Good times with Nazis!

[WilyBadger]

So is it possible, I wonder, to create a timeline where the Nazis win, but everything turns out better than it did in our world. No Cold War, for example. Is there a way to make this happen? I realize that "better" is a subjective term, but I'd like to see some ideas.

[Evil Opus]

First step-make a moderate Nazi regime. Things do not turn out better when six million people are killed in a genocide(the Holocuast). If the Germans had won, it probably means about 12 million people dead.

[chunkeymonkey13q]

Considering how many the Russians killed, that's not much.

[black angel]

First step-make a moderate Nazi regime. Things do not turn out better when six million people are killed in a genocide(the Holocuast). If the Germans had won, it probably means about 12 million people dead.
12 million people did die.

[Superdude]

Death toll would probably to about 20 million in the Holocaust- with a slow death toll from starvation and overwork for a very long period of time.

[Kidblast]

The Nazis had plans after winning the war to kill roughly 10 - 20 million people a year. Mostly untermenschen and other such undesirables.

Now I don't know about you, but any regime whose plans call for the death of 20 million people a year, is not going to be any better than Maoist China or the
Soviet Union.

[Nicole]

Maybe, just maybe, if you somehow get rid of Imperialist Japan with their destruction and murder (this has the side affect of no Pearl Harbor), murderous regimes in China and Indo-China, and in many other places and pretty much prevent every single genocidial event elsewhere in the world, you might barely come out even to OTL...

[Superdude]

This is of course assuming that rational leadership doesn't take control of the Party. If they do, I'd expect a death toll of about a million a year, mainly due to overwork and starvation, from being forced to work on farms and in factories.

[MerryPrankster]

A well-placed bomb takes out most of the Nazi leadership.

Some semi-benign Nazis who sincerely believe in an "Aryan burden" to "uplift" the Slavs take power. I'm sure there were some such people somewhere (though probably not all that many).

They'll still be a bunch of thugs, but much better than the "main Nazis" of OTL. Think French colonialism (citizenship and parliamentary representation for some African colonies) vs. Belgian colonialism (genocidal).

Or perhaps the Army simply removes the remaining Nazis, unilaterally withdraws from the West, destroys Stalin, and then pulls out.

[Straha]

Have the army overthrow the nazi elite in 1941. The reich would dominate europe but it would be a bureaucratic technocratic semi-junta dictatorship hellhole but not the bugfuck insane genocidical hellhole of OTL.

[Faeelin]

Some semi-benign Nazis who sincerely believe in an "Aryan burden" to "uplift" the Slavs take power. I'm sure there were some such people somewhere (though probably not all that many).

Or perhaps the Army simply removes the remaining Nazis, unilaterally withdraws from the West, destroys Stalin, and then pulls out.

Why would the military withdraw from a position of European superiority?

You've given us a less bad timeline, not a good one.

[Superdude]

Hitler is killed off early, Roehm takes party leadership, wipes out the "right" wing part of the party.

[Jesse]

The Nazis did apparently consider deportation to be a viable way to get rid of Jews, but there weren't any countries that would accept so many, and shipping them to Madagascar wasn't possible in the middle of a war...so how about a POD where Israel is created before the war starts, and is willing to accept unlimited Jewish immigration? Having the Nazis be less brutal towards slavic people without totally changing their ideology is trickier, but maybe a more cunning Hitler would realize that he'd have a better chance of winning in Russia if the Nazis acted as liberators rather than enslavers, with harsher treatment planned for after the war was won...then if Hitler died before this plan was put into place, maybe the new postwar leadership would just accept the status quo and act like relatively benign imperialists?

[Douglas]

Are you saying that Communists are more militarily inept? Because I don't see how if Rohm still controls Germany's mighty military that changing fascism to communism is a step up the ladder, its just switching ladders.

[Glen]

I'd suggest that any attempt at such a premise would likely benefit from a rapid victory in 1940.

If we go with the classic Lord Halifax becomes PM coupled with the capture of the BEF at Dunkirk, leading to a peace in the West, then we add in the idea floating around of the Nazis shipping the Jews to Madagascar as their own (out of the Nazi's way) 'homeland', then we've made a reasonable start to a less horrible timeline.

Maybe follow up with the surprise death of Hitler (let's go with an auto accident), and Speer wins the power struggle with army support. Gradual reforms follow, as Speer is more a technocrat than a demagogue.

Would there be a Barbarrosa ITTL? Don't know, maybe. Depends on the timing of Hitler's demise. However, if there is, but Hitler dies early into it and Speer takes over, could see more of a shift in the policy of the Germans towards the Poles, Ukranians, Byelarussians, etc. More anti-communist and looking to establish buffer states between the Reich and the Russians.

