Would the Nazis ever moderate in time ?

Assuming the nazis win though some series of unlikely events would they ever moderate there positions in time? My gut feeling is yes they eventually would decades after they won but what do you guys think?

Nope nope nope.

Moderate Nazis are an oxymoron.

A WW2 win will only entrench their self-righteous belief in racial superiority, aryan hegemony, blah blah blah.

In fact, you might see and even more evil version of Nazis post-war.

See General Plan Ost for some ideas.

Lateknight said:

Assuming the nazis win though some series of unlikely events would they ever moderate there positions in time? My gut feeling is yes they eventually would decades after they won but what do you guys think?

Click to expand...

"Moderate Nazi" is a phrase akin to "Moderate Communist." It just doesn't...work. German nationalist? Okay, yeah.

A Nazi ceases to be a Nazi when they abandon core tenets of Hitler, in the same way that a Communist ceases to be a Communist when they abandon the core tenets of Marx/Engels. They might be in the same GENERAL vein of thought, but extreme ideologies don't typically favor moderation.

Nazism is an incredibly extreme ideology, and I don't think your phrasing is very helpful

If your looking for an idea of what a Nazi dictatorship would look like post war then Robert Harris' Fatherland is one of the best views.

AdmiralBlake said:

Nazism is an incredibly extreme ideology, and I don't think your phrasing is very helpful

If your looking for an idea of what a Nazi dictatorship would look like post war then Robert Harris' Fatherland is one of the best views.

Click to expand...

Your right I'm changing the thread title.

VirginiaHistoryTeacher said:

"Moderate Nazi" is a phrase akin to "Moderate Communist." It just doesn't...work. German nationalist? Okay, yeah.

A Nazi ceases to be a Nazi when they abandon core tenets of Hitler, in the same way that a Communist ceases to be a Communist when they abandon the core tenets of Marx/Engels. They might be in the same GENERAL vein of thought, but extreme ideologies don't typically favor moderation.

Click to expand...

Well there were all flavors of communists, there are still communist parties in pretty much every Western country (I incidentally walked by a communist party rally in Montreal attended by what looked like a couple hundred people on my way back from work). Admittedly, as a political and economic model for running a country communism has proven to be pretty lacking in just about every situation (China's communism nowadays is pretty much Strong-man Capitalism in all but name), but unlike Nazism communism doesn't necessary mean radical extremism, which IS core to the Nazis. Nazi's believed in racial superiority, and had the stated goal of "eliminating" the lesser races. It is pretty impossible to make that "moderate" in any sense of the word. Maybe in this AH scenario after the victorious Nazis had murdered all the Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, Roma and liberal free thinkers, they subsequently seem to be more moderate, but thats really just because they have run out of non Aryans to murder.

There were "moderate" Nazis in OTL. A Goering or Speer in charge of things post-Hitler would be very different than a Himmler or Heydrich post-Hitler. There were many Germans and even Nazis who were anti-semites, but who would never had initiated the mass murder of them. If Hitler dropped dead anytime between 1936-1941, it's highly unlikely any Final Solution is ever approved by Kanzler Goering. The Nuremberg Laws and occasional pogroms were enough to satisfy all but the most ardent anti-Semites.

The level of mass murder done under Stalin, Hitler, and Mao can only be done for a certain period of time. Sporadic pogroms are one thing. Ongoing, systematic bloodshed another. Most people (not everyone - sadists are out there and definitely occupy a high place in the Nazi party) will eventually recoil. Once the prime architects of these horrors go away (whether by purges or natural deaths), it is more likely than not that the deliberate mass murder stops. Of course, another reason it'll decline and stop is that the initial purges will eliminate a lot of "reasons" for its support to begin with. Germany itself won't have any Jews, Gypsies, or Slavs, and for most Germans, that'll be enough. Support for ongoing systematic murder further east is going to drop, especially once resistance intensifies as urban, middle class professionals refuse to become farmers in Ukraine. "Why kill the remaining slavs when we need them to farm the land and give us grain," will be mentioned.

