British Politics in a Nazi Victory TL

[Mulder]

Yes, but obviously having been beaten in a war they've been knocked back from that standing (it's not really "beaten" if you come out with more than you started with), and like I said: while Germans as a people are no more aggressive or evil or whatever than anybody else, a Germany ruled by military officers and cultivating the Dolchstosslegende is not something I'd like to see if it can possibly be avoided.

Why must I always be accused of having something against Germany? I'm the one who quotes Schiller.



And the runaway military class that had developed in the interwar period - a time of complete constitutional democracy and great social and npolitical freedom - would still be there.



Prussian militarism was clearly a real phenomenon (witness Wilhelm Voigt and the Zabern affair) but I'd like to think my analysis is a bit more nuanced. The old German army had a senior leadership representing reactionary Junker interests and all too willing to push aside the civilians, but it was, like all mass armies, a rather beaurgoise citizen force. Imperial Germany couldn't help having an army full of Social Democrat soldiers and Jewish lieutenants from Frankfurt, and no less a foaming-at-the-mouth critic of all things German than AJP Taylor said that the idea that the Germans were particularly more brutal or wicked in WW1 contains little useful truth.

But in the post-Versailles climate, the Germans had a small, artificially limited army officer corps made up of a very specific kind of officer drawn from the old elites, and this created an "echo-chamber". The Reichswehr was not "Prussian militarism", it was a daughter. It did become involved in politics in very unpleasant ways, but it couldn't have pulled an August 1914.

The significant thing was that it was wrapped up in itself and developed a tradition whereby the citizens values of the old German army vanished. It was ambitious, calculating, and completely amoral, and Hitler gave it a collar of his own while removing it from the leash of human decency with documented results.


That a tiny military class coming from a tradition of nationalism, supremacy, and entitlement in the Junkertum would develop such an attitude is a no-brained and says nothing whatever about the character of the German people who passed through the mechanism it had created after 1935.

But the army leadership existed, and was not nice.

But in any other political system than genocidal nazism, this officer caste would have withered away with the years, and their influence would have been gone by 1970 for sure. No one will care about the Dolchstosslegende anymore once Versailles is overcome, and I'm sure that any sane government, be it a surviving democratic Weimar, a "Putinist" Weimar or even a vanilla-fascist regime will reach a revision of the most important grievances the general German population had (Anschluss, SUdetenland, border revision with Poland, Memelland, remilitarization of the Rhineland, an end to reparations).

Japan surrendered unconditionally. Leniancy is not incompatible with total victory.


My attitude is this: from a policy point of view, it was the logical choice for all the Allied governments to destroy Axis power altogether, and a realistic person can't expect governments to do anything whatever except follow their own self-interest at any point in history.

From a humanitarian point of view, a doctrine which ensured that the people who were responsible for unthinkable attrocities (the German military leadership on the eastern front were complicit in numberous megadeaths) and that the carnage was never repeated, as opposed to balancing millions of lives on the very thin reed of an enemy officer caste, wasn't even in the league of the Japanese-American internment, let alone the Kalmyk deportations; and I don't kid myself that the Allies weren't up to their knees in civilian blood.



The destruction of Germany military power has avoided a repeat event, so the only way an "honourable" peace could be superior on its own merits would be if it was better than a certainty.



Without a comprehensive cleansing of the Nazi past? The lesson of history is that societies don't naturally come to terms with their misdeeds to a helpful level. Just look at the ex-USSR.

Just look at Japan. Their culture was not changed after WWII the amout German culture was, and Japan has still left alone their neighbors ever since.

"Versailles Mark II" has resulted in a liberal democratic Germany which has been flabberghastingly succesful in coming to terms with its own past and is now among the nicest places I can think of in the world, and almost complete peace in Europe for decades.

And a lenient peace has resulted in a liberal democratic Japan which is not as obsessive about its past as Germany is and doesn't play sucker up to its neighbors whenever the opportunity presents itself and does not distort its pre-Imperial history the way many German historians (and especially school history teachers born between 1940 and 1960, of which I had several to enjoy) distort its pre-Nazi past (all that "Sonderweg" crap, in school I basically "learned" that Germany single-handedly started the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war and WWI all in one. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think the Japanese way of dealing with their past misdeeds by denial and having their Prime Minister visit that war criminal shrine (Yakusuni shrine, or something like that) is right, but neither is the German way. I do think that Nazi crimes should be remembered and not forgotten, so something like it will never repeat itself, but the FRG with its distorted view on history is certainly not the "nicest place in the world". I mean, those "60 years of Germany "celebrations"" in 2009 spoke for themselves.

 

[Keenir]

Just look at Japan. Their culture was not changed after WWII

seriously?

before WW2, they were ruled by a god. after WW2, they were ruled by an Emperor.

the amout German culture was, and Japan has still left alone their neighbors ever since.

being stripped of all military and militarism kinda helps.

 

[I Blame Communism]

But in any other political system than genocidal nazism, this officer caste would have withered away with the years, and their influence would have been gone by 1970 for sure. No one will care about the Dolchstosslegende anymore once Versailles is overcome, and I'm sure that any sane government, be it a surviving democratic Weimar, a "Putinist" Weimar or even a vanilla-fascist regime will reach a revision of the most important grievances the general German population had (Anschluss, SUdetenland, border revision with Poland, Memelland, remilitarization of the Rhineland, an end to reparations).

True. However, what we're discussing is a situation in which Nazism is out of the bottle and is overthrown by the officers. They've been let out of the kennel and I'd prefer if they could be put back in. If there's no Nazi regime, it's another situation altogether.

Just look at Japan. Their culture was not changed after WWII the amout German culture was, and Japan has still left alone their neighbors ever since.

Japan has been a rather opaque society where a great deal of apologia for the Imperial past has been tolerated, however, which you can't say of modern Germany. I like modern Germany. Indeed, I like Germany.

And a lenient peace has resulted in a liberal democratic Japan which is not as obsessive about its past as Germany is and doesn't play sucker up to its neighbors whenever the opportunity presents itself and does not distort its pre-Imperial history the way many German historians (and especially school history teachers born between 1940 and 1960, of which I had several to enjoy) distort its pre-Nazi past (all that "Sonderweg" crap, in school I basically "learned" that Germany single-handedly started the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war and WWI all in one. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think the Japanese way of dealing with their past misdeeds by denial and having their Prime Minister visit that war criminal shrine (Yakusuni shrine, or something like that) is right, but neither is the German way. I do think that Nazi crimes should be remembered and not forgotten, so something like it will never repeat itself, but the FRG with its distorted view on history is certainly not the "nicest place in the world". I mean, those "60 years of Germany "celebrations"" in 2009 spoke for themselves.

I don't see what's so awfully horribly terrible about a self-effacing education system, compared to apologia for murderous regimes or, you know, actual murderous regimes. People are perfectly capable of looking up their own history and arriving at their own conclusions, and it seems to me that Germany is arriving at a more rational consensus about its past. A swing against the nationalist reading was understandable and, being temporary, healthy. People have misread the past through the lense of the present throughout history (I don't agree with plenty of what the British education system tells me): modern Germany has done it in a way that never hurt anyone and is now fading.

 

[Mulder]

I don't see what's so awfully horribly terrible about a self-effacing education system, compared to apologia for murderous regimes or, you know, actual murderous regimes. People are perfectly capable of looking up their own history and arriving at their own conclusions, and it seems to me that Germany is arriving at a more rational consensus about its past. A swing against the nationalist reading was understandable and, being temporary, healthy. People have misread the past through the lense of the present throughout history (I don't agree with plenty of what the British education system tells me): modern Germany has done it in a way that never hurt anyone and is now fading.

