Our very own admin has written an essay on the survival of Nazi Germany it's a very interesting read.
A surviving Reich
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sharlin
Banned
I love a bit of warnography with tanks and guns and what ifs, what I can't stand is the Wehraboo's who immediatly think "Its Field Grau and designed by the Germans! IT IS GLORIOUS AND ALL CONQUERING!" and won't here a word said about how bad the german army was at other things (its HR and Public affairs department being the obvious one, or the fact that if a Ferdinand so much as looked at a hill its engine would burst into flames and its clutch would explode, little things like that...).
Most people when wanking Germany in WW2 also have a habit of the two following things.
A: Making Nazi Germany operate and develop tech/re-arm about 5 - 10 years ahead of everyone in this perfect technological bubble that no one else can penetrate and just carries on EXACTLY as they did in the pre-war/during the war, and don't react to the sudden dozen divisions of Tiger I's on the border in 1940 or the fleet of carriers laying waste to Scapa Flow.
B: Closely related to the above, an anoyyingly common habit of making absolutely EVERYONE in the Allies from Pte Blogs on the front line to Churchill and Friends be reduced to the IQ and mental capacity of someone who's been drinking raw lead since the age of 6 as well as indulging in daily hour long sessions of headbutting walls or beaning themselves in the head with a ballpine hammer and this has been going on since the mid 20's. So when our dashing 'underdog' Aryan's turn up the RAF/MAF is equipped with Sopwith Camels and Spads, both navies have sunk becuse of a problem with BBQ's being held in the main powder magazines and the infantry equipped with sharpened peices of mango and dressed in woad.
I call this WAlliederp.
Oh and C if your name starts with a W and ends with a King: The nazi's introduce X engine earlier. What happens. The answer every time is this "Fuck all really, more men die and the Krauts drag the war out a bit longer 'yay'."
Most people when wanking Germany in WW2 also have a habit of the two following things.
A: Making Nazi Germany operate and develop tech/re-arm about 5 - 10 years ahead of everyone in this perfect technological bubble that no one else can penetrate and just carries on EXACTLY as they did in the pre-war/during the war, and don't react to the sudden dozen divisions of Tiger I's on the border in 1940 or the fleet of carriers laying waste to Scapa Flow.
B: Closely related to the above, an anoyyingly common habit of making absolutely EVERYONE in the Allies from Pte Blogs on the front line to Churchill and Friends be reduced to the IQ and mental capacity of someone who's been drinking raw lead since the age of 6 as well as indulging in daily hour long sessions of headbutting walls or beaning themselves in the head with a ballpine hammer and this has been going on since the mid 20's. So when our dashing 'underdog' Aryan's turn up the RAF/MAF is equipped with Sopwith Camels and Spads, both navies have sunk becuse of a problem with BBQ's being held in the main powder magazines and the infantry equipped with sharpened peices of mango and dressed in woad.
I call this WAlliederp.
Oh and C if your name starts with a W and ends with a King: The nazi's introduce X engine earlier. What happens. The answer every time is this "Fuck all really, more men die and the Krauts drag the war out a bit longer 'yay'."
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The Napkinwaffe are all very amusing, but there's rule of cool and there's trying for actual alternate history. While I might not put it with sharlin's level of vitriol (I will however, get a real chuckle from excellent phrasing of said vitriol) the persistence of the Napkinwaffe is always a little disquieting. A lot of us here play games. Either we go full on Paradox and play the complicated stuff or content ourselves with *mere* Civilization series on high difficultly settings, but either way, a lot of the people on these boards entertain themselves with a good dose of empire building. We all should have some awareness of the importance of an economy for any all conquering spree, whether its Civ tank rushes, or taking a South Indian kingdom in 1389 and making it lord of everything from Jerusalem to Jakarta.
We also all know if you're going to be the person who is behind economically, you damned well better have a good strong research edge to make up for it. And we all know how hard it is to keep that research edge if your economy isn't that big, and if you are spending more than the absolute necessity on units and weaponry. When we're all playing games, most of us get this. Germany in 1939 is state whose economy is smaller, which has made choices that hinder it's R&D (1), and is doing long-term damage to its economy by producing far too many weapons. Put it and the other powers in 1939 in a Civ scenario with different names, and its the "very hard" setting, or its Tannu Tuvu in Hearts of Iron, etc. Factor in the extreme inefficiencies of the mad man's court style of management, the little fiefdoms run by opiate-addicts and psychopaths, and this only gets worse.
