History would remain the same as in our timeline up until November 1st of 1941, when Axis forces accomplished the objective of operation Typhoon, and seized the city of Moscow. The attempted soviet counter offensive was ineffective and poorly organized, leading to massive casualties and the inevitable capture of the city. The Soviet high command had evacuated the city days before, the loss sent shock waves across the Soviet Union. On November 7th, Leningrad would surrender to it's besiegers. By December 1st, the port city of Rostov had been seized in the Ukraine. Between the months of November and January, it is estimated that close to nearly 1 million soviet soldiers surrendered to the ever approaching axis advance. What remained of the shattered and broken soviet military escaped towards to Ural mountains and beyond, with Stalin and the politburo intent on fighting a prolonged war of attrition in the unforgiving terrain of the far east. Following the final months of 41 and their disastrous retreat eastward, soviet tactics would become progressively desperate and extreme: Children as young as 12 would be conscripted and fielded as front line soldiers, mass murder of civilians who could provide aide to the approaching axis advance, the sending out of typhoid infected soldiers to be captured by axis forces in order to spread disease from behind enemy lines, etc. The axis advance into the Soviet union would stop in July of 1942, just short of the Ural mountains where the remnants ( the most desperate and fanatical ) of the Soviet military and high command lie in fortified positions - unable to mount any kind of counter attack, and only capable of a desperate defense. On July 27th, 1942, Adolph Hitler would declare V-E day: victory in the East. With the Soviet Union rendered all but completely incapable of any counter attack, the Axis forces of Europe would now be able to put to use Russia's mass of raw materials to power a reinvigorated war machine and shift their gaze back westward. Throughout the rest of 1942 and early 1943, the European Axis powers ( namely the German Reich ) would begin rebuilding the massive industry of Russia, and plundering her lands for resources to furnish the largest arms build up the world had ever seen. Millions of troops would be moved out of former soviet territory back to the west where they would prepare for the re-invasion of Africa, and the 2nd battle of Britain. April 7th of 1943, the German Luftwaffe ( and assorted axis allies ) would begin an air campaign three times the size of had been used two years ago. American and British Air power would be completely overwhelmed within a matter of weeks, leaving total domination of the skies for the axis. On April 11th, In the city of Tunis, the final Nazi/Italian holdout on the continent, nearly 60,000 troops would be dropped off for reinforcement against American advance, seizing any movement across the front permanently. In addition to the reinforcements sent to Tunis, a total of 120,00 troops would make amphibious landings along the coastline of Libya, Algeria, and Western Egypt. On April 30th, German paratroopers would make landfall near the port of Dover, quickly seizing the city and opening up a port for further reinforcement. The Royal navy, though having easily outmatched the Kriegsmarine a few years ago, now found itself matched by the reinvigorated axis war machine and it's ability to turn out copious amounts of screening vessels and endless waves of aircraft. Within a matter of two weeks, 27,000 Germans; 3,000 Italians; and 800 Hungarians were in the South of England, fighting a tooth and nail battle north, towards London and beyond.
In the Far East, with the British and Americans fighting a reinvigorated German onslaught in Britain and Africa, the Japanese Empire and her allies would waste little time reorganizing their forces following a series of embarrassing and costly defeats to Americans. With the American navy distracted in the Atlantic, the Imperial navy would reestablish control of it's supply lanes in the South Pacific and vigorously reinforce their positions - providing fresh troops, weapons, supplies, and equipment to establish better fortifications. With some breathing room now until the next series of island invasions, commanders in Tokyo, at the behest of pacific veterans, began rewriting their doctrine of combat against the Americans - who had thus far proven superior to their own defending island garrisons. In Burma, with the Home islands now completely wrapped up in their own defense, the commonwealth defenders would slowly be worn down through attrition by the invigorated Imperial advance. Indian and Anzac troops would defend valiantly every inch of ground lost - but to no avail. By August of 1943, Burma would be completely occupied by Japanese and Thai forces. In China, without the assistance of Soviet and American supplies, the KMT and PRC would suffer of series of rapid defeats in several short offensives by the Japanese and their Chinese collaborators. Despite these series of defeats though, the Japanese and their allied forces were unable to make significant advances into the Chinese interior - on account of strained manpower ( a significant amount of new reinforcements were being sent to the south Pacific and the new Indian front at this time ). The Chinese forces were able to recover from these defeats and reorganize, though the Japanese had managed to secure for them selves a more desirable position across the country, making future Chinese offensives far more costly. In October of 1943, the Japanese and Thai military would begin their offensive into the Eastern half of the Indian subcontinent. Though commonwealth forces had prepared border defenses weeks in advance, a sudden revolt among nationalists who sympathized with the Japanese would cause chaos deep behind allied lines, allowing the Japanese to plow hundreds of miles into the India with relatively light losses. In November of 1943, in the city of Calcutta, India would be established by axis-aligned nationalists and would act as the contesting state for dominance in India. A reorganized and consolidated defense of commonwealth troops would stop the Japanese and nationalist advance around the province of Faizabad. It would be along this line that a protracted and bloody war of attrition would be fought for over the next year and a half.