It is quite easy to call such a system "not terrible" when you never have been exposed to it. And, in my opinion, this system cannot fade fast enough, since I don't want my children to listen to the same crap in school that I had to listen to.

 

[stodge]

Back on Topic...

To get back on topic, the state of British politics in the event of a German "victory" would depend on the nature of that victory. On the assumption that we're NOT talking about a successful German military invasion of the British Isles, we're then looking at a Halifax "peace" with Germany.

It's been argued elsewhere that Halifax would swiftly call an election following the armistice (there hadn't been an election since 1935). It seems improbable in the post-war atmosphere that the National Government would be ousted but its majority would be much reduced.

The Conservative Party would have rallied round Halifax after the fall of Chamberlain but would probably have lost seats to Attlee's Labour Party and perhaps even to the Liberals under Sinclair. The National Government would have become a Conservative Government.

British political development would depend on events elsewhere. If we are working on the premise of continued German victory, I'd have to assume the Germans successfully overcome the Soviet Union or at the worst forcing the Russians back to the Urals.

The issue of the USA would be critical - if we move into a "Cold War" situation (possibly aided by the British passing atomic secrets and data to Washington), Britain would be on the frontline and would have governments strongly favourable to Washington yet not vehemently anti-Berlin for obvious reasons. High levels of defence spending would mean higher taxes but would be supported with German tanks just across the Channel.

If the USA is somehow neutralised, British political development would become more attuned to that of Germany. It's possible that either the Conservative Party itself or an offshoot would become an avowedly pro-German party. How far this would go would depend on events in Germany.

One scenario has the Party facing a challenge from the SS and the Army post-Hitler and the whole lot falling apart in a civil war out of which the subjugated countries would re-emerge.

Another has the Nazi ideology being replaced by a more technocratic structure over time and a gradual (over 30-50 years) transition to something more recognisably democratic albeit with the option being between shades of the same opinion. This might happen within the context of a political union of European states.

The Liberal Party could survive as a tolerated opposition but there seems little hope for Labour in such a scenario.

 

[mrmandias]

I'm glad.
Also, the Nazis managed to kill off 60% of the Soviets under their most immediate power (prisoners of war) without any effort at all. They just didn't feed them, clothe them, or shelther them. Much simpler than gas-chambers, and the result was much the same.

True. Stalin killed millions and millions in the Holdomor for comparatively little costs. If the *victorious Nazis wanted to adopt Best Totalitarian Practices, they could slaughter all these people.

My main objection to this Holocaust Escalation scenario is that even the Nazis were human and the Holocaust and the whole Nazi state were more or less centered around a crisis scenario--the coming war to regain Germany's place in the sun and, eventually, the actual war. The Nazis could probably manufacture another crisis but its more likely that they kind of lose their way. Nazism was a revolutionary ideology, the Nazi state was a revolution, and revolutions always run out of steam.

 

[mrmandias]

Indeed. It's the difference between a regime that was, like most regimes in history, willing to do brutal and evil things in pursuit of its objectives and a regime that's sole objective was destruction on a massive scale.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but now you're downplaying the horror of the Soviet enterprise. They weren't romantically committed to doing evil like the Nazis but Stalinist Russia was totalitarian, not authoritarian. It was not just another regime that happened to be doing brutal and evil things. The difference between it and most governments is a difference in kind, not in degree.

 

[Arachnid]

Trying to stay on topic

To get back on topic, the state of British politics in the event of a German "victory" would depend on the nature of that victory. On the assumption that we're NOT talking about a successful German military invasion of the British Isles, we're then looking at a Halifax "peace" with Germany.

It's been argued elsewhere that Halifax would swiftly call an election following the armistice (there hadn't been an election since 1935). It seems improbable in the post-war atmosphere that the National Government would be ousted but its majority would be much reduced.

The Conservative Party would have rallied round Halifax after the fall of Chamberlain but would probably have lost seats to Attlee's Labour Party and perhaps even to the Liberals under Sinclair. The National Government would have become a Conservative Government.

British political development would depend on events elsewhere. If we are working on the premise of continued German victory, I'd have to assume the Germans successfully overcome the Soviet Union or at the worst forcing the Russians back to the Urals.

The issue of the USA would be critical - if we move into a "Cold War" situation (possibly aided by the British passing atomic secrets and data to Washington), Britain would be on the frontline and would have governments strongly favourable to Washington yet not vehemently anti-Berlin for obvious reasons. High levels of defence spending would mean higher taxes but would be supported with German tanks just across the Channel.

If the USA is somehow neutralised, British political development would become more attuned to that of Germany. It's possible that either the Conservative Party itself or an offshoot would become an avowedly pro-German party. How far this would go would depend on events in Germany.

One scenario has the Party facing a challenge from the SS and the Army post-Hitler and the whole lot falling apart in a civil war out of which the subjugated countries would re-emerge.

Another has the Nazi ideology being replaced by a more technocratic structure over time and a gradual (over 30-50 years) transition to something more recognisably democratic albeit with the option being between shades of the same opinion. This might happen within the context of a political union of European states.

The Liberal Party could survive as a tolerated opposition but there seems little hope for Labour in such a scenario.

I think you are overestimating the potential of Britain to self Finlandise. As I see it there are two scenario's.

1. US-Germany Cold War, essentially similar to OTL but with more US troops in Southern England. i.e. continued alternations between Conservative and Labour with Butskillism for a few decades till some Thatcher analogue comes along. As a front-line state and with the Nazi's just over the Channel Labour is probably going to be more hawkish, but you aren't going to see the Conservatives change all that much from OTL.

2. US isolationism. Britain has to adjust to the new reality that it is a small island 15 miles from a united hostile Europe. However this won't necessarily result in it turning in Finland. With an inward looking US you are going to see the British Empire stagger on for longer and the White Dominions continue looking to Britain. It took WW2 for Canada and Australia to switch from looking to the Mother Country to the US, without US involvement that switch isn't going to happen. In this scenario I expect both parties to be divided on hawk/dove lines. You are going to see Labour hawks because its the ev0l Nazis! and Conservative hard-liners because its the ev0l Germans! but you're also going to see Nixonian advocates of trying to avoid Nuclear MAD post 1950.

 

[I Blame Communism]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but now you're downplaying the horror of the Soviet enterprise. They weren't romantically committed to doing evil like the Nazis but Stalinist Russia was totalitarian, not authoritarian. It was not just another regime that happened to be doing brutal and evil things. The difference between it and most governments is a difference in kind, not in degree.

Oh, I absolutely think that totalitarian regimes like the Nazis, the Stalinist USSR, and so on are in another league, but I stand by everything I've said: the USSR under Stalin was really, really awful, but up against Nazis there was no question who was better.

 

[DCC]

Oh, I absolutely think that totalitarian regimes like the Nazis, the Stalinist USSR, and so on are in another league, but I stand by everything I've said: the USSR under Stalin was really, really awful, but up against Nazis there was no question who was better.

True enough. Nazi Germany built murder factories like Auschwitz. Stalin's USSR "only" killed people by making them do slave labor on half rations, sometimes in Siberian winters.

