So here is a theory. I am wondering how others would approach this. What do you think the results would have been if the USSR and Nazi Germany had maintained the peace/nonaggression pact?
Do you think that war could have been brought to the United States door step? I certainly think that the UK mainland would have been in trouble. I don't know if mainland America could have been invaded. And maybe the soviets would have used their resources in the east?
The peace would not have lasted more then 3-5 more years. Both were competing political theories and had strong antipathy for each other.
Plus you are leaving out the ultimate "Weakest Link" of the Axis Powers, Italy.
More then anything else, it was Italy that lost WWII. Their defeats ended up pulling German forces all over the map, from North Africa and Sicily, ultimately into Italy itself. I have long believed that more then anything else, it was the weakness of Italy that ultimately doomed Germany.
And from everything I have ever seen, England would not have fallen (although they might have become Finlandized). Germany never had the assets to invade England, and never attempted to build them. They might have forced a political capitulation and disinvested their Global Empire, but I can't see how they could have ever seriously invaded.
And the same goes with the US. To big, to far away, no real chance of ever taking it over.
One thing people have to remember is that neither Germany nor Japan wanted to have "Empires" as most people thought of the term. Both envisioned being the "Mother Country" of a bunch of other countries who followed them because they were obviously superior. This can be seen in the fact that with a few exceptions, the countries invaded were not annexed. In fact, quite a few were "Liberated" by the conquerors, and became "Independent Nations". The Philippines, Manchuria, Burma, Thailand, Japan was well known not only for invading countries, but for "Liberating" them, even if only to move from one largely benevolent master to a brutal one who controlled through fear.
Interestingly, neither Germany nor Japan wanted to directly control all of their "Empire", they were more along the lines of the Roman Empire. Let the kings and princes and potentates rule the individual countries, just so that they in turn paid homage to Germany and Japan.
But invading the US, that was never going to happen. Even the most audacious plans for "Axis Victory" had the Americas largely sitting as an independent entity, a variant "Cold War", with at most a few of the Alaskan islands falling under Japanese occupation (and maybe Hawaii in addition to the islands already conquered). The expectation of the Soviet Union was that eventually it would be invaded, with Germany taking the industrial Western parts, Japan taking the coastal Eastern part, and leaving a shell nation of Russia under their control holding the remaining, largely worthless land in between.
The general "absolute worst case" scenarios were rather interesting. The majority of Central and South America would not have supported either Germany nor Japan. In this the US was unquestionably the propaganda winner, with most seeing Germany, Japan and Italy as an attempt to a return to colonization. And even some of the old war plans like Crimson (invasion of Canada) and Scarlet (Invasion of Australia) were dusted off and updated to a contingency plan. That if somehow England and the United Kingdom were to fall and the King captured, Canada, Australia, and many of the overseas territories (Caribbean islands) would be "Invaded" by the US and "Occupied" administratively. This was not for the conquering, but largely an administrative plan, so that a victorious Germany could not use the United Kingdom framework to use it's influence to force the Commonwealth nations to support it in a war.
Seizing the King and forcing England to become an Ally of Germany could have theoretically used force to have Canada, Australia, Jamaica, and other areas support them as well. By doing a "Protective Invasion" the US could have severed the ties of those nations during the war and made them US Territories instead of United Kingdom territories. And this was supported by the UK as a "last ditch effort" in the event that England fell, and the Royal Family could not be evacuated and were captured.