1935
Counterfactual writers like to look at two significant points: Ernest Bevin having the flu and thus being unable to deliver a scathing response to George Lansbury's call against sanctions on Italy (as Bevin's diary indicates he would have done) and if Baldwin had waited until
after the election to have Hoare quietly work on a solution to the 'Abyssinia problem'. The "Bonfire Surprise" (actually the news leaked on the 4th November) was a humiliation for Baldwin and the Conservatives, costing them a large number of seats that went to the opposition, mostly Labour - Lansbury's "Christian pacifism" at least looked honest and principled - and to a lesser extent Simon's National Liberals.
Result was a flailing, half-mad coalition between what were technically three different Labour parties and Herbert Samuel's more social-reformist Liberals. Lansbury's coalition agreed on social reform, if not how to do it, and general peace work.
One of these turns out better than the other.
1938-1940
The fall of Spain, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to fascist and Nazi aggression overshadows Lansbury's domestic reforms - so, it being the 30s, does him granting dominion status to most of India, Burma, and Singapore. and wanting to, dare we even think it, to some
Africans. Eden's Conservatives win the election promising strength. That means some harsh austerity and deliberate debt to rapidly build up the armed forces.
A victorious Germany knows France won't attack it without British aid and, handily enough, Britain is a few years away from being able to wage war in Europe - the full might of the Reich can be aimed at the Soviet Union. And the full might of Italy can be aimed at Greece, which goes very, very badly wrong and Eden makes noises about defending the Greeks, after making sure the Germans aren't going to step in if they do. The Greek-Italian War ends with Greek forces pushing into Albania and the Mussolini government falling over, which would be good if the Nazis don't slip in to support the random functionaries dug up and told "you are the government now".
However, Western Europe seems safe for now but Asia does not - Japan is looking likely to move. Eden decides that protecting British colonies and dominions is more important, and the focus is there. The Soviets are worried.
1941-5
The USSR attacks first
with Operation Groza. The Soviets are unable to attack with any element of surprise but the Germans are unable to fully pull off their defensive plan, Operation Bertha, as Hitler sticks his oar in. The result is three weeks of carnage that significantly maul the Germans and leave the Soviets with many of their best soldiers dead or crippled; Zhukov's great plan hasn't worked but it's not a loss, the Red Army could fall back to the frontier and prepare for a weak German counterattack.
Stalin has Zhukov 'removed' for failing and demands an advance to Warsaw, an advance by raw recruits with meagre resources. Initial gains do not last and in three years of bloody slog, the Axis powers are victorious. The Soviet Union has no foreign aid at all - in fact, the USSR looks like it's planning to march West and so various democratic powers tacitly lift sanctions and share intelligence with the Nazis until their electorates start to revolt.
Britons, the Dutch and Americans do not, because they've got a war in the Pacific to focus on (French Indochina is left alone as Germany and France are talking a bit and Japan is leaving that for later). Imperial Japan lasts the best part of a year before giving up, signing the Treaty of Singapore - which basically moves everyone back to their pre-war borders and sees Japan agree to not conquer any more of China - and running off to be in at the end of the fall of Russia, carving out a big chunk of land.
As far as Britain's concerned in 1945, those dastardly Japanese have been thwarted from having our empire, the Hun and his Spode friends are exhausted, the Reds have been vanquished forever - and Britain itself is still fine. Hurrah!
News of the genocides across Europe do reach British soil, souring the mood a bit, but what could we have done?
Barely noticed, France is turning fascist under fear of Soviets, the need to pivot to Germany, the false view that cor look how impressive those jackboot regimes are.
1945-1948
Germany has won a big smoking graveyard and few Germans actually want to
move to the new lebensraum; neither do the Japanese and the Italian Nazis. Only the Nazi's Nazis will do this. Which means there's less hardcore Nazis in Greater Germany and a lot more disgruntled people asking "is this
it?", and military men feeling they haven't got their dues compared to those shiny arseholes in the black shirts. When Hitler dies of a stroke, the Wermacht try to take over but they can't quite manage it without the help of newly fascist France, the one country in Europe that's both big, an empire, and completely untouched by war so far.
Now fascism is within bombing reach of England. "I told you so," say the socialists, who point to the atrocities fascsts & Nazis did in Europe, WHAT WILL THEY DO HERE; the also point to the big strides made by President Wallace in the States (who isn't a socialist but never mind that), and a decline in welfare and living standards since the Lansbury days, argue for a grand People's Health Service, argue for all sorts of things. Mosley's Blackshirts are also on the march again, and a scandal breaks out when it's discovered the French are sending him a few bungs.
Eden is well aware this is going to be a problem but wants the breathing space of an early election, so he doesn't have his party worrying about that too. He miscalculated: Ernest Bevin's Labour just about makes it to a majority, as the Liberals have continued to decay. Socialist domestic reforms are back on but the big one is preparing for the inevitable war with France. The plan will be to bomb the living crap out of Calais first, then have troops across Africa and Asia - bribed by promise of dominion status - make numerous strikes, try to turn this into an overseas conflict.
(Meanwhile, the Nazi states in the massacred east are cut off and feuding with the Italian Nazi states, and each other, and "traitors" within, and Slavic partisans - nobody outside cares. It is Hell.)
1949
France deploys a new type of German-derived missile to hit London. Most of them blow up on the gantry or land in the sea because it's barely tested, a necessity of keeping it secret. Calais is duly bombed, but it was better guarded than expected and isn't fully knocked out - and the French construction of submarines is greater than Naval Intelligence suggested. As the Home Fleet is hit badly and French bombers try to hit the RAF, it's clear France is preparing to invade and to hell with the colonies, they've got less French people in them and will be regained when Britain surrenders.
Enemy troops land in Dover, supported by constant air supply and bombing runs - even as Britain wins the colonial wars, the British Army is being pushed back to the Waterloo Line of defences that seal off Kent, the Estuary, and an unfortunate chunk of Sussex. At that point, the Battle for Britain stalls for a bit. France was pushed to the limits there, it can't advance much further without much more resources
or mass bombing & paratrooper raids elsewhere to terrify Britain into giving up. (Anyway, RAF bombers and Royal Navy raids are terrorising the French!)
Stalemate is ended when Bevin's government and the army fake out that the Waterloo Line around Surrey is weakening, and the staunch conservatives of the county don't want to die for some bally socialists. (This much is true for many people, helping the deception) French forces plunge at this weak underbelly, planning to sweep through and to London, and blunder into a meatgrinder at Esher-Walton while being cut off at the rear. Half the invading force is gone.
At this point, France gives up and decides to try retaking the colonies instead, then try Britain again later - but too much damage has been done. When Paris sues for peace, the price is half the empire (of which a third was being lost anyway).
Socialism Beats Fascism. But with much of Europe still fascist, the threat of France and Japan still great enough to require constant watch, and the Americas not caring, for how much longer? And as Britain looks at this, and it considers the true horror of the exterminations in Eastern Europe, people wonder "what if?"
George Orwell's last book before death,
1935, imagines a world where if only Bevin had been health and around back then...