Grootafrikansryk

I designed this TL for an RPG campaign and am curious to see what you folks make of it.

POD: Dr. Gregory Pincus, an American-born Jew, extends his stay at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute into the early 1930s, only departing Germany when it becomes apparent that the Nazi Party will take control of the Reichstag. As a consequence, Pincus' work on reproductive medicine strongly influences key German biologists, who adapt it to the purpose of Aryan racial science, producing a Lebensborn program that more closely resembles its postwar mischaracterization as a concerted human breeding program.

In OTL, Pincus demonstrates in vitro fertilization in rabbits in 1934. In ATL, his German colleagues achieve this feat a year sooner, drawing the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who is deeply concerned with the reproductive health of the German nation. Himmler immediately seizes on in vitro fertilization as a solution to declining German birth rates, and his Lebensborn program, launched in 1935, discretely begins collecting gametes from "ideal Aryan racial stock" and storing them for later fertilization. Meanwhile, young German women are recruited with offers of financial aid and other incentives to be surrogate mothers to artificially conceived children. Aggressive research over the next decade produces viable human embryos by 1941, and the first test-tube babies are born as Barbarossa stalls outside of Moscow.

The breakthrough has little impact on the course of the war, which still ends in total Axis surrender. Butterfly effects multiply throughout the early '40s, however, resulting in the survival of Reinhard Heydrich, who (being one of the more prominent contributors of genetic material to the program) commandeers the Lebensborn during the final days of the Reich and, with the help of Otto Skorzeny, smuggles several hundred infants out of Germany. The children are resettled in South Africa (where they are passed off as Afrikaner orphans) and educated by fugitive SS. The children are trained as agents provocateurs and instilled with a fanatical devotion to Heydrich, who fashions himself "The Great Father". Once of age, they are sent to Europe and America to foment trouble.

Around the time the Cold War reaches a crescendo in the late '50s and early '60s, incidents of sabotage, murder, and terrorism begin to plague both sides of the Iron Curtain. The U.S. and USSR point fingers at one another and step up military readiness, while the best leads point improbably to organized neo-Nazi youth gangs. Elsewhere, Mossad agents and Nazi hunters begin turning up brutally murdered around Pretoria and Johannesburg, cities where Heydrich and Skorzeny are (rightly) suspected to have fled after the war. Here too the best leads point to gangs of Germanic youths. Eventually, the CIA and KGB begin to piece together what is happening, but the truth is too bizarre to act on without solid evidence. Neither side gets the chance to pursue the matter, however, as Heydrich's children manage to escalate the Cuban Missile Crisis and trigger a global thermonuclear war in 1962.

The U.S. "wins" the Third World War, but is critically weakened. The USSR and China collapse in internecine warfare, and Europe is also badly damaged. Heydrich has sacrficed the Fatherland to bring down the enemies of the Reich, but he now turns his attention to subverting the white government of South Africa and establishing a new Germanic Empire in the Southern Hemisphere. Within ten years, his followers dominate the National Party and have established the Broederbond as an SS-like secrete police. Amidst a sharp depression brought on by the temporary collapse of world trade, apartheid takes on a sinister tone as blacks are indentured to the state and herded into squalid bantustans. A "permanent emergency" is declared, and brutal crackdowns are made at the slightest hint of rebellion. Political union with Rhodesia marks the formation of the Grootafrikansryk in 1966, followed by campaigns to annex Mozambique and Angola (where stranded Portuguese colonials have been fighting for their lives against black nationalist forces). The invasion of the Congolese successor states in 1972 brings Katangan uranium deposits under Ryk control, although the Afrikan military won't be able to do anything useful with them for several more years.

By 1980, the major world powers are the U.S. (still formidable despite the war, but rapidly losing influence due to a heavily cartelized economy and ham-fisted foreign policy), Greater Afrika (methodically picking off fractious tribal states south of the Sahara), Brazil (which significantly expands its export sector during the lapse in American industrial dominance in the mid-'60s), and Australia (which takes a leadership position in the Pacific following the disintegration of East Asia). The U.S. experience in WWIII brings about a nationalist-authoritarian state, as order is restored by the military-industrial complex, which points to the "victory" over the USSR as proof of American global manifest destiny. Cooperation betwen the United States and Greater Afrika is a non-starter, but a three-way standoff between the U.S.; the Franco-Afrikan Axis (France being quasi-fascist, rabidly anti-American, and the only surviving state of consequence in Europe); and the Australo-Brazilian Alliance makes for some very strange late-20th century realpolitik.

Comments? Criticism?
 
This is a pretty awesome idea. But, as always, more detail would be nice.

Like, what is the extent of the nuclear war? Is Europe totally destroyed? And what U.S cities?

What is the deal with the USSR? After the WWIII, they went to war with China?

I can see how France, Brazil, and Austraila would be strong simply by surviving the war untouched, but it seems to be a rapid climb to super-power status for South Africa. Wouldn't India also be a power if it was untouched by the war?

What are the governments like of these countries? Why is France anti-American?(more so than usual) Why is the US facist?

And how is Isreal doing?

But I do think this is pretty cool, in a dystopian way.
 
This is a pretty awesome idea. But, as always, more detail would be nice.

Like, what is the extent of the nuclear war? Is Europe totally destroyed? And what U.S cities?

What is the deal with the USSR? After the WWIII, they went to war with China?

