Right. Thanks.
@CalBear :
Well, I could discuss some of your assumptions there.
"the right side of the moral compass" : Please don't forget morals and ethics are relative. There is no "right side" (even if I of course don't agree with nazi germany's racial ethos). And your morals don't define if you win or lose a war.
Actually neither ethic or morals codes are relative. There is a range of both that are acceptable depending on circumstances. These are generally seen as one variety or another of "normal" and can be labeled under the heading of
Malum prohibitum. These particular behaviors vary from society to society and can represent a remarkably wide range. A textbook example of
prohibitum is represented by "age of consent" laws wherein one society may consider legally to be 13 or 14 and another segment of the same society may consider it legally to be 18.
There are, however, other actions that are outside of normal in virtually every human social grouping for which records exist. These sort of acts are always wrong and to be condemned. These are, of course, known collectively as
Malum in se or, quite literally evil in itself. To use the above example regarding age of consent, there is no human society that accepts the use of infants or toddlers for carnal gratification. While laws exist to address those deviants who violate this cultural taboo, they frequently protect the deviant more than the society, since the act itself is so far beyond the Pale that without the laws those who commit the act would be ripped asunder by the general citizenry of the victim society.
There are also acts that, through social evolution, move from
prohibitum to
in se. Examples of this include chattel slavery and "honor killing". These tend to move between categories slowly and are not always embraced by cultural groups that do not share certain religious or historical commonalities.
Nazi Germany was built on
Malum in se virtually from the onset. It willfully killed children, not due to the "fortunes of war" or mischance, but as direct governmental policy. It willfully killed the "simple-minded". It willfully killed long established cultural subsets. It willfully used slavery with the express intent of killing the slave (known to the Reich lawgivers as "extermination through labor"). It willfully violated the basic "laws of war" as they had existed since the 17th Century. The list of
Malum in se actions that formed the basis of Nazi policy can be extended for pages.
Nazi Germany was as close to a purely evil state as has EVER existed. If your disagreement with the Reich is limited to its racial beliefs alone, I utterly pity you.
"anti-capitalism " : Well. Capitalism is not the sole and only way to go.
True. However it has proved to be the most economically stable system yet encountered.
"If one takes steps to alter the myriad pieces of National Socialism that ensured that the 1,000 Year Reich's ~60 year self destruct mechanism was removed you will have altered the country to the point that it would look at the Nazi era with a mix of disdain and horror (rather like today's Germany does). That altered country would no more want to be associated with the Third Reich than does today's Bundesrepublik."
I'm not so sure of that. A victory of nazi germany is also a victory of the racial ethos over democracy and the egalitarian/capitalist ethos that caracterizes the modern world. The Bundesrepublik is horrified by Nazi Germany not because it is Nazi Germany, but because today world's morals defined themselves as the opposite of Nazi Germany. If they had won, racial classification would have become a normal thing. As there are no real social classes per se (I mean that social conflict is not a priority) in the spirit of many contemporary people which live under capitalism without an alternative, the egalitarian ideal would be dead and morals built on another (a racial) basis.
Since I am not a German citizen, I will leave it to one of our German members to determine exactly how deeply you have insulted their society. I will simply state that, with the specific exception of the Nazi era, there has NEVER been a Germanic society in the last 1,000 years that would not have found some part of the Nazi movement to be loathsome beyond belief.
Of course a 1000 years old Reich would be very different. But don't forget a change of government doesn't change an empire : the Roman Empire was still the Roman Empire, even when only Byzantium was left. The Roman Empire as a whole was there even when it was a Republic : it wasn't the same government, but there's a continuity of the political entity anyway.
The idea that empires will last longer in the future (because of more acute social understanding, propaganda techniques, etc) is also a sci-fi choice. It may not be the case in reality, but seems possible. And it happened in history, anyway.
The fact that the late rulers of Constantinople chose to style themselves as Emperors of the Roman Empire when Rome was 1,000 years past its days of Empire does not mean that the Empire still existed except within the delusions.