difficulty in finding a job at first, but there were more jobs than available men. He ended up marrying a piano teacher and becoming an elementary school principal.
Henri Bacquard ran for local office on the strength of his war record and won. He served two terms in the National Assembly before his election as Mayor of Lyons.
Otto Skorzeny served six years in Spandau Prison. Upon his release, he gave a couple of extremely polite newspaper interviews before disappearing. He later surfaced as an advisor to the government of Bolivia (which had the distinction of being the last Axis nation to surrender), and then disappeared again entirely in 1966. To this day, his final resting place remains a mystery.
Yamamoto was killed in action at the Battle of the Hokkaido Straits. His flagship Hiryu was swarmed by torpedo planes after Shooting Star jets took out his fighter screen.
Albert Einstein wrote the same letter to Al Landon that he did to Roosevelt in our timeline. The Manhattan Project fit nicely into Landon's modernization campaign- "I'd rather spend ten bucks and put one kid in harm's way than spend one and risk ten kids," he said famously. By the way, this demonstrates simultaneously Landon's great strength of plainspoken grit and his great weakness of tactless blurting.
The Manhattan Project was still two months from completion at war's end. While an atom bomb did go off at Trinity, and atom bombs were later tested by Great Britain, France, Russia, China, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Korea and Japan, no nation maintains more than a few dozen warheads- just enough to serve as a final deterrent. With the exceptions of India and Pakistan during the Kashmir Crisis of 1993, no nation has ever threatened the use of its nuclear option.
Einstein served for three years as head of the UN Atomic Energy Commission, but he had no head for politics. His suggestion of a World Atomic Authority that would supply nuclear power to UN member states never took off, and his Non-Proliferation Pact was gutted. He resigned in disgust and went back to Princeton.
As I stated previously, Israel-Palestine wasn't flooded with refugees as it was in our timeline. Also, the British held onto the area until 1954. As a result, there was enough time to build a workable consensus. The region is divided into thirty-two provinces with large degrees of autonomy. Jewish Israelis now make up about 55% of the population. By tradition, the Speaker of Parliament is Jewish and the President is Arab. There are extremists on both sides, but the majority of MPs and citizens lean heavily on those who would break the fragile peace.
Goering, Goebbels, and Eichmann were tried at the Rome Tribunal, although Goering committed suicide before sentencing. Goebbels, Eichmann, Bohrmann, and several other top-level Nazis were hung on December 10, 1946. Riefenstahl was tried and cleared, although she never managed to fully redeem her reputation. She still kept her love of adventure, taking up scuba diving in her 90s. She also attempted to join one of the European Union's special Arts Grant missions to the World Space Station, but was rejected after physical screening.
The world is definitely unstable. The US is the world's strongest power and the world's strongest economy, but in this world Russia had forty years less catch-up to do after Communism's fall. The end of empire came slower and easier, China's been a capitalist powerhouse for decades, and Latin America never had decades of disastrous military rule to recover from. There are several big power blocs- Russia, the Federal Republic of China, the Latin Trade Bloc, the European Union, the USA, the Arab League, the African Community... something big has got to happen soon.
What that is, no one will ever know.
