True. @Bullfilter's Turkey remains the most grim and miserable dystopia on the board by quite some way.
Er...your own AAR has the US constantly undergoing financial meltdown, every moderate or reformer dead or disgraced and the world stuck in 1937 forever.
Worse than a world-straddling Fascist conglomerate? S.I.T.H. aside, I’m not sure they’re that much worse than Tiso & Tuka!
SITH could be worse if the being running it genuinely was entirely focused on hurting people. The things the east german secret police manged to do with absolute power and no oversight...
Likewise, Turkey could be waaay worse too but thanks to forum rules and paradox gameplay, they're fairly benevolent autocrats...and in that universe the Germans, Japanese and even British are way worse.
PS: But if the dubious accolade of 'most grim and miserable dystopia' is up for grabs at the next YAYAs, then TT will take any votes on offer
I would like to remind everyone that the CKII and EUIV forums exist, the former relies upon horrific familial depravation as a game mechanic and the latter requires any and all up and coming powers to colonise the world and enslave millions of people, and both encourage holy war, outrageous discrimination and bloodlust that would be difficult to pull off in HOI without nuking the world, because those games last for centuries.
Need I remind you that just in my own limited work, I managed to depopulate large swathes of Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East because one man decided he was God's Chosen and attempted to wipe Islam off the face of the Earth. Using nothing but early medieval tech.
In one lifetime.
Seriously, these games are dark creatures if you stop to think about any of the AARs on the board.
In any case, such a world is vastly preferable to the Axis hegemony we see evolving here. Hitler and Mussolini, but competent?? I shudder to imagine...
It's difficult to say how a dictator of Germany in that time period could have done much better than Hitler really, except for the obvious don't commit genocide and believe in magic stuff, given the shockingly bad hand the country had. Absolute power is one thing but any leader would have had to contend with the realisation that either they were going to to conquer all of europe, die trying or be obliterated by the soviet union within two decades. Germany didn't really have many options.
Mind you, they still picked most of the worst choices in otl so competent leaders could help a bit. Economy is still going to collapse though.