I wonder what drove poor Nadine to move from France to the Reich and to sell her body for a few marks.
If Germany is decaying then the situation in France might be very similar if not worse ...
The French economy is worse off (and geared towards supplying Germany with raw materials, for the most part - same with the rest of the Berlin Pact) but the government isn't
quite as bonkers.
It could be that Nadine was recruited thru sex trafficking just like OTL. Young women are brought into Germany with the promise of high paying domestic jobs and end up forced into prostitution. Another thing is Nadine could have fell in with the bad crowd and got hooked on drugs. I have a feeling there is a market for non- Germanic women in the Reich sex trade. Germanic women are needed for babies so they considered off limits. An Aryan/Germanic hooker is probably going to rehab and a reeducation camp. A French girl like Nadine would simply be deported or be sent to a labor camp.
Your second guess as to how Nadine ended up where she did is correct.
I would think that the precise position in the internal social hierarchy depend on several aspects. I suspect the Swedes and Norwegians poverty which makes them likely migrants to the industrial cities, would place them relative low on the social structure. The Danes and Dutch both groups who are more likely to set up farms in East, will likely be seen more positive, as most Danes and Dutch people the average German would interact would be middle class people even the farmers in the east. The former non-Germanic speakers will suffer under a mix of being impoverish, general lower education and their ambivalent racial position. A interesting aspect will be Finland, as they still have their Swedish minority and it have likely grown, as many Swedes likely choose Finland over the continental cities. Of course all these group will likely be above French, Croat and Serbian guest workers (if Serbs still exist, I have no idea what Germany have done with their Serbian protectorate).
Agreed with all of the above. As far as Serbia goes, it's still around, if firmly under the German thumb. By the time the Germans were 'done' in the East, the Reich hierarchy had seen their economy needed to transition from conquer conquer conquer to a more normal mode, and 'discovered' that the Serbs - like the Croats - were actually descendants of the Goths and other Germanic tribes. They'd just been corrupted by those nasty Russians with their Orthodoxy and Cyrllic writing. They weren't annexed by the Germans because the Reich didn't want the hassle of such a large exclave, nor by the Croatians or Hungarians because the Germans said no.
What happened to the Laplanders/Sami people? Were they wiped out by the Nazis or driven into Russia?
That's an excellent question. Probably deported to Finland at the same time as the non-Germanized Estonians.
I imagine Norwegian fishermen make a lot of money "losing" lifeboats full of people suspiciously near British fishing grounds.
Nice idea! Consider it canon.
Let's not get carried away. This Germany is poor, but it's got a freeish market, and nobody (Germanic) is starving. It's probably Belarus or Russia, across a continent.
If Russia is a 7 on the Crapsack Tyranny Scale, this Reich is easily a 12. They're not committing genocide any more (mostly since they ran out of 'others' to butcher), and you're right, there's no starvation, but it's still a nightmarish place.
And now an update!
***
Rüdersdorfer Straße 65 was a typical Hitlerstadt highrise. Twelve stories tall, stone and glass, the ubiquitous eagle and swastika carved above the big glass front doors (one of them was shattered, awaiting repair that was probably long overdo), graffiti scarring the lower two floors. Some brave dissident had painted
FREUNDE
FÜHRER
On the surface, it just said ‘Friends Führers’ but there was subversive subtext. Friends over führers.
The rest of the graffiti was less political and more vulgar. One faded black phrase instructed everyone who saw it to bend over and lick their own ass cheeks. This was not, so far as Ziska knew, something that could actually be done, but it was a big city, so who could say?
She pushed her way into the lobby and was immediately struck, almost physically, by the combined stench of booze, cigarettes, and other, more illicit diversions. The lobby did not in any way strike her as unusual. There were the obligatory maps on the left wall, the one opposite the mall slots. One showed the Reich, from the Atlantic to the Urals. It was behind glass to protect it, but that hadn’t stopped someone from drawing rough lines over the part that had once been Sweden. The other one was a three years out of date bus map of Horst-Wessel.