But when it's the OTL Nazis, so many history geeks throw their common sense out the door. Now there are cultural reasons for this in the US and Britain - the Nazi can be Sauron to our Aragorn in a way other bits of our histories really don't lend themselves to, and having the opponent be the Dark Lord suits the collective memory better than the realization it was Aragorn vs. a particularly gimpy orc. But it's still a little disturbing that this role of cool affects people, when it involves looking past, or apologizing for, or glossing over, one of the vilest regimes in human history. And this disquiet is somewhat justified when you look at older threads that focus on the Third Reich, which is that a lot of the participants have since been banned. Often for the time when the mask slipped, and they exposed some very ugly opinions indeed. Check out other websites that cater more to them, and disquiet increases. There's always a disclaimer about how they're not _actually_ Nazis, just history buffs. But the material always seems to belay it...
(1) Yes, the Germans research by 1939 was starting to hurt. Look at when the theoretical work was done on so many of those cool jets and rockets and systems. In 1944, the Germans are largely working of the remaining theorizing that had been done before all the smart folk got chased out of the country. They were eating their seed corn, research wise. Any long term Nazi timeline is one where one side has computers and the others don't. Period. Finito.
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The movie is definitely Fatherland.
My review of the book and movie is here, and, yeah, the book is 1000x better than the movie.
My own novel, A Kill in the Morning has a surviving Nazi Germany in 1955.
The point of departure is in 1941, when Churchill is killed and there's an Anglo-German ceasefire. The US never joins the war. There's a stalemate on the Eastern Front and a German-Russian peace treaty in 1943. By the time of the novel in 1955, there's a three-way Cold War.
The novel has a timeline included, I'll have to see if the publishers will let me post it here.
My review of the book and movie is here, and, yeah, the book is 1000x better than the movie.
My own novel, A Kill in the Morning has a surviving Nazi Germany in 1955.
The point of departure is in 1941, when Churchill is killed and there's an Anglo-German ceasefire. The US never joins the war. There's a stalemate on the Eastern Front and a German-Russian peace treaty in 1943. By the time of the novel in 1955, there's a three-way Cold War.
The novel has a timeline included, I'll have to see if the publishers will let me post it here.
No I think he's right - wiki says a single holocaust train carried 5,000 - 7,000 people and that 1,600 trains were organised by the German Transport Ministry at an average of 1.5 trains per day
This source says there were 25,000 train movements a day on the German railways.
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Cogent points all.
The snappy uniforms don't hurt, either. For those who like snappy uniforms.
A single Army Group in 1941 needed in theory 30 trains per day. Auschwitz at its absolute max during the extermination of the Jews in Hungary received 2-3 trains per day, in 1944 when the war was lost. As mentioned above, the coal economy alone consumed a thousand times more cars and locomotives than the Holocaust.
redlightning
Banned
Even if the Reich secures a truce in the West and victory in the East, it will still be a short lived regime. Hitler will probably die sometime in the late 1940s because of his heart health. The German economy will eventually collapse because the new regime cannot afford to maintain control over Europe and production will be stagnant without the war.
GarrySam
Banned
Yep ... And with no strong successor , the whole rotting structure would come crashing down
In my scenario Hitler has a mild heart attack in 1946 and a worse one in 1950 and is semi-comatose by the mid-fifties. Though there's speculation that he had Parkinson's disease that wouldn't necessarily kill him in the forties. Having said that, I couldn't see him lasting much later than the mid-fifties.
I don't really buy the ideas that either the economy will collapse or that the structure will crash down if Hitler dies.
Sure there would be infighting and coup attempts when Hitler dies, but whoever gets the army on side will win, as always happens in the power struggle after a dictator dies. The Soviet Union didn't collapse after Stalin died. China didn't collapse after Mao died. etc etc.