Meanwhile, between the months of April and November, back in the British Isles, the number of Axis troops by August of that year numbered nearly 100,000. The whole of Southern England had been taken with the exception of London, whose defenders continued to hold out staunchly against daily and nightly raids from the land and air. Despite total dominance in the air and generally superior ground forces, the Germans suffered casualties at a ratio of 3 to 1 against the retreating allied forces. Unlike their advance into the Soviet Union and France, the American, British, and various other allied armies trapped in Britain seldom ever surrendered - choosing most often to defend to the very last man, or retreating to more advantageous positions in order to fight another day. Occupation of England was also proving to be a difficult situation for Wehrmacht and axis forces. The Anglo-Saxon populace was not nearly as foreign to the German occupiers as the Poles or Russians had been, and were generally viewed much more kindly. A collaborationist movement led by members of Oswald Mosley's former BUF ( Mosley himself still lie imprisoned in London during this time ) would assist in the Axis effort of occupation. On the opposite end of the spectrum. Fearsome guerilla fighters would sabotage German and Italian operations on a near hourly basis. Being alone meant almost certain death. The constant sabotage and assassination made any operation against the allied defenders excruciatingly difficult and drawn out.
For the next year and a half, Axis troops would fight a tooth and nail battle to reclaim territory that had been lost only a few months ago. Axis armor and air power were much more effective here in the open sandy terrain of the Mediterranean coasts then in the cluttered forests and fields of England. The allied armies were being led and largely bolstered by American army units. Though the allies were numerically superior to the axis forces, superior firepower and equipment fielded by the ever more advanced Wehrmacht would be the deciding factor in most battles. Tactical and thought out retreats to advantageous positions by allied commanders would ensure that no mass route across the front ever ensued - prolonging the African campaign for months, and allowing for an almost even number of casualties on both sides.
On February 4th, 1944, the Swastika would be flown over what remained of Buckingham palace, acknowledging the final fall of London - the British Commander died in combat, choosing death over surrender. The battle took four months and resulted in over 800,000 dead on both sides, making it the bloodiest battle of the war, and the second bloodiest battle in human history ( beaten only by the battle of the Somme ). Despite the vapid cries of near defiance by his generals, Adolph Hitler demanded that the city be taken by force. A force of over 1,000,000 axis soldiers descended upon a defending force of 210,000. The fighting would be brutal and grueling. German armor superiority would be rendered completely null in the winding turning alleys and streets of London, forcing a close quarters infantry fight across the massive city. fighting over certain districts and Burroughs in the city became so bloody that Axis commanders would pull back and refuse to move forward without air support. After three months of excruciatingly slow and bloody door to door fighting, Hitler finally allowed the Luftwaffe to deploy their experimental jet aircraft upon the city in order to level every single district to the ground. The bombing campaign would last only a week, but the Luftwaffe's new jet air planes would manage to level as much as 70% of the city, killing untold tens of thousands. Even despite this near total destruction of the city, fighting would continue on for weeks, as the last of the British defenders would be driven from the rubble and railways which lie below the city. In the final days of the battle, nearly every prisoner which had been housed in the tower of London would be executed by the Home Guard, including noted Nazi sympathizer Oswald Mosley. So terrible were the losses at London that the intended invasion of Scotland and Northern Ireland ( operation drain pipe ) would be halted until sufficient reinforcements could be sent in - something which would wind up never occurring.
With Japanese forces spread thin and locked in their stalemated positions across East Asia, the United States would attempt several amphibious invasions throughout the south pacific in order to better secure their supply route with Australia and New Zealand, between the months of March and April, 1944. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would be stunned when not a single one of their attempted landings managed to move past the beach head ( with some landing parties not even reaching that far before being wiped out entirely by defenders ). Marine landing parties found themselves caught off guard by a better fortified, equipped, and more tactically adept enemy than what they had fought two years ago. The bloody failures across the south Pacific would drive the American's back to what remained of their holdings in the East Pacific, where they would not leave for the rest of the war.
