Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II

Helen White stated that a hypothetical world in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War is a harsher and grimmer place to live in than the real world, where Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers lost the War in 1945.[8] Speculative literature about hypothetical military victories by the Axis Powers have generally been English-language literary work from the British Commonwealth and the United States as such protagonists tend to experience events from the perspective of military defeat and foreign military occupation.[9]

The literary tone of alternative history fiction presents the military victory of the Axis Powers as a melancholy background against which the reader sees the unfolding of political plots in a socially strained atmosphere of foreign occupation and socio-economic domination.[1]

The Ultimate Solution (1973), by Eric Norden, shows the Nazified people and the society of the United States as a morally hopeless nation and state; a state of affairs that concludes with a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The social story of SS-GB (1978), by Len Deighton, concludes with a US commando raid into Nazi occupied Great Britain, to rescue British nuclear scientists, while the British Resistance remains hopeful of eventual military liberation by the United States. In Clash of Eagles (1990), by Leo Rutman, the people of New York City rebel against the Nazi occupation of the US.

Some depictions focus on Nazism's contradictions, suggesting that even with military triumph, the system would eventually start to collapse under its own weight. In Fatherland (1992), by Robert Harris, the Greater German Reich faces economic crisis, forcing Hitler to pursue rapprochement with the US; at the story's conclusion, the protagonists thwart this effort by exposing the Holocaust to the American people. Harry Turtledove's In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003) presents the Nazi world two generations after their victory in WWII, in a time and place that allowed political liberalization and democratization.[10] The Hearts of Iron IV mod The New Order: Last Days of Europe shows the Reich declining thanks to economic stagnation and hostile relations with its former allies.[11]

The novel Swastika Night (1937) presents the post-war world born from the victory of the Axis Powers: A dictatorship characterized by much "violence and mindlessness" which are justified by "irrationality and superstition".[3] Published two years before Nazi Germany began the Second World War in 1939, Swastika Night is a work of future history and not a work of alternative history. The book reviewer, Darragh McManus, said that although the story and plot of the novel are “a huge leap of imagination, Swastika Night posits a terrifyingly coherent and plausible [world]”, that “considering when it was published, and how little of what we know of the Nazi regime today was then understood, the novel is eerily prophetic and perceptive about the nature of Nazism”.

The short story, I, James Blunt (1941), is a work of wartime propaganda set in a fictional September 1944 when Great Britain is under Nazi rule. The story is told through the entries of a diary, which describe the social and economic consequences of military occupation such as British workers sent to the shipyards of Nazi Germany and Scotland to build warships to attack the U.S. The novel concludes with the diarist exhorting the reader to ensure that the story of the Nazi occupation of Great Britain remains fiction.[12]

The novel We, Adolf I (1945) presents a Nazi victory in the Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942 – February 2, 1943) which allowed Hitler to crown himself emperor of the world. In Berlin, the Nazis build an imperial palace featuring architectural elements of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. In the course of the story, the despot Hitler enters a dynastic marriage with the Japanese Imperial princess in an effort to produce a Fascist heir to rule the world after Hitler.[1]

The Last Jew: A Novel (Ha-Yehudi Ha'Aharon, 1946) tells the future history of a Nazi world ruled by the League of Dictators, wherein the last Jew to survive the Final Solution is discovered hiding in Madagascar. The League of Dictators plan the public execution of the last Jew as entertainment during the Olympic Games. Before they can realize the spectacular death of the last Jew, the Moon's excessive proximity to Earth, a negative consequence of Nazi lunar colonization, provokes a catastrophe that extinguishes life on planet Earth.[13] The novel should not be confused with Yoram Kaniuk's novel The Last Jew, which has been translated to English.[14]

The stage play Peace in Our Time (1947), by Noel Coward explores the nature of fascist rule in London and examines the deleterious effects of military occupation upon the mental health of the common man and the common woman. As a playwright, Coward was included in the Gestapo's Black Book of enemies-of-the-state to be arrested upon completion of Operation Sea Lion, the Nazi conquest of Great Britain.[4]

The novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) presents an Axis victory after Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated in 1933 and the United States is divided between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.[1]

Additional notable depictions of Axis victory include:

Counterfactual scenarios are also written as a form of academic paper rather than necessarily as fiction and/or novel-length fiction:

• What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been contains "How Hitler Could Have Won the War" by John Keegan.
• Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, edited by Niall Ferguson, contains "Hitler's England: What if Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940?" by Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson, plus "Nazi Europe: What if Nazi Germany had defeated the Soviet Union?" by Michael Burleigh.

