Who's winning the war?

Of course, we all know that EVENTUALLY the Empire is utterly defeated, but it won't happen during the life of the game.

I'm not sure we do (unless there's some lore floating about I haven't seen, I haven't read a lot of it)

I think we can be pretty certain the sith are defeated but it is conceivable that the empire could win as in the scenario (or similar) that I proposed earlier, it would take some writing and might be a little beyond bioware to make it believable but I live in hope of the surprise twist... Just to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the republic players really.

Well, lets address the setting and the events that follow...

#SPOILER ALERT!#~
The Republic Wins, the Sith go extinct, the Empire falls, Dark Jedi led by Palpatine take over the Republic from within (Prequals) and create the New Galactic Empire.

I could give you more info as to why, but that falls into Spoilers.

Short answer: Me
Long answer: MMMMEEEEEEE

In war, no one really wins.

First of all, that's an absurd scenario. Japan and Germany lacked the ability to seriously pursue the development of nuclear weapons. The United States was able to exert its very considerable industrial might, draw on one of the largest collections of top-notch physicists, chemists, and engineers in history, and conduct its production and experiments without the danger of air attack or naval bombardment. Those advantages were all related to the Americans' success in the war independent of the atomic bomb: the US simply outproduced pretty much everybody else in the world. Nervi belli pecvnia infinita: the sinews of war are infinite money, and the Americans had that in spades.

Secondly, even if, somehow the Americans failed to develop working nuclear weapons, and the Japanese or the Germans did, so what? Unlike the US, neither Japan nor Germany had the capability to mass produce nuclear weapons; even one bomb would have practically been a miracle. And what can one bomb actually do? Cause severe damage to a single one of the many American, Commonwealth, and Soviet armored spearheads driving deep into Germany? Turn a chunk of a single Marine division into fine ash during an amphibious landing in the Pacific? How would either of those things turn the tide of the war? And that's not getting into the problems that both Germany and Japan would've had in delivering such a weapon, since neither of them possessed strategic bombers, the bases from which to launch them, or the escorts necessary to defend the bomber(s) against American or Soviet air power.

So yes, I will sit here and tell you that the war would not have gone differently if Japan or Germany had developed the atomic bomb. Because, as always, there are other considerations than just the existence of technology.
Ehhh.

There were a lot of good things about German industry, but actual production figures for Germany were dwarfed by those for the United States and the Soviet Union during the war. Part of this is because Germany did not really begin the process of industrial mobilization until 1942, and even that was severely hampered until the aftermath of the attempted coup in July 1944. It took Stauffenberg, Operation COBRA, and the destruction of Army Group Center for Hitler to finally give Speer the nearly unlimited authority he needed to rationalize the labyrinthine network of overlapping and infighting bureaucracies that governed German production. (Göring had had something like that authority, but since he was an indolent, useless fat slob he didn't do anything with it. ) By then, the Allied bombing effort had reached something of a crescendo, so it was all Speer could do to keep up with the Eighth Air Force's destruction of his factories even as they switched over to war production - and by the late fall of 1944 he'd lost that race, too.

The production numbers for German arms and industrial support infrastructure tell the story. For example, of Germany's advanced tank models, like the Panther, Tiger, and their variants, less than what, ten thousand were produced during the entire war? Whereas the USSR managed to pump out about 65,000 T-34s and T-34/85s from 1941 to 1945. The T-34/85 was in most respects technologically equivalent to the PzKpfw. V and yet the Soviets were able to produce five times as many of the former as the Germans could of the latter. That's a serious industrial gap, there. And that's not even getting into how the Americans built the world's largest and most powerful air force and navy, the most vast merchant marine since the Roman Empire, rebuilt transportation infrastructure for both Western Europe and large chunks of the Soviet Union, and still had enough time left over to make tanks, small arms, ammunition, and all manner of supplies for the US Army and Marines. Next to that, Germany's industrial effort during the war looks piddling.

Sure, statistically Germany's industrial effort looks practically heroic by comparison with that of the United Kingdom, or really anybody other than the two world superpowers. But that's the thing: the Nazis were up against both of those superpowers, each one of which by itself outproduced German industry.

I agree that the Hitlerite regime's focus on its leader was a fairly severe handicap at times (Stalingrad, the Wunderwaffen, the declaration of war against America, the abandonment of the Mediterranean offensive in 1940-41, and, oh yeah, the entire freaking Holocaust), but to be fair, Hitler also made military decisions that were objectively sound. For instance, his "stand fast" order in the winter of 1941 unquestionably saved the Wehrmacht from destruction, and it was Hitler who overcame the general staff's unwillingness to commit to the offensive that eventually became Manstein's Sichelschnitt in 1940. Hitler was the one who delayed ZITADELLE long enough to get the Panther into service, which was the main thing that gave Germany a fighting chance at Kursk - a decision that Manstein and most of the other military hierarchy concurred with at the time, although after the war they would blame the end of German superiority on the Eastern Front on it.

So it's really hard to judge Hitler's role in Germany's military success or failure. Historians like Ian Kershaw have been unwilling to come down very hard on one side or the other.

By the way, shouldn't the Latin in your sig be "igitvr qvi desiderat pacem, praeparet bellvm"?

The answer is right in front of you. The republic wins the war, and they eradicate all known Sith. However they dont find them all, and the Sith decided that it was the in-fighting that cost them the war so they adopt the one master one apprentice motto. Then the take over the senate with subversion in the clone wars and the Republic is pushed to extinction.

I honestly think that the Empire wins this war in the end. I mean look at the Republic in the movies, they use ships that seem derived from Imperial designs, they use the Imperial symbol, and most talk with that imperial British accent. In these games, the Empire is basically an invading force. If the Republic wins, why don't they just through the Imperial culture in the garbage?
Because they lost the war, the Empire imposed it own culture on the Republic and something happens later for the Empire to turn into the Republic we know from the films.

Just my theory anyways...

The empire offers order to the universe, granted its with a heavy hand, but that would appeal to many people who have lived with disorder and violence on their worlds.

This is my thought as well. The end of the Rep Makeb story also heavily suggests that the new supreme chancellor is very militaristic, selfish and eager to repeat the mistake of the last time the Sith were around and just try to completely eradicate the Sith race and culture. It's a very Palpatine-esque situation where he amassed power for himself in the name of combating "the enemy". Not to mention the "faceless soldiers escorting you around with weapons drawn" which all good dictators have.

If I had to place bets, I see the Jedi abandoning her campaign of genocide.