Meanwhile, among the Japanese High Command, the thwarted invasion of the South Pacific, though proof of their of their martial adaptability, had sent worrying shock waves across their military ( specifically the navy ). With the mainland being a complete stalemate, and the home islands having an increasingly difficult time finding males to conscript ( by this point, as much as 47% of the fighting male population had been made casualties by the war ) into the military, the idea of the Americans opening up a new front in Pacific sent commanders into fits! Famed admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto, master mind of the Pearl Harbor attack, proposed an invasion of Hawaii by 1945, in order to ensure the American's possessed no foothold in order to open up another front in the Pacific. His proposal would be accepted by Japanese high command, and the mustering for the largest invasion force since the 2nd battle of Britain would begin.
Come January of 1945, with still an inadequate amount of reinforcements arriving from across Europe into Britain to replace the disgustingly high losses at London, British, American, and other allied armies took the initiative and begun a counter attack southward, on the still reeling Axis forces.
Some time, in late of January of 1945, having seemingly been the culmination of months of ever growing partisan activity as a result of ever increasing withdraws of occupying forces from the east, once small and sporadic revolts on the behalf of partisan groups in the former Soviet Union, Poland, and the occupied Balkans, began gaining stunning momentum. For years, the Third Reich ( and the whole European Axis to a lesser extent ) maintained a death grip upon the resource rich lands of Poland and the former Soviet Union. In addition to the moving in of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans into traditionally Slavic lands, Slavs across Eastern Europe would be force through the most inhuman conditions imaginable - with nearly every crime against humanity being suffered upon them ( from slavery to genocide ). After years of inhuman torture, slavery, and occupation, the Slavic partisan groups of Europe finally began seeing their opportunity for self liberation when more and more forces had to be pulled from the East back towards the West. By January of 1945, whole swaths of Poland, the Former Soviet Union, and the Balkans, were now openly in rebellion and claimed by a variety of partisan groups. Occupying forces would be evenly matched at first with the unorganized rebel groups - but with no reinforcements coming from the west and having to cover tens of thousands of square miles in territory, all but the most well fortified and skilled of army groups would be overwhelmed and brutally savaged by the vengeful Slavic uprisers.
The partisan uprisings among the Slavic populations of their eastern territory had been of little concern to the German High Staff until it began deeply affecting their war machine in early 1945. In addition to losses in massive amounts industrial complexes and mineral extraction projects, hundreds of thousands of soldiers would be left stranded thousands of miles behind enemy lines. With the possibility of losing the East, and in turn, the resources which power the Axis war machine, Axis nations were forced to begin pulling already strained troops from the west back into the East, in order to try and quell the uprisings. With allied forces laying siege to the city of York in England, and a general Axis retreat across the island, the vast majority of reinforcements were taken from the more stable North African front - a place were already previously the axis had been outnumbered. Now fighting on three fronts across two continents, the Axis was finally beginning to feel the strain of maintaining their massive empire. On February 22nd of 1945, in an attempt to try and reverse the recent tide of retreats across the west - more specifically the British Isles - German high command approved of the use of an atomic weapon on the recently lost city of York. The bomb killed 60,000 allied soldiers, and over 90,000 civilians, halting the allied advance southward entirely, and shocking the entire world. The Third Reich had used the first atom bomb ever to destroy the city of York. The second use of atomic weapons, however, would be used against them.
Unbeknownst to the Axis, by the time of the atomic bombing of York, the American military had also developed it's very own atomic weapon in secret. With the destruction of York and the reeling defeats in the pacific, the American government was desperate for a win against the axis, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were convinced that the atom bomb was key to this victory. On April 1st, 1945, the Axis HQ for the North African front, and central supply hub, the city of Tunis, would be destroyed by American atom bomb, dropped early in the morning. Killed in the bombing was field Marshal of the front, Erwin Rommel. On that same day, with Axis forces across Africa left in a state of shock, allied forces would begin a massive counter attack from all directions, seizing upon the disoriented Axis armies. The results would be immediate and clear, as without direction or support coming in from Tunis, Axis commanders across the front would panic and almost universally call for unorganized routes.
