Could Nazi Germany defeat the US in a Cold War peacefully?
...dude, we outproduced the Nazis to a truly hilarious degree while bankrolling the British and Soviet war efforts. And kicking Japanese ass nonstop starting barely 6 months after they sunk a bunch of our Pacific fleet. And we weren't stupid enough to try to commit organized genocide while doing this.
We also had a tech edge thanks to guys like Goddard, we produced the best multi-role piston-engined fighter of all time in the P-51 Mustang before the concept of multirole fighters was even really a thing and we produced it in hilariously vast quantities while the Nazis were trying to put a mediocre primitive jet in the air, we had more and more efficient factories by an order of magnitude, we had more population, a massive oceanic barrier, a vastly superior navy, superior naval tech, and oh yeah, by 1945, when the Nazis were not so much running on fumes as having the fumes strangled out of them, we were still just starting to warm up.
The USA is simply larger, more powerful, and most critically orders of magnitude more efficient than a hypothetical victorious Third Reich that has to keep down a bunch of rebellions everywhere. Even stacking the deck by giving the Nazis better leadership, you're still looking at a tech and economic gulf and an increasingly impossible scale of conquest that's simply not sustainable for the Nazis.
The Nazis would lost, and lose horribly.
Well once the US becomes aware of the extent of German rocket research and production the US would almost definitely feel compelled to get into rocket research heavily. Much the same way the Germans would feel compelled to more heavily research atomic weaponry. As it was the US had experimented with6 or developed a range of guided muinitions by the end of the war. The US actually built a copy of the V1 based on some wreckage handed over by the Swedes. The plan was to use 75 thousand of them for the immediate pre invasion bombing of Japan. This despite the fact that pretty much everything worth bombing had already been destroyed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic-Ford_JB-2
If by "greatly overlooked factors" you mean irrelevant non-factors, then yes. Yes they are.
History Learner
Banned
To say the fact the U.S. would not be the world reserve currency in this situation is irrelevant is to be completely ignorant of what that entails and the wider story of the 20th Century.
To say that the US would not be the world's reserve currency due to the Nazis holding out in Europe is to be completely ignorant of how it happened in the first place and the wider story of the 20th century.
Bretton Woods happened WHILE the Nazis were still a thing, and there is no reason to think the exact same reasons wouldn't be present here. Moreso maybe with so much of the world's gold that isn't American tied up in fascist hands.
How would they know about nuclear weapons? The US has used them on Japan without using them on Germany? The US could wait until it has dozens and wipe both the Nazis and Japan off the face of the Earth. There is no reason for the US to tip it''s hand and show it's ultimate trump card unless it's certain of victory. The US is able to research artillery rockets because they are able to find evidence of the program in 1942, and they got engine samples in 1944. There is no reason, without wanking the Abwehr, for the Nazis to know about nuclear weapons until they are used.
I was working off the assumption that the Japanese still got hit with a couple nukes.
Why would the US do that if the Nazis are still around? Why wouldn't the US hit the Nazis first, or keep the whole thing secret until they absolutely have too? There is no reason for the US to use nukes unless it can take down both to the point where the US won't face nuclear retaliation.
Realistically, no. The Germans are run by people who don’t understand the economy, have a much smaller starting base, and huge financial issues.
If we can somehow have the US nationalize many industries during the Depression/War/Post War Era, forgo Free Trade, remain on a Gold Standard as long as possible, establishes a system of price controls and often quotas that cripple virtually every industry, establish a level of legal support for unions that causes constant work stoppages, create a welfare system with huge welfare cliffs that discourage work, get bogged down in several major wars, and have the strictest (to the point of redundancy) environmental laws in the history of the world, we can cripple the US economically. If we make the US also become xenophobic with no opening of the immigration system and assume the the economic instability causes reduction in fertility rates we might cause America’s population growth to peak at around 250 by now.
