I remember watching a movie where the Third Reich survived until the '60, the plot revolved around a german policeman investing a murder related to an old Hitler's attempt to gain economic support from the America but it fails when the president finds out about the death camps. The details are vague since I was a kid but the regime was about to fall, however I was wondering if something like that could have happened or there are TLs with similar scenario.
A surviving Reich
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sharlin
Banned
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=140356
is always a good place to start for a TL of a surviving Nazi state, well it survives for a bit. Grimdark but superbly written.
is always a good place to start for a TL of a surviving Nazi state, well it survives for a bit. Grimdark but superbly written.
That's probably Fatherland you watched.
As for whether the Nazi German Reich could survive anywhere beyond OTL, that would probably require radically different strategic decisions on Hitler's part (such as not starting World War II, for a start) or an extremely good reason for the Americans and British to not drop nukes on Germany after a while.
I think The Anglo-American/Nazi War extends into the 1950s, and my own timeline (see signature) may be gearing up to a similar conclusion, although it's still in 1938 as of right now and doesn't feature Hitler as the leader of Nazi Germany.
If you want a sillier version, Wolfenstein: The New Order features a Greater German Reich that extends into America by the 1960s.
EDIT: Ninja'd!
As for whether the Nazi German Reich could survive anywhere beyond OTL, that would probably require radically different strategic decisions on Hitler's part (such as not starting World War II, for a start) or an extremely good reason for the Americans and British to not drop nukes on Germany after a while.
I think The Anglo-American/Nazi War extends into the 1950s, and my own timeline (see signature) may be gearing up to a similar conclusion, although it's still in 1938 as of right now and doesn't feature Hitler as the leader of Nazi Germany.
If you want a sillier version, Wolfenstein: The New Order features a Greater German Reich that extends into America by the 1960s.
EDIT: Ninja'd!
Spare Change
Banned
There was a movie was called Fatherland and was based on the best selling book by Robert Harirs also called Fatherland. The movie was just OK but the book was excellent and one of the classics of Alternate History.
If you read novels I would give Fatherland a try. It is very good and because it was a best seller it is very widely available (libraries, used, kindle etc.).
The other classic of a Nazi Victory is Phillip Dick's Man in a High Castle. Which is also very good but more in a 1950's science fiction way. If you don't know who Dick was the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, Paycheck, and Minority Report are all loosely based on his stories.
The link to the Amazon page (American) where you can read the reviews and judge for yourself.
http://www.amazon.com/Fatherland-No...6080&sr=1-1&keywords=fatherland+robert+harris
If you read novels I would give Fatherland a try. It is very good and because it was a best seller it is very widely available (libraries, used, kindle etc.).
The other classic of a Nazi Victory is Phillip Dick's Man in a High Castle. Which is also very good but more in a 1950's science fiction way. If you don't know who Dick was the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, Paycheck, and Minority Report are all loosely based on his stories.
The link to the Amazon page (American) where you can read the reviews and judge for yourself.
http://www.amazon.com/Fatherland-No...6080&sr=1-1&keywords=fatherland+robert+harris
Certainly the Reich could have survived longer. The outcome of WW2 was not pre ordained and Germany could have won the war had Barbarossa gone better or Germany won the Battle of the Atlantic. A draw was still attainable certainly until 1943 or even 1944 had the strategic decision been made to do so and Hiler allowed his generals more latitude than he did in operational and tactical decision making.
Bleeding the Allies to a stalemate might have allowed a "Fatherland" type scenario to become a reality though it would have been very difficult to achieve.
Bleeding the Allies to a stalemate might have allowed a "Fatherland" type scenario to become a reality though it would have been very difficult to achieve.
It's generally the whole economy thing and the nukes thing. Circumvent both or either or have the Nazis score an overwhelming early victory and one could get a slightly more long-lived Reich.
Alex Richards
Donor
It's more a problem that you can get Germany to win WWII, but not something which you're recognise as Nazi Germany to win.
I mean we're talking about a regime which, for ideological reasons alone, was working to death the Jews supposed to be operating their only plant trying to produce synthetic rubber. There were regiments in the Battles for major cities on the eastern front that were going around clearing the Ghettos (and hospitals in the latter case) of any remaining Jews rather than actually fighting the Soviets, and the holocaust was given a significant portion of the rolling stock of Europe for its operations at the same time as there were supply shortages on the Eastern front. And that's without going into the massive inefficiencies in the administrative system, the widespread culture of backstabbing fostered by Hitler and frankly insane leadership decisions coming from the very highest ranks of the party.
Hell the nuclear weapons programme was abandoned because the scientists involved managed to miscalculate the energy required by about 3 orders of magnitude making them think it was physically impossible.
