Der Kampf: The Rise and Fall of the Austrian Führer

[Darrenb209]

I’m still open to what occurs. What I have planned is the Japanese accidentally a public diplomatic incident, and don’t back down and apologize. Britain moves a portion of its fleet to the Pacific to keep an eye on Japan and to remind them who has been a naval power for longer but this causes Japan to feel cornered so they launch a surprise attack to show the world they are to be taken seriously.

That’s my placeholder idea so I’m open to ideas. I just thought a Pacific War starting in 1940 to be interesting.

If necessary I’ll push it back to early 1941 to give the Japanese more time to prepare. It’s a work in progress.

It's not an impossible way to go about it. I'd just recommend that you keep two things in mind, first, that if a public diplomatic incident is the thing that kicks of the escalation, surprise will be a lot harder to achieve. Second is that it is impossible for the Japanese to pull off a Pearl Harbor on the British. Not because of some sense of RN superiority but rather due to basing positioning. The only area that the Japanese could acquire total surprise at is Hong Kong, which if the RN commander has half a brain will not be where the fleet is stationed.

The most likely place for the fleet would be Singapore, which if the French don't hand over Vietnam to the Japanese and the Japanese do not take the Philippines, would be incredibly hard to get to without being detected.

Hong Kong is fucked though.

Regarding the IJN, since you can't exactly rush shipbuilding, a 1940 war will mean they start it without the Yamato, nor the Shokaku and Zuikaku aircraft carriers. Considering they were part of a shipbuilding schedule, you'd probably need to change that schedule well back into the early 30s if not late 20s.

If you want to start a war in 1940 with Japan, the absolute best way to do it would be to get pride involved so that they go in ill-prepared but unwilling to back down.

 

[Ficboy]

Japan and at least the UK won’t have good relations.

I’ve always enjoyed timelines that featured the Japanese Army’s Northern Strategy over the Navy’s Southern Strategy.


Indeed we will

So what will Adolf Hitler's cabinet of the Austrian Social National State or the Osterreichischer Sozialer Nationalstaat look like. My guess is that it will be OTL's Fatherland Front and Austrofascists that will be part of it such as Engelbert Dolfuss. By the way, I came up with that name for what Sozinat Austria would call itself.

 

[Nenshou Yuuki]

You know considering that the war is going to start because of the Balkans again, Germany will be able to power it's war effort just from the sheer energy generated from Otto von Bismark spinning in his damn grave.

 

[Darrenb209]

I suspect there'd be genuinely serious arguments about demilitarising the whole Balkans and having the world's major powers serve as guarantors of peace simply to avoid WW3 post WW2 and that'd probably be one of the more reasonable solutions offered considering some of OTL post WW2 plans... I could see some crazies going "Kill them all or there'll be another war."

 

[Mirak]

@Ficboy You're really trying to milk out all of the author's timeline notes aren't you?

 

[Ficboy]

@Ficboy You're really trying to milk out all of the author's timeline notes aren't you?

Just questions and suggestions.

 

[Tanner151]

Another thing about Otto, IOTL he absolutely despised and opposed the Nazis and Hitler. Here's a quote I found online.

Wouldn't take that much to rework that quote to fit the story.

Also on the subject of not wanting to spoil whether Austria will lose the second world war, considering that the story is called The Rise and Fall of The Austrian Fuhrer, I don't think things are going to go any better for Hitler ITTL. Especially considering he's going to get Britain, the US and the USSR against at the same time and that didn't work out for him when he controlled a much larger country.

Edit: Oh and congrats about the marriage, have a great honeymoon.

That’s a very good quote that could definitely fit here. I don’t see Otto von Hapsburg being pro-Sozinat, but that’s doesn’t mean a family member in the line of succession wont be.

As for WW2 and Hitler’s fate that is spoilers so can’t reveal much at this time.

Hmm, could we see an Austrian anti-fascist resistance using Otto von Habsburg as the figurehead? If that happens, monarchist feelings, which simmered in Austria even till the mid 1970s OTL, would be even more pronounced.