Stalin may have killed more Russians than Hitler did--but then again, Stalin was in power much longer; was in charge of all of Russia, not just part of it; and evidently had no intention to kill *all* the Russians, just the ones that might concievably pose a threat to his power (concievably to a paranoid dictator, that is.) His body count *per year* was quite a bit lower.

In my opinion, Hitler was genuinely worse. (Though--also in my opinion, Hitler gets the blame he deserves for his atrocities. Stalin does not have as bad a reputation as he deserves.)

 

[Eurofed]

I seem to recall (I'd want to check Read) that Mussolini was still saying there should be no war until 1942 in 1939 - I shalln't hazard a guess whether or not he intended to actually have a war by then if it could possibly be avoided, but while it would increase Italian strength in absolute terms, that delay would dramatically reduce the relative strength of Germany.

I'm tentatively skeptical that Benny was ever aware that the relative strength of Germany was to decrease, so I'm inclined to think that he probably wanted a war. He really wanted that Mediterranean empire if he ever could get away with it.

I also think that an opprotunity to get his way in the Balkans without Entente interference would have been welcome.

Also an opportunity to feast on the Anglo-French colonial empires.

Was he? I wasn't aware of that, which would have to be factored into my opinion. I presume, though, that like many people (including many in Britain and, in a way, Stalin) he was wowed by Blitzkrieg and thought the USSR had no chance.

That, too, but he genuinely wanted Italy to take part in the anti-Communist "crusade" (I know you don't like the term, but it's appropriate here) for prestige and glory.

I remain dubious as to whether war with the Entente was a goal he'd ever have arrived at if he hadn't been pushed, however.

He was not megalomanical enough to start a war with the Entente alone.

I take it your comments refer to the General Government? Heydrich specified that the ghettoes within the GG should be located as near as possible to railways stations "preparatory to future measures". If the Nazi plan was to send the Jews to the "reservation", why would they care how easy it was to shift those who were already there?

That's two different things. The Jews from other countries were to go to the GG "reservation" as an interim measure. But the GG Jews themselves, as well as the newcomcers, were ultimately earmarked for a different fate, which was extra-European deportation up to the Wannssee Conference, the Final Solution afterwards.

Notably, the Germans made no reference to Madagascar in their negotiations with the Vichy government.

Mostly because a somewhat detailed draft for Plan Madagascar was not yet finalized during the armistice negotations with Vichy, even if the general idea had been approved by Hitler since 1938. However, in summer 1940, Hitler spoke of the Plan with Mussolini and Raeder.

Sure, it would have been meaningless and the time was not ripe, but I'm unaware of any reference to "deportation schemes" after Hitler had given his "annihilation of European Jewry" speech, which is pretty telling.

In May 1940, Himmler told that "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony". He spoke with Hitler of the plan, and the latter said that the plan was "very good and correct". The news of this solution to the "Jewish question" circumlated among the Nazi spheres, since Hans Frank, the GG governor, told at a party meeting, that "As soon as sea communications permit the shipment of the Jews, they shall be shipped, piece by piece, man by man, woman by woman, girl by girl".

Yet, there was not yet a detailed plan, so Ribbentrop charged Rademacher, recently appointed leader of the Jewish Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to create one (see the link above), which he did on July 3.

Once learning of the new potential of the Plan, Heydrich pressured Ribbentrop to relinquish control of the effort to the RSHA (the usual merry Nazi bureaucratic infighting). In this way, Eichmann, who headed the office of Jewish evacuation in the RSHA, became involved. On August 15, Eichmann released a draft of his own, calling for the resettlement of one million Jews per year over four years, and abandoning the idea of retaining any Jews in Europe whatsoever. Because of this, building of the Warsaw ghetto was halted.

During late 1940 and 1941, failure to defeat Britain made the project stall, and the Warsaw ghetto was completed and opened in October. Expulsions of Jews from German territory into occupied Poland continued again from late autumn 1940 to spring 1941. Mention of Madagascar as a "super ghetto" was made once in a while in the ensuing months, but by early December, the Plan was abandoned entirely. Failure of the Plan ushered in the Final Solution.

In the light of the evidence above, Hitler's reference in the 1939 speech may easily be interpreted as the threat of extinguishing Jewry in Europe by wholescale deportation to Africa, or perhaps he was just making a general threat, without having a clear idea of the means (far from unusual for the man).

However, on November 12, 1938, Goering told the German Cabinet that Hitler was going to suggest to the West the emigration of Jews to Madagascar. Schacht, Reichsbank president, during discussions in London, tried to procure an international loan to send the Jews to Madagascar. In December 1939, Ribbentrop even included the emigration of Jews to Madagascar as part of a peace proposal to the pope.

Once the Nazis had accepted "no more Jews" as an end in itself, their were two ways to achieve this: ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ethnic cleansing was never particularly viable, and Hitler announced his intention to commit genocide as soon as he could cover it with war measures in 1939. As soon as they moved into Poland, the Nazi organisers made preparations for genocide.

Quite unnecessary to a policy of mass forced deportation, which they ever embraced.

A rather questionable interpretation given the evidence I quoted. We may certainly say that since late 1938, they shifted to the "no more Jews in Germany" policy, which became no more Jews in Europe" after the start of the war, but they meant this to mean deportation to Africa up to mid-late 1941.

No denying that, but again: when after Hitler spelled out the possibility of genocide in 1939 did the Nazis ever hint at any attention to turn to deportation?

See above.

And? The point is that the Nazis were 100% willing to commit mass-murder against the Jews after 1938. Given that, I see no reason why they won't make use of Jewish slave-labour rather than investing their own resources into getting warm bodies out of their domain.

Your evidence that they were planning to use such slave-labour instead of the mass deportation ?

And this is exactly what I'm objecting to. I don't mean to denigrate the singular suffering of the Holocaust victims, or endorse the disgusting communist revision of history, but the fact of the matter is that we in the west remember the people who were murdered by the Nazis using gas but not the even more peope who were murdered using bullets, fire, and famine, and all of them were people just as much.

The essential point (no escape from genocide after June 1941, when it officially began) remains.

My point is that, according to available evidence, an early enough Nazi victory over Britain, or perception of it being close at hand, would have led to the adoption of policies that would have avoided the Holocaust in favor of mass deportation to Africa. No doubt that dumping millions of Jews in poor underdeveloped Madagascar would have still led to a rather substantial body count, but in all likelihood, this is would have left millions more alive than OTL. This may be fairly certainly assumed according to historical evidence for the non-Soviet European Jews. For the latter, the picture is more murky, since IOTL we start to come close to the moment when the Nazis shifted their plans from deportation to extermination. And the Soviet Jews were likely perceived as more dangerous than the rest, since in the twisted caste-system Nazi view of the USSR, they were perceived as the leaders of the Bolshevik regime and hence more dangerous. So in a TL where the rest of Euro Jews are getting a one-way ticket to Africa, would Jews from occupied Soviet territories be earmarked for it, too, would they be singled out for mass killing, or would the Nazis try to do half and half ? Difficult to say. In my tentative opinion, perhaps the latter.

As it concerns the fate of the Gentile Slavs, the issue is even more complex. In any Nazi victory TL, the atrocities would remain that were motivated by harsh repression of any real or perceived hostility or resistance to Nazi rule, as well the ones motivated by "freeing up" food for Nazi troops and civilians (although the latter would not be such a big issue in the medium term, when they regain access to the world markets). This would still raise a rather substantial but ultimately limited bodycount. The other main issue is how they would choose to deal with the Gentile Slavs which they earmark as non-Germanizable (varying percentages of the majority, according to ethnicity, and likely slightly adjustable by butterflies). If the Holocaust does not happen, mass extermination of the Slavs becomes rather unlikely. It always was quite problematic, due to the numbers involved, in such a TL a precedent and template would also be lacking. So the remaining alternatives would become deportation, or keeping them around as an exploited workforce, or trying to do half and half.

