Determined to Destroy Us - An Axis Victory Cold War TL

[sloreck]

ITTL there was plenty of evidence before the camps were liberated that Jews and others were being killed, it was the scope that was not truly understood. ITTL it is simply not possible to conceal what has been going on, not just with the Jews but the Poles, Russians, and others who were being enslaved or killed. The presence of a slave labor system including the features of the pre-CW US south or the sugar plantations of the Caribbean simply cannot be concealed. Travelers to "old" Germany (post Anschluß borders) will inevitably see slaves whether as domestic servants or garbage collectors. There will be folks who travel to Ostland, even if only those from Axis aligned countries, and their observations will get out. Furthermore the border between Ostland and the rump USSR is long and somewhat porous, especially for quite some time after the fighting stops. Russian refugees leaking across the border will have tales to tell as well as some hard evidence such as photographs. During the war the story that the Jews were being "relocated" could be sold, but afterwards, especially with Generalplan Ost in swing this won't fly. Furthermore, I expect at some point that the Nazi hierarchy will have its own "mission accomplished" moment where it will declare that all Reichs territory is now Judenfrei/Judenrein. So where did they all go if not anywhere under German control now??

Also, IMHO, Holocaust deniers will be seen as Nazi apologists which puts them in a bad situation. The problem is that being a holocaust denier ITTL is now not just denying that Jews (and who cares about them anyways) were killed by the Nazis by the millions but also millions of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc also killed in one way or another. OTL Holocaust denial can be sold to those who are basically antisemitic, ITTL the killing cast such a wider and bigger net that denial is signing on as a Nazi sympathizer from A to Z.

 

[GDIS Pathe]

How will those deniers explain the loss of circa 100 million people in the East?

 

[Redshank Galloglass]

while i think outright denying heritage is kinda... overboard, I could see German Americans downplaying their ethnicity in favor of aggressive nationalism, so honestly the Germanophobia seems understandable to me.

 

[Knightmare]

How will those deniers explain the loss of circa 100 million people in the East?

Shoddy record keeping, perhaps?

 

[GDIS Pathe]

so the utter lack of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, all that is going to be explained by shoddy record keeping?

 

[Knightmare]

so the utter lack of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, all that is going to be explained by shoddy record keeping?

Who knows what goes on in their stupid heads? I sure as hell don't.

 

[dandan_noodles]

Interestingly, most people in the U.S. South report their ethnic ancestry as 'American', rather than 'English' or 'Irish' or 'Scot' or other ethnic terms we usually think of; I suspect the general trend would be for German-Americans to start describing themselves as Americans, rather than other European ethnicities. In the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the concept of race/ethnicity was more Lamarckian than Darwinian; a German or Irish or Italian could become an [Anglo-]American if they were properly assimilated.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

How will those deniers explain the loss of circa 100 million people in the East?

"They got moved into the interior, not our problem."

 

[Shogo]

Casualties of famine?

That was one of the things meant to speed up the extermination. An artificial famine, like the Holodomor, in which the Nazis just flat out refused access to food. Telling their soldiers shit like, "Do not feel sympathy for them. Every loaf of bread they eat is a loaf of bread taken away from a Germany family that needs it more than they do."

Just sell the lie that it was a legitimate famine and they had to choose between feeding the German people and feeding a conquered population.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

Just sell the lie that it was a legitimate famine and they had to choose between feeding the German people and feeding a conquered population.

Thus giving the Nazis the perfect excuse when they point to what happened in Bengal (assuming the same famine occurs)?

 

[Bookmark1995]

That was one of the things meant to speed up the extermination. An artificial famine, like the Holodomor, in which the Nazis just flat out refused access to food. Telling their soldiers shit like, "Do not feel sympathy for them. Every loaf of bread they eat is a loaf of bread taken away from a Germany family that needs it more than they do."

That is just monstrous. Making the starving of others as a family value is just incredibly horrible. I can imagine German Hitler Youth cruelly eating food in front of starving slaves.

Thus giving the Nazis the perfect excuse when they point to what happened in Bengal (assuming the same famine occurs)?

I imagine Nazis trying to rationalize their own behavior by pointing out the evils of American and British history will be very common.

Of course, this will only give more ground to those trying to make a color-blind society possible.

