How effective would the Nazi population growth measures have been?

Just what it says on the tin.

The Nazis started huge programs to improve German population growth (Mutterkreuz, Lebensborn, etc.).

How fast was it really possible for the German population to grow in the case of a (however unlikely) victory.

I have seen some graphs with huge population spikes between the moment the Nazis take power and the start of the war.
 

RousseauX

Donor
There would have most likely being a post-war baby boom and after that you run into the problem of demographic transition.

Namely that fertility rate is inversely correlated with income per capita, given that the Nazis were planning to transfer wealth into Germany to artificially raise income, it would have ironically decreased the fertility rate. Increased education of women and economic transition away from an agrarian economy (of Germany and most of Europe was still in 1945) would have resulted far less incentives to have children, just as the did OTL.

Population growth would have started to decline after the 60s and eventually settle into something <2.1 children per women, just as OTL.
 

Deleted member 1487

Ironically the Nazi birth programs did not increase birthrates back to pre-WW1 totals. IIRC they topped out around 20-21 live births per 1000 people:
http://alphahistory.com/nazigermany/women-in-nazi-germany/

Maybe with future generations of women being indoctrinated with the mantra of pregnancy for the nation would boost birthrates in a Nazi victory scenario and with sufficient resources to ensure those extra children aren't a burden on families (like Soviet Romania experienced).
 
Just what it says on the tin.

The Nazis started huge programs to improve German population growth (Mutterkreuz, Lebensborn, etc.).

How fast was it really possible for the German population to grow in the case of a (however unlikely) victory.

I have seen some graphs with huge population spikes between the moment the Nazis take power and the start of the war.

Depends on how successful they are at scattering Germans across Poland and Ukraine.

There was, IOTL, some considerable reluctance among urban Germans to live as peasants. I wouldn't put it past the Nazis to actually deport settlers to the frontier by force if the Fuhrer wills it, but that approach doesn't seem conducive to efficient population growth.
 
The GDR had many policies to raise the population and they did kind of work.

Married couples got a flat sooner and similar stuff.

I guess when you take the policies of the communist block as a model you will see that all these actions did not function as hoped.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Depends on how successful they are at scattering Germans across Poland and Ukraine.

Poland border regions are doable but the broad pattern of post-war economics (wages in cities increase over wages in rural area) means that urbanization is going to be the rational made by German citizens with regard to where they want to be.

One of the many problems with German settlement plans is that they didn't understand that it wasn't the 1850s anymore and vast tracts of agricultural lands are in fact not very appealing to most people when compared to post-war urban life.
 

Deleted member 1487

Poland border regions are doable but the broad pattern of post-war economics (wages in cities increase over wages in rural area) means that urbanization is going to be the rational made by German citizens with regard to where they want to be.

One of the many problems with German settlement plans is that they didn't understand that it wasn't the 1850s anymore and vast tracts of agricultural lands are in fact not very appealing to most people when compared to post-war urban life.

Or why they had to keep importing Italian, Greek, Polish, and Slovak labor to work German farms even pre-war, because Germans did not want to do the hard work of farm labor anymore; as a result even apples, which grow well in Germany, were in shortage in the 1930 due to lack of labor willing to work to grow/pick them. Germanizing Slavs is going to be necessary to have the farm labor that Germans don't want to be.
 
Or why they had to keep importing Italian, Greek, Polish, and Slovak labor to work German farms even pre-war, because Germans did not want to do the hard work of farm labor anymore; as a result even apples, which grow well in Germany, were in shortage in the 1930 due to lack of labor willing to work to grow/pick them. Germanizing Slavs is going to be necessary to have the farm labor that Germans don't want to be.

Didn't Generplan Ost assume the surviving Slavic peoples were going to be slaves for the settlers? If that's the case then you might get some more incentive to move people out depending on how much of a plantation-style setup is implemented here. If it's less a case of, "hardy pioneer carving out a homestead" and more "we'll move you out to supervise this group of untermenschen and make scads of money doing it" I could see people jumping at the incentive.

It would also be a pretty horrible place to be, no doubt about it. Between agricultural plantations, mines, partisans, and the sort of people who'd be first in line to volunteer for the overseer's job you're going to end up with something pretty foul. Think the worst of the Middle Ages meets the Belgian Congo.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Didn't Generplan Ost assume the surviving Slavic peoples were going to be slaves for the settlers? If that's the case then you might get some more incentive to move people out depending on how much of a plantation-style setup is implemented here. If it's less a case of, "hardy pioneer carving out a homestead" and more "we'll move you out to supervise this group of untermenschen and make scads of money doing it" I could see people jumping at the incentive.

It would also be a pretty horrible place to be, no doubt about it. Between agricultural plantations, mines, partisans, and the sort of people who'd be first in line to volunteer for the overseer's job you're going to end up with something pretty foul. Think the worst of the Middle Ages and the Belgian Congo.