I don't really see why a peacetime Nazi economy will be bad enough to make the regime collapse, particularly considering how effective Nazi repression was. And with a forcibly integrated export market of practically the whole of continental Europe the German economy might not be in bad shape at all.
Also, with a 1941 PoD there is a very strong next-generation candidate to take over from Hitler - Reinhard Heydrich. In OTL he was about to be made 'protector' of France when he was assassinated. In an ATL where he makes a success of that and retains control of the RSHA he will be in a strong position IMO.
I find rude and arrogant to accuse who propose a Nazi victory scenario of being racist or fascist, maybe they think that the Nazi were a menace thus with some chance and want to explore the horrible future they wanted to create like many alternate history books about this theme.
While the nazi supertech is sci-fi a lot of german scientists were grabbed from Americans and Sovietics after the war and I think that the error in their nuclear research was on purpose, after all one of these scientist wasn't a father of the modern phisics.
Yes, I doubt that if Hitler was killed in one of the attempts on his life there would be a sudden return to the democracy like some think. And was Heydrich more pragmatic than Hitler?
While the nazi supertech is sci-fi a lot of german scientists were grabbed from Americans and Sovietics after the war and I think that the error in their nuclear research was on purpose, after all one of these scientist wasn't a father of the modern phisics.
Yes, I doubt that if Hitler was killed in one of the attempts on his life there would be a sudden return to the democracy like some think. And was Heydrich more pragmatic than Hitler?
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Designed by Hugo Boss, no less. Think about that next time you're shopping for a new suit.
Yeah, afaic the best chance for a surviving Reich is one that never initiates the 2nd World War. Heck if Russia were to get pushy against the Baltics and Poland it could even be looked on favourably by hypothetical future historians in their Cold War equivalent. We all know the Western powers were fairly unscrupulous in their choice of allies when facing up to communism in the 50s - 80s etc. A Nazi Germany that for whatever reason stops it's conquests after the absorption of Czechoslovakia stands at least a half chance of long term survival, my recommendation would be to guarantee the independce of Poland and the Baltic States as a 'buffer' against communism.
Of course for various ideological reasons this is difficult, but all it requires is for pragmatism to outweigh idealism at the top ranks of the Nazi government for just a while. Perhaps the Heer are able to convince Hitler that the Army is in no state to fight France and the UK, perhaps Hitler is incapacitated, perhaps Poland agrees to the German demands for West Preussen and Upper Silesia. Any of these are potential very late PODs for a longer lasting reich.
sharlin
Banned
Also re surviving/victorious Nazi's....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Nazi's were not, never were, never will be 'plucky underdogs'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Nazi's were not, never were, never will be 'plucky underdogs'.
If we're in the mood for analogies, I'd prefer sack of ferrets to house of cards -- angry ferrets with a taste for crystal meth. The contrasting metaphors suggest different outcomes.
Without disputing the general picture, scenarios where Germany wins in the East and stalemates the western allies aren't all that far fetched (they're easier to believe if the order is reversed). Re-starting the war may prove easy or difficult for the USA -- it may have to wait for Germany to do so of its own accord. In the meantime the Nazi empire gets progressively stranger, but the idea that keeping hold of it would cripple it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Partisan movements were only maintained at the cost of tremendous sacrifice and would stand no chance whatsoever without outside supply, intelligence and above all the hope of liberation.
The superficially stable situation encourages mercenary support in particular, and ideological fellow-travelers like Laval also aid control to an extent far in excess of what their numbers suggest. The proportion of Aryanised foreigners varies from large (Netherlands) to small (Ukraine), but these again are disproportionately useful. Conversely, the list of categories of Germans excluded (murdered, deported, enslaved) from Aryanism grows and grows -- those with physical or mental infirmities, Jewish ancestors, independence of mind, those too short, too tall, wearing spectacles, it could go on and on.
In assessing its political progression, neither hatred nor wish-fulfilment should cloud analysis, and neither should excessive determinism. That the imaginable outcomes are all dismal doesn't make them interchangeable.
The succession to Hitler may be smooth or rough. While confinement to the sack only aggravates the ferrets' natural tendency towards infighting, it can't be said with certainty how frequently it will break out or whether a given instance will resemble more the night of the long knives or broader purges (violence against those outside the regime is assumed to be habitual, but the victims in that case are not close to power). Civil war may be frequent or non-existent; Hitler's preference for feudalism may make this less frequent than seems likely.
