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Hitler plainly saw his principal allies, Italy and Japan, as partners of convenience. But they also intended to eliminate Christianity and to adopt a state policy of polygamy so that the male survivors of wars expected to kill four million German soldiers would be able to impregnate enough German women to forestall a drop in population. It goes without saying that the Nazis intended to eradicate the Jews and other “sub-humans” in every region they controlled. Since the Afrikaners were implacable racists much after Hitler’s own heart, he anticipated a pro-Nazi South Africa. In sub Saharan Africa he expected to restore the colonies Germany had lost after the First World War and seize the rest from defeated European powers. Mussolini would be permitted to acquire lands approximating those of the Roman Empire, except that Hitler intended to retain control of France and Great Britain (as well as Ireland) and convert Spain and Portugal into satellite states. Japan would (temporarily) receive the rest of the Soviet Union. The brutal “General Government” of Poland would have extended into the former Soviet Union as far as 70 degrees east longitude-a bit more than half of the entire Russian empire-and the entire region converted into a vast pool of expend able slave labor. The initial victory in Europe would have been followed by the direct annexation of countries Hitler deemed suitably Nordic: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as well as the German-speaking region of Switzerland. In his mind, the sequel to a victorious World War II would have been World War III, followed by World War IV, and so on-until Germany had conquered the entire globe. But unsurprisingly, the most chilling vision was Hitler’s. Roosevelt’s vision that most nearly matched the post- 1945 world order that actually materialized. Weinberg (author of the magisterial A World at Arms, widely considered the finest study of World War II yet written) followed a trail of intriguing hints left by the major heads of state about the postwar world each envisioned. What would have happened then? In a slim but fascinating book titled Visions of Victory, historian Gerhard L. Had history taken slightly different turns at any of these junctures, Hitler could well have achieved his dream of total conquest of Europe. In October 1941 Russia teetered on the brink of collapse as panic gripped Moscow and German troops stood forty miles away.

In September 1940 the RAF was within a whisker of defeat, leaving Britain open to invasion. In June 1940 a serious faction within the British government urged making peace with Germany.