Fate of Estonia in Axis Victory Scenario

I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but Hitler's War Aims suggests the Nazi line re the Estonians was that they'd largely been Germanicized during Swedish rule. I want to say something like fifty percent of the population was thus deemed racially acceptable. The rest probably would have been deported to Siberia or (if lucky) Finland. Politically, I'm sure Estonia would have eventually ended up as one or more Reichsgaue (it's just me, but I think the Baltics would have been cut apart and stitched back together in defiance of the old borders - f'instance, southern Estonia and northern Latvia made into one gau, northern Estonia and Ingria into another, etc.).
 
I wonder if Finland could go to bat for them at all, or at least accept a population transfer.
 
I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but Hitler's War Aims suggests the Nazi line re the Estonians was that they'd largely been Germanicized during Swedish rule. I want to say something like fifty percent of the population was thus deemed racially acceptable. The rest probably would have been deported to Siberia or (if lucky) Finland. Politically, I'm sure Estonia would have eventually ended up as one or more Reichsgaue (it's just me, but I think the Baltics would have been cut apart and stitched back together in defiance of the old borders - f'instance, southern Estonia and northern Latvia made into one gau, northern Estonia and Ingria into another, etc.).

I Know, Hitler was a Stupid Psychopath.

Estonians are not Slavs. They look Aryans to me. (No Offense)
 
If the Nazis are victorious and can basically do whatever they want in the conquered lands I think less people wind up being exterminated than Hitler would prefer in an ideal scenario.
From a practical standpoint the Nazis cannot kill everyone, they need people to work farms and factories. To that end they probably wind up declaring more people as "aryans". Plus with Hitler's health who knows how long he lives. There is probably a cold war going on with the West and his successor might be more practical and decide devoting resources to murdering everyone in Eastern Europe isn't the best thing.
 

Wendigo

Banned
According to Generalplan Ost 50% of Estonians would be "eliminated" using extermination through labor and starvation. They'd die in the process of razing their own cities, with others dying across Nazi Europe in various mines, factories, building the Atlantic Wall, and other public works projects where they face absolutely horrid conditions and are fed on starvation level diets (<1,500 calories) designed to kill them within a year's time.

The survivors would be enslaved and forced to work on German plantations in the East.

Considering at that time Estonia had a population of one million and half of the population was marked for death it would be only a few short years after the Reich had obtained continental hegemony before the term "Estonian" goes the way of the Dodo.

Same with Latvians and Lithuanians (50% and 75% of population subject to elimination respectively)

Nazi Germany and its leaders were a bunch of purely evil insane monsters who planned to exterminate whole nations/races so callously it was like they were filing their taxes and not killing millions of people solely for existing as "subhumans."
 
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According to Generalplan Ost 50% of Estonians would be "eliminated" using extermination through labor and starvation. They'd die in the process of razing their own cities, with others dying across Nazi Europe in various mines, factories, building the Atlantic Wall, and other public works projects where they face absolutely horrid conditions and are fed on starvation level diets (<1,500 calories) designed to kill them within a year's time.

The survivors would be enslaved and forced to work on German plantations in the East.

Considering at that time Estonia had a population of one million and half of the population was marked for death it would be only a few short years after the Reich had obtained continental hegemony before the term "Estonian" goes the way of the Dodo.

Same with Latvians and Lithuanians (50% and 75% of population subject to elimination respectively)

Nazi Germany and its leaders were a bunch of purely evil insane monsters who planned to exterminate whole nations/races so callously it was like they were filing their taxes and not killing millions of people solely for existing as "subhumans."

So do as the Soviet Russia and it's Leader were bunchly pure evil and insane as well. Also, so do as the Kazakhs, Chechenians, Asiatics and Tatars were Enslaved by the Soviets. :(

I Think the Survivors might be more Germanized or Left Alone/Given Citizenship.

Also, they were Estonians who were collaborating with the Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_Auxiliary_Police
 
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I have suggested some time that Finland could take a significant number of those Estonians that would not fit Nazi "Germanization" plans. Greater Finland would have a lot of land to be settled in Eastern Karelia after the ethnic Russians there would be deported to, well, where ever. The Finns would not probably spare a lot of thought to what happened to them after they crossed the border to German-controlled territories. But Estonians were kin to the Finns and the whole point of conquering East Karelia would be to create a greater Finnic homeland. If the Finns get any inkling that the Germans will want to kill a major number of Estonians, Helsinki would simply say that they can just take the undesired Estonians off the German's hands. Finland would probably even offer some compensation for the Germans for this, should Berlin not agree to it initially.