In this hazy picture, the number of significant branch-points grows so large as to make speculation useless unless the thicket of possibilities can be pared back somehow, and focusing on questions of interest can help in this.
How long could it all last? Might Naziland reach some tipping point beyond which its people could no longer be re-integrated into the world of normality? How would Naziland progress economically, technically and scientifically? Could it reform itself? What would be its cultural effects beyond its frontiers? Could the USA have initiated a new war? Would it win? What would the post-war world look like? Although the final questions may be the most pertinent and grounded in foreseeable fact, the questions are ordered so that the first ones provide some context to help give better answers.
How long could it all last?
While rapid collapse into infighting is certainly imaginable, to claim it's inevitable is excessively deterministic. It could have survived in some form for a long time. Even a fragment would pose severe dangers in the developing technological context.
Neither should collapse be assumed to imply a more benign outcome. Civil war could be very long and bloody and the winners may be no better. Depending on the technological context, especially regarding nuclear weapons, the US political leadership may find pressure to intervene irresistable even if its preference is to fight both factions.
Without external intervention, no definite end should be assumed.
Might Naziland reach some tipping point beyond which its people could no longer be re-integrated into the world of normality?
By the 1970s, people who had reached even adolescence prior to the creation of Goebbels' propaganda machine would be a diminishing portion of the working-age population. By the end of the 80s, those in charge are the children of Nazism metaphorically if not literally (lebensborn).
As the question of economic, cultural and technical degeneration is one of degree only, opposition to the regime and its ideals must be significant by this time, however this doesn't imply an ideological battle between regime loyalists and democrats. Opposition elements would instead encompass all sorts of beliefs developed in all sorts of micro-political contexts.
How would Naziland progress economically, technically and scientifically?
Senior ferrets will use their agrarian empire in Eastern Europe as more of a leisure pursuit than an economic asset, though significant wealth may be extracted from Western satellites also. All the same, these transfers can disguise even severe economic problems in Germany for a long time and severe economic problems in Germany can't be counted on either, however probable.
Notwithstanding the problems with information exchange (e.g. use or even comprehension of the Rotterdam radar, Zuse's digital technology etc.) that hindered German technical development, history doesn't reveal a Germany in technical decline even in 1945. Though exploitation of technology for economic and military ends is uneven and blunders noticeably but unpredictably, technical development in a narrow sense will continue.
Germany's contribution to science is crippled both by ideology and by emigration. Replicating scientific developments elsewhere is a much easier challenge, however, and the regime's bafflement at anything that's happened since 1850 hinders its ability to fully implement or even to clarify its scientific ideology. The religious awe with which Nazism felt for technology probably means it will allow anything its scientists promise will help the regime.
All the same, the longer the regime endures the more severe will be the damage and if it lasts long enough (90s and later) it will struggle even to comprehend foreign developments. In the shorter term, nuclear and solid-state physics are most important. Each is held back 5-10 years, a figure that will rise over time. This contribution to the retardation of industrial development compounds other consequences of Nazi rule, with effects likely rising steeply as time passes.
Could it reform itself?
While it's next to impossible to imagine it doing so, it's important to note that radical regimes nearly always tend towards conservatism over time. This isn't conservatism as we would recognise it and its use of violence internally is perhaps no less extreme but it satisfies some sufficiently ruthless elite. In this instance, conservatism also implies cynicism which would sap the regime of its zeal and energy.
What would be its cultural effects beyond its frontiers?
In a sense this is where we live now, so the question is of practical interest. In the alternative outcome imagined here, people live beyond the frontiers of an existent Nazi empire which will have quite different effects. Fellow travellers abroad have more cohesion and influential even where their numbers are minor.
More interesting than the direct impacts are the indirect effects which may be (or are in reality) subtle, difficult to perceive or even paradoxical. A resolute enemy of Nazism is still someone influenced by Nazism even if in ways not imagined or desired by Nazis.
