Effects of a succesful Barbarossa

It really doesn't matter how effective post-Soviet collapse resistance is (and it would likely be more effective then you think, if not as effective as the OTL movements and only briefly as the German program of genocide takes effect), it doesn't change the fact that theNazis intended to genocide the population and the results of that would be what renders the Eastern territories a massive economic drain on the Germans for generations to come. Under the Nazis, the ex-Soviet territories would not become a effective source of materials for the war effort. It would not become the breadbasket of the Reich. It would become a charnel house. And there is almost no economic value in a charnel house.

All this talk about the Nazis letting the Ukrainians and other Soviet ethnic groups self-administrate is totally ignoring how the Nazis viewed these groups and what the Germans actually intended to do in the event of military victory over the USSR. Suffice to say, self-administration does not factor into it at all.

Nazi economic justifications for Barbarossa were ultimately secondary (and, in final analysis, contradictory) to their prime motivation behind the enterprise, which was ideological racial lunacy.


Who said they would govern themselves forever? All Hitler had to do was put his racist ideology aside temporarily and act as if he were a liberator for the oppressed peasants. Once he accomplished his victory with Soviet Union by inflicting heavy losses on the military and civilian population, his policy of genocide would be easier to implement, since he had the very people he hated to do part of his work for them. Obviously the peasants would not engage in a policy of a genocide against their own people, but many of them would be willing to fight for their belief of their own governance if they had fought against the Red Army, gladly dying against a state they hate so much with an ally they believe can topple the Soviet Union down. How would it be a charnel house, the occupation the USSR would solve their oil problem and despite their policy of exterminating Slavs, they could initially use them as slave labor to aid the war effort. Tens of millions of them that could serve a role for armaments and then be sent off to be killed. Doesn't seem like a charnel house to me.
 
Who said they would govern themselves forever? All Hitler had to do was put his racist ideology aside temporarily and act as if he were a liberator for the oppressed peasants. Once he accomplished his victory with Soviet Union by inflicting heavy losses on the military and civilian population, his policy of genocide would be easier to implement, since he had the very people he hated to do part of his work for them. Obviously the peasants would not engage in a policy of a genocide against their own people, but many of them would be willing to fight for their belief of their own governance if they had fought against the Red Army, gladly dying against a state they hate so much with an ally they believe can topple the Soviet Union down. How would it be a charnel house, the occupation the USSR would solve their oil problem and despite their policy of exterminating Slavs, they could initially use them as slave labor to aid the war effort. Tens of millions of them that could serve a role for armaments and then be sent off to be killed. Doesn't seem like a charnel house to me.

That's assuming Hitler is willing to forgo his deeply entrenched ideologies for a shred of pragmatism. He's way off the deep end long ago, and he's not about to change if he believes that Germany could win it on their own. Given the shocking successes early into Barbarossa (which could have gone very wrong if Stalin wasn't humping the idiot ball so closely despite all his intel screaming warnings at him), it's hard for him to think he would have to resort to using 'subhumans' to cover for manpower until matters went south.
 

Deleted member 1487

It really doesn't matter how effective post-Soviet collapse resistance is (and it would likely be more effective then you think, if not as effective as the OTL movements and only briefly as the German program of genocide takes effect), it doesn't change the fact that theNazis intended to genocide the population and the results of that would be what renders the Eastern territories a massive economic drain on the Germans for generations to come. Under the Nazis, the ex-Soviet territories would not become a effective source of materials for the war effort. It would not become the breadbasket of the Reich. It would become a charnel house. And there is almost no economic value in a charnel house.

All this talk about the Nazis letting the Ukrainians and other Soviet ethnic groups self-administrate is totally ignoring how the Nazis viewed these groups and what the Germans actually intended to do in the event of military victory over the USSR. Suffice to say, self-administration does not factor into it at all.

Nazi economic justifications for Barbarossa were ultimately secondary (and, in final analysis, contradictory) to their prime motivation behind the enterprise, which was ideological racial lunacy.
Its hard to fight back without weapons, ammo, food, supplies, radios, training, and reinforcements. Plus the Axis armies won't be locked down at the front fighting the Soviet armies beyond 1942 really. Soviet stragglers could do some damage for a while, but once the Axis armies turn on them and they aren't getting outside support at best they remain little pockets of people trying to survive off the land and avoid the Axis and hope they can survive, not fight a large organized guerilla war. There isn't the ability to fight anything remotely like OTL's partisan war because that depended heavily on outside support from Moscow and constant external supply and reinforcement, plus even night time aerial evacuation of wounded. Its just not possible to do a significant guerilla war without an outside sustaining force and the collapse of the Soviet government would prevent that. Look what happened to the anti-Soviet guerillas at the end of and post-WW2.

As to Nazi plans they did plan on killing people through starvation, but also keeping tens of millions of people alive to work. For those that they planned to kill they planned to work them to death too and even assuming they were able to live up to Generalplan Ost they would have a large labor force and would be able to extract what they needed.
 
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