A Class with Dr. Chang

Another depressing one, alas, based on the Ward Moore (of "Bring the Jubilee" AH fame) short story "A class with Dr. Chang."

A world in which Germany never allied to Japan, instead moving to closer relations with a more openly fascistic China. Thanks to Hitler’s timely assassination, there was also no invasion of the USSR. Things got a bit sticky for a while after the British development of the atom bomb, but in the end cooler heads prevailed, and after the British Commonwealth fell apart, a rough four-way balance of power prevailed for a few decades, between the US-dominated western hemisphere and Australasia, the USSR, the Reich-Chinese alliance, and the Empire of Japan, which although ejected from China by a Chinese resistance armed by Germany and the USSR, still held onto Korea and a sizeable little SE Asian empire.

Things went pear-shaped when the US went fascist in the 70’s, launched a nuclear first strike against Japan and took over much of its empire (Vietnam proved...troublesome), and went on an orgy of conquest in the Americas which only ended with a “limited” nuclear exchange (a few millions on each side) with the German Reich. Its Jews and Asians have been murdered or expelled, its blacks for all intents and purposes re-enslaved, and is currently engaged in a murderous arms race with the German-Chinese alliance and the USSR and its allies – which have formed a shaky alliance in the face of the American Menace.

The Reich has mellowed, and nowadays is an only occasionally brutal one-party state, with the Fuhrer now replaced by a Chancellor with limits on his powers, and the US is a nasty reminder of the Bad Old Days (and, troublingly, an inspiration to some who want said days back). The Reich is still institutionally racist, but things have improved to the point where the Reich now fields black colonial regiments and they’ve even got rid of the Nuremberg laws (although very few Jews fleeing the US have shown interest in the Reich as a refuge location). The Jews were driven out rather than exterminated, and there is an actual state of Israel – a leftish Soviet ally in an area where the Soviets have no other friends. (Iran is an often-restless puppet).

The Arabs, along with whites-only, nuclear-armed [1] Australia, are the only states that are US allies by choice rather than compulsion, and relations are still prickly (Arabs are not allowed to settle in the US, for one thing). Japan and Korea avoided US invasion (the USSR and the Chinese both were pretty definite on that) but is still recovering from the loss of more than half its population, and ironically is to some extent a Chinese puppet nowadays. The USSR has been undergoing not too successful spasms of economic reform since the 70’s, and although the hostile outside environment has helped keep the state unified, is in poor shape and heavily dependent on Chinese and German economic support (given out of fears of civil war and perhaps the loss of an ally to the US side). India is leftist but also rather Hindu nationalist, and has problems with Islamic unrest. The Italian Empire still toddles along under Fascist control, and is woefully corrupt and suffering from a serious insurrection in Tunisia, for which out of national pride it has refused German support.

China, run by the Kuomintang party, is richer than OTL (it started booming economically in the 60s rather than the late 70s), although not quite a superpower yet. It is understandably nervous about the Americans, and closely tied to Germany, their biggest trade partner and investor. Chinese immigrate in large numbers to German colonies, and provide a lot of warm bodies for German “eacekeeping” forces. The UK, along with Finland and Sweden, are still more-or-less democratic, although the UK has been forced to “come to an understanding” with the Germans, which help protect Newfoundland and New Zealand from the US. A few fragments of the old Commonwealth still remain associated with the UK, due to fears about their neighbors and a lack of interest in joining the somewhat moth eaten Communist International. South Africa is still racially segregated, if no more repressive than OTL 1980s, and is notable, after a post-1976 wave of refugees from the US, in having the world’s fourth largest Jewish population after the UK, Russia and Israel.


[1] They've been worrying about the Yellow Menace for a long time.