Perhaps with an earlier end to the War in the West, the Germans persuade the Dutch into supplying oil shipments from the Dutch East Indies to Japan, bringing tension between Japan and the USA down enough so no Pearl Harbor.

Maybe with the successes of the Germans against Russia, and the absence of an imminent war against the USA, the Japanese are persuaded to open up a second front against the Russians in the Russian Far East. This results in a bit of a sapping of the Japanese land forces, and their need to switch from conquest to consolidation, and even a more concilliatory stance towards the Chinese so as to secure their rear.

The Russians overthrow Stalin with the imminent failure of the USSR, establishing a ruling coalition of the military and former party pragmatists. A peace is made that preserves the heart of the Rodina.

Everyone is a little exhausted at this point, and settle down into consolidation and recouping.

While fascism and militarism are the rule in Europe and Asia and even South America for the next few decades, things are gradually improving as the economy recovers and people become more interested in prosperity than nationalism. The old radicalist nationalist policies begin to fade, and eventually even political liberalization starts to occur. Maybe in Germany itself, a 'velvet revolution' of sort occurs, as a new generation rejects the harsh ideologies of their parents and finds their own way.

Is this the most probable timeline? Heck no! Is it plausible...I think it might be.

[Bismarck]

Maybe there would be a shorter, and less bloody war in Russia, ending in a rapid German victory. Hitler decides to keep most of the "untermensch" for labor instead of mass extermination. Over time, the under-class gets more rights due to more moderate Nazi leaders (i.e Speer) coming to power. Germany occupies siberia in 1942/1943, fighting along the Trans-siberian railway (This had already been done in 1921 by the Bolsheviks, it's definitely feasible), and attacks Japan into Manchuria. The same success as Operation August Storm probably. Japan falls quicker, leading to a shorter and longer peace.

Benefits:

- 6-10 million dead due to war in TTL instead of 50-60 million in OTL
- no intense cold war
- more unified europe

[luakel]

Glen, maybe the Brits could work something out with the Vichy French instead- Lebanon and OTL Israel are set aside for Jews and Christians who want to leave Europe/are already there, while Syria and Jordan are where the Muslims in those areas go? Also, Speer wasn't even powerful at this point... maybe much of the high-up Nazis (Himmler, Goebbles) are killed with Hitler, but Goering isn't. He has more of a claim to being Fuhrer, but also would likely just want to enjoy the comforts of ruling so people like Speer may still be able to get the reforms we need set up without him caring.

@Bismarck- I doubt that the Germans reaching the Pacific in 1942 is feasible.

[Superdude]

Are you saying that Communists are more militarily inept? Because I don't see how if Rohm still controls Germany's mighty military that changing fascism to communism is a step up the ladder, its just switching ladders.


I don't think you quite understand. Roehm was not a communist, he was a left wing Nazi. Im not saying communists are more militarily inept, in any case.

Im saying that there is a war, but it is short-it doesn't involve a Holocaust, nor a disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union. It involves a negotiated peace with France and Britain and the creation of an earlier European Union, dominated by Germany, of course.

I believe there would be increasing liberalization of the Nazi regime, and eventual democracy without the tumultuousness of OTL.

[Glen]

Glen, maybe the Brits could work something out with the Vichy French instead- Lebanon and OTL Israel are set aside for Jews and Christians who want to leave Europe/are already there, while Syria and Jordan are where the Muslims in those areas go?

Wasn't a popular notion among the Nazis, who would be calling the shots ITTL.

Also, Speer wasn't even powerful at this point... maybe much of the high-up Nazis (Himmler, Goebbles) are killed with Hitler, but Goering isn't. He has more of a claim to being Fuhrer, but also would likely just want to enjoy the comforts of ruling so people like Speer may still be able to get the reforms we need set up without him caring.

Good point. Goering might work in lieu of Speer.

[MrP]

The Nazis did apparently consider deportation to be a viable way to get rid of Jews, but there weren't any countries that would accept so many, and shipping them to Madagascar wasn't possible in the middle of a war...so how about a POD where Israel is created before the war starts, and is willing to accept unlimited Jewish immigration? Having the Nazis be less brutal towards slavic people without totally changing their ideology is trickier, but maybe a more cunning Hitler would realize that he'd have a better chance of winning in Russia if the Nazis acted as liberators rather than enslavers, with harsher treatment planned for after the war was won...then if Hitler died before this plan was put into place, maybe the new postwar leadership would just accept the status quo and act like relatively benign imperialists?