 

[puterking]

Ugh, all this talk just makes me want the Rio Pact to kick some Nazi ass.

 

[Shogo]

You have to remember, a big part of Generalplan Ost was outright inspired by America's own expansionism. You replace the the Slavs with Native Americans, East with West, and throw in a few references to Manifest Destiny and you have the roadmap the Nazis followed when planning out their subjugation of, and expansion into, the East.

Making reference to the way America inspired them would be an easy way for them to get under America's skin.

"We learned it from watching you!"

The Civil Rights Act passed earlier in this timeline right? Because the Nazis would probably have tried to covertly fund politicians who hoped to continue Jim Crow Laws. That was one of the things Hitler liked about America, because he saw it as Americans knowing to keep a "lesser race" in its place.

I think I mentioned a little bit about this stuff earlier in the thread. Included some quote of Hitler's about how people won't care that the wheat for their bread is grown on land stolen from the Slavs, just as the American people don't care that their wheat is grown on land stolen from Native Americans.

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It'll also be interesting seeing what kind of movies Germany produces. In keeping with the statements earlier in this post, I imagine they'd try to create the "Eastern" genre as a modern take on America's "Western" genre.

Their art will obviously be more traditional. Landscapes. Portraits. It might even be good, since the Nazis were quite opposed to modern "art". And as someone who has been to museums of modern art . . . This is something I'm forced to agree with. Three empty picture frames arranged in a row is not art, goddamn it.

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Unfortunately, it's basically too late for the Rio Pact to actually do anything about the Axis militarily.

Both sides have already reached the point where their nuclear arsenals make them capable of enforcing MAD.

 

[Redcoat]

Snip

Welp, I didn't know that. That'll be real fucking annoying and a great propaganda boost. Great!

 

[TheBrazilSpirit]

I just finished reading this great TL!

Anyway i have a few question regarding the weapons developement in TTL.

How is the Kriegsmarine doing? Does they have nuclear subs?Have the Nazis pushed for a fleet of Yamato-esque BBs?
What about the Luftwaffe? Have they upgraded the ME-262 to Me 362(or even 462 by the time)?They have strategic bombers?
And finally,has the Heer gone though a doctrine reform and they have their analogue to OTL Leopard 1?Or they are in the Tiger line of heavy and slow tanks?

 

[FleetMac]

You have to remember, a big part of Generalplan Ost was outright inspired by America's own expansionism. You replace the the Slavs with Native Americans, East with West, and throw in a few references to Manifest Destiny and you have the roadmap the Nazis followed when planning out their subjugation of, and expansion into, the East.

Making reference to the way America inspired them would be an easy way for them to get under America's skin.

"We learned it from watching you!"

The Civil Rights Act passed earlier in this timeline right? Because the Nazis would probably have tried to covertly fund politicians who hoped to continue Jim Crow Laws. That was one of the things Hitler liked about America, because he saw it as Americans knowing to keep a "lesser race" in its place.

I think I mentioned a little bit about this stuff earlier in the thread. Included some quote of Hitler's about how people won't care that the wheat for their bread is grown on land stolen from the Slavs, just as the American people don't care that their wheat is grown on land stolen from Native Americans.

Bolded for emphasis: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Burchenau, etc. There is a order of magnitude difference between the US' westward expansion and removal of the Native Americans (shitty as a thing that was, of course), and genocide for its own sake. Let's not confuse the issue, the Nazis can make any number of comparisons they want for the sake of tweaking Washington's nose, but at the end of the day the "Push to the West" was not conducted with a deliberate goal of hunting down and wholesale slaying entire groups of people like the Nazis have done, even if disease and neglect did see lots of disarmed people wrongly die in America.

Then again, I'd LOVE to see the Krauts try OTL Soviet "Whataboutism" propaganda over, say, some kind of international summit in a decade or so, only for it to get slammed back in their face by outlining Nazi Generalplan Ost goals compared to...nothing printed as policy akin to it in either US or general colonial history (to be honest, I'd have loved to see that with the OTL Soviets too). Wouldn't change the minds of anybody predisposed to drinking the Fascist Koolaid, but if anything there is always the Soviet perspective to provide legitimacy to America's counter-counter-accusations towards Nazi points, since they are right next door and have (I have to imagine) plenty of documentation on the likes of the Dirlewanger types being SOP in the Ost, not the same thing as isolated incidents or merely "reallocating land/food".