In the All About History Bookazine series, What if...Book of Alternate History (2019): Among the articles are What if...Germany had won the Battle of Britain? and What if...The Allies had lost the Battle of the Atlantic?

• It Happened Here (1966), a British film directed by Kevin Brownlow[15]
• Philadelphia Experiment II (1993)
• Fatherland (1994), based on the 1992 novel
• Jackboots on Whitehall (2010)
• Resistance (2011)

• The Other Man (1964)
• Star Trek: The Original Series: "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967)
• An Englishman's Castle (1978)
• Darkroom: "Stay Tuned, We'll Be Right Back" (1981)
• Justice League: "The Savage Time" (2002)
• Star Trek: Enterprise: "Zero Hour"/"Storm Front" (2004)
• Misfits: Season 3, Episode 4 (2011)
• Danger 5:, Season 2, Episode 7 "Welcome to Hitlerland" (2015)
• The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019), an Amazon Studios series based on the 1962 novel
• SS-GB (2017), a BBC miniseries based on the 1978 novel
• "Crisis on Earth-X" (2017), four-part Arrowverse crossover event between Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow
• The Plot Against America (2020), an HBO miniseries based on 2004 novel

• "Blitzkrieg 1972", issue 155 of The Incredible Hulk (September 1972), takes place in a battle-torn New York City, where German Nazi forces, from their headquarters on Wall Street, are increasingly defeating the outnumbered US Army forces desperately defending the city—until the Hulk comes to take a hand in the fighting and confront the super-Nazi Captain Axis.
• In DC Comics, Earth X is an alternative Earth in which the Nazis won World War II.
• In the 2003–2004 Captain America story arc Cap Lives (Captain America Vol. 4, issues 17-20), Captain America awakens from suspended animation in 1964 to find that—due to a temporal anomaly—Nazi Germany has won WWII and conquered much of the world, including the United States. After dropping a nuclear bomb on the US, Nazi Germany took control of North America, renaming New York City as "New Berlin" and declaring it the capital of Nazi America. The Red Skull has become the Führer of the so-called "New Reich" and seeks to create an army of blonde, Aryan supermen or super soldiers based on Captain America's DNA. Alongside American resistance fighters that include Bucky Barnes, Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos, Peter Parker, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, Sue Storm, Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, Tony Stark, Donald Blake, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, Frank Castle, and Stephen Strange, Captain America fights against the New Reich and succeeds in returning to the timeline in which he is originally meant to be.[16][17]
• An alternate reality (designated as Earth 9907) in which the Red Skull survived and assumed leadership of the failing Third Reich, leading it into total world domination, also appears in the A-Next comic series by Marvel Comics.[18]

• Rocket Ranger (as a background story/alternate reality) by Cinemaware (1988)
• Battlestations: Pacific by Eidos Interactive (2009)
• Wolfenstein: The New Order by MachineGames (2014)
• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood by MachineGames (2015)
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus by MachineGames (2017)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood by MachineGames (2019)
• Hearts of Iron IV (2016) allows players to play out a possible Axis victory. Several mods exist set in hypothetical Axis victory scenarios, including The New Order: Last Days of Europe, where the victorious Axis split apart leading to a three-sided cold war between Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and a resurgent United States.
• Among the many alternate history timelines featured in the GURPS role-playing game Infinite Worlds is the highly dangerous timeline known as Reich-5, the worst of several Nazi-victorious alternate histories.