Final Solution Successful

When the Nazis were planning the Holocaust, they drew up plans of wiping out all of the European Jewish population: an estimated 11 million people. Some 6 million Jews were ultimately murdered before the Third Reich fell to the combined might of the Allied Powers.

As sickening as it sounds, what if the Nazis had been more successful in their genocide? What if 10 million, or even 11 million, Jews had been wiped out, leaving virtually nothing left of the Jewish population of Europe, save for in Britain. How would this effect the creation and viability of Israel, the further development of the Arab nations, and the world as we know it? Would the Morgenthau plan actually be initiated, as a vengeance against a people who had succeeded in wiping out all of the Jews of Europe?

There is the possibility that the world wouldn't know what had happened (the AH novel "Fatherland"). The camps might have been quietly closed down, their mission successful. If the Allies had not liberated the camps, seen the evidence with their own eyes, there would have been no trials at Nuremburg. Simon Wiesenthal would have died in a camp, instead of spending decades loudly and insistently reminding the world that mass murderers were still free. No vengeful Jews would have been alive to hunt down, capture, and put on public trial Adolf Eichmann in the 1960s. Anne Frank's diary would never had been published.

I don't think Israel would exist. Who would move there to populate it?

And here is another sick thought. Would the Reich's success have made the idea of eugenics MORE popular in post-war Germany, and in the United States, than in OTL?

Are we still assuming that the Axis lose the war? From that standpoint, it would be incredibly hard, no, impossible, to conceal an operation that brutal and wide-spread. For one thing, the Germans documented the war extensively. Even before the war, the rest of the world knew that the Nazis had it in for Jews. With all that propaganda before the actual conflict, what do the Allies think after they start picking up the pieces of Europe, and suddenly notice that eleven million people, strangely all Jews, are not accounted for? I`m sure there would be evidence of the Holocaust.

Now, if we are assuming that the Allies do still find out about the Holocaust, but Hitler was successful in his operation, that would create a very different history. The war crimes trials would still happen, but Israel most likely would not be founded. This would change Arab-American relations quite a bit. Facing down the barrel of the Soviet Union`s cannon of communism, they would probably stand behind the United States even more than they did. We might even be friends with some of those countries; with our backing of Israel non-existant. There probably wouldn`t be a "war on terror" going on right now. It may sound horrible, but a successful Holocaust probably means a much more stable Middle East.

tetsu-katana said:

It may sound horrible, but a successful Holocaust probably means a much more stable Middle East.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but what about Europe?

KJM said:

Yeah, but what about Europe?

Click to expand...

Do you really think it will make any significant difference in ethical, political or legal terms whether the Nazis murdered 6 million people or 11 million? Can you (can anyone) actually envision either number? I seriously doubt whether anyone, then or now, in any meaningful sense understands the dimension of what happened. The Holocaust is the stories of countless survivors telling about those not surviving, footage of camps and bodies, and (for the people back then) the reality of the liberated camps themselves. I don't think that the overall figures will make any difference - not in court, not in memory, and not in politics.

Of course murdering 11 million would make more difference then 6 million, as said there wouldn't be anyone left to shout out about the dead millions.

carlton_bach said:

Do you really think it will make any significant difference in ethical, political or legal terms whether the Nazis murdered 6 million people or 11 million? Can you (can anyone) actually envision either number? I seriously doubt whether anyone, then or now, in any meaningful sense understands the dimension of what happened. The Holocaust is the stories of countless survivors telling about those not surviving, footage of camps and bodies, and (for the people back then) the reality of the liberated camps themselves. I don't think that the overall figures will make any difference - not in court, not in memory, and not in politics.

Click to expand...

Exactly. The world will find out what happened, and the result will be pretty much the same, except for one key factor in world stability- Israel. Europe, in OTL, still had five million Jews to want a homeland. This timeline, there would probably be only a few thousand; not enough to have a homeland, in Palestine or elsewhere. The war crimes trial will still happen, but the results will be much the same. Once you`ve already killed six million people, the punishments don`t go much higher. The point is horrible, I know, but this probably would result in a more stable world, much like one where the Holocaust never took place at all.