And that's a lot more deaths than the Holocaust. I don't even consider the OTL Holocaust death-rate of 60% to be impossible, although of course the TTL Holocaust death-rate will go considerably higher.

A 60% death-rate essentially arising from genocidal counterinsurgency policies, brutal and indiscriminate as they may be, seems quite unlikely, given the population numbers involved. As I said, food-hoarding is only going to be relevant up to a point.

Similar, but there are differences. China, foe example, was a much less urbanised society, meaning that a breakdown of agricultural production implies less starvation in cities.

True.

The three principle causes of civilian death were urban mass-starvartion (Kharkov, Leningrad), the Holocaust, and the Partisan war;

We may assume that in some TLs, the Holocaust does not happen.

and as I understand it the Chinese partisans, while they could face equal brutality when the Japanese did retaliate, weren't so organised and pervasive at the Soviet ones in places like Belarus.

Quite likely more organized. Most likely not more pervasive, and actually the contrary may be true.

That would result in starvation on a large scale, no doubts about it.

Yep.

Do yo have any evidence for this belief whatever besides a desire to make the Nazis look better and the Soviets worse?

I'll see if I can track down the history journal paper that shaped my opinion on the issue.

One does not need death-camps to cause multiple megadeaths. The Nazis managed plenty without their aid.

True as well, and sadly easily so. But without the death-camps, the body count is only going so far.

 

[Keenir]

Eurofed, is there a reason you will not permit this thread a noble death like it had achieved?

 

[Eurofed]

The Nazis started in a very educated society and trashed its education system. They'd be obliged to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

It depends, of course, on how much and how early they get to realize that their trashy education policies are giving them a serious economical and technological disadvantage. But, theoretically speaking, it's not as difficult to reverse them as you imply, if the political will is there.

Several of those are plausible at the very least in terms of keeping options open and threats in being, but again: the accounts I've read give Hitler no stark choice about a peace offer in 1941.

We read contrasting sources, I suppose.

What were the Soviets going to do, invade Bulgaria? Not destroying the world was in the interests of both USA and USSR, but it's not like the Nazis had any particular desire to negotiate with the Soviets. The Soviets may have wanted to investigate the possibilities of a negotiated peace, but how could they do it? It wasn't in their power to make any third party mediate for them.

They could have used a different diplomatic channel.

Possibly (I was thinking in terms of a very brief pause, Amiens-style), but the point is that I really doubt the Soviets were in earnest about accepting any losses.

Don't ever forget that they had a precedent of accepting an unfavourable peace. Stalin was not really the guy which needed to justify his foreign policy choices, but he could always say "Lenin did it" to silence any doubts. About whether being in earnest, oh, now doubt they would be on the lookout from day 1 of the peace for a favorable opportunity of a rematch. Just like Hitler would do on his part. Heck, in all likelihood, if such a peace happens, is because someone can talk Adolf in the idea that this is just a medium-term temporary measure, and Germany can restart the war after the Western Allies have defeated, Germany has rested and rebuilt its full strength, and the like.

I believe that Hitler's long-term plans involved increasingly heady ambitions. He may well have meant to fight the USSR first, but I certainly think he wanted to smash Versailles if the opportunity presented itself - and in the scenario, it does.

But he had already done to the degree that it mattered in 1938-39, and the job would have been completed with the defeat of Poland. While I can easily believe that it would turn against the West in the attempt to plunder its economic resources if/when Germany faces economic trouble, he never cared that much about going out of his way to regain Alsace-Lorraine or seeking a rematch with France.

If it's tied by an alliance to France, it's obligated to stand by the Czechs. Now, trusting religiously in a French alliance wasn't a likely or a sensible thing for Pilsudski to do. Obviously his attempt to walk a tightrope between Germany and Russia with military power as his balancing pole and France as his safety harness was doomed, but that was because he misunderstood Hitler, as did everybody, not least Stalin and Chamberlain.

Pilsudski's policy was doomed in the long term anyway, even if Germany had got a a different leader.

a Germany ruled by military officers and cultivating the Dolchstosslegende is not something I'd like to see if it can possibly be avoided.

Among the military officers that you dread so much, the willingness to go at war with the West or Soviet Russia unless they were attacked was practically nil. At the very most, they contemplated a war with Poland to gain a border revision, which had been on the table as a long-term perspective since the 1920s. Even more so ITTL where they pulled a coup to stop such a war. Not to mention the fact that in the medium term, they would have restored something like a second Kaiserreich. And once Versailles had been undone about all the points that really mattered for the German people (Austria, reparations, Rhineland, Sudentenland, Danzig, disarmament), the willingness for aggressive advertures among the officers or the public at large was practically zero, so the Dolchstosslegende stopped being a relevant issue.

And the runaway military class that had developed in the interwar period - a time of complete constitutional democracy and great social and political freedom - would still be there.

In the medium term, the restart of conscription and changing political and foreign policy situation would surely remold it back to something like the old pre-1914 army, which was no better and no worse, politically speaking, than the other European powers' armies. But the main point is that the German regular army, like the Italian one and radically differently from the Japanese one, was on its own consistently devoid of radical aggressive urges in foreign policy. As it concerned domestic policies, they were no friends of Weimar, but they stood for something like an idealized Kaiserreich. Such a political regime sponsored by the army would mostly vary in its degree of authoritarianism according ot how much tolerance and leeway the socialists and the trade unions would get, at the worst.

Prussian militarism was clearly a real phenomenon (witness Wilhelm Voigt and the Zabern affair)

I see your Zabern affair with my Dreyfus affair.

The significant thing was that it was wrapped up in itself and developed a tradition whereby the citizens values of the old German army vanished. It was ambitious, calculating, and completely amoral, and Hitler gave it a collar of his own while removing it from the leash of human decency with documented results.

But nothing of what it did at Hitler's drive (and again, there is no evidence whatsoever that any of that would have been done without a megalomanic like him at the helm, on the contrary the Heer often dragged its feet and was fearful) is going to happen if he's overthrown in 1938-39.

But the army leadership existed, and was not nice.

The French guys that tried to pull coups in 1958 and 1961 were not nice, either.

Japan surrendered unconditionally. Leniancy is not incompatible with total victory.

The Allies consistently failed to give any hint that Germany would be given a lenient peace if the request for surrender was honored. The political impact of doing so on the German public as well as the anti-Nazi groups and the fence-sitters in the army would have been huge. Doing so would have costed the Allies nothing really important, only to scrap their Plan Morgenthau and ethnic cleansing stuff. If this had pushed Germany to overthrow Hitler and accept such a peace, good, a lot of lives among soldiers, civilians, and Nazi victims would have been spared. If not, too bad, they would have fought on like they did IOTL.

The destruction of Germany military power has avoided a repeat event, so the only way an "honourable" peace could be superior on its own merits would be if it was better than a certainty.

As it concerns the 1938-39 situation, there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone else in the foreseeable future meant for a general war in Germany if Hitler was removed, and Nazi imprint on Germany society was still minor and shaky, and in all likelihhod fleeting. Such an overthrow leaves Germany a satisfied power and hence yields better chances for lasting peace than an early Entente victory.