That is very possible, whether he wants to be or not. Dang, until the ‘70s? That’s really cool.

There were numerous resistance movements that used the Habsburgs as a symbol, two of Otto's cousins were actually arrested and sent to concentration camps.

There will be resistance to Hitler’s regime/Sozinat Party.

It's not an impossible way to go about it. I'd just recommend that you keep two things in mind, first, that if a public diplomatic incident is the thing that kicks of the escalation, surprise will be a lot harder to achieve. Second is that it is impossible for the Japanese to pull off a Pearl Harbor on the British. Not because of some sense of RN superiority but rather due to basing positioning. The only area that the Japanese could acquire total surprise at is Hong Kong, which if the RN commander has half a brain will not be where the fleet is stationed.

The most likely place for the fleet would be Singapore, which if the French don't hand over Vietnam to the Japanese and the Japanese do not take the Philippines, would be incredibly hard to get to without being detected.

Hong Kong is fucked though.

Regarding the IJN, since you can't exactly rush shipbuilding, a 1940 war will mean they start it without the Yamato, nor the Shokaku and Zuikaku aircraft carriers. Considering they were part of a shipbuilding schedule, you'd probably need to change that schedule well back into the early 30s if not late 20s.

If you want to start a war in 1940 with Japan, the absolute best way to do it would be to get pride involved so that they go in ill-prepared but unwilling to back down.

Very true. Japan would start the war off weaker and depending on how things in Europe develop Britain may be in a stronger starting position than OTL or equivalent to OTL. But having three carriers available by the next year would help replace the losses from the beginning of the war but once the losses start to mount Japan can’t replace them at a fast enough rate, especially if more than one major power is fighting them.

For a surprise attack, I wasn’t envisioning a Pearl Harbor like attack but more of a few squadrons on patrol are ambushed and Hong Kong plus much of Indonesia and Vietnam are taken fairly quickly. And the British fleet I imagine would be at Singapore mainly. The Philippines would a dagger to Japan’s empire so the Japanese would want to take it soon if the United States gets involved in the war.

So what will Adolf Hitler's cabinet of the Austrian Social National State or the Osterreichischer Sozialer Nationalstaat look like. My guess is that it will be OTL's Fatherland Front and Austrofascists that will be part of it such as Engelbert Dolfuss. By the way, I came up with that name for what Sozinat Austria would call itself.

A lot of that is spoilers, but I will say Sozinats won’t be the only members in government when Hitler comes to power and the Fatherland Front/Dollfuss will play a major role in 1930s Austria.

What’s the name? The Austrian Social National State/Österreichischer Sozialnationalis

You know considering that the war is going to start because of the Balkans again, Germany will be able to power it's war effort just from the sheer energy generated from Otto von Bismark spinning in his damn grave.

That wouldn’t be a half bad idea. WW2 starts over the Balkans due to an aggressive Austria. Bit of a World War theme.

I suspect there'd be genuinely serious arguments about demilitarising the whole Balkans and having the world's major powers serve as guarantors of peace simply to avoid WW3 post WW2 and that'd probably be one of the more reasonable solutions offered considering some of OTL post WW2 plans... I could see some crazies going "Kill them all or there'll be another war."

Some of OTL plans were just ridiculous. Churchill’s and Morgenthau’s were noticeably wacky.

If anything this Alt-WW2 will cement The whole “Balkan Powder Keg” belief even mkre

 

[Nenshou Yuuki]

That wouldn’t be a half bad idea. WW2 starts over the Balkans due to an aggressive Austria. Bit of a World War theme.

Not just that, specifically both WW will start because Austria declared war on Serbia. Though considering what Hitler is going to do to the Serbs will make what the Ustases did IOTL look like child's play,

I could see Hitler trying to revive the Central Powers during the inter war years and WW2, getting both Germany as an ally and Turkey, depends on who gets in charge after Ataturk's death.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

I just thought a Pacific War starting in 1940 to be interesting.
If necessary I’ll push it back to early 1941 to give the Japanese more time to prepare.

