People trying to find some way to make the Nazis more successful, competent and or victorious in general; I see it pop up a lot and I don't understand it, not on any level. Be it from the fact the Nazis were not actually particularly competent or advanced in reality, or the fact their economy remained garbage cos it was broken from the ground up, or even from am interest or moral level cos it just seem disgusting and unpleasant, along with being totally ASB levels of baseless.
Like, Alexander the 'Great' dying in a battle where he almost died is a believable divergence cos it almost actually happened. You can't magically fix the Nazi's broken economy, ruinous ideology that sabotaged their effective, or the fact they were not the supreme juggernauts of the world their propaganda painted them as; not without ASB or completely changing them on a base level into an entirely different society, movement and government.
I believe that the answer to this question consists of multiple factors conjoined with each other, whose conjunction is the result that we see here. Among the most important I would highlight these factors:
1) Decades of propaganda about how the Nazis were actually formidable engineers, capable of stunning feats in the fields of science and technology, most especially in the engineering and design of machines of all kinds.
I think the main culprit for this idea is Phillip K. Dick and his mindfucks at TMITHC about how the Nazi government would have translated into Concordes, lunar and Martian colonies, FLYING SAUCERS with zero point energy engines, Atlantropa being fact true, and Germania being built in all its splendor... all BEFORE 1962.
An idea that all the other writers who came after just ran with no matter how ridiculous or baseless they turned out to be. In many cases it was because of the assumption that, as an American author, Phillip K. Dick was assumed to have done his research correctly. And that, therefore, his statements were nothing more than the purest truth.
An author from any other country would undoubtedly have been required to have papers and statistics to support his claims that the Nazis could have done all this. And he would have called his bluff right away, in case he couldn't provide these documents. (Which he would not have been able to).
This idea of "the Nazis as formidable engineers" would also be reinforced by the publicity of operations such as Paperclip and the presence of Von Braun in NASA, to cite the most visible example. (Von Braun is important).
The appearance supports, in theory, Dick's claims that the Nazis were such formidable engineers that the United States and the Soviet Union would not have advanced as quickly without them. This is greatly helped by the fact that many of the projects of the Third Reich suffer from what is called “overengineering”.
There are reasons why the “Nazis were making 1950s weapons to fight a 1930s war” meme is a real thing (while ignoring the corollary that the Allies won with 1940s weapons).
2) The rejection of economism as an explanation.
Economism is defined as "the idea that ALL decisions have, in the first, only, and last instance, purely economic causes." Also adding that “all other non-economic arguments used to justify these decisions, in reality, completely lack weight and relevance. Being only excuses used by the leaders to disguise economic motivations”.
In its application to the study of Nazi Germany, the greatest exponent of this thesis is Tooze, a guy that everyone treats as if he were a God of economics and history for reasons I don't understand.
According to the interpretation that I have obtained from the economistic theory in the case of the Third Reich, it follows that he "operates" in this way:
—NOBODY in the Nazi Party believed a word they were saying, they were just spouting lie after lie to shut people up.
—ALL the ideological, political, social program, etc., were nothing more than excuses to justify economic decisions.
—The German economy was on the brink of exploding in 1938 because the Nazis were screwing it up to that point for reasons that are a mystery. Sources? BECAUSE HEKONOMI! BECAUSE TOOZE!
—There was a very real threat that the military would stage a coup to stop the Fuhrer from further destroying Germany's economy. For no other reason. Yes. I'm supposed to believe that the military were seasoned economists, deeply concerned with economics, obsessed with economics as the ultimate driver of everything, and extremely knowledgeable about macroeconomics. Despite the fact that the real evidence shows that their understanding of the economy was limited to yelling at the quartermaster where the ammunition they so badly needed was.
—The Allies had been drinking huge amounts of lead paint since 1929 and continued to GIVE AWAY millions of tons of resources and hard currency to Germany in exchange for vague promises that maybe one day they would get paid. From a strictly economistic point of view, it makes absolutely no sense to dedicate yourself to throwing away tons of resources, without obtaining in return any tangible benefit from this action, trying to keep the economy of a country running that clearly has no intention of paying for all that .
