[Closed] Hypothetical books about the outcome of WW2 had Germany won

So you want a non-fiction book about a fictional scenario?

The biggest issue you'll have finding anything you can take seriously is that by 42 German high command was utterly nuts (by 44 it's utterly bat droppings) and things changed on a daily whim.

Until Barbarossa fails there's a bit of reasonable deduction to be done from what was happening already in Europe but even by 37-38 it's essentially an ego driven gangster state with relatively little direction beyond the whim of the leader and whomever he's surrounded by this week.

It's a bit like asking for Boris's plan for the UK in 2032.

Fatherland, Robert Harris, I would recommend if you are after fiction.

Making History, Stephen Fry, also sort of fits into your category.

Can anyone recommend any books (written from a historical point of view rather than ‘Man in the High Castle’ fiction) about what the outlook would have been had the Axis powers won the war and Nazi plans for occupied Europe.

Germany had lost the war in 1941. Just a matter of when it would of been beaten. You could easily argue, it was 1940, when the UK refused to enter peace talks.

The Len Deighton novel, SS-GB is a decent read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_Axis_victory_in_World_War_II

Quite a reasonable list of stuff here.

I’m not a big fan of counterfactuals but in the short term, you could look at what happened in the occupied territories to get a sense of the immediate impact. In France, where Hitler assessed more people (Jews aside) to be racially similar the occupation was ‘relatively’ benign (and I do mean relative here, there was still plenty of oppression and murder). In Poland, Ukraine, Belarus etc it was a very different story with mass murder and destruction the order of the day. The Nazis also played on local and national enmities to enlist the help of the indigenous populations in their campaign of mass murder.

An interesting question but really the main thing is we should be happy it’s hypothetical. I think Philip K Dick said the reason he didn’t write a sequel to High Castle is that he couldn’t face it.

Was recommended "Why the Germans do it better" the other day.

Obviously Germany lost, but that could be seen as one of the reasons they are where they are and Britain is a ****ing laughing stock.

So you want a non-fiction book about a fictional scenario?

You got it.

Yep a classic case of "build back better".

Germany had lost the war in 1941. Just a matter of when it would of been beaten. You could easily argue, it was 1940, when the UK refused to enter peace talks.

This is really the problem - there aren't any realistic scenarios where Germany and Japan could have won, the best they could have hoped for was a stalemate and peace treaty. Germany did not expect that invading Poland would trigger a larger war so they weren't actually prepared for an extended war. They didn't have the resources to launch an invasion of the UK so Britain's refusal to negotiate peace made victory impossible for Germany. Japan had no chance of defeating the U.S., they just hoped they would be able to create a defensive perimeter that would persuade the U.S. to sue for peace. The idea of launching an invasion of the U.S. mainland is preposterous.

Good analysis thols2 - in retrospect the whole thing was completely mad on the part of the axis powers. An object lesson in badly misreading the reaction of the opposing parties. Hitler never wanted anything but total victory, but the Japanese were genuinely shocked that the US wouldn’t entertain peace talks.

Obviously Germany lost, but that could be seen as one of the reasons they are where they are and Britain is a **** laughing stock.

Yeah, I've heard it said before that Britain (and the US) won the war, and Germany (and Japan) won the peace.

Agreed, thols has it nailed.

I think there might be a case for Germany defeating USSR - they got as far as what is now the inner ring road in Moscow and besieged Leningrad. If the USSR had been defeated, Nazi Germany would have been able to concentrate on the Western front. That would have made the invasion of Europe much harder but atomic bombs would still have meant the defeat of the Nazis in the end.

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze explains WW2 from an economic point of view. Even when things were going well for the Nazis they had serious economic problems. Once the productive capacity of the British Empire and USA came online they were doomed e.g. Rommel started losing in North Africa when Montgomery got large numbers of American trucks

I disagree Hols, it was by no means a forgone conclusion. Had Britain sued for peace in 1940 say, then Germany would have had plenty of time to regroup and Barbarossa could easily have been a success if the Germans could give it their undivided attention, and it came pretty close as it was. If all of the North African troops had been in the Caucases instead, or Stalingrad had fallen for example how long would the USSR have lasted? And then how long could the UK have lasted if the Germans came back west, only fighting on one front and with all the resources of Europe behind them? No way could the US take on Germany without the UK, even if they had the resources geography was against them.
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The Pacific is more complicated I think. If Britain had fallen after the USSR, say in 1944, what would have happened in India and Burma? If the Japanese had not dragged the US in but instead concentrated all their effort on China could they have won there and then gone on to India? Would the US have tried to stop them or tried to keep out of it all?
A world where Germany domintes Europe, Japan the far east and India and the US north America was perfectly possible.
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Even smaller things could have had a massive impact. Say Spain joined the axis and took Gibraltar. They would control (access to) the Mediterranean, the British would have struggled to get Middle Eastern oil and without access for the Royal Navy into the Mediterranean the Afrika Korps could ahve taken Suez, serverly hampering the British efforts in India and Burma for example.
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1943 onwards in reality it was probably just a matter of time but before then it could have gone either way.
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What if the British had agreed terms in 1940 and the Barbarossa had failed, as it did in reality? How far would Stalin have gone? He would certainly have annexed all of Germany. France? Would the UK be part of the USSR?

but atomic bombs would still have meant the defeat of the Nazis in the end

But the Germans were also close to having operational nuclear weapons too and, had they defeated the Russians and freed up more manpower to defend against the Allied bombing of facilities, they could have beaten the Allies in the race...