And for the record, while the Nazis do have a large nuclear arsenal....I'm not inclined to believe that they're in any condition to actually levy it against the Rio Pact in terms of delivery method, given that A) Nazi avionics technology was not what I'd call "long-ranged" enough to make a successful atomic bomb delivery across the Atlantic without interception, let alone multiple coordinated strikes (they kinda suck at strategic bombing theory), and B) references upthread that the nuclear bomb program's success came at the cost of a ton of resources pulled from the rocket program. Not to mention what I'd call a near-complete penetration of what rocketry program they had by the CIA (and likely SIS) giving a huge missile tech boost to the USA and UK. I don't foresee a nuclear war happening anytime soon, but I'd actually give even odds based not only on a relatively small bomb number disparity, but likely a large lead in the Rio Pact's favor on target intel and, crucially, payload delivery options. Having The Bomb is all well and good, but it doesn't make for good deterrence if it can't go anywhere meaningful.

 

[Bookmark1995]

....but if anything there is always the Soviet perspective to provide legitimacy to America's counter-counter-accusations towards Nazi points, since they are right next door and have (I have to imagine) plenty of documentation on the likes of the Dirlewanger types being SOP in the Ost, not the same thing as isolated incidents or merely "reallocating land/food"...

That's an excellent argument: the Soviets have probably welcomed millions of people fleeing from Dirlewanger and his vicious acolytes: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and maybe a few lucky Poles and Jews. That's an entire nation of people who can provide evidence of the evils in the Third Reich.

And since the USSR seems to be liberalizing, these people will have the freedom to write and make movies about their experience.

 

[Shogo]

That was more supposed to be a joking reference to those old PSAs than a serious statement. I know that most of the deaths suffered by Native Americans weren't the result of deliberate action, and it was never really on the same level of horror show as Nazi Germany.

It was still one of the things that inspired Hitler's policies for the East. Maybe it'd be more accurate to describe their thought process as . . .

"We did what you did. We just did it more efficiently."

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I'm not terribly certain they'd have a "near complete" penetration of their rocketry program.

And I also think it'd be foolish to assume Germany doesn't have rockets capable of delivering nukes from long range just because they didn't put as many resources in their rocketry program during WW2 ITTL.

Once Germany got its nukes, a lot of resources would be freed up to get back to work on rockets and they'd still have all the same rocket scientists they had IOTL. People that the members of the Rio Pact weren't able to poach in this timeline to jumpstart their own rocket programs.

15 years is a lot of time for them to develop rockets and strategic bombers.

 

[TwisterAce]

I haven't commented on this timeline in a while. I'm enjoying the latest developments in the story.

I'm curious to see the progress on military technology and doctrine since the end of TTL's World War II. By now I'm sure Nazi Germany has mass-deployed jet aircraft and has probably developed aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered ships. Since the Reich's biggest threats - the United States and Britain - are overseas, I imagine the Kriegsmarine has received a boost in funding and has undergone significant expansion. Same for the Luftwaffe, which would probably have a large force of intercontinental-range bombers. The Heer may have been downsized somewhat after WWII ended, although it may still be one of the largest armies in the world (perhaps second largest after the Soviet Army).

Some of the more exotic Wunderwaffe have probably been cancelled, although the more practical proposals might have been put into service.

 

[Spartacus1224]

I haven't commented on this timeline in a while. I'm enjoying the latest developments in the story.

I'm curious to see the progress on military technology and doctrine since the end of TTL's World War II. By now I'm sure Nazi Germany has mass-deployed jet aircraft and has probably developed aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered ships. Since the Reich's biggest threats - the United States and Britain - are overseas, I imagine the Kriegsmarine has received a boost in funding and has undergone significant expansion. Same for the Luftwaffe, which would probably have a large force of intercontinental-range bombers. The Heer may have been downsized somewhat after WWII ended, although it may still be one of the largest armies in the world (perhaps second largest after the Soviet Army).

Some of the more exotic Wunderwaffe have probably been cancelled, although the more practical proposals might have been put into service.

How could the rump soviets/Russians(who are sorta in a civil war) afford a larger army than the Reich?