Have Germany do as much as the opposite as possible due to a convient series of deaths resulting in the least bad people managing the economy and eventually opening out. Reform their economic institutions during the 50s (no idea how) to the point Germany has economic policies no worse than the OTL by the late 60s, and at least viable economic institutions by 1960 with some of their oil and mineral wealth up online by the early 60s. Through brainwashing and financial incentives keep fertility high. Don’t provoke the US too much.
Do this and maybe Germany can win an economic victory by 2000. Have the US basically do postwar Britain’s economic performance in steroids and Nazi Germany eventually go with Post War Germany’s economic performance but with much higher fertility.
If we can somehow have the US nationalize many industries during the Depression/War/Post War Era, forgo Free Trade, remain on a Gold Standard as long as possible, establishes a system of price controls and often quotas that cripple virtually every industry, establish a level of legal support for unions that causes constant work stoppages, create a welfare system with huge welfare cliffs that discourage work, get bogged down in several major wars, and have the strictest (to the point of redundancy) environmental laws in the history of the world, we can cripple the US economically. If we make the US also become xenophobic with no opening of the immigration system and assume the the economic instability causes reduction in fertility rates we might cause America’s population growth to peak at around 250 by now.
Have Germany do as much as the opposite as possible due to a convient series of deaths resulting in the least bad people managing the economy and eventually opening out. Reform their economic institutions during the 50s (no idea how) to the point Germany has economic policies no worse than the OTL by the late 60s, and at least viable economic institutions by 1960 with some of their oil and mineral wealth up online by the early 60s. Through brainwashing and financial incentives keep fertility high. Don’t provoke the US too much.
Do this and maybe Germany can win an economic victory by 2000. Have the US basically do postwar Britain’s economic performance in steroids and Nazi Germany eventually go with Post War Germany’s economic performance but with much higher fertility.
History Learner
Banned
Bretton Woods was signed in 1944 after the Western Allies had landed on the continent and the Soviets had launched Bagration. What gave the agreement viability was the fact Western Europe was soon after fully liberated and acceded to the agreement, bringing their colonial empires in on it as well de-facto.
Kariya
Banned
Nazi Germany's poor economic situation is severely overstated and parroted by everyone here. I've no clue where that's even coming from. Incredible really. Secondly the "Cold" war which is presented here wouldn't play out in the same way. Soviets and US entered it as allies and relations cooled gradually. US and Nazi's would enter it as enemies, and they would have no qualms about open expansion if they wished to do so. They would also have far less moral qualms about that. Nazi's will have resources of entire Eurasia and Africa at their disposal whereas US would be confined to Americas.
I think that a victorious 3. Reich would focus on biological weapons, if their nuclear bomb research never progressed. It's more in line with Nazi focus on biology and genetics.
"Entire Eurasia" is hyperbole. They would have to be able to take and hold European Russia, and even if they kill 80% of the population (which in itself is a massive undertaking the Germans had trouble with OTL), they'd still have problems policing it all. And then there's the massive expanses of Siberia and Central Asia. This isn't a drive from Berlin to Paris, this is an expanse of territory that matches Canada and the US combined in size.
And taking Africa presents just as much problems as taking Russia, if not more. Sleeping sickness, malaria, other pleasant diseases that Europeans handle poorly, not to mention the complete lack of infrastructure beyond a few important points... you're acting as if Nazi Germany winning the Eastern front is an automatic meal ticket. It isn't. You now have to handle, administer, protect, and defend all that territory.
Germany's biggest chance is to make sure the new decolonized Africa and Middle East is its friend. If you're removing the Anglo-French boot only to put an Aryan one down, you're going to have a lot of problems come the 1960s. You're going to need troops from all over Europe just to be able to barely keep the important parts under control, and every time a French or Slovak soldier dies because Germany needs more rubber tires, that's more German troops needed just to keep said occupied territories from exploding into riots. Mass murder is counterproductive, since by killing people and burning down homes, that's manpower and infrastructure you're wasting just to prove a point.
