This is going to be the last segment of this scenario for a while. It takes the scenario to a not-particularly-satisfactory but probably inevitable conclusion. At some point I would like to address some of the questions I leave you with at the end of the scenario, but for now this is it.

What has happened so far: In this alternate history, due to a less than stellar Japanese performance on the first day of the war, Hitler decided not to declare war on the United States in December 1941. Circumstances and political necessity drew more and more US military power into the Pacific. That resulted, not unexpectedly, in an earlier Japanese defeat, but also in German advances considerably beyond the areas they were able to seize in our time-line. By mid-1944, Japan is essentially defeated, although Japanese holdouts continue to fight hopeless but deadly fights against the US and its allies. That fight is often a complicated multi-sided struggle, with Communist and non-Communist nationalist trying to take advantage of the fighting to win independence from colonial powers, sometimes fighting among themselves as well as with both the Japanese and the Allies.

The Roosevelt administration has a problem. It knows by now that an atomic bomb is possible. It doesn't have one yet, and won't for about a year, but it knows that one is possible given mid-1940s technology. Roosevelt has a great deal of respect for German science, but little knowledge of how far along the Germans are on making an atomic bomb. As a result, in mid-1944 Roosevelt desperately wants to take Hitler down before the Germans get the bomb. The British and Soviets aren't in a position to defeat the Soviets on their own, even with US Lend-Lease.

If the US doesn't get involved in the European part of the war soon, the US army will rapidly weaken as a war-weary populace sees the occupation of Japan as the end of the war and demands that Roosevelt "bring the boys home." With the 1944 election looming that is not something that Roosevelt will be able to resist, unless he can maneuver Hitler into attacking the United States. He makes some very aggressive moves in that direction, moving US forces into the path of any German advance in Iran, moving US naval forces close to the Baltic Sea, apparently in conjunction with a possible British invasion of Norway, and sending a heavily escorted convoy of US ships to resupply British-held Cyprus and northern Palestine.

Hitler wants no part of a war with the United States in late 1944. US naval and air power is overwhelmingly powerful, and Hitler has belated learned to respect the power of US mass-production. Hitler has little ability to hurt the United States directly, and the US can do a great deal to the Germans. At the same time, Roosevelt's actions make it very difficult for the Germans to avoid war.

What comes next: Hitler was not always the most rational of men, and the US moves threaten important German interests, not to mention the fact that not responding to them would mean a humiliating back down for the Germans. At the same time, Hitler is capable of biding his time. He did that in the last half of 1941 when the US aggressively aided the British in the North Atlantic.

The naval balance of power calculus makes fighting the US difficult. In our time-line, the US built 18 fleet aircraft carriers and 60 smaller but still potent escort carriers in 1942 and 1943, along with 5 battleships, over 20 cruisers, and over 200 destroyers (figures adapted from Nofi and Dunnigan Victory at Sea). In this time-line those figures should be about the same. The US has nearly 20 more fleet aircraft carriers either coming on-line in 1944 or in the pipeline for 1945, along with at least 44 more escort carriers. The Germans and Italians can't begin to match that power, and any attempt to do so would be disastrous.

Hitler is still rational enough not to take Roosevelt's bait. He decides to let the Cyprus convoy go through unmolested, while concentrating German air power and the limited amount of naval power he has on the rumored British invasion of Norway.

Roosevelt isn't quite through tweaking Hitler's nose. He has been quietly negotiating both with Vichy France and with Vichy French authorities in North Africa. Churchill has proposed that Britain would occupy North Africa, while the US guarantees the neutrality of Vichy France. If the Germans invade Vichy in response to a British invasion of North Africa, the US can move into Vichy in response to a Vichy call for help.

The French have to go along with that arrangement to some extent if it is going to work. They aren't happy with the increasingly demanding and permanent-seeming German rule, and at least some of them are tempted by the possibility of a way out. On the other hand, the French have a healthy respect for the power of the German army. They have no interest in exchanging even the limited autonomy they have for the kind of direct German rule that Poland and parts of the old Soviet Union are experiencing.