As it concerns the 1943-44 situation, when Germany would have been forced to accept surrender even if it got a lenient peace, the Allies would still get their chance for denazification. There is no evidence that a peace any harsher than that would be necessary. Italy and Japan got a better deal and behaved just the same.

Without a comprehensive cleansing of the Nazi past? The lesson of history is that societies don't naturally come to terms with their misdeeds to a helpful level. Just look at the ex-USSR.

As much as I may find the Putin regime distasteful on various aspects, it has caused no real big problems to the international community. Surely it has started no WWIII. There is also the fact that post-Soviet Russia has started from a rather worse position that our hypothetical post-Nazi Germany. The effects of the Communists staying in charge for 70 years, and the Nazis doing so 5-6 years, do not even begin to compare, politically and socially.

"Versailles Mark II" has resulted in a liberal democratic Germany which has been flabberghastingly succesful in coming to terms with its own past and is now among the nicest places I can think of in the world, and almost complete peace in Europe for decades.

So has done Spain, without any need for being invaded and military defeated by the glorious Entente armies.

 

[I Blame Communism]

I'm tentatively skeptical that Benny was ever aware that the relative strength of Germany was to decrease, so I'm inclined to think that he probably wanted a war. He really wanted that Mediterranean empire if he ever could get away with it.

That the relative strength of Germany would decrease was readily apparent to everybody else: Germans (that's why they launched the war), Entente (the basis of our doormat strategy), and Soviets (the whole point of the M-R pact was to buy time). Why not Italians?

Also an opportunity to feast on the Anglo-French colonial empires.

I'm not seeing much pre-war interest in those territories to stand against his consistent hostility to Greece and Yugoslavia.

That, too, but he genuinely wanted Italy to take part in the anti-Communist "crusade" (I know you don't like the term, but it's appropriate here) for prestige and glory.

The very first "Crusade" was a useless war organised by powerful men on behalf of their cynical perversion of an idea that killed thousands and thousands of ordinary people for no reason. It's a completely appropriately term.

He was not megalomanical enough to start a war with the Entente alone.

True; and yet for a lengthy period he antagonised Yugoslavia, Greece, Abbysinia without moving towards Germany or the USSR: this appears to suggest that he didn't mean to fight the Entente at all.

That's two different things. The Jews from other countries were to go to the GG "reservation" as an interim measure. But the GG Jews themselves, as well as the newcomcers, were ultimately earmarked for a different fate, which was extra-European deportation up to the Wannssee Conference, the Final Solution afterwards.

What of the explicit genocidal intent of the standing orders issued before Barbarossa? What the balls else does "Race War" mean?

Also, if the Nazis were so overflowing with humanitarian concern for the Jews of Poland, Germany, and France, couldn't they have just left them alone until the deportation was ready? There was a war on. Moving them to Poland and then over the sea and far away is a complete waste of time and resources.

Now, I of course believe that the Nazis were all about wasting resources; but why it that in your world, a waste of resources which makes them the bad guys, like mass-murdering Soviets, will be terminated by Hitler's sensible successors, but Hitler himself will waste resources rather than harm the Jews?

Mostly because a somewhat detailed draft for Plan Madagascar was not yet finalized during the armistice negotations with Vichy, even if the general idea had been approved by Hitler since 1938. However, in summer 1940, Hitler spoke of the Plan with Mussolini and Raeder.

And Jews were dying in Poland. Your thesis that genocide was decided at Wannsee is incompatible with the genocide that was ordered against Soviet Jews in 1941.

In May 1940, Himmler told that "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony". He spoke with Hitler of the plan, and the latter said that the plan was "very good and correct". The news of this solution to the "Jewish question" circumlated among the Nazi spheres, since Hans Frank, the GG governor, told at a party meeting, that "As soon as sea communications permit the shipment of the Jews, they shall be shipped, piece by piece, man by man, woman by woman, girl by girl".

Nazi propaganda called Churchill and other British and French anti-appeasers "warmongers" up to 1939, and stressed their desire for peace. This was while ordinary Germans were seeing their standards of living fall to build more tanks. The Nazis were certainly not above barefaced deception, and indeed "You're being deported further east" was exactly what trainloads of confused Jews were told.

Given that, I'd prefer to rely on deeds.

Yet, there was not yet a detailed plan, so Ribbentrop charged Rademacher, recently appointed leader of the Jewish Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to create one (see the link above), which he did on July 3.

The Nazis state, as you note, was notorious for working against itself: I therefore find it interesting that a solution in the realm of foreign policy was drawn up by a foreign policy organisation.

Once learning of the new potential of the Plan, Heydrich pressured Ribbentrop to relinquish control of the effort to the RSHA (the usual merry Nazi bureaucratic infighting). In this way, Eichmann, who headed the office of Jewish evacuation in the RSHA, became involved. On August 15, Eichmann released a draft of his own, calling for the resettlement of one million Jews per year over four years, and abandoning the idea of retaining any Jews in Europe whatsoever. Because of this, building of the Warsaw ghetto was halted.

So what we're seeing is increasingly ambitious and imaptient attempts to rid Europe of Jews - while people are starving in Poland - and an increasingly unrealistic plan bouncing around -a plan dependent on Britain, of course, surrendering.

During late 1940 and 1941, failure to defeat Britain made the project stall, and the Warsaw ghetto was completed and opened in October. Expulsions of Jews from German territory into occupied Poland continued again from late autumn 1940 to spring 1941. Mention of Madagascar as a "super ghetto" was made once in a while in the ensuing months, but by early December, the Plan was abandoned entirely. Failure of the Plan ushered in the Final Solution.

I'm sure this was a very great comfort to the Baltic and Soviet Jews who had already died face-down in muddy pits in accordance with the German army's standing orders.

In the light of the evidence above, Hitler's reference in the 1939 speech may easily be interpreted as the threat of extinguishing Jewry in Europe by wholescale deportation to Africa, or perhaps he was just making a general threat, without having a clear idea of the means (far from unusual for the man).

Very likely the second: and once again, going from that starting point, analysing deeds not words and taking acount of the practicalities, we arrive rapidly - by June 1941 - at extermination.

However, on November 12, 1938, Goering told the German Cabinet that Hitler was going to suggest to the West the emigration of Jews to Madagascar. Schacht, Reichsbank president, during discussions in London, tried to procure an international loan to send the Jews to Madagascar. In December 1939, Ribbentrop even included the emigration of Jews to Madagascar as part of a peace proposal to the pope.

So whenever the Nazis were talking to a soft-hearted westerner, it was deportation? I'm not really surprised. Concealing the Holocaust was later their deliberate policy.

A rather questionable interpretation given the evidence I quoted. We may certainly say that since late 1938, they shifted to the "no more Jews in Germany" policy, which became no more Jews in Europe" after the start of the war, but they meant this to mean deportation to Africa up to mid-late 1941.

Mid-1941 is when they ordered their army to shoot any Jew in the USSR.

Your evidence that they were planning to use such slave-labour instead of the mass deportation ?

Principally, that they used slave-labour instead of mass-deportation.

My point is that, according to available evidence, an early enough Nazi victory over Britain, or perception of it being close at hand,

In the tune of what I so often say: it was perceived as being close at hand. Some chicken, some neck.

would have led to the adoption of policies that would have avoided the Holocaust in favor of mass deportation to Africa. No doubt that dumping millions of Jews in poor underdeveloped Madagascar would have still led to a rather substantial body count, but in all likelihood, this is would have left millions more alive than OTL. This may be fairly certainly assumed according to historical evidence for the non-Soviet European Jews.