When things do "moderate", it depends on who is in charge. If a Goering or Speer takes over, it could happen as early as the fifties. If Himmler or Heydrich, then maybe not until the 1970s. A lot will depend on what happens to the SS and whether they are able to take over the state. They will be the ones driving an eliminationist agenda. The rest of the party not so much.

Doesn't mean the moderate Nazis wouldn't be evil, but we're talking the difference between Brezhnev and Stalin.

Later Generations

A lot might depend on how the younger generation of Nazis bought into the ideas of racial superiority. You might and I say might have many in the 2nd generation who would reject many of the ideas of their founders. That always happens in any major movement, namely within a generation the ideals of the founders of said movement are altered or radically changed by the next generation.

That doesn't mean it will be all sweetness and light for any conquered peoples. Don't expect "kinder, gentler" Nazis (talk about oxymoron!). Rather expect less institutional murder and more local/regional atrocities as well as very harsh repression in general of "undesirables." It might not however be on the scale of the first generation. Note-the operative word here is might. I like many here would have to see how much the younger generation would reject the perverted "vision" of their elders.

Geon

On the assumption that they are not defeated

Of course he longer the 'NAZIS' are seen as successful the more generations sup from that particular cup - ie indoctrinated - then the attitudes might not naturally die out until those people are no longer in positions of power / dead

Given that these people would be teens in the 1940s and 50s and dependign on who suceeded Hitler possible the 60s then we are looking at 2000 - 2010 before a more liberal Greater Germanic society appears.

Lateknight said:

Assuming the nazis win though some series of unlikely events would they ever moderate there positions in time? My gut feeling is yes they eventually would decades after they won but what do you guys think?

Click to expand...

Every regime has its times of power, and its times of decline.

Even the Nazi system is vulnerable to some symptoms of decline: Göring is only the most prominent one. The whole "Führerprinzip" might be efficient if you have capable leaders on the top, but Hitler appointed some completly inept persons like the mentioned Mayer of the Luftwaffe. This person used his unchecked power over Europe to steal painting from all museums of the continent, he was a known drug addict and in addition to these vices also very conceited - he loved collecting titles. Now imagine such persons in times of peace: corruption will blossom in the whole GROSSDEUTSCHES REICH and slowly undermine the whole regime.

The times of the incorruptible Prussian officials (like Eichmann) executing every inhuman order will end, and they will be replaced by party members knowing the only goal of their own wealth. This will be bad for the system and its further genocidal plans, but good for mankind, since as incapacity spreads in the reich, the Nazi plans will be executed in a slower pace.

As long as Hitler lives, the system (or should I say: the whole shit?) will hold together. The whole genocidal plans will be carried out, the Holocaust will be "finished" while the murder of the Slaves will begin. He can unite the party structure, through is charisma and his determination.

But once he is dead, our corrupt friends will start to fight over Hitler's succession. Göring will most likely win, but he will also most likely stop most of the programms. Why continue to slaughter Slaves and other "Untermenschen?" It only creates resistance movement in the local population and prevent a consequent enrichment. The new generation will have no - Nazi - ideals (and for one time, this is nothing bad), it will only have the goal to make a career in the Nazi administration while raking in the profits of corruption and robbery.

There you have your moderation. Not a real human one, but a moderation.

It's possible, if you get someone like Goring or Speer in charge.

While Hitler is in power no, and after Hitler is dead the system falls apart. The Nazi state was built on the idea of everyone competing and the strongest winning out. Without a universally recognized leader like Hitler that means that the top Nazis (who all hated each other) would rip each other to shreds, taking the Reich with them.

I am goning to be the oddball here and say yes.

Führerprinzip isn't practical. After Hitler died, there would have been a power struggle inside the NSDAP, the victor would have been the person who could have gotten the military some Gauleiter (Franconia, Berlin, Rheingebiet) and the industrial sector behind himself.

Even in the leading circles of the NSDAP there were a lot of opportunists who didn't believe in the fanatical Rassenwahn. The most prominent are Göring and Speer, but there are others who even helped to save some Jews or sabotaged the Holocaust from a position of power inside the NSDAP: Gottlob Berger, Konstantin von Neurath, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, ...

