DBWI: looking back on the 20th Anniversary of Nazifascism's collapse

[Eurofed]

Ok folks, we have all heard the media, it has been 20 years since Nazifascism collapsed. Despite what many thought during the Cold War, it did not end up with America and Nazifascist Europe tossing each other ICBMs across the Atlantic.

Thanks to the wisdom of Schmidt (really, the man would deserve better press in his own country; Germany was going to lose its bloody empire anyway, we all owe him if the death-throes of Nazifascism did not end in a bloodbath or nuclear annihilation) and the peaceful defiance of German, Italian, French et al. masses yearning to taste American prosperity and superior consumer technology, get the state off their backs, and stop the endless line of soldier caskets coming back from Russia, Europe amazingly returned to freedom and democracy without any violence, and Germany, Italy, and their allies peacefully retired to their post-WWII national borders. Truly the "Velvet Revolution" remains a pivotal historical moment.

But despite the enthusiasm when it occurred, the post-Cold War World has not been a bed of roses, either. Large swaths of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa remain an absolute mess, terrorism an horrible plague, nobody ever paid for the crimes of Nazifascism, and democratic Germany and Italy are still tempted by semi-authoritarian nationalism and act like their old geopolitical turfs and their nationals that the irresponsible actions of their past regimes scattered all over the Old World are their divine right.

Looking back, how do you think things could and should have gone, about the Cold War and its aftermath (NOT about WWII's outcome, please; there cannot be a worse AH cliche than "WI Soviet Russia had won WWII") and looking forward, how do think things are going to be ?

 

[Fletch]

What with all the chaos that has occured in Europe over this timeframe, thank god Britain ws on Americas side throughout the Cold War. I have to say though, I am still wary at the idea of US forces leaving us in case the continentals go a bit loopy again...........

One thing I will say is the economy has prospered due to trade with them. In an ideal world, Germany would permenantly kept weak in a military sense, but the economy strengthened. Ditto France and Russia.

 

[metalstar316]

Are you referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was 20 years ago this November, or are you referring to the actual collapse of the Nazi government following the successful coup of May 1992?

Regarding the cold war, I still say President Patton should have launched those nukes at Munich. I gather that he would have too, if Himmler's interpreter hadn't cleaned up the language der Fuhrer used at that conference in 1964.

 

[Fletch]

Are you referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was 20 years ago this November, or are you referring to the actual collapse of the Nazi government following the successful coup of May 1992?

Regarding the cold war, I still say President Patton should have launched those nukes at Munich. I gather that he would have too, if Himmler's interpreter hadn't cleaned up the language der Fuhrer used at that conference in 1964.

Prime Minister Profumo did the right thing by backing America, but I have to say it was scary stuff. Who would have considered the death of Hitler and the power scramble just weeks later though?

 

[BlackWave]

Are you referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was 20 years ago this November, or are you referring to the actual collapse of the Nazi government following the successful coup of May 1992?

Regarding the cold war, I still say President Patton should have launched those nukes at Munich. I gather that he would have too, if Himmler's interpreter hadn't cleaned up the language der Fuhrer used at that conference in 1964.

They still had the capability to wipe off our most important cities back then too, you know. If they didn't, we'd have gone to war the normal way pretty quick.

 

[metalstar316]

I do know that I wouldn't want to be a European right now. Even twenty years after the collapse, France, Russia and the People's Republic of Poland still don't have viable governments. Witness the chaos and rise of piracy in those three rogue states.

 

[Georgepatton]

Are you referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was 20 years ago this November, or are you referring to the actual collapse of the Nazi government following the successful coup of May 1992?

Regarding the cold war, I still say President Patton should have launched those nukes at Munich. I gather that he would have too, if Himmler's interpreter hadn't cleaned up the language der Fuhrer used at that conference in 1964.

OOC: Why would there be a Wall in Berlin in a TL where Germany wasn't divided by the Allies?

 

[metalstar316]

OOC: Why would there be a Wall in Berlin in a TL where Germany wasn't divided by the Allies?

OOC: I don't know. Blocking off the dissidents, maybe? Just take the ball and run with it.

 

[Domoviye]

OOC: Why would there be a Wall in Berlin in a TL where Germany wasn't divided by the Allies?

OOC: Instead of a Warsaw Pact as OTL, the Nazi alliance could be called a Berlin Wall. Make Berlin the city were an alliance between Nazi Germany, and its allies/puppets was formed, and it could be a wall dividing Europe from the world.

 

[Georgepatton]

OOC: I don't know. Blocking off the dissidents, maybe? Just take the ball and run with it.

OOC: Okay. Maybe the wall wasn't strictly in Berlin, just called the Berlin Wall because Berlin put it up?
IC: Ah, the Berlin Wall, great symbol of the Cold War. I have a piece of it. Friend of mine who worked in the American embassy over there sent it to me when the students started tearing it down. "Anti-Communist Protective Rampart" my ass. All it ever did was keep ex-Soviets from sneaking into Germany, and not enough of that.

 

[RCAF Brat]

OOC: Why would there be a Wall in Berlin in a TL where Germany wasn't divided by the Allies?

OOC: I don't know. Blocking off the dissidents, maybe? Just take the ball and run with it.

Why not call it Berlin's Wall or the Westwall and have it be TTL's Iron Curtain? The Iron Curtain (the borders between the Soviet controll states and the West) also imploded in 1989, at the same time as the Berlin Wall.

