Could Nazi Germany defeat the US in a Cold War peacefully?

A significant number of the Free French African forces are exactly that - African.
While scholars discuss the exact ratio of volunteers to conscripts, their families and villages are in Free French Africa.

I think I must agree that the long term viability of a Free French polity is poor, but the question is what it becomes.
I like to think of some kind of "Taiwanisation" and slowly going from being Free French Africa to being independent
francophone Africa, whether a union or separate sovereign states, but much of that depends on the attitudes of the
European Free Frenchmen, the British and the Americans.
I can't quite see them being handed back to curry favour and drive wedges, but that is because I, as a ITTL Allied politician,
came to the conclusion that "handing our allies-protectorates-sort of colonies, with all their natural resources, the people
they'd treat even worse than we do and the money we've spent on improving the place, over to the Nazis" would hurt us
more, nationally and internationally.
(Cf. the discussion elsewhere in this forum on whether the rest of NATO would go to war if Russia invaded the Baltic states.)

This is the third time I've had to say this in the last two weeks, but I could have phrased my argument better and apologize. I can see how you got your perception out of what I said.

When I speak of abandoning the Free French cause, I'm not saying they had the territory to Vichy. Rather, I'd argue that why the higher echelons of the Brazzaville government get thinned out (being exactly the White French types most likely to defect, but also the glue holding the localities together into a single polity) the Allies are going to be increasingly faced with less of a Taiwan and more of a South Vietnam as local demands for autonomy push up against an increasingly authoritarian regeime. At some point, they are either going to need to reform/Africanize to the point that claiming to be the government of France is absurd, or the Allies will run the numbers and decide a controlled breakdown into friendly native states is better than trying to prop up a military junta that's collapse will only produce hostiles and unrest in the British African territories
 
I wider fin the Germans would even be able to buy off or fund groups around the world. They don't exactly have a platform that the common man would be in favor of, and I don't think the ruling classes would much support being a German appendage, such as how Germany was trying to have Southeast europe be for themselves. The Nazis killed too many groups ethnically, religiously, politically, etc for there not to be sore feels (understatement) frommthe survivors or those related to them. I don't think even the Axis countries in Europe would like them.
 
I wider fin the Germans would even be able to buy off or fund groups around the world.

I once thought up that they might support all kinds of German-American and various groups in the right half of the political spectrum. Of course, at first they'd have to win the war in Europe.

The least thing that'd have to happen for that: They'd have to be extremely lucky once (Otto Hahn goes crazy, loses his conscience, and is now willing to build nukes for Hitler which he never did IOTL), or very lucky a few times. If the BEF was captured, AND they decided to mobilize Russians who hated Communism (they might decide to backstab them later), AND they managed to bully Turkey into leaving some airports close enough to Baku to them, AND a surprise attack on said Baku was successful, AND the US couldn't deliver enough oil instead, AND Enigma was somewhat safer, AND they also managed to take the Suez canal and the Arabian oil... THEN, and only then, they'd have a halfway realistic chance to win at least in Europe and MENA.

And at the same time, they mustn't ever screw up in a major way.

However, it is a fact that FDR was worried that the nazis might win in Europe, and Africa too, and successful in pulling Latin America to their side, and even parts of the US (he thought about the South who'd have an interest selling their cotton to the nazi world). Maybe he was writing this in his darkest hour... my source is Ralph Giordano's book about Hitler's plans after the "Endsieg". Giordano was a Jewish activist, and definitely not a self-hating one, he wouldn't have quoted that if it wasn't true.
 

Anchises

Banned
This is the third time I've had to say this in the last two weeks, but I could have phrased my argument better and apologize. I can see how you got your perception out of what I said.

When I speak of abandoning the Free French cause, I'm not saying they had the territory to Vichy. Rather, I'd argue that why the higher echelons of the Brazzaville government get thinned out (being exactly the White French types most likely to defect, but also the glue holding the localities together into a single polity) the Allies are going to be increasingly faced with less of a Taiwan and more of a South Vietnam as local demands for autonomy push up against an increasingly authoritarian regeime. At some point, they are either going to need to reform/Africanize to the point that claiming to be the government of France is absurd, or the Allies will run the numbers and decide a controlled breakdown into friendly native states is better than trying to prop up a military junta that's collapse will only produce hostiles and unrest in the British African territories

Agreed. Free France is going to be faced with a trickle of defections, right from the start of the ceasefire.

De Gaulle as a leader will have much less gravitas than IOTL, so holding together the whole polity is going to be a hard task.

Initially the vision of a victory over Fascism and the threat of persecution from Vichy France keeps it together. Once Vichy offers a credible amnesty, the trickle will gradually turn into a steady stream. Others would simply migrate to Britain or America.

