A Blunted Sickle - Thread II
- Thread starter pdf27
- Start date
I have to disagree with this part of your analysis. While ATL's Holocaust is for all practical purposes just as horrific as OTL's one, I think for West-European Jews the feeling of fear and abandonment is not going to be the same. OTL you had local authorities in different shapes or form aiding the deportations, neighbours and countrymen betraying Jews and razzia's in their own neighbourhoods. Then when the survivors came back from the camps, there was preciois few sympathy in society's where there was a scarceness in everything. ATL this would not be the case. While the West-European Jews will be shocked and angered, they will be far less terrified I imagine.
@pdf27 : great work as always, much appreciated.
Ramontxo
Donor
As stated in an former post I desagree. TTL has been awful for the Jewish population of Germany and German controlled Eastern Europe. Particularly in Poland it has been the Greatest Progrom ever. With an staggering number of victims. Still (imho) it is several degrees under the absolute horror the industrialised Holocaust was
Agreed. Same with Atlantic Charter and US entering the war, as impetus for industrialised Final Solution.
If I decide to give up writing I'll just post the lot. Right now we're about 2/3 through what I've written - things might actually accelerate after the next few updates (yeah, right!) as the end of the war is a big gap in what I've written and I wanted to do justice to it. Postwar I actually find a lot easier.
I think the starting point will be Polish forces occupying Germany.
There very much has been a Holocaust, in that Operation Reinhardt has started earlier than OTL. Bełżec was still build ITTL, and I see no reason for it to even have as many survivors as the 7 OTL survivors from the 4-500,000 murdered there in OTL.
The whole of Germany is going to be occupied as a starting point.
Seems reasonable to me.
SNCF actually. Just under 1,000 miles by TGV and Eurostar. Not all that much slower than car + aeroplane, and I'm feeling much less tired for it.
There are lots of theories as to why they shifted to outright extermination. Mine (taken from Wages of Destruction if I remember correctly) is that the original plan was to work the Jewish population of Europe to death in the East after Russia was conquered. By 1942 when it became apparent this wasn't going to happen any time soon, they shifted to mass extermination instead.
Applying that logic here instead, the failure to knock out the French and expel the British from the continent means that Barbarossa is off the menu indefinitely. This being the case, I think the shift to mass murder will happen much earlier (the Wannsee conference is 12 months earlier ITTL). Operation Reinhardt goes ahead as planned, but the far smaller Jewish population under German control and their proximity to the extermination camps means that they're fed through the extermination camps much earlier and there are no combined labour/extermination camps like Auschwitz II. Essentially once Jews are "deported" they'll find themselves at one of the Reinhardt camps within days and then be murdered within hours.
Well, peace at least. A treaty implies some sort of negotiation, which by now is rather redundant!
The Wannsee conference happened in Jan 1942 after which the 'liquidation of the European Jews' or in simple English organised mass murder on an industrial scale was given the green light.
And only possible due to Germanys control of the majority of Europe at a point when it did appear that Germany might actually win
Before that it was simple disorganised mass murder at a local level.
In this TL we are unlikely to see something like the the Wannsee conference happen at all and even if it did they are not in a position to act on it.
So its likely to remain disorganised mass murder at a local level - Not great but not terrible.........
Totally forgetting that the German forces that invaded Poland already were carrying a list of those to kill.... Sorry Holocaust did not start in 1942 , it just got made more efficient, it already was going on and was pretty organised ( as far as Nazi's went with their social Darwinism meaning multiple groups working in competition )
Jews as a group were not targeted for murder during the invasion of Poland. Germany's primary victim in 1939-1940 were the Polish intelligentsia, who were to be annihilated by thr SS. The Germans also carried out murders of civilians as reprisals to resistance actions. While Jews were killed in these murders, they were not killed for being Jewish. At this early point in the war, Polish Jews were herded into ghettos, where they lived a wretched, horrifying existence. The Nazis had no certain longterm plan for what to do with them. Possibilities included setting up a "reservation" somewhere in the General Government, for example. It also should be noted that only Polish Jews were forced into ghettos at this time.
The order by Hitler to kill all of the Jews under their control OTL was likely given in December 1941 (when Germany declared war on the US and the Jews thus lost any potential value the Nazis might've viewed them as having as hostages to deter the US from entering the war) or a few months beforehand. I'm not sure if/when a similar order by Hitler would be given ITTL.
With respect author had years ago written down that the realisation that they can't use the jews as salve labour resulted in them going full genocide so unless you want them to retcon years of what they have written what you're expressing is a moot point.
Edit
This is what pdf posted four posts above you.
Last edited:
How sad. The Italians joining the pile on would have made describing this timeline to people much more fun.