Hence why I said slightly. The virulent racial hate and expansionist underpinnings of the Nazi ideology (not forgetting the general looniness of their high command) simply could not lead to long-term success.
The example of Francoist Spain should be enough to imply that some kind of fascist right-wing authoritarian regime certainly could endure (at least as long as its central figure was alive), but the Nazis would not - and did not - settle for this, leading to the millions dead of World War II and the Holocaust.
The virulent racial hate and expansionist underpinnings of the Nazi ideology (not forgetting the general looniness of their high command) simply could not lead to long-term success.The example of Francoist Spain should be enough to imply that some kind of fascist right-wing authoritarian regime certainly could endure (at least as long as its central figure was alive), but the Nazis would not - and did not - settle for this, leading to the millions dead of World War II and the Holocaust.
It's less heresy than something that gets an extremely rigorous working thorugh - a lot of people here are looking for more rigor in the theories than History Channel ratings bait. So any surviving Reich theory will _have_ to have a plausible answer to the questions of economics and the questions of the nukes. Personally, I think the first question is the harder one to answer, because it give the Allies a huge flexibility in how they can respond to any different Nazi moves or strategies, particularly when combined with the Allies espionage edge.
Some of the snarky razzing is also again the sort of "anti-History Channel" view based on how much knowledge of military history is here in these forums. The Wehrmacht made some very farsighted choices in the 30's about air power and mobile warfare. But this didn't make them a flawless military machine; it simply made them ahead of the curve in some areas. They were woefully behind in others - horsecarts carrying the spare parts for tanks. Partially because the whole "the Nazis were perfect flawless soldiers whose military machine was always a step ahead" meme is a) wrong, and b) has an unsettling frequency of adherents with far darker motives for researching the Reich, it draws a certain amount of scorn.
This. You can certainly construct a scenario where *Germany wins *WW2, but it's not going to be Nazi Germany. Even if they managed to knock out the Soviet Union (which is a pretty big if), they're still looking down the barrel of war with the US and the UK (plus the Free French forces), and that is going to end with either the 81st Airborne dropping on Berlin or long stretch of radioactive glass where Germany used to be. There are simply too many institutional problems (inefficiency, batshit craziness, poor resource management, bugfuck crazy leadership, etc.) for the Nazi's to overcome to pull off a win.
Francoist Spain is a weird case, since they were definitely a right-wing/authoritarian Fascist regime, but not crazy to the extent that Germany or Italy was, and Falangism was of a different breed than the other kinds of fascism. Plus, Franco wasn't either a) a fucking lunatic (Hitler), or b) a human cartoon character (Mussolini).
Also, the Anglo-American Nazi War timeline, linked above, is quite good as a "longer-lasting Reich" thread because its unsparing: Its not just a "lets make the war last long because I want to see those jet flying wings and proto-assault rifles and this one really cool camouflage pattern in action" thread. It goes into detail of exactly what Eastern Europe had in store for it if the Nazis won. Don't read it before you go to bed.
Spare Change
Banned
Young Pretender,
The Problem is that some of the posters here are so knowledegble about what happened it blinds them to what could have happened. In otherwords they miss the forest for the trees.
People tend to be very definitive about what would happen in a case of a What if? This is b/c they think they know the real answer from extrapolating from real history. However History is not science. People are making broad assumptions on what is probable based on a sample of one.
People always bring up the Nazis since their victory would make a very different world.
Since we never had a WWIII with the Soviets. In many respects we are still living in post war era created by the allied victory in WWII.
As for a German Victory I don't see why it is ASB.
The later the POD the less likely a victory. From any POD from 1943 on I agree it is almost ASB.
By 1942 after the USA declaration of war, a Nazi outright victory becomes impossible, but a negoitated peace (stalemate) is still possible. Not not at all likely, especially if Hitler is still alive but not ASB.
But anytime before the USA declaration of war, the earlier the POD the better, it is entirlely possible that the Nazi's could have won the war.
Kissinger thought Hitler should have declared war in 1938.
Or he could have played nice till 1942 when Germay would have been militarily ready.
Or he or the weather could have prevented Dunkirk.
Or he could have pretended to march in to Russia as a liberator with plenty of slavic figureheads and the Soviet Union would have collapsed like a house of cards
In any case after the fall of France he had a lot of strategic and even some diplomatic possibilites.
Yes if Hitler acted exactly like he did in OTL he would have gotten similar results (we think) but what if he did something different?
The Problem is that some of the posters here are so knowledegble about what happened it blinds them to what could have happened. In otherwords they miss the forest for the trees.
People tend to be very definitive about what would happen in a case of a What if? This is b/c they think they know the real answer from extrapolating from real history. However History is not science. People are making broad assumptions on what is probable based on a sample of one.
