Imagine a standard German victory scenario for WWII: Operation Barbarossa is an unmitigated disaster for the Soviet Union, forcing them out of the war in late 1941 or early 1942 and allowing the Third Reich to annex territory up to the Urals. The British also accept a white peace with the Germans at some point before or just after the collapse of the USSR’s position. Hitler does not declare war on the United States, and the Americans focus on defeating Japan. By the end of the 1940s a Cold War has begun, with a German-led fascist Europe (with Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, and Vichy France as Berlin’s primary allies/satellites) on one side and the United States, the United Kingdom (with whatever remnants of the British Empire they can hold onto) and the rest of the Anglosphere on the other.
In our world,
there were some individuals in the Eastern Bloc who became notable for publicly opposing the policies of the Soviet Union. Some of them, such
The Gulag Archipelago author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were forced into exile. In a world where the Nazis came to dominate Europe, who might be some prominent German and European political dissidents?
I recognize that the answer to this question does partly depend upon whether the Third Reich eventually moderates its political and social stances, when it does so, and to what degree it does so, and upon how tightly the Germans seek to exert control over their allies/satellites. It is also obvious that the Third Reich targeted many people not for their political positions, but because of their ethnicity, sexuality, or other immutable characteristics. I am wondering which individuals, who might otherwise be left alone by the government, would still protest the Nazis in some form or fashion.
There were any number of left-wing European academics and artists who would likely run afoul of the Nazis. Off the top of my head, I can think of Bertolucci, Camus, Derrida, Foucault, Pasolini, and Sartre (though some of those individuals would likely face more difficulty due to their being Jewish or gay).
In the discussion surrounding a
Fatherland scenario, several users (including myself) wondered which German would most likely serve as a Solzhenitsyn analogue. The individuals mentioned included
Rudi Dutschke,
Günter Grass,
Wilm Hosenfeld, and
Oskar Schindler, the latter of which was given such a role in the timeline. What other Germans, particularly Germans with some connection to the regime, might become so disgusted with the Nazis that they publicly break with them, perhaps to the point of defecting to the Americans?