Free France would be a bunch of unconnected colonial backwaters, with increasingly hostile natives. Lets assume for example that Japan still loses, does anyone here seriously believes that Free France could handle the Vietminh (assuming Vichy doesn't get it in the peace treaty)?

Free France would be a very obvious American puppet. To its French inhabitants it would offer little economic prospects, aside of American handouts. It would offer the prospect of indefinite military service,;to prop up a "lost cause".

What political structure would it give itself?

Indefinite state of emergency with de Gaulle as a de-facto dictator?

Only white French citizens vote ? If that is the case, I think there is a realistic possibility that de Gaulle loses fairly quick or that the whole thing splinters into seperate little statelets.
 
When I speak of abandoning the Free French cause, I'm not saying they had the territory to Vichy. Rather, I'd argue that why the higher echelons of the Brazzaville government get thinned out (being exactly the White French types most likely to defect, but also the glue holding the localities together into a single polity) the Allies are going to be increasingly faced with less of a Taiwan and more of a South Vietnam as local demands for autonomy push up against an increasingly authoritarian regeime. At some point, they are either going to need to reform/Africanize to the point that claiming to be the government of France is absurd, or the Allies will run the numbers and decide a controlled breakdown into friendly native states is better than trying to prop up a military junta that's collapse will only produce hostiles and unrest in the British African territories
Then we are mostly in agreement.
The bolded bit was my unspoken assumption (the independent francophone Africa I mentioned) - well, the one
assuming the Franco-Anglo-Americans don't pick up the idiot-villain ball.
I couldn't think of a term that got closer than "Taiwanisation" (I can never remember if they or anybody else still
claim they're the legitimate Chinese government).

I'm presuming liberated Vietnam (I'm going with the "US concentrated on Japan"-scenario) would be a separate entity.
Free French Africa wouldn't exactly to be in position to make an demands or serious protests, as in the post-war period
they would have to be more focused on working things out locally,
 
I once thought up that they might support all kinds of German-American and various groups in the right half of the political spectrum. Of course, at first they'd have to win the war in Europe.

However, it is a fact that FDR was worried that the nazis might win in Europe, and Africa too, and successful in pulling Latin America to their side, and even parts of the US (he thought about the South who'd have an interest selling their cotton to the nazi world). Maybe he was writing this in his darkest hour... my source is Ralph Giordano's book about Hitler's plans after the "Endsieg". Giordano was a Jewish activist, and definitely not a self-hating one, he wouldn't have quoted that if it wasn't true.
Germans in the Americas left Europe not just for economic reasons, but to escape monarchies. The Nazis are hardly better, and the most supporters of those groups were,p maybe a couple tens of thousands of so of the newer immigrants. The Nazis wanted to recruit Germans from the Americas to settle the Wast, believing the best and most adventurous Germans moved oversees to be poineers. Anyone interested in the Nazis would have headed over when they made the call for that. Also, you need to think about whether or not the Soviets, as mentined, have the money for buying things longterm. They got plenty of modern art they planned to sell, plus the precious metals of annexed areas and the personal properties of locals, but you miiight have some people asking why the Germans sirloin haven't paid back all the loans the Americans made them that basically gave them double what they had to pay the Entente in reparations each year. On religious grounds you are also going to have Latin Americans somewhat hostile, given the enslavement and murder of tens of milloins of Catholics.
 
I couldn't think of a term that got closer than "Taiwanisation" (I can never remember if they or anybody else still
claim they're the legitimate Chinese government).

Some hardliners in Taiwan still do, but even the KMT gave up on that after Chiang Kai-Shek's death, allowing discussion of Taiwanese independence in 1987, and dropping it as a position in 1991 when Taiwan ceased to be a one-party state and ended martial law.
 
I wider fin the Germans would even be able to buy off or fund groups around the world. They don't exactly have a platform that the common man would be in favor of, and I don't think the ruling classes would much support being a German appendage, such as how Germany was trying to have Southeast europe be for themselves. The Nazis killed too many groups ethnically, religiously, politically, etc for there not to be sore feels (understatement) frommthe survivors or those related to them. I don't think even the Axis countries in Europe would like them.
Not only that, but where are they going to find the money from?
 
Some hardliners in Taiwan still do, but even the KMT gave up on that after Chiang Kai-Shek's death, allowing discussion of Taiwanese independence in 1987, and dropping it as a position in 1991 when Taiwan ceased to be a one-party state and ended martial law.

Actually, the ROC government, no matter which party in power, never explicitly dropped that position to avoix provoking the PRC.

When President Lee Teng Hui moved away in more overt terms from the 'One China' position in 1995, that triggered the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.

Even the current ROC gov in control by the DPP, a pro Taiwan indepedent party, never ventured too far from the status quo.
 
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