@Background Human
One of the most realistic takes on the subject is Robert Harris’s 1992 novel
Fatherland, where Germany defeated the UK (putting Edward VIII back on the throne, while George VI and his family exiled themselves in Canada along with Winston Churchill), annexed the USSR up to the Ural (endeavouring to settle that “living space” with German colons), and brokered peace with the US after developing their own nukes in 1946 (thus attaining the same balance of terror as the Soviets did in the original timeline).
Two decades later (the action takes place in 1964, prior to the celebration of Hitler’s 75th birthday, the Führer having softened his image since the end of the war and grown more reclusive over the past few years, with the dreaded head of the SS Reinhard Heydrich – who survived his assassination attempt in 1942 and went on to succeed Himmler after his death in a plane crash two years earlier – being seen as his likely successor), the cold war is waged between the Greater German Reich and the US (who defeated Japan like in the OTL), mainly through the support of Russian border incursions from Siberia (the impopularity of Hitler’s doctrine of “perpetual war” starting to mount along with the body count), local partisan resistance in the Eastern Reichskommissariats (those latter two hindering and discouraging the German colonization efforts), and anti-Nazi terrorism (with mentions of murdered officials and bombs aboard airliners), all of which has put a strain on the German economy (which strongly depends from the exploitation of the rest of Europe, Switzerland remaining the only nation not under Berlin’s influence), with the post-war generation becoming increasingly rebellious (the White Rose movement undergoing a resurgence in German colleges and an English band implied to be the Beatles meeting the same success in Hamburg as they did in the OTL), despite the systemic indoctrination of the youth and the constant propaganda.
At this point, Joseph P. Kennedy (JFK’s father, who was ambassador to the UK at the beginning of World War 2, and fell out of grace due to his Nazi sympathies in the OTL) is the US president and seeks détente with Germany, Berlin preparing itself for his upcoming visit, during which a meeting with Hitler has been scheduled.
Also, all information about the Holocaust has been successfully redacted to the point that no one has any reason to question the official version about Jews having been “resettled East” (and the Nazi government is able to deny and dismiss any accusation of genocide as bolshevik propaganda), at which point the plot of the book gets kicked off by the murder of one of the last living participants to the Wannsee conference (where the Final Solution was decided in 1942).