Roosevelt has to be careful, because in an election year getting too blatant could backfire. The Republican Party controls both the House and the Senate, and congress is getting increasingly assertive in their questioning of Roosevelt's aggressive stance toward Germany. The US has a powerful naval force operating in the Mediterranean, and that force does move into the Western Mediterranean near southern France, along with an amphibious assault force.

The increased British and US power in the Mediterranean does change the balance of power between Vichy and the Germans considerably. Vichy officials in North Africa become more assertive and more blatant about violating disarmament provisions of the armistice, forming unauthorized units and upgrading the increasingly obsolete equipment they are stuck with to the extent that the limited technical capability available in North Africa allows. The US supplies a limited amount of dual-use equipment such as trucks and radios, some of which ends up in the hands of the French military.

The Germans have a bit of a dilemma in North Africa. They can't let the French get too weak because that could invite the British or Free French in. At the same time they don't want to allow the French to have weapons that they may well eventually use against Germany. The result has been a series of compromises through 1943 and early 1944 that gradually bring somewhat more modern weapons to the French Army in North Africa, while also allowing that army to decline in relative combat power compared to the major powers.

The German authorized upgrades in French North Africa are small, primarily more modern small arms, and a few hundred slightly modernized Dewoitine fighters. French officials resent the decline in their power, and look enviously at British and Free French armies bulking up on US Lend Lease arms. Some French officers in both North Africa and Vichy France have been quietly sounding out the US on potential for Lend Lease and US protection if the French re-enter the war. They are impressed by the size of the US fleet and the way that fleet has apparently forced the Germans to back down over the Cyprus convoys. The Roosevelt Administration has quietly promised an extensive Lend-Lease-based rebuilding of the French North African army and/or the Vichy army if they re-enter the war on the Allied side.

In August 1944, Britain launches an invasion of French North Africa. Due to very good British disinformation efforts, Hitler sees the North African invasion as a secondary effort intended to draw German power away from an impending British invasion of Norway. He moves German and Italian forces from the hard-pressed Egyptian front to counter the British. French forces in North Africa switch sides after token resistance.

Hitler moves available mobile forces to the border with Vichy France and gives the French leadership a blunt warning: if they choose to do so the Germans can move into unoccupied France far faster and with much more power than the US or British can. If the Vichy regime makes any move to join the Allies or to invite the Allies in, the Germans will occupy the rest of France, and that occupation will not be gentle. The aging Petain has heard enough about the German occupation of Poland and the Soviet Union to know what that means and to fear it. The Vichy French government tells the US publicly that it will resist any Allied invasion, while privately pleading that any such invasion only be done if it likely to succeed and succeed quickly.

Hitler is torn about whether or not to occupy Vichy France. On the one hand he knows for sure now that the French will not fight an Allied invasion. That means that the southern coast of France is a vulnerable point for the Germans. On the other hand, the Germans have enough problems without adding the still formidable French navy to their list of enemies and occupying the rest of France would tie down security forces that are badly needed to cope with the increasingly bitter partisan warfare in the Soviet Union and increasingly in the German-occupied Middle East, where the Germans have quickly outworn their initial welcome among Arab nationalists.

The Germans are overstretched, and badly in need of time to consolidate their empire. The Germans demand airbases in Vichy France and control over the ports of southern France, but don't push too hard for that when the French procrastinate on that. Hitler is influenced to some extent by events on the French island of Corsica, where Italian pressure on the French for bases leads local Vichy officials to switch sides. The Italians invade with a motley fleet of motorized fishing vessels, and fight a little sideshow of a war with French forces on the island, reinforced by French North African forces.

Hitler's view, autumn of 1944: Hitler feels that unless the US enters the war he has won. He respects US industrial power, but he doesn't believe that the US has staying power as a major power. He is somewhat aware of the growing US public pressure to bring the troops home and go back to life as normal after the defeat of Japan. He feels that if he can avoid war with the United States through the US election in November 1944, Roosevelt will lose and the US may well revert to isolationism.