Actually this world has two possibilities. First is that Nazi Europe survived the war, in which case I suspect the Muslims, Slavs and Africans are also very peaceful along with any other 'sub-humans'. Assuming we didn't have an all out nuclear war in the 1960s.

The second is that the war ended with a victory for the US and any remaining allies, probably involving nuclear strikes on Europe.

Peace of the grave.

I believe the question was only talking about the European Jews being wiped out, keep in mind that there were already Jews living in Palestine at the time, along with several other parts of the world that remained free from the Nazis. There is no evidence (although I could be wrong) about the Jewish population in North Africa being persecuted when those areas were under Italian/German control. So even if the Nazis had killed more than they did, I think the Jews would still have survived, and if anything it is probably more likely that not only would there be a state of Israel, but without the massive influx of Jewish refugess fleeing from Europe, the Arab neighbors just might be a little more civil and accomodating towards the Jewish state.

Yeah, I meant the European Jews only. But they were the initial ones to emigrate to Israel; without their numbers, any Israeli state (even if one had been made) would have been swallowed up by the Arabs.

Leej said:

Of course murdering 11 million would make more difference then 6 million, as said there wouldn't be anyone left to shout out about the dead millions.

Click to expand...

WEll, that is assuming that it is only holocaust survivors who do the shouting. Even if it were only Jews who cared about publicising the Holocaust (which OTL is not true), there would still be Jews in North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Great Britain (and, presumably, Sweden, Spain and Switzerland). I don't think that killing every single Jew within Hitler's reach would have created silence. How? I mean, how could the victorious allies not talk about this? There would still be a Document 271, still be a Nuremberg Trial, still be a postwar re-education program.

In fact, if we are just a little cynical we might expect more talk of the matter since it is uninhibited by a) concerns over monetary claims by survivors, since there are none, b) latent (or overt) antisemitism on the part of many politicians and journalists, since the need to seriously talk to Jews about the topic is removed and c) Mideast politics, as neither pro-Israeli factions exist to denounce all critics of Israel as disrespecting the memory of the Holocaust nor anti-Israel morons claiming it never happened.

I guess I just lack imagination. Assuming the Final Solution was completely successful but Germany still lost the war as in OTL what's the difference? Hitler had basically destroyed European Jewry anyway, and much of the philosophical impetus and financial support behind Zionism came from Britain and the USA anyway. Plus the many Jews already in Palestine aren't going to sit quietly. I suspect Israel would still get established - although its Jewish population would initialy be smaller - and it would be supported by the USA and western Europe in the same way as in OTL. Perhaps the treatment of Germany might be harsher, but I doubt it. The Morgenthau plan had already been discarded and, after all, what's the difference between 6 million and 10-12 million dead? In the developing context of the Cold War. the west needed a strong Germany and would still find a way of absolving them as soon as possible.

He's kind of right- one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic, etc, etc. Point is, what's the difference between 6 and 11 million? Both numbers are far too huge to really comprehend.

Well where did all those jewish people go after the war? It isn't the statistic that matters; what matters is the existence, or lack thereof, of several million educated (and in some cases wealthy) people.

You aren't going to find any obvious direct results, but after the first couple decades the change would still be dramatic, I think. US politics may have shifted noticeably, anti-semitism is unlikely to re-emerge in Europe even in fringe groups (They're gone, but our problems are still here), etc. Little stuff, but it will build over time.


PS - It's funny. I'm arguing the exact opposite of my position in the worse 9/11 thread. But that was 27,000 people over three years, not 5 million over six decades.

I agree that Israel would be severely undermined through lack of population. Its already tiny in OTL (5-6 millions), most of wish were european survivors.