The SS seems to have done its best to get as many Jews to emigrate as possible. For some it was financially impossible, while others had other reasons for remaining. Had the war begun later, or the British been willing to accept unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine (and the concomitant boom in Arab-Jew violence) there's a certainty that fewer would have died in the Holocaust.

Maybe Hitler succeeds against France, but then we have a British PM prepared to countenance peace talks. The war ends. Hitler is killed off somehow, so there's no invasion of Russia. A condition of the peace was to accept greater numbers of Jews into Palestine. Madagascar is a non-starter, I think. It's come up before and someone pointed out that it has absolutely nowhere near the facilities or production capability to support the European Jewish population.

Somehow the Soviets end up attacking Germany or Germany gets irritated at other Soviet moves and war breaks out. Germany has got plenty of spare production capacity, and the Soviets are forced back. No SS units go round massacring Slavs, and these men are instead recruited or left to live productively. Germany does well militarily, but over-extends her economy. Stalin and the party are taken out by a civil war. Germany, financially wearied by the war, is compelled by public unrest to return to a semblance democracy within a decade. Meanwhile, in Russia a Republican government of sorts appears. By the '70s a new generation of revisionist historians are pointing out such disgusting facts as Kristallnacht and the cruelties heaped on the Jews.

Main points: no massacres of Jews, Slavs and other ideological opponents of the regime; resumption of democracy in Germany accompanied by guilt for national misdeeds (like OTL); near democracy in Russia by the late '50s; eventual self-determination for various Reich protectorates like the Ukraine.

How unfeasible the above is will now be debated by everyone, and all the flaws pointed out and underlined. ;) :p

[luakel]

Wasn't a popular notion among the Nazis, who would be calling the shots ITTL.
Why would the Nazis care where the Jews go, I thought they just wanted them out? If Britain agrees to let them into the Middle East, that might actually be better than Madagascar, as the Jews wouldn't be complaining as much.

@MrP: I could see Andrei Vlasov leading Russia, while perhaps a General from the war (Rommel?) could take over Germany.

[CalBear]

So is it possible, I wonder, to create a timeline where the Nazis win, but everything turns out better than it did in our world. No Cold War, for example. Is there a way to make this happen? I realize that "better" is a subjective term, but I'd like to see some ideas.

If you are white, preferably German or Nordic, have no great love of freedom of religion, association, or speech, are willing to enjoy the benefits of medical breakthroughs based on experimentation on unwilling human subjects (hey, PETA may love this TL), and can overlook the occasional disappearance of neighbors & co-workers for no reason then the answer is yes!

If you believe that Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Africans, Arabs, Union organizers, Gays, Gypsies & Slavs are less than fully human than Nazi's Win World is likely an ideal TL.

If, however, you find any of these ideas repellant, or if you can't stand the very thought of sharing the world with a group that was more than willing to turn 10 - 12 million people into air pollution because the fit into one of the groups noted above, then, sadly, the answer is a resounding NO!

Too many people seem to think the problem was Hitler or the "Nazi Leadership". It was not. The entire Nazi Party, the premise that it was built on, and the base beliefs of its membership, was that Aryans were, by divine right, superior to all others. The entire nest had to be burned out to stop the rot from spreading.

Can you come up with a Germany, free of the Nazi stain through internal revolt & purges, that wins WW II scenario & this victory results in a better 2nd half of the 20th Century? You bet! I would much rather have dealt with Rader, Rommel & Canaris et al after they had dispatched the Nazi scum then with the Stalin, Beria & Molotov led USSR.

As long as the Nazi's existed they needed to be hunted, found, and ground underfoot.

[Faeelin]

Can you come up with a Germany, free of the Nazi stain through internal revolt & purges, that wins WW II scenario & this victory results in a better 2nd half of the 20th Century? You bet! I would much rather have dealt with Rader, Rommel & Canaris et al after they had dispatched the Nazi scum then with the Stalin, Beria & Molotov led USSR.


Would you rather deal with Rader and Rommel than Adeneuer and De Gaulle?

[MerryPrankster]

Why would the military withdraw from a position of European superiority?

You've given us a less bad timeline, not a good one.

Maintaining this European superiority would overextend them and bleed them white. And even if they did pull into a "Festung Germania" after the destruction of the Bolsheviks, have they really lost?

France is humiliated, Russia will be in ruins, and Britain is on the other side of the water. Germany will be the strongest European power for awhile and they won't need to spend blood and treasure occupying lots of foreign territory.

[CalBear]

Would you rather deal with Rader and Rommel than Adeneuer and De Gaulle?