Hitler doesn't really want to be at war with either Britain or the US at this stage. He has his empire. Britain and the US will eventually be targets, but that's a matter for ten to fifteen years in the future. He doesn't really care much whether or not he's at war with the rump Soviet Union.

Roosevelt's view-autumn 1944: Roosevelt really wants to take Germany down soon because of the potential for German nuclear weapons. By autumn he has pretty much exhausted his bag of tricks though. The maneuvering has resulted in some Allied gains. Bringing French North Africa into the war is a major plus, though maneuvering between Free French and ex-Vichy French are driving both Churchill and Roosevelt to distraction. The convoys to Cyprus and Palestine have started to turn those areas into viable British bases against German supply lines.

On the downside, the US public is in the mood to celebrate the victory over Japan and then get back to life as normal. As 1944 goes on, questions are increasingly being raised in congress as to why Lend-Lease needs to continue, and why the US is maintaining an army much larger than it needs for the occupation of Japan and the containment of remaining pockets of Japanese hostiles.

If he can't provoke Hitler into attacking the United States, Roosevelt needs a fallback position that doesn't lead the US back to isolationism. That would be fatal to the British. Britain is no longer able financially to maintain a Great Power army or navy. Without Lend-Lease, the British would have little choice but to end the war on German terms.

As a fallback, the Roosevelt Administration looks at the possibility of a peace without victory over Germany. Hitler with atomic weapons is a nightmare. Hitler with atomic weapons dominating Britain and an isolationist US is an even bigger nightmare. Roosevelt looks for ways that the destinies of the US and Britain can be linked and peace, or more likely a truce of ten or fifteen years, with Hitler can be arranged. That isn't at all what Roosevelt wants, but he is realistic enough to know that it may be the best he can get given the political and military situation.

Where does this end? There is no chance for genuine peace between the Hitler and the rest of the world. There is a chance for a kind of truce followed by a cold war. As a matter of fact that looks almost inevitable if Hitler refuses to take Roosevelt's bait in the summer and fall of 1944. This scenario's Britain and Soviet Union can't realistically expect to defeat the Germans. The Germans can't realistically expect to defeat the British and Soviets. They don't have the naval or air power to invade Britain, and they have reached their limits in terms of ability to control territory in the Soviet Union and the Middle East.

I would say that some kind of 'peace treaty' would be cobbled together, though to be honest I find it hard to visualize given the hatreds and distrust from this war. A 'peace' might look something like this:

The British would probably demand and get a German withdrawal from most of France, the undeniably Polish areas of Poland, and at least the coastal areas of the low-countries. Germany would probably be willing to do that, though with provisions that would limit fortifications and armies in those areas. They would want the ability to go back in when they were ready. The Germans would probably be willing to have the Iran/Iraq border be the boundary between German and British influence in southern Iran. They would hang onto parts of northern Iran as their gateway to the Middle East.

The Germans would probably not be willing to give up much of the territory they conquered in the Soviet Union. That was the core of what Hitler was after. The Soviets might or might not be willing to accept that kind of an arrangement on a temporary basis in order to rebuild.

Roosevelt might try to arrange that some US troops were stationed in Britain to 'guarantee the peace' and make some provisions for the US to continue military aid to Britain. He would just about have to in order to keep Britain from folding economically.

In any case, whatever the details, we now have the setup for a cold war with Nazi Germany on one side and the US on the other, with the rump of the Soviet Union, the British, and the French playing roles of varing significance. How would all of this play out? Would the Germans settle into a Soviet-style long-term political/military competition with the US? How long would Hitler survive, and how would the Nazi regime evolve after he died? When would the Germans develop atomic weapons? When would the US finish its bomb? How would the technology race go? The Germans would start out with a more advanced technology base than the Soviets, but with much less ability to organize technological efforts. Would there be an earlier missile/space race? When would the Germans launch their 'Sputnik"? Would the war remain cold, or would it turn hot? Would the Nazi regime eventually do a Soviet-style collapse, or would it survive into the twenty-first century?