Key questions are how the Nazi empire, with its obsession with symbolism and communication transcending conscious thought, causes people to interpret reality differently and how those different interpretations then intersect with a profoundly altered political and diplomatic context. The totalitarian power to concentrate resources on resonant projects of tremendous scale means that Germany's effects (even if mostly reactive, which isn't guaranteed) can increase even as it itself declines.
Historically, the strange and terrible psychology of the Cold War was partly a product of the newly expanded human imagination for violence. A surviving Reich exerts even greater influence neither it nor its enemies will fully comprehend. Superpower rivalry in the developing world is even nastier than that between the US and USSR.
Could the USA have initiated a new war?
It's in answering this question that the haze of earlier speculation comes in useful. In almost all circumstances the short answer is yes but the details matter. As with anything the possibility exists for mistakes. Errors helping Germany are unlikely to be more than minor; the real question is how seriously any mistakes hurt the post-war world.
The Western allies cannot maintain a war footing indefinitely without inviting on themselves some of the same political problems that will (utterly, even if it takes a very long time) devour Germany. They must therefore try to maintain war production while permitting normal political debate and relaxing government control of information, but this presents problems.
Historically, the US war economy worked splendidly because millions were willing to fund, via war bonds and the like, large and sometimes corrupt profits by industrialists. The profits were distributed by democratic government and so favoured overall production in contrast to the random and blood-fueled laissez faire of WWI. This tremendous advance would nonetheless have very different effects when extended to the longer term.
The historical Truman Committee sacrificed some fairness and much completeness in the interests of effectiveness. Though a reasonable compromise in the circumstances, it couldn't have worked in the way it did without wartime constraints on reportage. Alternative arrangements could permit minor scandals to become major stories and more serious events seriously alter political evolution. Wealth becomes more concentrated among owners of war industries the longer things go on. If they can't be encouraged to put their own money into war finance, the rest of the population won't either.
Does the US lead a sudden attack on Germany? This presents practical problems for a democratic government and its political effects are the opposite of the historical Pearl Harbor raid. Does it channel aid to partisans? That would invite Germany to re-ignite hostilities at a moment of its own choosing. How confident is the US leadership in its intelligence? Patchy and intermittent intelligence can arrive at politically difficult moments. Assuming Germany doesn't do it a favour, the decision to attack must be made by the USA but the consequences will be felt most sharply in Britain and Nazi-dominated Europe.
Would it win?
German defeat is all but certain. US victory could mean many things, though.
What would the post-war world look like?
Political disputes suspended for the duration widen the longer things go on. Something will have to be invented to replace reds under the bed. Absent a foreign enemy to obscure the sources of political strife, political divisiveness has more effects for mainstream society. Desegregation is delayed and this may interact with politics in South Africa and elsewhere.
Suspicion of the West is sharpened in developing countries where whole thing is seen as two bunches of Westerners beating each other up.
Seeing as the USSR is seen as having been hamstrung by the Russian Civil War, its existence was brief and the West has anyway always mentally pigeonholed Russia, communism may paradoxically be strengthened in rich countries.
As happened with the victors at Versailles, the absence of an external enemy causes the winners to drift apart. US politicians have no reason to curb their anti-colonialist sentiments which Britain etc. perceive as an outrageous hypocrisy.
Benign effects may also occur. Assuming Naziland doesn't persist too long, the developing world may benefit from less mercenary treatment.
Eventually a second wave of tumult must arise as the trauma is reluctantly internalised culturally. Historically this coincided with the 1960s (as distinct from (quote unquote) the 60s) by which time the South and the poorer parts of Appalachia had benefited from generations of aid and desegregation had overcome its most serious opposition, factors which are in doubt here.
By now things may be very different from our experience. The course of events is sensitive to many factors, but the circumstances in which hostilities were resumed, the weapons used, the death toll, and the severity of allied rule in Germany obviously matter.
Given a few lucky rolls of the dice, the war wasn't that different from the historical reality, and maybe even decolonisation runs more smoothly and there's no Cold War. Catastrophe porn is easy to dream up also, mind. The cultural climate resulting from the Nazis having existed at all means that for many there must be an enemy, domestic or foreign, after the war. Bungle some critical elements of the liberation war or ignore for too long the civil strains it's aggravating and the second wave of conflict could be worse than the first.