—As if that wasn't bad enough, the Nazis were also formidable economists who spent almost a decade running what would become the biggest Ponzi scheme in economic history, completely unnoticed. (Except FDR, of course.) Which resulted in the above situation of "The Allies grab all the idiot balls and give Germany everything it needs to attack them later."
"But at the same time I'm supposed to believe that they were fundamentally stupid and completely incapable of managing anything more complex than the economics of a single-family home."
—All the invasions of Nazi Germany were for the sole purpose of looting resources to keep the economy going. All strategic, ideological, political, and any other non-economic considerations had absolutely no weight in this plan. All the talk about the Lebensraum, revenge for the First World War, etc., would be nothing more than propaganda to disguise their desire for looting.
—Again, the Allies began to drink massive amounts of lead paint and decided not to exploit the advantages this situation offered them.
The problem is that the economistic explanation given to us here openly and absolutely contradicts everything that has been written up to then about the Second World War. To which is offered as a counterargument "well, the other historians were victims of their prejudices and children of their time, in addition to buying the propaganda that the ex-Nazis made about themselves."
So what you get is basically "Everything that has been said so far is a vile lie, this is the real truth, and if you don't accept it it's because you're stupid." Which generates rejection due to the lack of elaboration of the argument.
Something that does not help at all that, in many cases, the fans of Tooze's economic thesis "argue" it as if they were a YouTube booktrailer, without doing more than referring you to the book: "If you want to know the truth, read Wages of Destruction”.
Which is even more absurd because usually at least a summary of what the claim is is included, but in this case it is not.
So what we get is that the so-called "gold standard of economic history of the Third Reich" is treated as if it were a work of fiction subject to the "NO SPOILERS" hysteria we see on Fandom. In addition to the fact that his fandom sounds too similar to the cult of sectarian gurus that we see in many other places.
3) "No one can be that stupid."
Earlier I mentioned how the Nazis are repeatedly portrayed as formidable engineers, even more formidable economists, and generally the height of strength and virility. Of course, this is not universal.
Many other authors have chosen to go to the other extreme and portray the Nazis as people who are obscenely stupid to a ridiculous degree more like a Saturday morning cartoon. Often, moreover, they do so at the same time as they copy and paste Dick's ravings delusions about Nazi superscience.
So what we get is people with technology worthy of Star Trek but actually behaving and acting like illiterate medievals. Which in turn generates rejection for lack of realism because "it is impossible for someone to really be so stupid without causing his own downfall."
Which is made even more absurd by the contradiction involved in portraying people as patently stupid as being at the same time a severe existential threat. A danger that must be contained at any price, as soon as possible, with the most violent means possible... even if the economist's own theses establish that in reality it would be enough to sit and wait for the Third Reich to explode by itself.
As a consequence, this translates into a brutal reversal of the thesis on "the Nazis and science". If before the idea was "Nazi superscience" now the opinion moves to "in reality all Nazi projects were huge white elephants devoid of any value except as resource sinks." Plus some stupid pseudopsychological Freudian talk about how they're trying to make up for something.
Remember Von Braun? He too has suffered this effect. If before the idea was that Nazi science was superscience, now the pendulum is swinging to the opposite extreme. Von Braun is the example I've seen most often, and that's why I'm using it. Apparently now it turns out that Von Braun
1) Actually he just copied Goddard's plans and sold them as his own.
2) he never invented anything useful.
3) He was a liability to NASA rather than a benefit.
The reason I don't mention "made his career by exploiting forced labor to death" is because that's an absolutely legitimate criticism, but it has nothing to do with Von Braun's scientific qualifications (or lack thereof). Which is what I was talking about right now.
An average viewer, perhaps a potential TL author, sees this and is likely to conclude that this over-the-top stupidity is actually just part of the publicity/demonization campaign of Nazi atrocities.
The conclusion ends up being that so much insistence on the stupidity of the Nazis has no basis and is just propaganda.
Something that has had a lot of weight, more than the historical documentation, the fact that historians and writers are too influenced by all these works of fiction where the villains are stupid who prepare their own downfall by themselves as a result of their own Actions. (And Nazis are massive villains in both fact and fiction)
At least that's what I think happened here.
