AHC: German Post-WW2 resistance movement

I don't think people understand how shocking the Final Solution was to the German people when they actually saw it in pictures, in person and in newsreels. The average German even with the state controlled press often had some limited understanding that bad things were happening to the Jews and others, but it rarely went much beyond that.

I talked to a 90 year old German about it who witnessed SS troops in his area organize a mob during Kristallnacht. Who fought in Stalingrad and knew about the horrors human beings could do to each other in a dirty war and he is upfront and he is open that he was taught in school all about the U.S. because they told him this would be a place people like you would eventually rule over in a few decades. He was hit by his teacher with a ruler for saying that he thought it was odd that a small country like Germany could rule almost the entire world.

But, he said the horror of the camps was something else entirely far far beyond what he or the German people would have ever supported and he does to this day believe had the horror of the death camps had been known during the war there would have been a civil war inside the German Army and inside Germany itself.

The problem was there was no way for the masses of ordinary people in a Totalitarian system back then for people to find out back then as all information was controlled and if someone told you something like this you couldn't trust what anyone told you as anyone could be working for SS and those who knew about it didn't talk to it to others for fear they would report them as potental spies or enemies of the state.

People today in modern Germany or modern democratic countries ask how could they not know and most today believe they did all know. Some certainly did know, but given the system we are talking about even a father talking about it to his son risked his son telling someone and his father and son being killed as enemies of the state or his son turning his father in a liar and an enemy of the state... lets just say information that if repeated could get you killed didn't travel very far.

Back to the origional question no given what the Western Allies and Soviet's did though often horrible to the German people they felt more horrible about what happened so there was not going to be any kind of uprising... however if the Western Allies were dumb enough to continue to try to force Germany to become all subsistance farmers and millions of Germans were dying like flies then you could see West Germans start attacking American and British troops, an organized rebellion start to form and Stalin backing pro-Communist rebels in West Germany who hate the U.S. and UK more then Stalin for forcing them to starve to death in numbers that could actually have rivaled the Final Solution had the plan announced in 1944 been enacted completely.
 
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however if the Western Allies were dumb enough to continue to try to force Germany to become all subsistance farmers and millions of Germans were dying like flies

"Continue to try" implies that they actually began to try. They didn't.

I always find it amusing, anyway. The funny assumption is that if a country gives up heavy industry and focuses on farming, that automatically results in famine and starvation. Think about it.
 
"Continue to try" implies that they actually began to try. They didn't.

I always find it amusing, anyway. The funny assumption is that if a country gives up heavy industry and focuses on farming, that automatically results in famine and starvation. Think about it.

I think the rationale was that a lot of land in Germany was unsuited to farming. Germany was never agriculturally self-sufficient, so without heavy industry to pay for imports, Germany would only be able to support a population 2/3 of the one it had at the time.
 
I think the rationale was that a lot of land in Germany was unsuited to farming. Germany was never agriculturally self-sufficient, so without heavy industry to pay for imports, Germany would only be able to support a population 2/3 of the one it had at the time.

First, Germany was not self-sufficient as to food in 1945 - so the Allies imported food. And they kept doing that for a good while. They can do the same in such a scenario.
Second, in 1945 German heavy industry was destroyed, but there were other things apart from agricultural products everyone was interested in, namely, raw materials. The Allied military governments had frequent spats about how to allocate coal, for instance, and that came from German mines. Even without heavy industries to use it, there was a shortage of coal for home heating purposes, not only in Germany but in places like France, for instance.
Third, there is light industry, too. The Germans could well produce cuckoo clocks or radios, and export them, in order to be able to import grain.
Fourth, the actual German agricultural production was down, in 1945, because of several reasons, one of them being, however, a shortage of manpower. Some of the unemployed factory workers could go back to the countryside and take up that slack.
Fifth, naturally there's a limitation to that fourth point, in that high-yield, industrial-like agricultural production isn't as manpower intensive as its earlier versions were. But OTOH, if you cut down on the industrial production you have, for instance, less tractors and you have to increase the manpower per acre.
Sixth, linked to the previous one, subsistence farming also may make use of more mapower and at the same time can make use of more marginal land that high-yield farming can't use. That addresses the shortage of usable land.

Certainly, the average standard of living of the Germans wouldn't see the wow rise of the early '60s (that's in Western germany of course). They would remain much poorer. That's not to say they'd starve in great numbers.

Am I saying that this would be wise? Hell no, bad bad idea. But mass starvation? No.
 
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