A significant number of Estonian soldiers was fighting in Finland during the Continuation War anyway, IOTL, so there would be a lot of wartime contacts there. It is quite well-known in Finland that, for example, up to 10% of the Finnish Navy's wartime personnel was made of Estonian volunteers.

In fact we might see an actual "Estonian homeland" set up in Eastern Karelia, somewhere by the White Sea. It would be a sort of a sad reservation for the surviving Estonians, sure, but at the very least it would be a lot better than anything the Nazis would have in store for these people.

The Finnish government might try to apply the same policy to pretty much any Finnic group in German-occupied Russia, assuming it would get any traction with the Nazi authorities.
 
I have suggested some time that Finland could take a significant number of those Estonians that would not fit Nazi "Germanization" plans. Greater Finland would have a lot of land to be settled in Eastern Karelia after the ethnic Russians there would be deported to, well, where ever. The Finns would not probably spare a lot of thought to what happened to them after they crossed the border to German-controlled territories. But Estonians were kin to the Finns and the whole point of conquering East Karelia would be to create a greater Finnic homeland. If the Finns get any inkling that the Germans will want to kill a major number of Estonians, Helsinki would simply say that they can just take the undesired Estonians off the German's hands. Finland would probably even offer some compensation for the Germans for this, should Berlin not agree to it initially.

A significant number of Estonian soldiers was fighting in Finland during the Continuation War anyway, IOTL, so there would be a lot of wartime contacts there. It is quite well-known in Finland that, for example, up to 10% of the Finnish Navy's wartime personnel was made of Estonian volunteers.

In fact we might see an actual "Estonian homeland" set up in Eastern Karelia, somewhere by the White Sea. It would be a sort of a sad reservation for the surviving Estonians, sure, but at the very least it would be a lot better than anything the Nazis would have in store for these people.

The Finnish government might try to apply the same policy to pretty much any Finnic group in German-occupied Russia, assuming it would get any traction with the Nazi authorities.

That would probably work. Hitler respected the Finns, after all. He likely wouldn't mind it if they asked for people the Germans didn't want anyway. After all, Generalplan Ost was to depopulate the East, not to kill everyone there. That it opted for genocide was because the Nazis had no other way of clearing the place out.
 
That would probably work. Hitler respected the Finns, after all. He likely wouldn't mind it if they asked for people the Germans didn't want anyway. After all, Generalplan Ost was to depopulate the East, not to kill everyone there. That it opted for genocide was because the Nazis had no other way of clearing the place out.

So do as the Soviets as well.
 
Because, the Soviets killed about 63 Million People. Nazis killed 21 Million People.

Soviets-Nazis were at the Beginning Allies in 1939-1941.

Your OP is about an Axis victory, especially what would happen to Estonia. If Estonia is in the German sphere, the Soviets are East of Moscow, gone, kapput, nada, zipp, disappeared. They are irrelevant. Sure they did some bad things, but for the sake of this What If? they are about as relevant as a race of spacefaring cockroaches in the Andromeda galaxy.
 
So do as the Soviets as well.

For all the mass crimes and atrocities it committed, the Soviet Union never planned anything like Generalplan Ost. While Stalin used famines to starve his own undesirables by the millions, and ordered massive deportations, he never intended to depopulate Eastern Europe in order to make room for a dominant master race. Nor did the Soviet Union ever consider wholesale physical and cultural destruction of Estonians as a people, although I can't certainly praise its behaviour toward them. Indeed, Stalin obviously recognized the right of Estonians to exist as he created the Estonian SSR.
By the way, opposing "Slav" and "Aryan" only makes sense in a Nazi worldview. The Nazis probably did not regard the Estonians as really "Aryan", but their approach to the concept was flexible enough. (Croats and Slovaks are clearly Slavic, but this never bothered the Nazi leadership in making alliances with them).
 
Because, the Soviets killed about 63 Million People. Nazis killed 21 Million People.

Soviets-Nazis were at the Beginning Allies in 1939-1941.