 

[metalstar316]

Why not call it Berlin's Wall or the Westwall and have it be TTL's Iron Curtain? The Iron Curtain (the borders between the Soviet controll states and the West) also imploded in 1989, at the same time as the Berlin Wall.

OOC: Well, because in my imagination, I pictured a Nazi victory leading to Lebensraum, thus Berlin is well away from any borders particularly with the Soviet Union, if the SU still exists.

 

[RCAF Brat]

OOC: Well, because in my imagination, I pictured a Nazi victory leading to Lebensraum, thus Berlin is well away from any borders particularly with the Soviet Union, if the SU still exists.

I viewed it as being more, ah, limited. Say the Nazis got to keep the Baltic States, Belarus, the Ukraine, and everything west of there. Poland, the Ukraine and Belarus became a Nazi hell on earth. The Italians survived the war, though they lost Ethiopia and Somalia. They would have lost Libya too, but peace broke out first. Britain survived, and got a peace that could be spun as a victory of sorts. France was the big loser, with French possessions in North Africa going to Germany and Italy, but everything else got taken over by Britain or the US. France it self got carved up into a couple of Nazi puppet states. Japan picked a fight with the US and (a suddenly at peace) Britain and went down in flames. The US stayed out of the war in Europe, which is why the Germans 'won'.

 

[Eurofed]

Are you referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was 20 years ago this November, or are you referring to the actual collapse of the Nazi government following the successful coup of May 1992?

Well, in common parlance the fall of the Iron Wall, or Berlin Wall, as some may prefer, has come to be identified with the collapse of the Nazifascist block across Europe (after all, it's when the NF regimes fell in the main allies-vassals of Germany: Italy, France, Hungary, Romania, Dietsland, Scandinavia...) rather than the moment of its fall in Germany itself, bizarre at it may be. I acknowledge that properly speaking, we should regard the 1992 failed coup by Gestapo/SS hardliners against Schmidt and the successful counter-coup/insurrection by pro-democracy Whermacht units and Berlin civilians as the true end of the monster. Despite his other faults, that image of President Strasemann talking the civilians and the Heer into defying the SS from the top of a tank remains a powerful image.

Regarding the cold war, I still say President Patton should have launched those nukes at Munich. I gather that he would have too, if Himmler's interpreter hadn't cleaned up the language der Fuhrer used at that conference in 1964.

Are you joking ? Even if the European nuclear arsenal was not nowhere as good as America feared to be back then, and Patton himself wildly exaggerated about the "missile gap" in his presidential campaign, in all likelihood they would have took several American cities with their second strike. And the 1964 SIOP still totally lacked the flexibility to launch a first strike focused against military targets, any large scale American nuclear attack would have targeted the cities and killed thousands of millions of Europeans (not to mention their innocent Russian, Arab, and African subjects, well those who survived the purges before Hitler died anyway), turned western Eurasia into a glowing wasteland, and wrecked global environment. The NF block fell peacefully in a couple decades anyway.

 

[Jimbrock]

What? Here in Italy, the transition wasnt so sudden. Soon after the war finished in 1943, democracy was already slowly soaking through the system. I mean, sure, we were very grateful to Mussolini for the 'Great Victory' and of course it is mainly his initiative that brought us the Alps, Dalamatia, Corsica, Tunisia, the Ionians, Malta, East Algeria, and the like. But still, when Ciano came to power in the sixties, most Italians were convinced that the Nazis were no good. And you cant deny that the Great Count reintroduced democracy, however slight it was. And no-one, even a Nazi optimist, could say that Ciano was a German vassal when the Fascist Governmment erected the Algiers wall in '69.

And the Fascists arent seen in such a bad light down here, either. Even though the National Freedom Party is a far cry from the old Mussolinists, the Avanti Party is still a vocal majority.

 

[yourworstnightmare]

Well, the drama has gone on for 20 years too, the debacle over the Polish border, the length it took for Berlin to recognize an independent Czech Republic.

 

[Eurofed]

Well, the drama has gone on for 20 years too, the debacle over the Polish border, the length it took for Berlin to recognize an independent Czech Republic.

Sad, but comprehensible, if you think about the extent of the ethnic changes that the Nazi inflicted to the region after the war. Only typical Nazi callous disregard for the consequences of their actions would think that mass deportation of "undesirable" Pole and Czech population in eastern Poland, Bielorussia, and western Ukraine would not brew vicious inter-Slav ethnic conflicts, in addition to the rabid anti-German terrorism itself, that have been ongoing for decades.

About German sloweness into recognizing the new Slav entities, in addition to the typical ambiguity about the crimes of the Nazis, they were in all evidence afraid of the consequences. Even if only a lunatic fringe may think that the Germanization of Bohemia-Moravia & Western Poland, and the Bug-Wartha-Vistula border, could be ever reversed against a nuclear great power, and even the most Slavophile German politician would accept the Slavs' "right to return" when Hell freezes over, think of the reparations that the deportees and their descendants could claim !

OOC: folks, I have assumed as granted that at the very very least, 50 years of Nazi rule would lead to complete Germanization of Bohemia-Moravia and the areas of Poland they annexed in 1939 and 1941, and that the new German-Slav border would be the OTL 1943 one. I honestly dunno how much successful they would have been in the Germanization of the General Government, if ever.