[AH Fiction] Murder in Hitlerstadt
- Thread starter varyar
- Start date
Wolf of Badenoch
Donor
Am I alone in feeling a little cheated? Ziska was a rounded character - surely much too good for a novelette? More please, Varyar!!!
I know this story is over, but figure this is a better thread to ask this question: How many people actively buy into the Party's State Racism? I know we like to believe in human decency and all, but being indoctrinated for decades in a closed society, wouldn't the majority see it as perfectly natural?
Unfortunately, yes.
Yeah. You can't murder half of Eastern Europe and keep a lid on it. Ziska, as an SS officer, has access to more detailed information than most Germans, but it's common if rarely discussed knowledge what happened.
OTL while exact numbers weren't known, a very large proportion of the German population knew that Jews were being murdered both by SS squads in Russia, and and in the camps. Lots of the SS and Wehrmacht men involved wrote home and even had photos, and soldiers not involved would comment on what they saw. After the war many of these men would come home and the stories would spread further. Likewise the culling and enslavement of the Slavs in the east would be well known. Absolute numbers and other details might not be general knowledge but the overall program would be known. For example the railroad workers who drove the trains to Auschwitz and other camps would be well aware that large numbers of people went in, but none came out and the camps stayed the same size more or less.
"Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1735.
"Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1735.
I would suspect that it's complex, most people would likely buy into it to some degree, but few would buy into it fully. As example @varyar have mentioned earlier, that the true believers see the impoverish Swedes as equals, while the general population doesn't. So we may have a large part of the population who see it as bullshit that the French are below the Swedes in being equal with Germans. I also suspect the people buying into state propaganda will be the whose position would be weakest without it. As such the Germanified population of the east will likely buy the most into the propaganda and also be the people who embrace the SS Asatru Cult the most. In many way I suspect the former European USSR are pretty much the centre of regime support, because the population there will be a mix of people who have completely embraced Germanic identity to survive, true believers who have migrated from the western parts and opportunists, who have decided cheap farmland was worth taking it from the people who once owned it.
In the western part of the Reich you likely see people with much stronger regional identities, who buy much less into whatever the Regime sells this week.
Wow I really enjoyed reading this, the writing is excellent and it brilliantly captures the grimness and stagnation of the Nazi state. I’ll start on your new story now! 
Wow I really enjoyed reading this, the writing is excellent and it brilliantly captures the grimness and stagnation of the Nazi state. I’ll start on your new story now!
Thanks!