I don't where you get these figures, but ... IIRC high estimates of the victims of Stalin's regime (under which the vast majority of deaths caused by any Soviet regime occurred) range in the 12-15 million (according to The Black Book of Communism, if memory serves), and I am talking about estimates that are considered by many historians as biased and too high. Unless you are nout counting ALL victims of any Communist regime, notably Mao's China, as "killed by the Soviets". And even there, 63M sounds a rounded-up sum of the highest estimates.
The total number of deaths imputable to the Nazis is also difficult to assess, but the purposeful starvation and devastation they brought onto Poland and Russia, added to the Holocaust and the other criminal activity, etc. suggest that 21 millions may be a conservative estimate and total is quite higher.
 
IIRC there were some Nazi plans to transport the Dutch people to Estonia and Latvia. It doesn't sound like a smart or practical plan, but total Nazi victory is kind of ASB anyway.

So Estonia's future would be a German - and maybe Dutch - colony. As people already said, the Nazis would exterminate half the Estonian natives and force the other half to Germanize or die. The Soviets were brutal, but the Nazis were easily ten times more brutal and murderous.
 
If Estonia goes to Germany:
Heinrich Himmler provisionally approved the General Plan East in June 1942. He further demanded a more specific "Overall Settlement Plan" and escalated the program to include "the total Germanization of Estonia and Latvia," along with Poland, "in no more than twenty years" and the "total resettlement" of Lithuania's population.”
(Blood and Soil, by Ben Kiernan)

“Jews were to be resettled wholesale; only certain proportions of other ethnic groups, spelled out in Wetzel's evaluation, were to be subject to resettlement. In the case of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, this proportion was set at 50%....
The colonization enterprise was to be preceded by the takeover of the territories due for settlement, their economic exploitation for the duration of the war, and the expansion of the resources of the "German folk land" (deutscher Volksboden). With regard to the latter, the lecturer emphasized its great importance in view of the fact that it was meant to allow for the territorial concentration of the German people. According to notes taken by Hermann Krumey, Beyer listed Estonia, Latvia, the Dniester, Kiev and the Black Sea as border areas. For the time being the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was not to be included in the projected settlement. Nonetheless, according to the variant of GPO developed by the RSHA, within 30 years 1-2 million German families were to be settled (45-50,000 per year over the first 10 years, and 20-30,000 per year for the following 20 years).”
(The Shoah and the War, by Asher Cohen, ‎Yehoyakim Cochavi, ‎Yoav Gelber)

In the early months of the war, all things seemed possible to the German conquerors, and Rosenberg and other Nazi planners anticipated the eastward expansion of Estonia's borders to the Leningrad-Novgorod line (a region that Rosenberg called "Peipusland"). Much of the ethnic Estonian population was to be moved into this area to make room for German colonists in the Baltic itself. In fact, such plans were seriously discussed at Hitler's headquarters as late as August 1942, but the Soviet counterattack prevented their realization. Along similar lines, the Generalplan Ost of the SS Planning Office in May 1942 called for the population of the eastern Marken (frontier regions) to be substantially German or Germanized within 25 years.”
(Estonia and the Estonians, by Toivo U. Raun)

“The Plan to Germanize the Ostland During the German occupation Estonia (which was extended at the expense of Great Russia to include Novgorod), Latvia (which was extended to Velikie Luki), Lithuania, and Belorussia or White Russia (which was extended to include the Smolensk region) — all these areas were joined together in the Reichcommissariat Ostland.”
(Augustana Library Publications)

Himmler said: "We must Germanize and colonize White Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Karelia and the Crimea. We will proceed in other areas as we have begun here, building small cities of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants, along lines of communication where our super-highways, railways and airports are protected by our garrisons, and surrounded by a ten-kilometer radius of villages, so that the people are always immersed in German life and related to an urban cultural center."
(History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church, by David Cymet)

“As possible destinations for the Jewish expellees, Rosenberg suggested the territory eastwards of Lake Peipus on the Estonian–Russian border and declared that 'a great possibility for settlement' existed, above all, in Belarus"
(Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941, by Alex J. Kay)

Summary: Nothing particularly enjoyable for the Estonians.