This is a discussion which is only going to drag on, so here's something else to consider:

Let's accept your terms for a moment. The chicken's neck is wrung, Britain surrenders. Germany deports European Jews to Madagascar, where it is likely that multiple millions still die. The Germans then win in the USSR and kill lots more Soviet Jews and of course lots more Soviet gentiles. The overall deathtoll for the world is still higher, for Jewry at least comparable.

Given that, the present discussion is something of a quibble.

For the latter, the picture is more murky, since IOTL we start to come close to the moment when the Nazis shifted their plans from deportation to extermination. And the Soviet Jews were likely perceived as more dangerous than the rest, since in the twisted caste-system Nazi view of the USSR, they were perceived as the leaders of the Bolshevik regime and hence more dangerous. So in a TL where the rest of Euro Jews are getting a one-way ticket to Africa, would Jews from occupied Soviet territories be earmarked for it, too, would they be singled out for mass killing, or would the Nazis try to do half and half ? Difficult to say. In my tentative opinion, perhaps the latter.

They were already singled out for a mass-killing by the standing orders. The men and organisations prepared for this purpose are perfectly well-documented.

As it concerns the fate of the Gentile Slavs,

"Slavs" again?

One of the men who raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag was a Dagestani, one of the Red Army Fronts was led by an Armenian, one of the primary firsthand accounts of the GPW used in Mr.Rees' The Nazis is that of a decorated Tatar officer, and, you know, Stalin was a Georgian.

If you're going to spot ideology in my distaste for the word "Crusade", I have to wonder why you and others seem so shy about using the word "Soviets", which is the only accurate description for the victims of Nazi mass-murder.

the issue is even more complex. In any Nazi victory TL, the atrocities would remain that were motivated by harsh repression of any real or perceived hostility or resistance to Nazi rule, as well the ones motivated by "freeing up" food for Nazi troops and civilians (although the latter would not be such a big issue in the medium term, when they regain access to the world markets).

Why not? War may feed itself, but mass-starvation was also a Nazi policy to kill off Soviets. I hope that's not in dispute. In any case, as I said, agriculture goes right down when everybody's killing to stay alive.

This would still raise a rather substantial but ultimately limited bodycount.

An "ultimately limited bodycount" means nothing. What's the "limit"? Is it when we run out of Soviets? Then yes, there certainly is a limit to the potential bodycount, but if you won't be any more specific about it that doesn't exonnerate any Nazi killers.

The other main issue is how they would choose to deal with the Gentile Slavs which they earmark as non-Germanizable (varying percentages of the majority, according to ethnicity, and likely slightly adjustable by butterflies). If the Holocaust does not happen, mass extermination of the Slavs becomes rather unlikely. It always was quite problematic, due to the numbers involved, in such a TL a precedent and template would also be lacking. So the remaining alternatives would become deportation, or keeping them around as an exploited workforce, or trying to do half and half.

Or killing the majority of them through arbitrary murder, overwork, and artificial famine as was accomplished with the PoWs. My view that you refuse to recognise any mass-murder conducted outside of gas-driven extermination camps seems to be confirmed.

I should also point out that when the European powers (most flagrantly, France) kept Africans around as an exploited workforce on their Caribbean possesions, they succeeded in a death-rate considerably higher than the birth-rate, which in the absence of a continent full of Soviets being raided for slaves would result in extermination. I'm not a fan of royalist France (it's my Sans-Cullote hair, I'm sure), but Nazis they were not.

A 60% death-rate essentially arising from genocidal counterinsurgency policies, brutal and indiscriminate as they may be, seems quite unlikely, given the population numbers involved. As I said, food-hoarding is only going to be relevant up to a point.

Why? They were doing it for a reason. Standards of living for Germans improving thanks to Soviet and Slavic starvation and slave-labour was sort of the plan, or rather, one of the intellectual foundations of German far-right thought since WW1.

Half a population dying, give or take a bit, was perfectly normal back in the 1600s. The Germans lost at least a third of their population or so without any all powerful conqueror believing they all deserved to die (and that's an average figure which takes in many areas that the 30YW didn't really reach: smaller areas like Brandenburg were just gutted). The European colonial powers pulled off comparable proportions all the time in the 19th century. Is the Tsar can kill that many Circassians, why can't Hitler?

We may assume that in some TLs, the Holocaust does not happen.

If you want. Doesn't change a thing for Soviet Jews.

Quite likely more organized. Most likely not more pervasive, and actually the contrary may be true.

Sorry, which partisans are we referring to here?

True as well, and sadly easily so. But without the death-camps, the body count is only going so far.

The Chinese bodycount got so far as between ten and twenty millions without any death-camps.

Killing people is actually really easy, once the ball's rolling. War really does feed itself.

 

[I Blame Communism]

It depends, of course, on how much and how early they get to realize that their trashy education policies are giving them a serious economical and technological disadvantage. But, theoretically speaking, it's not as difficult to reverse them as you imply, if the political will is there.

That's in the future for the Nazi regime. I will note that they obviously had a deep-seated intellectual prejudice against free thought, and it's hardly unprecedented for a totalitarian regime (that of Stalin, for example) to damage its position against external foes because they're so afraid of their internal "enemies". In fact, that's exactly what the Nazis did. And like all totalitarian regimes, they'll always need to find an enemy.

We read contrasting sources, I suppose.

Which source are you reading?

They could have used a different diplomatic channel.

How many countries existed:

-That were not at war with Germany and determined to win?

-That were also not at war with the USSR and determined to win?

-That had an obvious interest both sentimental and more importantly practical in not seeing the USSR beaten?

-That were within a million miles of the Auswartiges Amt?

Don't ever forget that they had a precedent of accepting an unfavourable peace. Stalin was not really the guy which needed to justify his foreign policy choices, but he could always say "Lenin did it" to silence any doubts. About whether being in earnest, oh, now doubt they would be on the lookout from day 1 of the peace for a favorable opportunity of a rematch. Just like Hitler would do on his part. Heck, in all likelihood, if such a peace happens, is because someone can talk Adolf in the idea that this is just a medium-term temporary measure, and Germany can restart the war after the Western Allies have defeated, Germany has rested and rebuilt its full strength, and the like.

Then we're agreed that, in Nazi thought, it was war to the finish.

But he had already done to the degree that it mattered in 1938-39, and the job would have been completed with the defeat of Poland. While I can easily believe that it would turn against the West in the attempt to plunder its economic resources if/when Germany faces economic trouble, he never cared that much about going out of his way to regain Alsace-Lorraine or seeking a rematch with France.

The Nazi regime was mentally and physically dependent on conquest to justify itself. I see no reason to suppose that they'll refrain from conquering an old enemy when they obviously can.

Pilsudski's policy was doomed in the long term anyway, even if Germany had got a a different leader.

Now is not the time for another bout of people insisting that Poland Is Always Wrong. I'm not the Marshal's biggest fan, either (amn't I supposed to be a shameless Stalin-apologise out to Bolshevise Britain and nationalise the women?), but that's all besides the point.

Among the military officers that you dread so much, the willingness to go at war with the West or Soviet Russia unless they were attacked was practically nil. At the very most, they contemplated a war with Poland to gain a border revision, which had been on the table as a long-term perspective since the 1920s. Even more so ITTL where they pulled a coup to stop such a war.