Of course not. That being said...

I'm not altogether sure that it would not have led to a better post war world, at least from the American perspective. No Red Scares. No Tail-gunner Joe McCarthy. No supporting evil tin-pot dictators because they are anti-USSR. No Viet Nam. No Cuban Crisis. No Berlin Wall.

I can easily see a Germany that is more like a victorious U.S./U.K./France than the victorious USSR. Is a world where Metz & Strasbourg are part of Germany with the rest of France ruled by the French better than a world where Kiev & Prauge & Warsaw are controlled by Moscow? Is a world with a strong German Republic as the dominant power in Europe better than one with the post-war totalitarian USSR?

Without living there it's impossible to say, but I can see the possibilities of a better day.

[MerryPrankster]

Would you rather deal with Rader and Rommel than Adeneuer and De Gaulle?

Who's Rader?

I don't recall Rommel being too bad a fellow.

[Hapsburg]

Considering how many the Russians killed, that's not much.
It's still a lot, dammit. Besides, Stalin's purges were because he was paranoid of people around him. The Holocaust a purposeful genocide of an entire ethno-religious group. Very different thing.

I personally cannot see how a WW2 Nazi victory would have any positive effects.

Who's Rader?
Erich Raeder. German Grand Admiral, before Doenitz.

[WilyBadger]

Ok, here's an idea:

The Nazis win WWII, and by 1960 pretty much rule everything, along with their little puppet nations. But at the same time, the German public is slowly getting more and more disgusted by how things are being run.
By 1980 there's been the German equivilant of hippies and the sexual revolution and all that rot. End result: cracks begin to form in the Nazi empire.
By the 1990's, the Empire has collapsed under its own weight. The various nations of the world look at what happened over the last several years and finally begin to really pull together to make the world a better place for everyone. Having seen the world as Hell, they all decide to work together to make the world into Heaven.
By 2006 it's a happy, jolly place to live.
I dunno. Perhaps a little feeble. It'd need more work. But maybe the only a way a timeline like this COULD produce a positive result is by letting the Nazis have their way to the point where even the Germans get disgusted. I dunno.

[Bismarck]

I fail to see how a nation can collapse under the weight of its own social trends alone.

[WilyBadger]

I fail to see how a nation can collapse under the weight of its own social trends alone.

Not collapse, perhaps, but at least transform into something almost entirely different from what it was?

[Jesse]

If you are white, preferably German or Nordic, have no great love of freedom of religion, association, or speech, are willing to enjoy the benefits of medical breakthroughs based on experimentation on unwilling human subjects (hey, PETA may love this TL), and can overlook the occasional disappearance of neighbors & co-workers for no reason then the answer is yes!

If you believe that Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Africans, Arabs, Union organizers, Gays, Gypsies & Slavs are less than fully human than Nazi's Win World is likely an ideal TL.

If, however, you find any of these ideas repellant, or if you can't stand the very thought of sharing the world with a group that was more than willing to turn 10 - 12 million people into air pollution because the fit into one of the groups noted above, then, sadly, the answer is a resounding NO!

Too many people seem to think the problem was Hitler or the "Nazi Leadership". It was not. The entire Nazi Party, the premise that it was built on, and the base beliefs of its membership, was that Aryans were, by divine right, superior to all others. The entire nest had to be burned out to stop the rot from spreading.

Can you come up with a Germany, free of the Nazi stain through internal revolt & purges, that wins WW II scenario & this victory results in a better 2nd half of the 20th Century? You bet! I would much rather have dealt with Rader, Rommel & Canaris et al after they had dispatched the Nazi scum then with the Stalin, Beria & Molotov led USSR.

As long as the Nazi's existed they needed to be hunted, found, and ground underfoot. I agree with you on the inherent horribleness of the Nazi ideology, but the challenge was just to come up with a Nazi-win history which was "better" than our history...for that, you just need the Nazis to be better than the communists were in our history, not to be better than the liberal democracies. Any history in which more people live under Nazi domination than lived under communist domination in our history is almost certainly not going to qualify as "better", for example.

[Max Sinister]

This idea is a bit sick, I have to say, after all the nazis have done. You have to do a lot of twisting to make this TL better than OTL. But let's see, it's a kind of challenge.

Idea: Some historians claim that the nazis may not have built gas chambers if they had won the war. (Which still wouldn't make them good guys, the "normal" KZs were bad enough, and several hundred thousand people died there, were tortured...) And it's true that the conference of Wannsee and the really big mass murderings occurred after Hitler had declared war on the US and knew that he could barely win the war, so he decided to hurt the Jews as much as possible. If that's true (but it could well be that the nazis would kill them anyway, and in that case you'd have 12 million holocaust victims, which is not a good start), it might work...