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze explains WW2 from an economic point of view. Even when things were going well for the Nazis they had serious economic problems. Once the productive capacity of the British Empire and USA came online they were doomed e.g. Rommel started losing in North Africa when Montgomery got large numbers of American trucks

We bought one of these 'realistic' WW2 tabletop war games for my son a couple of Christmases ago. It was great, but we never found a scenario in which America didn't just roll over everyone else. We even tried an alliance of every other power to defeat them.

 atomic bombs would still have meant the defeat of the Nazis in the end.

They just weren't the threat then that they are now. By the end of the war the US had three, and used two of them.
You could not flatten an entire continent in twenty minutes like you can now. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was psychologically very effective but in terms of destruction not that dissimilar to the conventional attack on Dresden.

No way could the US take on Germany without the UK, even if they had the resources geography was against them.

This is what I mean by a stalemate. The U.S. would have imposed a submarine blockade on Germany. By 1950 at the latest, they would have been able to deliver nuclear bombs to Europe. Germany might have been able to last a few years longer, but the U.S. industrial capacity was massively larger and the U.S. would not have capitulated.

If the Japanese had not dragged the US in but instead concentrated all their effort on China could they have won there and then gone on to India?

Japan attacked the U.S. because the U.S. imposed economic embargoes on Japan because of the invasion of China. Japan either had to withdraw from China or go to war. Japan could not have invaded the rest of Asia with U.S. embargoes in place. Japan's refusal to withdraw from China made the U.S. entry into the war inevitable and Japan had a fraction of the industrial capacity of the U.S. so it was just a matter of time before Japan lost.

the Germans were also close to having operational nuclear weapons too

The Germans did not have a nuclear weapons program. They did some preliminary studies but didn't proceed.

Second vote for Fatherland, Robert Harris. Love the way reality is revealed, and how the world is working, whilst keeping a cool focused story in the middle.

They just weren’t the threat then that they are now. By the end of the war the US had three, and used two of them.

The U.S. had the capacity to produce three bombs per month in 1945. Germany would have been reduced to a wasteland.

The Germans did not have a nuclear weapons program.

I stand corrected - I could have sworn I read about it being so as part of the V Programme which was why they bombed the Peenemunde V base as they had a large contingent of scientists there (as well as the conventional weapons).

But why would Britain sue for peace? (I know Halifax and others were keen on the idea, but I don’t think that means it was ever realistic). Britain was not alone (in spite of Churchill’s rhetoric). It had Canada, Australia, India, the West Indies, New Zealand and others all prepared to lend resources and manpower. It had the most powerful navy in the world. Once all this got into gear and cranked up its game over.

This is what I mean by a stalemate. The U.S. would have imposed a submarine blockade on Germany. By 1950 at the latest, they would have been able to deliver nuclear bombs to Europe. Germany might have been able to last a few years longer, but the U.S. industrial capacity was massively larger and the U.S. would not have capitulated.

But why?
By which I mean, why would the US want to get involved? If the USSR and Britain had fallen why would the US go to war with Germany? The German empire would pose little direct threat to the US so why do it? It would probably have ended up more like the US/Soviet cold War did in real life

Pretty good info on German nuclear efforts here:
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/german-atomic-bomb-project

it was by no means a forgone conclusion. Had Britain sued for peace in 1940 say,

It was a forgone conclusion when Britain and the Empire didn't sue for peace.

Even if they had defeated the USSR, which was unlikely, they would never of been in a position to invade the UK. Operation Sealion was a fantasy.

Germany's lack of seapower, particularly when compared to the combined USA and UK fleets, meant it was never going to win.

By which I mean, why would the US want to get involved?

The U.S. was already supplying the U.K. with weapons. U.S. public opinion was already moving towards support of Britain. It was really a matter of when, not if. The U.S. would have taken over British territories around the world if Britain had actually capitulated, they would not have stood back and let Germany just march in. There really was no way that Germany and Japan could have actually won. Their only hope was to not provoke the U.S. to enter the war, but that would have required Japan to abandon its imperial ambitions.

The U.S. would have taken over British territories around the world if Britain had actually capitulated, they would not have stood back and let Germany just march in. 

But could they? Australia for example was already an ally, I can see them joining up. Canada, yes them too, makes sense. India? If the Japanese didn't invade then the collapse of the British empire would be their big chance for independence, no way would that become part of an American empire instead.

I seem to recall there was an Indian National Army, formed from prisoners captured by the Japanese. Basically they were promised independence if they fought against the British. Suffice to say it didn’t end well for them.

I meant places like Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. In particular, the U.S. would not have let Germany just take over the Middle East.