They pulled a coup to avoid a war that they knew they would lose. No humanitarian objection was raised to going into Poland merrily shooting up fleeing civilians, surrendered officers, and Red Cross installations, since they won. See, this is precisely why I don't like these guys.

Not to mention the fact that in the medium term, they would have restored something like a second Kaiserreich. And once Versailles had been undone about all the points that really mattered for the German people (Austria, reparations, Rhineland, Sudentenland, Danzig, disarmament), the willingness for aggressive advertures among the officers or the public at large was practically zero, so the Dolchstosslegende stopped being a relevant issue.

I believe Reichswehr memoranda from the 1920s sketch the eventual German domination of Europe. I'd rather not be dominated by a "second Kaisereich" which, the obvious implication is, is a second Kaiserreich without all those things that ruined the first one like civilian oversight and socialists, thanks.

In the medium term, the restart of conscription and changing political and foreign policy situation would surely remold it back to something like the old pre-1914 army, which was no better and no worse, politically speaking, than the other European powers' armies.

Two problems:

-It was worse than most. Sorry, but in Britain, generals (or admirals) couldn't silence the legitimate head of state and of government. We had plenty of our own problems, but that pre-WW1 Germany was a very militaristic society is hardly controversial.

-That's not what happened in OTL. Like I said, the "echo chamber" created an intellectual culture that was inculcated in all the new blood. The Nazis never really brought the army to heel... and the army certainly never objected to shooting civilians, including German ones.

But the main point is that the German regular army, like the Italian one and radically differently from the Japanese one, was on its own consistently devoid of radical aggressive urges in foreign policy. As it concerned domestic policies, they were no friends of Weimar, but they stood for something like an idealized Kaiserreich.

That depends on your "ideal". If it's anything like how the Kaiserreich actually was between 1916 and 1918, I want nothing to do with it.

Like I keep saying, I'm not saying the world should be burned to bring the German generals to justice, I'm just saying that I'd much prefer the available alternatives. Is it really so mad of me to prefer German democracy to a sort of German General Pinochet?

Such a political regime sponsored by the army would mostly vary in its degree of authoritarianism according ot how much tolerance and leeway the socialists and the trade unions would get, at the worst.

As the victims of a hundred tinpot generals in big hats can tell you, you's still a dead socialist even if it wasn't Nazis that got you. I don't like people shooting socialists, imprisoning them without trial, beating them up and tortuing them, hounding and harrasing them out of the countries they were born in, or driving them to suicide. Of course, I am a socialist, so I may be a bit biased here.

I see your Zabern affair with my Dreyfus affair.

So on the one hand, the German military protects people who advocate shooting their own civilians and arbitrarily detains members of the judiciary, and nothing much is done about this; and on the other hand, a single dodgy deal by a single prejudiced Frenchman raises a national crisis.

The reason there was no German Dreyfuss affair is because in Germany, sweeping a Jew under the rug to cover up for the Prestige Of The Armed Forces wouldn't, didn't raise many eyebrows. It happened. Nobody objected to army reports that accused Jews of shirking duty during WW1, even though German Jews were actually ardent supporters of the war effort.

But nothing of what it did at Hitler's drive (and again, there is no evidence whatsoever that any of that would have been done without a megalomanic like him at the helm, on the contrary the Heer often dragged its feet and was fearful) is going to happen if he's overthrown in 1938-39.

No, and that's much better than OTL. But am I expected to be happy that the people who organised the mass-murder of Soviet PoWs are in charge of one of Europe's greatest nations?

Oh, and the German generals, as I said, only objected to killing people when it wasn't practical. Nobody can pretend they didn't know what was planned when they went into the USSR. In Poland and the West, ordinary army officers just went completely unpunished for fairly frequent random massacres, but in the USSR they'd all read the Commissar Order. They knew it was race-war. A few refused to follow it: to the despair of all totalitarians, good people are everywhere. But the vast majority knew perfectly well what their mission was and didn't object, because that was the military culture they'd been educated in. The whole "Let's not feed the prisoners" attitude came from the army's ranks.

Oh, and a particular couple of facts which get under my nose, especially in tandem: German troops were issued condoms before Barbarossa, and Guenther von Kluge commanded that "Women in uniform are to be shot". Charming bunch.

The French guys that tried to pull coups in 1958 and 1961 were not nice, either.

Nope, and their attitude to Arabs was a pretty accurate analogy for that of the German generals to Slavs.

Just as well they never did get into power in France, an entrenched civilian democracy. I'd like Germany to be an entrenched civilian democracy.

The Allies consistently failed to give any hint that Germany would be given a lenient peace if the request for surrender was honored.

So these people - this band of men who came from a class which had tacitly blessed Hitler's rise to power, who had never objected to breakneck militarisation, who had never disciplined one German for shooting prisoners of war and civilians at random, and who had lastly been perfectly willing to take part in organised mass murder - had a right to deserve a leniant peace after the government they had happily worked for had spent the last years smashing helpless countries under its boots?

Excuse me, where in the book of diplomacy is giving a "leniant peace" to a powerful, aggressive state that has attacked you just because a lunatic mass-murderer had been replaced with some fairly sober mass-murderers a good idea? Bismarck (who, whatever else you say about the man, knew how and why to keep generals on the leash) would not approve.

It's not about the Allies humanitarian mission to save everybody from the big bad dictators, it's about their very real, very practical mission to win the war, rather then reward the enemy officers who were trying to destroy them by letting them have a victory on points.

The political impact of doing so on the German public as well as the anti-Nazi groups and the fence-sitters in the army would have been huge. Doing so would have costed the Allies nothing really important, only to scrap their Plan Morgenthau and ethnic cleansing stuff.

Doing so would have left in power the men who had bombed our cities, shot our prisoners, invaded and conquered our allies, sunk our ships, and in the case of the USSR had raped people's mothers and sisters, burned alive their parents and children.

And eye for an eye isn't right, but I find it very typical that the allies should just ignore the rather understandable public opinion of their own countries to appease the public opinion of the enemy.

If this had pushed Germany to overthrow Hitler and accept such a peace, good, a lot of lives among soldiers, civilians, and Nazi victims would have been spared. If not, too bad, they would have fought on like they did IOTL.

Like I said, people did actually want to defeat Germany, rather than rewarding a decade of aggressive behavior and leaving the men responsible in charge. Can the Allied leaders perhaps be forgiven for placing their national objectives (win the war and don't have to fight another one) above those of the enemy?

As it concerns the 1938-39 situation, there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone else in the foreseeable future meant for a general war in Germany if Hitler was removed, and Nazi imprint on Germany society was still minor and shaky, and in all likelihhod fleeting. Such an overthrow leaves Germany a satisfied power and hence yields better chances for lasting peace than an early Entente victory.

Personally, I think a defeated, occupied, and restructured power is going to be less troublesome than a victorious power ruled by generals.

As it concerns the 1943-44 situation, when Germany would have been forced to accept surrender even if it got a lenient peace, the Allies would still get their chance for denazification. There is no evidence that a peace any harsher than that would be necessary. Italy and Japan got a better deal and behaved just the same.

Anything where the German military allows the Allies to enter the country and establish the new government is "total defeat" in my book. If the German generals were never quite heroically anti-Nazi enough to come to terms with the necessity of actually being defeated and lay down their arms (even in the west alone), that's not my fault - and only serves to confirm my views of the German generals.