Regarding the IJN, since you can't exactly rush shipbuilding, a 1940 war will mean they start it without the Yamato, nor the Shokaku and Zuikaku aircraft carriers. Considering they were part of a shipbuilding schedule, you'd probably need to change that schedule well back into the early 30s if not late 20s.

Since we're still in the middle of the 1stWW, there's plenty of time for small changes to enable a slightly stronger Japan by 1940. It's only a year earlier than OTL and is 20+ years away ITTL. The thing to be aware of is that if Japan is stronger earlier, that will cause other nations to react earlier as well, so the Royal Navy (UK) / Marine Nationale (Fr) / Koninklijke Marine (NL) are likely to have stronger presences in the region as will the USA in the Philippines.
Also, the OTL shipbuilding schedules were, to a large extent, driven by the various naval treaties - a slight change to any of them could allow earlier / heavier building - or the Japanese could just be 'creative' in their interpretation of the rules, so going ahead with earlier /heavier shipbuilding.
In summary, there's no reason why you can't have a 1940 start to a South-East Asia / Pacific war - just don't try to leave everything much like OTL until the late 1930s, or it will be less plausible that Japan is a real naval threat.

 

[Darrenb209]

The problem with modifying the shipbuilding schedules is that Japan was doing heavy shipbuilding from 1930 onwards. If you have one set of ships finished earlier, then the other ones need to be finished earlier which in turn means that you need to start earlier which in turn means you need a motivation to start earlier. Doing that means that Japans earlier 20s shipbuilding needs to be adjusted and so on.

You could shuffle the order around, but the end result is that you'd just have the same ships under different names, because a battleship built in 30 is going to be the equivalent of a Battleship built in 30, not 41 and the same with carriers.

There are a lot of countries which had more shipbuilding capacity than they were using, the US and the UK are both one of these. Japan was not because they were already going all in on shipbuilding. Furthermore, any ships built prior to 33-34 are going to be useless due to the ideological problems that lead to them shoving too many guns on their ships rendering them vulnerable to capsizing which most of the IJN's budget for those two years went to rectifying.
They shouldn't discover that problem earlier because what did cause them to discover it was a Typhoon damaging most of a fleet.

If they adjust the 34 shipbuilding plan then they weaken their naval aviation, since that both added two carriers and was when a lot of improvements and expansion to that happened.

Circle Three was their 1937 plan, expected to take 6 years that would lead to the building of the Yamato class Battleship and the Shokaku and Zuikaku carriers. Can't speed that up.

Point is, Japan does not actually have the spare capacity to speed any of that up and so while you could rearrange any of those, you couldn't actually speed any up. Unless you have that revelation from the typhoon not happen and have the IJN larger but ridiculously vulnerable to rolling in bad weather or under fire, which would utterly fuck their accuracy and lead to a lot of capsizing.

 

[Mooze17]

That’s a very good quote that could definitely fit here. I don’t see Otto von Hapsburg being pro-Sozinat, but that’s doesn’t mean a family member in the line of succession wont be.

Monarchist Hitler? There was a fair amount of Pro Monarchy sentiment in Austria at the time, Fascists working with Monarchies is hardly unprecedented (for example Franco and Fascist Italy), and it would likely take the wind out of the sails of many Austrians who would potentially resist the Sozinats based on Pro Monarchy sentiment well getting many of the more traditional Austrian Conservatives on side easier. Even if Otto hates him, as you said there is no reason another family member in the line of succession could not be pro Hitler, especially if it regains them the crown and gains that family member more personal power. There was even a member of the House of Hohenzollern who joined the SS in otl and commanded a naval base, I see no reason that no Habsburgs ATL could not end up doing the same thing, especially if it increases their personal power and can restore them to the monarchy, and potentially lines up with that persons own beliefs, which is quite possible.