The problem is plantation type economy in the slave labor sense isn't all that viable in the 20th century anymore because agricultural have shifted away from being labor intensive to capital intensive. The mechanization of agriculture in the American south for instance made much of the black sharecroppers (who were slaves for most practical purposes) redundant and why they were allowed/incentivized to move to northern cities to take factory jobs. The optimal sort of slave economy would probably be something like Stalin's industrialization and collectivization than anything else.

Granted a slave economy ran by a German elite is a lot more viable than trying to repeat 19th century American frontier. But this doesn't lend itself very well to rapid population growth of the master race either.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Or why they had to keep importing Italian, Greek, Polish, and Slovak labor to work German farms even pre-war, because Germans did not want to do the hard work of farm labor anymore; as a result even apples, which grow well in Germany, were in shortage in the 1930 due to lack of labor willing to work to grow/pick them. Germanizing Slavs is going to be necessary to have the farm labor that Germans don't want to be.

But wasnt that the plan, establish essentially the american deep South throughout the east. Germans forming a wealthy and powerful aristocracy with Slavic slaves doing the work?
 
Germans would be happy to listen to Himmler and go to areas that used to be called Moscow and Leningrad and have 30 kids and freeze their asses off for the Fatherland.

Oh wait lol no way in hell.
 
I have been exploring this idea in my own Nazi victory TL, and from my own research, I imagine that the continued "encouragement" from Berlin for couples to marry earlier, begin having kids earlier and ramming their propaganda on pregnancy down the throats of young girls and attempting to produce further encouragement for women to produce more offspring could produce an increased birthrate.

They might even start encouraging teens in the Hitler Youth to start getting together earlier to try and help the breeding programs even.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I have been exploring this idea in my own Nazi victory TL, and from my own research, I imagine that the continued "encouragement" from Berlin for couples to marry earlier, begin having kids earlier and ramming their propaganda on pregnancy down the throats of young girls and attempting to produce further encouragement for women to produce more offspring could produce an increased birthrate.

They might even start encouraging teens in the Hitler Youth to start getting together earlier to try and help the breeding programs even.

This was basically what happened in the Soviet Union, it didn't stop birthrates from dropping to 2.01 by the 1980s.

Demographics and demographic transition really is one of those "iron law" dealies insofar you are talking about developed countries.
 
This was basically what happened in the Soviet Union, it didn't stop birthrates from dropping to 2.01 by the 1980s.

Demographics and demographic transition really is one of those "iron law" dealies insofar you are talking about developed countries.

I am not guaranteeing that it would be successful, I said that I think it could be successful in increasing the birthrate; at least for a initial albeit brief period. With it probably going lower with each passing year.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I am not guaranteeing that it would be successful, I said that I think it could be successful in increasing the birthrate; at least for a initial albeit brief period. With it probably going lower with each passing year.

That actually sounds about right, you had baby booms in both the USSR and the west in general post-war after all.
 
That actually sounds about right, you had baby booms in both the USSR and the west in general post-war after all.

Yeah, I figure there would be a general post-war baby boom in the Reich and other European countries as was the case with the West and the USSR in OTL; before an eventual drop of the birth rates to much lower years as the years go on.
 

It's

Banned
Just what it says on the tin.

The Nazis started huge programs to improve German population growth (Mutterkreuz, Lebensborn, etc.).

How fast was it really possible for the German population to grow in the case of a (however unlikely) victory.

I have seen some graphs with huge population spikes between the moment the Nazis take power and the start of the war.

What about the impact of those other nazi population "growth" measures- not talking about the murder camps, but the full and free availability of abortion for Slavs and any other racially "undesirable" groups?

Also, I remember reading in a book about the ww2 German army magazine "Signal" an article extracted from its English language edition predicting greater Germany having a population of (I think) 120m "by 1980". Anybody else seen this article (or the book)?
 
I think Nazis had to implement some sort of migration controls early on to prevent people moving from farms to cities. After victory similar would have to be implemented on larger scale. because even if couples would be willing to move to farms question is if their children would want same.

Another thing is that these hypothetical farmers, lets assume they moved close to Germany like Poland, would work hard. Their children would see it and faced with same future they are likely to say "screw this".

The main problems of Nazi plans are, as others have already said, that their mentality was rooted in idealistic image of pre-modern farming. Another is that they (OK, this was mostly Himmler and certain branches of SS) looked at complex problems and devised simple solutions that didn't work. Even early on they attempted large scale population transfers. Move Slavs out, bring in Volksdeutsche, profit! Well, that didn't work when dealing with relatively small numbers. Volksdeutsche didn't want to live in farms confiscated from Poles (too small, not fertile enough, not enough equipment....), moving large numbers of Poles around wasn't as easy as thought.

It's possible that in decades after victory Polish lands annexed to Germany would be almost completely germanised through settlement and expulsions, former Czechoslovakia and rest of Poland heavily germanised while rest of former SU you'd see clumps of German settlements in places of resource extraction.

As for birthrate I'd agree with what was said upthread. There would be some increase after the war but would then decrease again. With incentives like apartments, tax breaks, child care etc Germany could maintain somewhat higher birthrate but they wouldn't breed like rabbits.
 