And how exactly is Germany going to dictate terms to the Far East once the US stomps Japan into dirt? By that point, it'd be easier for China to get stuff from the US instead of Germany, and the Sino-German alliance had been dead a while before 1939.
The difference between American and German expansion is that Germany needs boots on the ground to keep its lebensraum, while the USA has multiple options to keep its economic empire going. The USA can literally hemorrhage the Reich to death, and I don't think it'll take till 1990 to do so. It'll be even shorter.
And taking Africa presents just as much problems as taking Russia, if not more. Sleeping sickness, malaria, other pleasant diseases that Europeans handle poorly, not to mention the complete lack of infrastructure beyond a few important points... you're acting as if Nazi Germany winning the Eastern front is an automatic meal ticket. It isn't. You now have to handle, administer, protect, and defend all that territory.
Germany's biggest chance is to make sure the new decolonized Africa and Middle East is its friend. If you're removing the Anglo-French boot only to put an Aryan one down, you're going to have a lot of problems come the 1960s. You're going to need troops from all over Europe just to be able to barely keep the important parts under control, and every time a French or Slovak soldier dies because Germany needs more rubber tires, that's more German troops needed just to keep said occupied territories from exploding into riots. Mass murder is counterproductive, since by killing people and burning down homes, that's manpower and infrastructure you're wasting just to prove a point.
And how exactly is Germany going to dictate terms to the Far East once the US stomps Japan into dirt? By that point, it'd be easier for China to get stuff from the US instead of Germany, and the Sino-German alliance had been dead a while before 1939.
The difference between American and German expansion is that Germany needs boots on the ground to keep its lebensraum, while the USA has multiple options to keep its economic empire going. The USA can literally hemorrhage the Reich to death, and I don't think it'll take till 1990 to do so. It'll be even shorter.
Barry Bull
Donor
And USA did all that when a vast sum of money and large amount of resource were dumped at Los Alomos to develop the BOMB.
With the transport infrastructure such a mess in the devastated and depopulated Lebensraum, it's going to take an awful lot of horse-drawn carts to get all that freshly mined handwavium to the factories too.
Well, the project cost more than the entire automobile industry of the time...
...except the USA could afford to pull it off. Which is why the US is basically a cheat code in WW2; its industrial and resource bases were insane compared to everyone else, even by 1939.
Also, speaking of German technical know-how, while von Braun got a lot of resources, the V- rockets project was inefficient, its nuclear weapons program hindered by the idiotic Deutsches Physik and Juden Physik mentality, and had a nasty habit on clamping down on anyone that thinks differently than the regime-ordered way - which is a problem considering you need scientists to use, you know, the scientific process of study. I'm expecting Germany would have its mad version of Lysenkoism rather than any sensible genetic research project.
So you mean Hitler didn’t invest everything into the military and ignored every economist telling him that doing that was a bad idea?
Kariya
Banned
The former Soviet territories would be depopulated and turned into farming and mining communities exporting goods to the heartland. Not much policing needed.
Africa - contain the natives there and just start dropping biological weapons while denying them any kind of aid or assistance. Within decades the native population would be next to gone sans disparate and isolated tribal communities.
This is nazi germany we're talking about. Mass murder is far easier for them than policing the entire continent. Kill the natives settle the new people and extract resources. Comparing that to trying to keep the natives either happy enough (not happening with racial attitudes) or oppressed enough (not happening due to sheer numbers) and the choice is easy for one who doesn't see them as humans.
Hemorrhaging depends on the willingness to take it easy. Unlike in our time when both powers had a touching point trough NATO they are now separated by oceans with no land border. I doubt the 1950s Americans would be willing to go trough a nuclear holocaust of their own over "some africans".
The war really depends not on the economy but on relations Germany establishes with puppet regimes and the goodwill of said people built up or ruined trough decades.
Kariya
Banned
Hitler was gunning for a war. Positing that to a post war leadership where Germany is the hegemon of Europe is silly. And ko he didnt. Detailed analysis shows that Germans owed less than the Americans did proportionally.