 

[Sarthak]

Monarchist Hitler? There was a fair amount of Pro Monarchy sentiment in Austria at the time, Fascists working with Monarchies is hardly unprecedented (for example Franco and Fascist Italy), and it would likely take the wind out of the sails of many Austrians who would potentially resist the Sozinats based on Pro Monarchy sentiment well getting many of the more traditional Austrian Conservatives on side easier. Even if Otto hates him, as you said there is no reason another family member in the line of succession could not be pro Hitler, especially if it regains them the crown and gains that family member more personal power. There was even a member of the House of Hohenzollern who joined the SS in otl and commanded a naval base, I see no reason that no Habsburgs ATL could not end up doing the same thing, especially if it increases their personal power and can restore them to the monarchy, and potentially lines up with that persons own beliefs, which is quite possible.

Otto is head of house. He would just disinherit the pro-hitlerites like how Wilhelm II forced Wilhelm III to back down in 1932. Having a disinherited monarch is not going to fly. Unless Otto agrees, no habsburg is getting on the throne on legitimate grounds.

.......Thought @Tanner151 it would be interesting if you make alt-ww2 a partial dynastic war as well with a fascist habsburg who was disinherited by Otto taking the throne as a puppet figure with Otto and the anti-nazi habsburgs leading the resistance. That would be a cool subplot.

 

[Tanner151]

Not just that, specifically both WW will start because Austria declared war on Serbia. Though considering what Hitler is going to do to the Serbs will make what the Ustases did IOTL look like child's play,

I could see Hitler trying to revive the Central Powers during the inter war years and WW2, getting both Germany as an ally and Turkey, depends on who gets in charge after Ataturk's death.

Yugoslavia will be a hotbed of ethnic cleansing, partisan activity, and massacres. So OTL but a bit worse. Hitler would love more allies, especially Germany though he would want Germany to treat Austria as an equal and not a junior partner.

I’m trying to figure out if 1930s Austria will butterfly events in Turkey. Maybe very slightly.

Since we're still in the middle of the 1stWW, there's plenty of time for small changes to enable a slightly stronger Japan by 1940. It's only a year earlier than OTL and is 20+ years away ITTL. The thing to be aware of is that if Japan is stronger earlier, that will cause other nations to react earlier as well, so the Royal Navy (UK) / Marine Nationale (Fr) / Koninklijke Marine (NL) are likely to have stronger presences in the region as will the USA in the Philippines.
Also, the OTL shipbuilding schedules were, to a large extent, driven by the various naval treaties - a slight change to any of them could allow earlier / heavier building - or the Japanese could just be 'creative' in their interpretation of the rules, so going ahead with earlier /heavier shipbuilding.
In summary, there's no reason why you can't have a 1940 start to a South-East Asia / Pacific war - just don't try to leave everything much like OTL until the late 1930s, or it will be less plausible that Japan is a real naval threat.

Darren makes some good points I hadn’t thought of. Your suggestion was something I would have tried to work in but the naval design stuff in Japan simply won’t be affected by Hitler.

The problem with modifying the shipbuilding schedules is that Japan was doing heavy shipbuilding from 1930 onwards. If you have one set of ships finished earlier, then the other ones need to be finished earlier which in turn means that you need to start earlier which in turn means you need a motivation to start earlier. Doing that means that Japans earlier 20s shipbuilding needs to be adjusted and so on.

You could shuffle the order around, but the end result is that you'd just have the same ships under different names, because a battleship built in 30 is going to be the equivalent of a Battleship built in 30, not 41 and the same with carriers.

There are a lot of countries which had more shipbuilding capacity than they were using, the US and the UK are both one of these. Japan was not because they were already going all in on shipbuilding. Furthermore, any ships built prior to 33-34 are going to be useless due to the ideological problems that lead to them shoving too many guns on their ships rendering them vulnerable to capsizing which most of the IJN's budget for those two years went to rectifying.
They shouldn't discover that problem earlier because what did cause them to discover it was a Typhoon damaging most of a fleet.