The majority of reinforcements coming in from Africa would arrive some time in late April, and would prove to few too late. Most Axis holdouts ( with several notable exceptions ) had been wiped out by the now entrenched partisan forces - nearly 100,000 soldiers and 62,000 civilians estimated to have been killed across the former Soviet Union alone. The partisan forces had by this time more rigidly organized their command structures, and furbished themselves to the supplies left behind by defeated Axis occupiers. The numerically inferior axis forces found themselves unable to recapture any significant lands in the east, managing only to halt any advance of rebels westward. In addition to their staunch defense, the partisan groups typically lacked any unifying factor among them, with numerous groups operating based upon conflicting ethnic, religiJous, ideological, and geo-political ideas ( The surviving Soviet government in Siberia was still too shattered at this point to capitalize upon this chaos ). With their stores of resources now running lower and lower by the day, Axis nations began research into even more radical and unconventional ideas in order to win the war with the allies as soon as possible - before they ran out of material completely, and would be forced from exhaustion to give up.
On July 8th, 1945, the Japanese invasion force would be first sighted off the island of Niihau, seizing both it and the island of Kauai via paratrooper landing within less than 6 hours. With 13 battleships, 6 aircraft carriers, 23 cruisers, 36 destroyers, and 41 submarines, ferrying a total of 90,000 marines, this would be the largest single invasion force in human history. The American military, aware that local forces were woefully unprepared to repel such an enormous force, and that losing Hawaii would mean defeat in the Pacific, approved of the use of the a last remaining atomic bomb in their arsenal. halfway between the islands of Kauai and Ohau, the Japanese fleet would be completely destroyed by an atomic bomb. Along the over 110,000 regular soldiers, Admiral. Yamamoto would also sink to the bottom of the pacific. With the catastrophic loss of their south pacific fleet, over eleven divisions worth of troops, and their most famed commander, Japanese advances in the pacific would be stalled for the remainder of the war. Likewise, with the ever intensifying situation in Europe and Africa, the Americans would make no further moves in the pacific for the rest of the war.
What remained of the city of Tunis would be seized on December 11th, 1945, when American Gen. Patton accepted the surrender of malnourished and atrophied German and Italian defenders. With the fall of Tunis, the last major axis city in Africa had fallen, and with the exception of few holdout divisions located in Algerian/Tunisian mountains and the Libyan interior, the allies reigned supreme in Africa once more. With approval from allied Supreme Command, Gen. Patton would begin preparations for operation Dragon - a.k.a, the invasion of Sicily.
General. Walther von Brauchitsch would be executed by the order of Adolph Hitler on February 2nd, 1946, for refusing to allow the atomic bombing Edinburgh on the grounds that the nuclear fallout of come back and affect his own troops. The execution had come as a shock throughout the entire military command - for the hero of Barbarossa Brauchitsch to be executed was nothing short of a monumental betrayal of trust between Adolph Hitler and much of his more conservative military staff. Despite the execution, the atomic bombing would never be carried out anyway, what with more trusted generals convincing the Fuhrer that destroying Edinburgh would have been more burden than boon for their beleaguered forces in Britain. The decision to not actually would quickly prove advantageous for the Axis, because by March 19th, Operation dragon commenced across Sicily. 50,000 Americans and 10,000 allied troops would make landfall at three separate locations across Sicily. All on the same day. With German and Italian forces already spread thin across two fronts are stranded deep behind enemy lines, it became obvious they would not be able to repel the invasion by conventional means in time. Without consulting Rome, the German High Command would detonate their final atomic bomb on the main beach which was the thought to be spearhead of the operation - completely annihilating the invading force and quickly sending the other two segments back to Africa in full retreat. Though the invasion was prevented, the government in Rome was beyond furious for the use of atomic weapons on it's soil without having first been consulted! Despite the outrage in Rome, neither the Hitler, the party, nor the military ever offered apology or remorse for the decision. In disgust over the on consulted bombing, and the ever more grim state of the ongoing war, Italy would officially pull itself out of the Axis alliance on July 4th of that year, and would declare itself a neutral state on July 11th.
Adolph Hitler, upon hearing of Italy's departure from the war was furious! Declaring to those close to him and in his staff that Italy had stabbed the axis in the back, and were the most vile traitors in the civilized world! As terrible and deceitful as any jew or bolshevik. Hitler would demand his commanders to begin drawing up plans for an invasion of Italy. Not since the attempted bombing of Edinburgh had the military high command expressed such total rejection and dissent to Hitler's demands - stating that the Wehrmacht had neither the manpower, nor the resources to carryout such an operation. Hitler was adamant however, demanding that the preparations be made and carried out as soon as possible.