Now just for the record, if the Nazis and Japanese had a "Victory" that resulted in them controling all of Europe (minus the UK and Ireland), Asia (Minus the Phillipines and India) and Africa (minus Liberia) you cannot assume that the OTL decline in the birth rate is going to happen since you are going to be dealing with different birth circumstances.

You see lets assume that Hiter does shortly after WW2 and the other Ultra-Facists (Himmler etcc.) are either killed or exiled to a remote part of their domains and Speer and his counterparts are in charge in Axis Europe. Now sure they have "won" the war but they now have a very big problem.

The so called loyal (or “Aryan”) population of the Axis powers is a minority within these 3 continents, everyone else is rather hostile towards the Axis Powers and thus with a few exceptions is more than happy to fight the Axis powers over their occupation of what they consider to be their lands.

Thus the Euro-Fascists are going to face a massive security problem over the next few decades across Europe, Asia and Africa. If they just fight the rebels (who would have a lot of American support) they would waste huge amounts of money and suffer such loss of live that there would be growing discontent locally.

On the other hand in they withdraw from those areas which are too difficult to deal with then they still have a serious security issue since the continent is unsecure and the rebel forces are unlikely to be the forgiving type considering the record of the Euro-Fascists. Not only that but you have no guarantee in retaining control of the access to the natural resources and thus posing a risk to the economy.

In both cases it would mean that the future of the Euro-Fascist elites is put into question. Thus the problem clearly needs to be solved and no you cannot simply use genocide (of course it is not really a good idea to use at all) to simply wipe out populations who have issues with the Euro-Fascists, because it will leave depopulated land which will be a drain to the economy.

Thus the only solution is to populate Poland/USSR/Africa/Middle East with loyal (or “Aryan”) peoples to take place of those who are hostile to the Euro-Fascists (the Slavs and Arabs who lived in those regions beforehand) who are no longer in those areas either because they have been forced out or been killed and the only way you can do that is to keep birth rates high.

Thus unlike Europe in OTL or any developed nation on earth in OTL (were was no reason to have a high birth rate and thus once contraception allowed lovemaking to happen without conceiving children the rate thus dropped), there needs to be a continued high birth rate otherwise the whole system will come crashing down.

For the record if you consider the populations of Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Finland and Denmark (if one is to be flexible about ones "defination" of Aryan, which in itself is a stupid concept*) as well as South African and Rhodesian Whites and Coloreds (Plus additional "Non-Aryans" in OTL considered "Aryans" ITTL) you have 250-275 million to expand upon to settle what needs to be settled. With a reasonable growth rate that should be possible.

Now how this must be done is another matter, considering the importance of having a high birth rate for the future of the ITTL status quo and thus the jobs of the elite they would likely be willing to try anything that would work to have a higher birth rate.

Firstly there is the matter of financial incentives. One of main reasons why people may or may not have children is because of the overall cost. If there is a financial incentive to have children then that barrier to having more is taken away. This financial support should also be extended to fertillity treatments.

Then you have to look at education and propaganda, using the example of Palestine is allows a mindset to be created that having more children is a good idea for the safety of the nation and is a "patriotic" thing to do for your country. I got the idea (for the latter) from a Tom Clancy Novel called Red Rabbit (there is a part were a KGB agent recalls how some of his fellow agents state in great detail about their sexual antics to show "how much they are defending the fatherland")

At the same time you must also use those same methods to encourage people to have sex (hetrosexual, sadly homseoxuals are going to suffer badly ITTL in Europe, shame really) from as you an age as possible (within limits of course), this can include a earlier ITTL introduction of Viagara foe example.

Speaking of which you also need make sure that the "contraceptives" up for sale are modified in such a way that they simply do not work for example.

Lastly you must also make Pregnancy seem attractive though propaganda, this includes going up to the festish level. (there is such a thing in OTL).

Also even if women work in the same numbers as they do in OTL that is not alone a reason for the birth rates to fall, for example in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community despite their religious conservatism many women work because under their sect men are meant to study religious texts and thus reducing their chances of gaining paid work so their women fill the gap, yet the birth rates are still very high. To allow this ITTL you need a decent childcare system in place.

Lastly can I make it clear I am no fan personally of what I have suggested. However considering the circumstances ITTL this is the sort of thing they need to do (if I had my way Hitler would have not nowhere or any of the other Nazis). It makes one think how crazy the Nazis idea were and in my view even if Speer and his counterparts suceed Hitler and actually make some sort of state coming out of the Third Reich and its counterparts work to the present day. History would not look to kindly on him or his sucesssors. In fact considering all the mass murder and other crimes against humanity that will take place, for many people under their rule it would be a living hell and a dark reminder of what humanity can do.

PS: To think of pretty much the only example that comes close you have to look at Gaza for example. In fact you might as well say that the "real" cold war would take place in the bedrooms of Axis Europe and their other territories.

*Hitlers idea of an "Ayan Race" that is and his defination of it as well as his idiotic belief of "Racial Superiority"
 
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