As much as I may find the Putin regime distasteful on various aspects, it has caused no real big problems to the international community. Surely it has started no WWIII.

Putin's Russia is one place I certainly wouldn't expect to start a war, but that doesn't mean I have to approve of its habit of systematically distorting history, apologising for a mass-murderer, and killing off dissidents. There's no alternative for present-day Russia, the only way out is as usual gradual development and reform; but in this case, there is an alternative: the Allies deNazifying Germany.

The Putin government is by no means the worst offender in the post-Soviet space, anyway. It's version of history (which is all things to all supporters) has nothing either on its corruption and opaqueness, nor on the versions of Soviet history propagated by various other groups. Plenty of people on the Russian opposition are fanatically pro-Stalinist (and on the other side of the coin, their Estonians and Galician counterparts are, ironically enough, also products of the Soviet totalitarianism despite the differant conclusions they draw about it). Where are the fanatical pro-Nazis on the German benches? Where are the people in Britain who are convinced that murdering German civilians is morally necessary? Oh, whoops, I forget, that's apparently me, if Mulder is to be believed. Long live Stalin!

There is also the fact that post-Soviet Russia has started from a rather worse position that our hypothetical post-Nazi Germany. The effects of the Communists staying in charge for 70 years, and the Nazis doing so 5-6 years, do not even begin to compare, politically and socially.

Of course, there are as always two sides to the coin (and one whole side of the human race coin is made up of women, which is pretty significant here); but anyway, what does that mean? That the Nazis aren't ever completely exhausted and discredited as an idea, like communism was? That hardly helps.

So has done Spain, without any need for being invaded and military defeated by the glorious Entente armies.

This is the same Spain where trying to get your grandparents out of the whole in the ground where they were shot by fascist thugs is a matter of extreme judicial controversy, right?

I love Spain, and one of my best friends is Spanish (Catalan nationalist, admittedly, but I'm not a Catalan nationalist, I just don't like Franco one bit); and she'd certainly agree that Spain is no Germany when it comes to facing the past.

 

[Mulder]

So these people - this band of men who came from a class which had tacitly blessed Hitler's rise to power, who had never objected to breakneck militarisation, who had never disciplined one German for shooting prisoners of war and civilians at random, and who had lastly been perfectly willing to take part in organised mass murder - had a right to deserve a leniant peace after the government they had happily worked for had spent the last years smashing helpless countries under its boots?

No, they did not, but the people of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and East Brandenburg did.

Excuse me, where in the book of diplomacy is giving a "leniant peace" to a powerful, aggressive state that has attacked you just because a lunatic mass-murderer had been replaced with some fairly sober mass-murderers a good idea? Bismarck (who, whatever else you say about the man, knew how and why to keep generals on the leash) would not approve.

It's not about the Allies humanitarian mission to save everybody from the big bad dictators, it's about their very real, very practical mission to win the war, rather then reward the enemy officers who were trying to destroy them by letting them have a victory on points.



Doing so would have left in power the men who had bombed our cities, shot our prisoners, invaded and conquered our allies, sunk our ships, and in the case of the USSR raped and burned alive people's brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and children.

And eye for an eye isn't right, but I find it very typical that the allies should just ignore the rather understandable public opinion of their own countries to appeace the public opinion of the enemy.

The moral duty of politicians in a democracy is to ignore the idiots who believe in morally disgusting crap like collective punisment. Otherwise they are the same kind of scum as any mass murdering dictator is.

Like I said, people did actually want to defeat Germany, rather than rewarding a decade of aggressive behavior and leaving the men responsible in charge. Can the Allied leaders perhaps be forgiven for placing their national objectives (win the war and don't have to fight another one) above those of the enemy?



Personally, I think a defeated, occupied, and restructured power is going to be less troublesome than a victorious power ruled by generals.

Germany being "less troublesome" is in your opinion worth the death of hundreds of thousands of East German civilians?

 

[I Blame Communism]

No, they did not, but the people of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and East Brandenburg did.

You may not have noticed this, but I hate war, and this is precisely because all wars, everywhere, ever, have consisted mostly of innocent, ordinary people who did nothing whatever to start them getting slaughtered. There is no war in the history of everything where even most of the casualties on even one of the sides deserved what they got, including all the wars that I do consider necessary and "just" (that being in fact a contradiction in terms).

What I'm objecting too is that, when every other warmaking government in history had persued its aims cynically without regard to the fate of ordinary people on both sides in an effort to win the war in accordance with its own foreign policy interest, the Allied governments become wicked devils for doing just that, even though they were up against the most evil regime in history. A hundred regimes before them had set out to win a war for the interests of a few of the rich and powerful, and didn't care how many young men had to die in the process. The Allied leadership had two options: win totally, or permit the most evil regime in history to have its way on millions of people. Given that, why are they the only ones who come in for criticism for taking steps to ensure the total defeat of the enemy at great cost in innocent lives? They, unlike almost every other war-leader, had a very good reason to want the enemy defeated.
Who deserved what they got? Not the Germans who were ethnically cleansed. Not the Britons who were blown to bits by people who never saw their faces. Not the people who blew them to bits. Not the Soviets who were raped and burned to death. Not all the British and German and Soviet and American young men who had to look to the front and hope like hell.

If it was up to me, I'd have struck down a few of the madmen who were responsible with thunderbolts from heaven and saved all the wretched victims on every side. As it turns out, it's really not up to me.

The next best alternative is to support the people who didn't plan to kill or enslave all their opponents.

The moral duty of politicians in a democracy is to ignore the idiots who believe in morally disgusting crap like collective punisment. Otherwise they are the same kind of scum as any mass murdering dictator is.

"Moral duty of politicians in a democracy", hm? Churchill and Roosevelt both ruled over multiple millions undemocratically because they happened to be black or brown (not that I'm saying the segregated South was the same as the British Empire, any more than the British Empire was the same as the Nazis). The world of the 1940s, as it turns out, was shit.

But I hope you're not suggesting that simply because he wasn't perfect, Roosevelt was Churchill was Stalin was Hitler, because if we can't agree that Allied victory was better than Axis victory than no common ground exists whatsoever.

Also, collective punishment is morally disgusting, but I don't blame people who had lost loved ones for believing in it, any more than I believe that the hundreds of ordinary Germans (and Japanese, and Soviets) who shot civilians and raped helpless women were as bad as their leaders just because they did morally disgusting things when they were exhausted, were half-mad with fright and stress, were frequently drunk, were a long way from home, had lost friends, and had been hardened by a totalitarian society. That's the way humans are, and the solution is not to expect us all to be plaster saints, it's to stop having wars. And if the lunatics have begun a war, the solution is to stop them.

Germany being "less troublesome" is in your opinion worth the death of hundreds of thousands of East German civilians?

Oh, sigh. Let's see what my days-younger self has to say on this matter, shall we?

So I consider an opportunity to purge German society of various nasty bits a good thing in itself. It's peanuts, however, compared to saving lives, Allied or German. Like I say, I really don't mind that much. I understand full why the Allies adopted Unconditional Surrender as their policy (and they had a variety of other reasons), but I merely prefer comprehensive defeat if all else is equal.

But hey, it's not like people care what Russkie-loving Bolsheviks like me actually say, so I may as well play to expectations.

Bwa! Look out, Germans! When we're done dismantling your military tradition, we'll nationalise your women, too! Long live Stalin! Long live Attlee!