I think Nazi-Germany could have turned in to a Italy like Fascist state smiliar to how China got less fucked up after Mao died.

The regime could with time become less brutal like the Soviet one did; its never going to be moderate, but will in comparison to the Hitler led Nazis and potentially Himmler led Nazis (that might actually be worse than Hitler).

The main problem I keep seeing to this moderating Nazi regime is the SS.

Let's say Hitler dies in 45' but in a victorious Nazi regime. Sure Speer or Goering will take over but Himmler and the SS will always be around in the background, wielding power behind the scenes.

With all those occultist practices and aryan mysticism included in their founding principles, I'd argue this group had little to no chance of moderating.

Imo given how inconsistent and all over the place Nazi race ideology was, you'll probably see them get worse and worse, narrowing down to goals of "perfect purity" more and more as they get rid of undesirables; imo eventually you might see a number of ethnic Germans deemed not suitably Nordic, Aryan, Germanic, or whatever is in vogue enough to not be at least sterilized. Wipe out the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and so on, and eventually the French and Italian might start looking pretty inferior, so on so forth.

GlobalHumanism said:

The main problem I keep seeing to this moderating Nazi regime is the SS.

Let's say Hitler dies in 45' but in a victorious Nazi regime. Sure Speer or Goering will take over but Himmler and the SS will always be around in the background, wielding power behind the scenes.

With all those occultist practices and aryan mysticism included in their founding principles, I'd argue this group had little to no chance of moderating.

Click to expand...

In peace time it is easy to get rid of people like Himmler. There were enough Heydrich style opportunists in the SS who kept good with Himmler because they had to. But they were all willing to stab Himmler and whom ever necessary in the back if it advanced their career.

The peacetime plan outlayed for the SS was to become a police force who had controll over the GeStaPo and the SD, turning it in to some sort of Federal Police. During this transformation process it is easy for the current Führer to organize (with the help of the military and military inteligence) an accident for Himmler and the loonies. Kind of a night of the long knives 2, electric boogalo.

Daniwani said:

Imo given how inconsistent and all over the place Nazi race ideology was, you'll probably see them get worse and worse, narrowing down to goals of "perfect purity" more and more as they get rid of undesirables; imo eventually you might see a number of ethnic Germans deemed not suitably Nordic, Aryan, Germanic, or whatever is in vogue enough to not be at least sterilized. Wipe out the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and so on, and eventually the French and Italian might start looking pretty inferior, so on so forth.

Click to expand...

Absolutely correct.

The Nazi regime required an "other" or an "enemy" internally and externally to justify its totalitarian rule.

With the European Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, Blacks, etc. seemingly exterminated from the continent in the event of a Nazi win, someone else will have to serve as the new enemy.

And surely that will mean canabalizing certain sections of its own populace to do so.

GlobalHumanism said:

The main problem I keep seeing to this moderating Nazi regime is the SS.

Click to expand...

Absolutely right. The SS would prevent any form of moderation. The average German boy in the Heer is exactly that. The guys in the SS are rotten to the core and utterly unrepentant.

"Hitler ist die Partei, und die Partei Hitler ist." So said the Deputy Fuhrer. And Magda Gobbels excused her suicide and murder of her children by, "I do not wish to live in a world without National Socialism (Hitler)."

Without Hitler, there is no Nazi party, since all the "moderates" like the Strassers had been eliminated. Assuming an (entirely ASB) victorious postwar Nazi State, it might have the name, but none of the substance other than being a thoroughly nasty dictatorship.

The vaunted Nazi "efficiency" had Germany on its last legs before the war allowed them to loot Europe, which was running dry even as they were winning. Call the high-water mark about December 1942, and the State would have collapsed along with the economy by 1950 at least, all Nazi-wank aside.

The Nazi 'ideology' was non-viable, compared with communism even, and would have been destroyed by its own inner inconsistencies if nothing else.