1990, The end of the Nightmare

The idea of this story is to explore what would happen in a universe where Germany won World War II and Nazism ends up falling at the beginning of the 90s, where a democratic Germany will have to deal with its Nazi past and assume responsibilities before the world of the atrocities that little by little will be known.

I am not a native English speaker, so if there is any incoherence in the words, I hope you will excuse me.


Chapter I

Winds of Change


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Year 1989. The Serbo-Croat war had been a disaster. 30,000 dead German soldiers and more than 200,000 million Reichsmarks spent for nothing. In the end, Serbia had swallowed whole Croatia and reformed Yugoslavia, which was soon recognized by most of the international community. As if the defeat were not enough, the horrible images of the aerial bombardments and the civilian victims of the war had shaken the conscience of the younger German generations and had initiated a wave of historical revisionism in Germany itself. Something similar had happened in the late 60's during the third Greek-Turkish war but the victory of Greece in that war coupled with the brutal repression of the Hermann Göring regime had drowned the incipient movement of protest at that time.

The economic bleed brought about by the war was compounded by the boycott that the recently formed Latin Union (France, Italy and Spain) was submitting to the Reich, one to which Boris Yeltsin's Russia had enthusiastically joined. From one moment to another, German exports had fallen by 35% and the Reich proved bitterly that it did not have the political or economic influence to force a change in relations. What was even worse was that Pope John Paul II tirelessly preached anti-Nazism for the world, causing the antipathy to the Reich to be in crescendo.

The old Chancellor Otto Remer had things very clear, a profound internal reform was needed that made the regime appear more benign to the world and reassure the uncontrollable student protests that were unleashed throughout the Reich. It was thus that the biggest reform since the proclamation of the Great Germanic Reich in 1949 was promulgated, the Umänderung. Among other things, the reform established freedom of the press, ended the segregation of the Slavs by converting them into full citizens and converted the Reich into a Confederation of autonomous states composed of Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway.

The reform was nevertheless rejected by the Reichstag, both by the softer factions of the party, led by Helmut Kohl, and by the most fanatical faction, led by Josef Bachmann. Since 1951 when the Great German Reich was declared it had been stipulated that there would be two sources of power in the Reich, the Chancellor, representative of the will of Adolf Hitler who would be elected by the former Chancellor through his political testament and the Reichstag, representative of the German people whose members would be elected through popular votes.

At the beginning this system worked because, being a single-party state, the Reichstag simply approved the decrees of the Chancellor without further ado. However, over time the state had turned to a de facto multiparty system with the same NSDAP factions ranging from Nazi fanatics to strasserists, conservative Catholics and liberals. This time the president of the Reichstag, Helmut Kohl, had opposed the reform of Remer and demanded that the Reichstag be granted legislative initiative and also demanded the release of political prisoners including Rudi Dutschke, serving a life sentence since 1970. The project was forwarded to the chancellery with the respective observations. For the Chancellor there was no possible alternative and even with the opposition of the SS he made the corrections that were demanded and he forwarded the project to the Reichstag, being approved with 70% of positive votes. Would Remer's reform work?
 
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With a Nazi victory in WW2 and Italy and France alinged with them until now, how come Lybia and Algeria managed to gain indepencende?
 
With a Nazi victory in WW2 and Italy and France alinged with them until now, how come Lybia and Algeria managed to gain indepencende?

Basically, what I have thought is that the peace treaty with the United Kingdom would lead to a German liberation of France and that French policies thereafter would not be very different from those of OTL, obviously without a German reconciliation and with bitterness of losing again Alsace and Lorraine. As for Italy, I had thought of a fall of fascism by the influence of John Paul II and that this would lead to the liberation of Libya and Albania.
 
With a Nazi victory in WW2 and Italy and France alinged with them until now, how come Lybia and Algeria managed to gain indepencende?
You could have the Allies push the Axis out of Africa but decide not to or fail to take Europe
 
As for Italy, I had thought of a fall of fascism by the influence of John Paul II and that this would lead to the liberation of Libya and Albania.
Libya would have an Italian majority if Italy keep it and Albania would small enough to just be Absorbed.
 
Forgot to mention. I'm quite intrigued by the ideas of your TL. Too many TLs fizzle out at this point.

Basically, what I have thought is that the peace treaty with the United Kingdom would lead to a German liberation of France and that French policies thereafter would not be very different from those of OTL, obviously without a German reconciliation and with bitterness of losing again Alsace and Lorraine. As for Italy, I had thought of a fall of fascism by the influence of John Paul II and that this would lead to the liberation of Libya and Albania.
Ahh, I'd assumed TTLs was a France with a Vichy gouvernment similar to a Warsaw Pact Client. I still think they'd have made stronger effort to hold onto Algeria. Loosing A-L in the 1870-71 war and the need to regain their pride was one of the reasons France seized Algeria to begin with. This would apply again in TTL.

As for Italy, I had thought of a fall of fascism by the influence of John Paul II and that this would lead to the liberation of Libya and Albania.

Libya would have an Italian majority if Italy keep it and Albania would small enough to just be Absorbed.
Gotta agree with Noscoper. There's been plenty of debates here how Italy would fare in case of WW2 neutrality or victory and all agree that Italians would almost certainly become a majority within about two decades, leading to it staying Italian.
I'd strongly suggest you change the status of Lybia and not just for realism purposes: How a post-Fascist now democratic Italy - I assume things went something akin to OTLs Spain there - would deal with the issue of possessing an African province, that was aquired through naked Imperialism but nowadays wants to be part of Italy is intriguing.
 
The premise Nazi Germany could become more democratic with time is one that has been explored quite often (Fatherland being the obvious example).

Once the original Nazi generation has died off in the 60s and 70s and the war has been won, how does the revolutionary zeal which drove the founding generation continue? The scenario offers little clue as to the state of the world (bi-polar or tri-polar Cold War?).

The final conflict would, I imagine, be between "reformers" and "hardliners" as happened in OTL USSR. The "reformers" would seek to develop a more consumer-based economy emphasising butter more than guns and this would lead to barriers coming down first economically and then perhaps culturally. As perhaps China will find out in OTL, the desire for material prosperity will trump revolutionary zeal every time.

Short of a Juche-style society, it's hard to see how a Reich with some windows to the world can't fail to see what is on the other side of those windows.

It's to be hoped that as in OTL, the fall of the Nazi State happens relatively peacefully and the new democratic Germania (perhaps) emerges into the community of nations in peace.
 
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