So let's say Hitler defeats the Soviets in 1941. Communism breaks together. Britain fears for its empire, so they make peace with Hitler, after throwing Churchill out. Hitler never declares war on the US. Japan is defeated even faster. The Jews aren't killed but sent to Poland. Germany controls all of Europe west of the Urals. But it's sheer impossible to control all of Russia. Although the war is officially over, the men don't return home, but have to stay as occupation force in Russia. Vietnam multiplied by a hundred. After a few years, the people are fed up, but Hitler doesn't want to give up the East. In the late forties, he dies conveniently, the army takes power, purges Himmler and other loonies, and retreats from Russia. Settlement in the Eats is stopped.

That's the best I could get, and I'm still not sure whether it's better than OTL. Communism is gone, but we know, most victims of Stalin's politics died before the war, and the nazi occupation of Russia may easily have led to millions of killed Slavs. The nazis don't kill six millions of Jews, but after Hitler, there's still antisemitism, and the Jews don't have a homeland. China won't become Communist... that could make the difference, but they're still under the inefficient and corrupt Guomindang. So, not really better, and that's the best I could come up with.

@Merry: I think Rader should be Raeder, the admiral.

[Hapsburg]

Really, the best way for this to work is if the July 20 Plot actually works, the military stages a coup, and the Nazi Party is booted out. The majority of the military leadership would probably be horrified by the genocide that was going on behind thier backs, and would put a stop to it before it goes out of control. During the 50's there'd be a transition to democratic leadership, and no divided Germany. Some eastern european countries would likely be spared from Communist takeover.

[Superdude]

Im thinking a bloody and nasty civil war, actually.

[Hapsburg]

Im thinking a bloody and nasty civil war, actually.
The thing is, the military outnumbers the SS and Waffen-SS. All they have to do to gain complete control over the Luftwaffe is assassinate Goering or arrest him, and replace him with someone like Galland or something. The nazi leadership would be dismantled in a coup. A short, brushfire-like civil conflict perhaps, but not big and messy like Russia's.

[luakel]

The Jews aren't killed but sent to Poland.
Why not just make the defeated Brits accept them in Israel? The Germans (and especially Hitler) wanted the Jews as far away as possible, and they wanted Poland for Lebrensaum.

[CalBear]

Who's Rader?

I don't recall Rommel being too bad a fellow.

Sorry, it should be Raeder. He started the war in Overall command of the German Navy. The German Navy, more than any of the other services, clung to the Pre-Nazi ways. In the end it had to submit, but it at least tried to stay reasonable.

Rommel seems to have been less culpable for War Crimes than the Generals who served in the East, where they enforced the Commisar protocals. He was fortunate to be in North Africa while the Jewish transportation was going the strongest from the West.

[Glen]

Why not just make the defeated Brits accept them in Israel? The Germans (and especially Hitler) wanted the Jews as far away as possible, and they wanted Poland for Lebrensaum.

I think the Nazis wanted them farther away than Palestine.

But I could be wrong...:eek:

[Glen]

The wikipedia entry on the Madagascar Plan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

[luakel]

I think the Nazis wanted them farther away than Palestine.

But I could be wrong...:eek:
No, they just wanted them out (Hitler wanted Europe for himself, he could care less about the Middle East besides oil). To me, Madagascar seems to have been chosen simply because it was relatively under populated, but you have to remember that many of the Jews would've wanted to go to Palestine (they would've in OTL but Britain wouldn't let them), and they had alot more claim to that area than Madagascar. A defeated Britain would probably be willing to accept, as long as the Jews stayed part of the Commonwealth, and as I said Germany would be worried about other things.

[MerryPrankster]

Wouldn't the July 20 plotters need to kill Himmler too? "Fox on the Rhine" has Himmler survive and the plotters follow-up too slowly and thus Himmler is able to take control. The Army might outnumber the SS, but scads of them are out of the country.

Plus the lower party officials are still around. Prunesquallor said that many local Army units asked the local Nazi officials what to do in the chaos immediately after the coup. If a major Nazi leader survives, he might be able to command a big part of the armed forces.

Besides, isn't July 20 a bit too late? Unless the plotters pull the army into Greater Germany and perhaps a few useful buffer zones and burn everything behind them to deny it to the enemy, I think there's a good chance they'll get defeated similarly to OTL (although I doubt Himmler, a strategic incompetent, would get command of the Vistula).