In a corner near the elevators, a Winter Help can rattler was asleep in a plastic folding chair, his empty donation can resting on the floor next to him on one side and a small mound of ashes and cigarette butts on the other, with a plastic crutch leaning against the wall behind him. Ziska looked at the man’s feet. Sure enough, one of them was missing. Blown off in the East, probably.
The elevators worked, fortunately. Ziska didn’t want to climb eleven flights of stairs in general, and especially not in a dump like this. She was likely to trip over three drunks, thirty bottles and three hundred needles on the way. After a minute or so, the elevator reached the eleventh floor and came to a creaky stop. The doors opened halfway on their own and had to be pushed, protesting rustily, the rest of the way.
The hallway where Günther lived had mostly functional lightbulbs and a weird smell Ziska didn’t even want to think about, let alone try and identify. She stepped over and around the debris of a dozen petty crimes and knocked hard on the door of 1109. “Max Günther!” she yelled, holding up her badge in one hand and resting her other hand near the gun at her hip.
In an American or Chinese crime drama, this would have been where the man inside would have called out “What do you want?” through the closed door or a door open only a little bit, security chain drooping in front of the tenant’s face.
In the Reich, they knew better.
The door opened all the way. A pear-shaped man in a dirty shirt and rumpled slacks stared out at Ziska. He was an inch or so taller, maybe, and easily a hundred and fifty pounds heavier. His arms were decorated with a mix of army and erotic tattoos. Even at this hour, his breath stank of beer. Günther said nothing, just waited for whatever misery the cops were going to rain down on him.
“I need to know about Nadine Giraud.”
The man licked his lips. A nervous tic, not a lustful one. “I haven’t seen her since Saturday night.”
“That’s because she’s dead.”
He looked genuinely surprised at that. “Dead? Seriously? Shit,” he said all in a hurry. Then, even more hastily, “I didn’t kill her.”
Ziska wasn’t 100% convinced. The fat man might have persuaded Nadine to let him in, might have threatened her into undressing – and the rest – for him, but it didn’t really fit. A pimp wouldn’t hesitate to beat one of his girls, but to murder her? It was possible, Ziska admitted, but she still thought it was more likely someone else. An exceptionally bad choice for a boyfriend, that was at the top of her list.
“Come downstairs with me. We’ll talk it over,” Ziska said.
“Downstairs?”
“Or downtown. Your choice,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and glaring coldly at him.
As expected, he preferred downstairs to downtown.
The rotund degenerate sank himself a cheap plastic couch around the corner from the elevators and stared miserably at Ziska. “I’m serious, I’d never kill Nadine. She made met a lot of money. She was my best girl.”
Ziska thought of the photograph, of the pale body on the bed, and pursed her lips.
“She made me a lot of money,” Günther repeated in a glum tone.
Ziska leaned in. Their faces were inches apart. The pimp paled a little and leaned back, bumping his head against the wall. “Tell me everything you know about her, you greasy swine, or I’ll have your whole family sent to a KZ,” Ziska said. It wasn’t a threat she had any intention of following through on, but she would have been well within her rights. In America, that sort of line was the stuff of bad movies. In the Reich, it was a reality. The Sippenhaft principle of guilt by association and collective punishment had been enshrined in the criminal code since the Hitler era.
Günther let out a weak noise of protest.
“Tell me!” Ziska yelled, jabbing one hand into his chest and resting the other on her gun.
At that point, the can rattler woke up with a start, sized up the situation and hobbled off without a word.
“Tell me!” Ziska yelled a second time. This kind of play-acting wasn’t how she liked to operate, but it worked. Usually.
The fat pimp was no exception. He shook his head frantically, but then began babbling out names, female names.
“Slowly, slowly,” Ziska said, snapping out her notepad with one practice flick of the wrist. She began to write as Günther repeated the list of names and nicknames. When he finished, Ziska had a list of eight girls. Christ, she thought. All of them answering to this sweaty pig.
Ziska wrote down one more name in large letters and turned the pad around. She held it right in front of the pimp’s face. The last name was, of course, MAX GÜNTHER.
“I’ll be keeping in touch with you,” Ziska said with a cold smile. Then she turned and stalked out of the lobby without another word.