If Hitler didn't decide to be a complete asshole when it came to Estonia:

“The Nazis capitalized on the Estonian quest for the Finno-Ugric ideal rather than pushing them in that direction. Estonian president Konstantin Päts, shortly before his arrest by the Soviets... suggested the relocation of the Estonian and Finnish borders eastward so that they could include the Finno-Ugric minorities. Päts also proposed replacing Estonia's Russian population with racially similar peoples from Russia proper. According to Päts, the Finns should have carried out a similar resettlement program in Karelia. The 1939 Soviet aggression against Finland made many Estonians feel guilty for not having helped a brother nation in need. The Estonians could now claim to repair that moral failure by assuming the symbolic role of caretaker of the Finno-Ugric nations in the German-occupied territory of the Soviet Union. Considering the close ties between Finland and Estonia—even if the former had usually played the role of leader and the latter of follower—the Estonians were now psychologically relieved of a possible inferiority complex. In practical terms, however, the Estonians could do little to help their linguistic kin in Ingermanland. The only thing Estonians could eflectively do was to extend to the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia the notion of a common culture and spirit. Before the war this attempt was realized mainly through ethnological studies, while in the context of Nazi occupation it came to be conveyed through anthropological and racial studies.”

“The Nazi “New Europe” was to be created through population transfer. The resettlement of Baltic Germans in the fall of 1939 (so-called Urnsiedldng) marked the first phase of the ethnic restructuring of the continent. In the northeastern corner of Europe, Estonia and Finland became actively involved in executing the racial blueprints of the Nazis. This involvement distinguished Estonia from the rest of occupied Eastern Europe, which had, for the most part, remained a passive recipient of the population policies emanating from Berlin. What Estonian and Finnish ethnologists and linguists had until now only dreamed of—a greater Finno-Ugrian entity—was becoming reality. Although it did not result in any significant increase of political representation, the demographic remodeling of the areas located between the Baltic Seain the west and Lakes Ilmen and Ladoga in the east echoed the interwar rhetoric regarding a pan-Finno-Ugrian union of sorts. Once again, the Nazis attempted to build a bridge to the hearts and minds of Estonians. The repatriation of ethnic Estonians from former Soviet territories had long been on the agenda of Estonian politicians and intellectuals. The German Security Police supported this endeavor as long as it concerned racially fit Estonians. According to Head of the German Security Police in Estonia Sandberger, incorporating small ethnic groups from Ingermanland into the Estonian majority would advance the concept of the Nazi “New Europe.” When asking whether there was “more of a valuable Estonian and Finnish ethnic stock left in the Soviet Union,” Sandberger argued that the Estonians would cherish the idea that they had saved even a tiny bit of precious human material. Indeed, by winning it back to the Estonian nation they would have prevented the imminent decline of kindred peoples. Head of the Estonian Self-Government Mae went one step further, proposing to exchange Estonia's Russian population for ethnic Estonians and other Finno-Ugrians living in Russia.”

“Between 17 August and 15 September 1942 a group of TU professors and graduate students conducted a population study near the town of Kotly in Ingermanland. Among the most noted participants in the research expedition were the ethnologist Gustav Rank and the linguist Paul Ariste. Another member of the expedition was an Estonian agronomist in the service of the Security Police in Tallinn. The main objective of the study was to map villages with a predominantly Finno-Ugrian population. The Wehrmacht, which sponsored the research, was particularly interested in reviving Finno-Ugrian settlements in that area.”

“Estonians did not waste time speculating about “Greater Estonia," which their status as an occupied country could not afford them anyway. Instead, Estonians capitalized on the territorial gains that Nazi propaganda had promised them. Even then, Estonians approached the matter seriously by conducting scientific research on Finno-Ugric peoples living in the former Soviet territories.”
(Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945, by Rory Yeomans, ‎Anton Weiss-Wendt)



Also, Finland had some designs on Estonia.




(compiling all this stuff goes to Ulrich Norman Owen, the Nazi Victory Map dude)
 
What would have happened to Ethnic Estonians in Axis Victory Scenario?

Would they be Germanized or Exterminated/Exploited? or Would they be Left Alone and given Citizenship?

Estonians looks Aryan to me.

Estonians are not Slavs.

They're Finno-Urgic. They're Language Spoken closer to Finnish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonians

No Offense to anyone. Just i'm Curious.


Aryan isn't an accepted anthropological or ethnic term unless you're talking about India. Aryan is a term used by the Nazis, whose racial science is not based on any actual science. Poles don't look all that different from Germans and they were still slated for enslavement and extermination.
 
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