Israel just wont be viable ITTL. Germany will be treated similarly... 6 or 11 million is the same, too large to comprehend.

Probably bit less anti-semetism, yes. More stable middle east for sure, probably more in the interests of the soviet bloc than ours.

Slightly smaller soviet population though. Perhaps a bit more sympathy that delays the cold war a few months. Then again the logic applies there too... 25 millions dead soviets or 28 millions is the same.

Matt and Valamyr.

OK, I see what you guys were getting at. Simple demographics. Not as many Jews means a less viable Israel. I didn't think of that. I suspect the west may still sponsor the establishment of a state of Israel in the middle east. However, maybe it would be smaller (perhaps located near the port cities of Haifa and TelAviv) and be more dependent from the beginning on US and European support. Maybe a commercial city state such as Singapore or Hong King would develop. Perhaps the complete destruction of European Jewry will create greater ideological impetus for a larger number of US Jews to emmigrate

Now I'm not an expert or even well versed in the creation of Israel, but I was under the impression that post World War II many jewish veterans of the US and UK provided a core of the fledgling military in addition to being able to purchase a good helping of surplus military equipment to outfit their army. With the destruction of the jewish population of Europe the driving impetus of the creation of Israel would not exist and those veterans would return home. Now this is not based in fact but rather hearsay, anyone able to confirm the impact of jewish veterans from the Allied armed forces involvement in the creation of Israel?

Mickey Marcus

Charlie, the most prominent American exserviceman to assist the Zionist forces after WWII was Brooklyn Jew Mickey Marcus, an experienced vet of the Ranger training school and 101st Airborne in ETO, who in 1948 served as military advisor to the fledgling Israeli DF, and was named by PM David BenGurion as LtGen. He helped to construct the IDF's strategy and training.
Look here for more bio info... http://www.jewishpeople.net/jewish146/mickymarcus.html

An interesting WI: Marcus was killed accidentally by a Jewish sentry before the war ended. But WI this case of mistaken identity hadn't occurred ? What role could Mickey Marcus have played in the continued development of the IDF after the 1st ArabIsraeli War ? Could he have been on the same level as Moshe Dayan and other brilliant Israeli military leaders ?

Apart from Marcus, there were a few other American and British WWII vets who volunteered to go and fight for Israel, but AFAIK they only came in relatively small nos. I recall vaguely reading 1 time Israel's attempt to recruit a 'foreign legion' of American Jewish vets around 2000 or so strong to fight against the Arabs, which however didn't eventuate since too few volunteered. There were also sympathetic or profitminded British soldiers during the British mandate who provided the HAGANAH covert assistance, such as selling arms and ammo, including 4 Cromwell tanks, while Jewish vets of the British 8th Army's Jewish Bde, which served in Italy at the war's end, played some part in the IDF's composition.

Heck, come to think of it, the Jews could've used guys like Joe Liebgott, off BAND OF BROTHERS, who was a Jew from Frisco and Easy Coy's interpreter, who as shown in the last couple episodes tracked down and executed a suspected SS concentration camp commandant who was hiding in the Austrian Alps after the war. But Liebgott and most other Jewish vets like him probably wanted to after finishing their wartime service just go home and make new lives for themselves.

It's an interesting balance- the lack of a european jewish population to make israel viable, and the possible greater feelings of zionisim among american jews (and exactly how many american jews were there in 1945?).

If the total destruction of the European Jewish population makes zionisim a huge thing in the US and elswhere, about how many jews are we talking about? As I've been taught, American jews liked the idea of Israel in the late 40's, but by and large didn't want to leave their comfortable, American lives to go live in the desert.

Hmm...could a largely Sephardic (Middle Eastern Jewish) Israel be a result? Without an influx of largely-left-wing Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, Israel might not become a socialist state like it is today.

Of course, I think John said that most Sephardim were uninterested in a Zionist state, so that might not work. Plus, most of the Sephardim who ended up in Israel got there by being expelled in 1948 by the Arab states.