If they adjust the 34 shipbuilding plan then they weaken their naval aviation, since that both added two carriers and was when a lot of improvements and expansion to that happened.

Circle Three was their 1937 plan, expected to take 6 years that would lead to the building of the Yamato class Battleship and the Shokaku and Zuikaku carriers. Can't speed that up.

Point is, Japan does not actually have the spare capacity to speed any of that up and so while you could rearrange any of those, you couldn't actually speed any up. Unless you have that revelation from the typhoon not happen and have the IJN larger but ridiculously vulnerable to rolling in bad weather or under fire, which would utterly fuck their accuracy and lead to a lot of capsizing.

Excellent description, didn’t know anything about the top heavy designs. So Japan will be short of some capital ships come the war, this will affect their offensive and defensive capabilities.
Perhaps a late 1940/early 1941 start date to the war is better than a mid-1940 start as I envisioned.

I will say Japan won’t feature the stunning successes it did in OTL nor will it expand quite so far.

Monarchist Hitler? There was a fair amount of Pro Monarchy sentiment in Austria at the time, Fascists working with Monarchies is hardly unprecedented (for example Franco and Fascist Italy), and it would likely take the wind out of the sails of many Austrians who would potentially resist the Sozinats based on Pro Monarchy sentiment well getting many of the more traditional Austrian Conservatives on side easier. Even if Otto hates him, as you said there is no reason another family member in the line of succession could not be pro Hitler, especially if it regains them the crown and gains that family member more personal power. There was even a member of the House of Hohenzollern who joined the SS in otl and commanded a naval base, I see no reason that no Habsburgs ATL could not end up doing the same thing, especially if it increases their personal power and can restore them to the monarchy, and potentially lines up with that persons own beliefs, which is quite possible.

I’m sure many monarchists will support the Social Nationalists, at the very least tolerate them more than the Communists, Socialists and other anti-monarchist groups. Hitler putting a Habsburg on a throne of some sort is a nice PR move for the monarchists and could be the “face” of the country while Hitler is the power behind the throne, literally.
Know any potential Fascist leaning Hapsburgs? Having a dynastic dispute would be very unique to see in an alt-WW2 Austria.

Otto is head of house. He would just disinherit the pro-hitlerites like how Wilhelm II forced Wilhelm III to back down in 1932. Having a disinherited monarch is not going to fly. Unless Otto agrees, no habsburg is getting on the throne on legitimate grounds.

.......Thought @Tanner151 it would be interesting if you make alt-ww2 a partial dynastic war as well with a fascist habsburg who was disinherited by Otto taking the throne as a puppet figure with Otto and the anti-nazi habsburgs leading the resistance. That would be a cool subplot.

Agreed, both on the head of house stuff and a anti-Sozinat Hapsburg leading an underground movement.

 

[Sarthak]

Know any potential Fascist leaning Hapsburgs? Having a dynastic dispute would be very unique to see in an alt-WW2 Austria.

http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-house-of-hapsburg-in-world-war-ii.html Read this blog, this guy surely has some dirt. He truly is a mad monarchist

 

[Tanner151]

http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-house-of-hapsburg-in-world-war-ii.html Read this blog, this guy surely has some dirt. He truly is a mad monarchist

Ah! Thank you, this will be a big help.

 

[Ficboy]

Ah! Thank you, this will be a big help.

Austria is less powerful than Germany and their conquests will more or less be limited to Southern Europe which means no Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Belzec, Chemno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka much less a policy of Lebensraum and Heims in Reich. Any Sozinat concentration camps will likely resemble Jasenovac for instance and will be located in the former Yugoslavia and the neighbors of Austria.

 

[Johnharry]

Austria is less powerful than Germany and their conquests will more or less be limited to Southern Europe which means no Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Belzec, Chemno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka much less a policy of Lebensraum and Heims in Reich. As for Germany, if it does go fascist which it will then it depends if Gregor Strasser or Herman Goering ever embrace exterminationism towards Jews, political opponents and other religious, ethnic and political groups even the former's strand of Nazism was more or less a right-wing version of socialism and wanted the redistribution of quote unquote "Jewish wealth" to the German people but there's no evidence he wanted to kill anyone at least not in a genocide by contrast the latter is more likely to do it and resemble OTL's Nazi Party under a different name. Any Sozinat concentration camps will likely resemble Jasenovac for instance and will be located in the former Yugoslavia and the neighbors of Austria.