Throughout out the later half of 1946, fighting across mainland china took upon whole new levels of violence and depravity. 10 years of unending war and nearly the entire male population of China being taken from the workforce has driven the country into the worst famine experience within living memory, with tens of millions starving to death across the continent. On the verge of total collapse, the independent armies of China would mount massive desperate offensives across the entire Japanese line. For the next 6 month, undermanned Japanese lines would have to brave daily and nightly attacks consisting of massive human wave charges ( the largest recording estimated at being 19,000 ), massed artillery and motor barrages, and massed suicide attacks. The superior weaponry and defensive positions of the imperial army - combined with the inferior weapons, organization, and physical condition of the Chinese forces, would allow for Japanese kill ratios of 7 to 1. Even still, defenders would often run out of bullets before the attackers ran out of manpower, forcing brutal melee confrontations which would almost always end in whole sale slaughter of the defending forces. So terrible and furious was the massed assault that the Imperial Air Force was forced to drop anthrax bombs upon not only enemy armies, but even on friendly positions being overrun by the enemy. Numerous radical and extreme measures would taken by the Imperial military during this onslaught to ensure that they were not drive completely off the mainland. This massed assault would end by December of that year, and if the lowest estimates are true, then this offensive was the single bloodiest military operation in human history. With a death toll ranging from 5 - 9 million. The end result of this assault, which would be dubbed the Diyu ( Hell ) offensive, would be inconclusive. Nearly only Imperial army positions across mainland China would be completely overrun, but territory of friendly collaborationist puppet states would still remain and house imperial survivors of the Diyu offensive. The Chinese nation, and even it's very landscape would be shattered. Ancient forests were completely torn apart by massed bombardments, plains set ablaze by roaring infernos, ancient cities reduced to rubble and corpses, rivers turned to poison with corpses and biological/chemical agents. In most places, there were 20 women for ever individual man. The Imperial Army was now finally broken as well, with as much as 65% of their remaining forces having been killed or wounded during the offensive. Tokyo would order a general withdrawal of all remaining troops in Asia back to the home islands, to be completed no later than 1948. In their stead, local allied armies would take up the fight and continue the war against the Empire's enemies.
On December 15th, 1947, having stalled the Fuhrer for five months with fake plans and imaginary troop formations, the generals of the Wehrmacht high command would murder the Fuhrer in his redoubt home; an assassin posing as an aide would stab the Fuhrer dead in his sleep before escaping. The masterminds of the coup would quickly seize large swaths of Berlin and the surrounding countryside in order to rapidly solidify their control; Not, however, before a warning was sent out from the SS National Headquarters to all units nation wide, informing the loyal political soldiers of the Nazi party that their leader had been killed by his own traitorous generals. With the Wehrmacht in control of Berlin and the surrounding area, they would immediately begin denying the allegation, claiming that it was the work of extremists in the SS and calling for a nation wide arrest of all SS members. Quickly, across Germany and western Europe - anywhere where Wehrmacht and SS units worked along side each other, battles began to break out along new lines of loyalty. The Wehrmacht commanders, acknowledging the war was unwinnable and that Germany would be destroyed if it attempted to fight any longer, desired peace - or, at the very least, a withdrawal from the costly territories which Germany could no longer occupy. The SS loyalists desired a continuation of the war, intent upon preserving the great empire which the Reich had carved out for itself in the East. A battered and bruised public, having been drained of youth and blood, was now forced to pick sides in their sundered Reich. Ironically, the wonder weapons which the military had developed in order to battle the allies ( radio frequency weapons, nerve agents, weaponized viruses, hypnotism of soldiers and prisoners, more advanced rockets and jets, higher yield atomic weapons, night-vision equipment, etc. ) would not be used against itself.
Across the world, for the next two years, the Reich would continue to tear itself apart, as rebels from the east and west would quickly begin cutting out for themselves their own little states in the chaos, while the fatherland burned in a brothers war fueled by the deadliest weapons ever fielded in battle. The shattered states of Asia ( imperial and independent ) would find themselves suddenly without an overwhelming Japanese presence, and now forced to rebuild a poisoned continent with no men or resources to carry it out. Stranded Axis armies across Britain, Africa, and the East would either be overwhelmed or adapt to their new and harsh reality. The United States, savaged to the core by this never ending and pointless war, would retreat the last of it's troops from the Eastern hemisphere by the be middle of 1949. By 1950, the war... was over. Everyone lost.