Even without VC victory conditions I don’t see how the Allies can stop the Axis from outright overpowering them.
The Allied material advantage to start the game is a complete illusion; between the easy G1 kills (200 IPC worth vs. 20 sacrificed), the effectively nonfunctional French units, the IPC bonus from the capture of France, the virtual requirement of the massive material sacrifice against the Italian fleet, the inability of the Allies to counterattack due to politics, pointless mech inf in the US, the extra division of powers with China and ANZAC, and units that start as many as 5 turns away from being anywhere useful, I’d argue that Axis STARTS the game economically and materially equal for all practical purposes, and gets massive strategic positional advantages as well.
For example, France actually starts the game with 227 IPC of units. By the time they get to actually move, they almost always have left 1 FTR, 7 INF (scattered), and a destroyer, for a total of 39 IPC of playable material. The nominal Allied material advantage to start the game is 600 IPC, so the French first-round losses represent almost a third of that advantage, alone. With Russia, only 60ish of the 363 IPC it starts with can be utilized at all until Germany DOWs, so that leaves about a 120 IPC advantage. Factor in the extra useless AA guns that the Allies have more of than the Axis and we’re down to 100. And then 487 IPC in US units can’t be used until someone DOWs them or turn 3 rolls around, 150 IPC of ANZAC units that aren’t really in the fight until the US gets there, and the fact that there is not a single, solitary Axis unit on the entire map that can’t be utilized for some immediate tactical purpose in R1, and the game really opens at a 1500 IPC to 1100 IPC Axis advantage.