Gregor Strasser is highly unlikely to take power in a Hohenzollern Germany, the Strasserists and Rohmists are notable anti monarchists and anti nobility in general.

 

[Nenshou Yuuki]

A point against there being a Habsburg on the throne in Austria is that IOTL Hitler hated the Habsburgs, which I feel would just be exacerbated ITTL due to actually serving in the common army. I could see him paying lipservice to gain some clout and maybe a fascist Habsburg in a high position in maybe the party and military but I find it unlikely for Hitler to be able to stomach a restoration to appease the monarchists, more likely he'd just purge them once he took power.

 

[Tanner151]

Austria is less powerful than Germany and their conquests will more or less be limited to Southern Europe which means no Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Belzec, Chemno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka much less a policy of Lebensraum and Heims in Reich. As for Germany, if it does go fascist which it will then it depends if Gregor Strasser or Herman Goering ever embrace exterminationism towards Jews, political opponents and other religious, ethnic and political groups even the former's strand of Nazism was more or less a right-wing version of socialism and wanted the redistribution of quote unquote "Jewish wealth" to the German people but there's no evidence he wanted to kill anyone at least not in a genocide by contrast the latter is more likely to do it and resemble OTL's Nazi Party under a different name. Any Sozinat concentration camps will likely resemble Jasenovac for instance and will be located in the former Yugoslavia and the neighbors of Austria.

Yugoslavia will be the site of much of the Austrian-led ethnic cleansing and there will be several labor camps and a couple of concentration camps but due to lack of resources/manpower this will be a side project of Hitler and the State Security (Staatsicherseit). I’m not saying there won’t be a Holocaust, but it will be on a smaller scale since this Alt-WW2 in Europe will be on a smaller scale.
Now some of Austria’s allies will partake in the alt-Holocaust with gusto while others will pay lip service or not do it at all. Austria won’t have the threat or clout to force the other Axis Powers to the same degree as OTL Germany could and did.

Gregor Strasser is highly unlikely to take power in a Hohenzollern Germany, the Strasserists and Rohmists are notable anti monarchists and anti nobility in general.

Very true, but both Röhm and Strasser will play a significant role in 1920s Germany moving forward, particularly in the 1930s.

A point against there being a Habsburg on the throne in Austria is that IOTL Hitler hated the Habsburgs, which I feel would just be exacerbated ITTL due to actually serving in the common army. I could see him paying lipservice to gain some clout and maybe a fascist Habsburg in a high position in maybe the party and military but I find it unlikely for Hitler to be able to stomach a restoration to appease the monarchists, more likely he'd just purge them once he took power.

Hitler will be very anti-monarchist but since many conservative elements are pro-monarchist he will pay lip service and entertain the idea but never pursue it seriously. There will be a fair sized monarchist contingent within the ÖSNVP.

The Hohenzollerns are not going to take power in Germany given the results of World War II. It's either the German Workers Party or the German Social National People's Party that will take over.

The Hohenzollerns are restored to power in Germany in the 1930s. It was hinted in the Prelude. Now whether or not they will hold a lot of power, be semi-powerful or be there purely for ceremonial reasons remains to be seen. Regardless of how much or little power the Hohenzollerns have the German military is still a state-within-a-State and will have a major influence on government throughout the story.

Also, next chapter is done but it is a bit short (it’s about Simon Golmayer) so I’m gonna write another POV segment from Fyodor “Andrei”’s POV, with possibly a flash forward sneak peek.

 

[The Informator Wanker]

Hey @Tanner151 , what about Himmler? Does the crazy man move to Sozinat Austria, or does he remain in Bavaria?