People always bring up the Nazis since their victory would make a very different world.
Since we never had a WWIII with the Soviets. In many respects we are still living in post war era created by the allied victory in WWII.
As for a German Victory I don't see why it is ASB.
The later the POD the less likely a victory. From any POD from 1943 on I agree it is almost ASB.
By 1942 after the USA declaration of war, a Nazi outright victory becomes impossible, but a negoitated peace (stalemate) is still possible. Not not at all likely, especially if Hitler is still alive but not ASB.
But anytime before the USA declaration of war, the earlier the POD the better, it is entirlely possible that the Nazi's could have won the war.
Kissinger thought Hitler should have declared war in 1938.
Or he could have played nice till 1942 when Germay would have been militarily ready.
Or he or the weather could have prevented Dunkirk.
Or he could have pretended to march in to Russia as a liberator with plenty of slavic figureheads and the Soviet Union would have collapsed like a house of cards
In any case after the fall of France he had a lot of strategic and even some diplomatic possibilites.
Yes if Hitler acted exactly like he did in OTL he would have gotten similar results (we think) but what if he did something different?
I think it's very much a reaction to works such as The Man in the High Castle, It Happened Here, SS-GB or the subject of this very thread, Fatherland, which are among the most striking as they feature successes above and beyond anything the Nazis ever could have or (in some cases) wanted to have achieved.
The "Nazi aesthetic" is also an effective shorthand for oppressive and Obviously Evil regimes (see: Star Wars and the Imperial uniforms), and some of that aesthetic and mood is inviting for writers who want to dip into that dystopic well.
Not to disparage their significance as important pieces of literature or polemic, naturally, but these (among others) probably gave rise to the idea that Nazi Germany was a few key decisions away from making a successful landing in England or conquering all of Russia, which based on most of what we now know, simply isn't true.
The "Nazi aesthetic" is also an effective shorthand for oppressive and Obviously Evil regimes (see: Star Wars and the Imperial uniforms), and some of that aesthetic and mood is inviting for writers who want to dip into that dystopic well.
Not to disparage their significance as important pieces of literature or polemic, naturally, but these (among others) probably gave rise to the idea that Nazi Germany was a few key decisions away from making a successful landing in England or conquering all of Russia, which based on most of what we now know, simply isn't true.
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And has been said, ad nauseum, proposing that Hitler do something requires it to be something Hitler would have ever possibly conceived of doing, ever. It's common to postulate that Hitler was such an anti-communist that he could have rolled into the Soviet Union posing as a liberator. But in this case, Communism is just a red herring. (1) He wasn't sending out the Einstaztgruppen and preparing the Hunger Plan because he thought the people it would kill were Communists, he very literally attacked the Soviet Union so he could implement them. The racism, the anti-slav and semticism, is far more of a core of his being than the anti-communism was. The brutality, as a emptier of the land, is the point of the entire program. It cannot be hand waved away as long as we are talking the Hitler of history and fact.
And the willingness of either Churchill or Roosevelt to pursue a negotiated settlement are just not there, in any credible source as long as Hitler is alive. They only become the merest, slightest, maybe maybe maybe ghosts of possibilities if Hitler dies. Once Hitler has invaded anything besides Poland, there's no chance of a negotiated settlement, and Hitler was going for all the marbles - as well as realizing that industrially and economically, time was not on his side. And thus why all of the "Nazi deploy teh super-doooper weapon" threads continue to get shot down.
(1) I just had to.
This is my hobby horse, so...
It's really not accurate to call Franco's Spain "fascist," as a fair deal of academic scholarship has noted. Yes, Franco had backing from the major fascist states, and fascists (or at least quasi-fascists) in the form of the Falange formed a component in his coalition; but the Falangists were never in the driver's seat, and neither for that matter were the Germans or the Italians. Franco is...a combination of interesting elements, but above all a traditional Iberian caudillo.
None of which is necessarily a defense of Franco, so much as a desire to preserve some clarity when it comes to using the "fascist" label. It's also a way of opening up analysis on the topic at hand, by way of explaining why it was easier for Francoist Spain to survive long-term, and even transition peacefully into something else, in a way that would have been more difficult for Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.
If it was Fatherland, the book it's based on has the Nazis defeat Soviet Russia.
I suppose that if Nazi Germany didn't insist on crazy levels of rearmament and had structured their economy slightly more sensibly, it could have gotten to say its 1938 borders, then proceeded to murder thousands of people in concentration camps and in "euthanasia" programmes before the eventual house of cards fell in upon itself.
Franco wasn't even a Falangist, and didn't he purge their parties after he got into power?