We (sick puppies that we are) weren't looking for the Italians to pile on the Germans, we were looking for the Italians to attack, kill/injure French soldiers and end up at war with a well armed entente...
As I mentioned some time ago, you’re still doing better than George RR Martin.
OK from a Geographic standpoint, I *think* this is the current situation.
The areas that the Entente and "Allies" haven't taken from the 3R at this time are.
1) Berlin. The British could probably simply destroy that square mile, but I think they'd rather have someone who can surrender the 3R.
2) Southeast Austria. France has reached the Brenner Pass (the Italian border in SW Austria) and met up with the Hungarians upstream of Vienna in NE Austria . It is possible depending on the weather conditions that they might not be able to make it into Graz and/or the Yugoslav border on the following day (the 12th), but that is Mother Nature, not the Nazis slowing them down.
3) East Prussia. Yay for British Protection, the Brits will get slowed down by Germans wanting to come with them!
4) Poland, Unfortunately, the British can't carry the coal needed by the Poles with them, the best the British can do at the moment is make sure that it is the German Soldiers in the unheated buildings with thin blankets rather than the Poles. Unclear what the best way to ship coal into Poland in the short term, in the Baltic, across Germany (without going through Berlin?), a southern route through Slovakia/Romania? (I'm presuming that asking Stalin isn't going to be *that* useful) The primary question is whether is any place that ZWZ doesn't want the British because the ZWZ is having an advanced case of Payback toward the Nazis?
The areas that the Entente and "Allies" haven't taken from the 3R at this time are.
1) Berlin. The British could probably simply destroy that square mile, but I think they'd rather have someone who can surrender the 3R.
2) Southeast Austria. France has reached the Brenner Pass (the Italian border in SW Austria) and met up with the Hungarians upstream of Vienna in NE Austria . It is possible depending on the weather conditions that they might not be able to make it into Graz and/or the Yugoslav border on the following day (the 12th), but that is Mother Nature, not the Nazis slowing them down.
3) East Prussia. Yay for British Protection, the Brits will get slowed down by Germans wanting to come with them!
4) Poland, Unfortunately, the British can't carry the coal needed by the Poles with them, the best the British can do at the moment is make sure that it is the German Soldiers in the unheated buildings with thin blankets rather than the Poles. Unclear what the best way to ship coal into Poland in the short term, in the Baltic, across Germany (without going through Berlin?), a southern route through Slovakia/Romania? (I'm presuming that asking Stalin isn't going to be *that* useful) The primary question is whether is any place that ZWZ doesn't want the British because the ZWZ is having an advanced case of Payback toward the Nazis?
Stalin didn't invade Poland from the east, now when collapse of Third Reich was obvious?
To be fair I probably did write that in about 2018 or something ridiculous. Note to self, really should write faster.
Fun for the audience, yes. Much harder for the author however!
I believe that's known as "damning with faint praise"!
They aren't going to wait around though. In 24-48 hours the inhabitants of the Reich Chancellery and the Bendlerblock are going to wake up and find British tanks on their lawns.
Yep, Most of the juniors just want to go home and the seniors are practicing their Yodelling skills to pretend that they are just locals.
Not especially - they're still limited by motor fuel above all else, and East Prussia is a hell of a long way from Hamburg through very recently occupied territory.
Nearest source of coal is Upper Silesia. Getting that transported shouldn't be all that hard - the railways still exist and will have been set up to move the coal pre-war since the mines are largely in what was pre-war Polish territory. However, they're massively disorganised by the demands of the German war economy so will take a little while to untangle.
The ZWZ being under the control of the Sikorski government which was until recently in exile isn't going to tolerate private revenge. They now own the judicial system, remember, and the British are more than happy to see Germans guilty of war crimes go through the Polish civil courts. With Stalin being a major preoccupation, they want to portray the image of a robust government as fast and strongly as possible. Additionally, any British troops between them and the RKKA are clearly beneficial to them.
Thanks. I've not gone away. but writing has been very hard.
Ran out of time. The Soviet system isn't terribly flexible, so the Warsaw Uprising and following Entente offensive across Germany caught them by surprise. Note that Stalin is also not a gambler - he's won massively out of WW2 while taking very few risks, and isn't minded to gamble those gains away in exchange for a large number of troublesome Poles.
Note also that Germany has collapsed completely in a couple of weeks - that's only possible because the Entente had massive armies in the field ready to go and Germany was hurt far worse than anybody realised.
Hmm, it seems strange to me that Stalin wasn't ready to take advantage of eventual crumbling of Germany. After all, all he has to do is to mop weak German forces in Poland and "liberate" as much as possible of Poland.
If the logistics don't follow and the Russians wind up in a shooting war with the English, it would endanger all of Stalin's gains.