Europe is thoroughly wrecked. Both Germanies wiped off the map, along with most of the Warsaw Pact nations. Britain is severely damaged and, I'm tempted to say, partially occupied by French and Irish (!) peacekeepers. Damage to the continental United States is mostly confined to the industrial belt bordering the Great Lakes, seaports on the East and West coasts, and a few strategic inland targets. (A lot of Soviet ICBMs go awry and crash into the ocean, their primitive guidance systems unequal to the task of delivering payloads halfway across the planet. Soviet bombers fare better, but are still decimated by Nike batteries.) China is still nominally allied to the USSR at the time of the exchange and so is included in the U.S. first strike.

I can see how France, Brazil, and Austraila would be strong simply by surviving the war untouched, but it seems to be a rapid climb to super-power status for South Africa. Wouldn't India also be a power if it was untouched by the war?
There are no real superpowers following WWIII. The Great Power paradigm of the early 20th century is more apt. The Ryk mostly benefits from being the only cohesive polity on the continent, and so is able to gobble up large chunks of Africa following the sudden collapse of the European colonial authorities. Abundant, disposable slave labor also helps. The Nazified Afrikans aren't particularly concerned with human rights, at least with regard to "inferior" races.

What are the governments like of these countries? Why is France anti-American?(more so than usual) Why is the US facist?
I haven't given much thought to Brazil. Australia is still democratic, although the obliteration of the House of Windsor has necessarily led to republican reform. France blames the U.S. for escalating the Crisis and dragging Europe into a devastating war, which it barely survived. The U.S. isn't strictly fascist, just militaristic and authoritarian. Martial law was established in the aftermath of the war and simply never rescinded.

And how is Isreal doing?
Overrun and dismembered by Arab armies following the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. support.

But I do think this is pretty cool, in a dystopian way.
Thanks! :)
 
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I seriously doubt this African state will be able to gobble up other states in Africa. The white elite is simply too small to allow it - who's going to run the administration, police the countryside, be the soliders etc etc etc? Not even counting they probably have an active insurgency on thier hands in each nation.
 
I seriously doubt this African state will be able to gobble up other states in Africa. The white elite is simply too small to allow it - who's going to run the administration, police the countryside, be the soliders etc etc etc? Not even counting they probably have an active insurgency on thier hands in each nation.


I agree, short off convincing them to use an extensive program of in vitro breeding they whon't have the numbers...

How advanced is the technology in the '40ties and the '50ties ITTL?
If eggs are fecundated off mother body the genetics of surrogate mother is irrilevant and white population could be farm produced using indigenous captive surrogates... quite horrible.
 
As a descendant of the race of Afrikaner super-men who tamed a southern portion of the Dark Continent, I say this should be in ASBs.
 
Cool, but in the Nazi flying saucers from the moon cool. Though I like the idea of a devastated, but still powerful, and now grimly jingoistic United States facing off against the other survivors of nuclear war. Kind of like that German game Earth 2150.
 
Busy during holidays. Pardon the delay.

I seriously doubt this African state will be able to gobble up other states in Africa. The white elite is simply too small to allow it - who's going to run the administration, police the countryside, be the soliders etc etc etc? Not even counting they probably have an active insurgency on thier hands in each nation.

Certainly. That is why I described the process of conquest as a methodical campaign against fractious tribal states. After three or four decades, Greater Afrika only controls the southern third or so of the continent (to about 10° S latitude); it is not some unstoppable juggernaut like the Draka. Still, the white minority of the Ryk is larger than one might expect, for two reasons: 1) a large influx of European refugees following World War III, and 2) an ample supply of involuntary surrogates among the captive black population. The Ryk has a Lebensborn program of its own and is deliberately growing the white population at a faster rate than unassisted reproduction alone would allow.

(This is causing societal problems of a different sort, however. Greater Afrika has been experiencing a baby boom for nearly 30 years, and white demographics are skewed quite young.)

Also, the Ryk's precocious interest in biomedicine and genetics has resulted in a diverse arsenal of fairly nasty germ weapons, which it employs liberally against rebels and insurgents. Weaponized ebola is a favorite, while HIV has been deliberately introduced into the "feral" black population in order to affect a long-term genocide of the race. The ultimate aim of the Ryk is to thoroughly dispossess the "lesser breeds" from Africa, then repopulate the continent with Aryan homesteaders*, but this is a project that is expected to take generations.

* Basically, this is a recapitulation of the Nazis' wilder plans for the Eastern Territories during WWII.
 
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As a descendant of the race of Afrikaner super-men who tamed a southern portion of the Dark Continent, I say this should be in ASBs.

This is not at all helpful. I have serious issues with the overzealous use of the ASB label on these forums, but it is especially counterproductive when it amounts to a declaration that, because a particular scenario is unsettling in its implications, it should be dismissed as implausible.

The only facet of this OTL that has so far been seriously questioned is the rate of expansion of the Grotafrikansryk, and I think that, given the disruption of the international system by World War III, the ideological motivations of the neo-Nazi apartheid government, and that regime's early access to modern biotech, it is not so extreme as to require ASBs.
 
This is not at all helpful. I have serious issues with the overzealous use of the ASB label on these forums, but it is especially counterproductive when it amounts to a declaration that, because a particular scenario is unsettling in its implications, it should be dismissed as implausible.

The only facet of this OTL that has so far been seriously questioned is the rate of expansion of the Grotafrikansryk, and I think that, given the disruption of the international system by World War III, the ideological motivations of the neo-Nazi apartheid government, and that regime's early access to modern biotech, it is not so extreme as to require ASBs.


How do Skorzeny and Heydrich manage to escape to South Africa without being caught by the British? Or moderate Afrikaners? Or the Mossad? If Skorzeny was "suspected" of moving to Johannesburg, he would have been caught within the month. That's like Himmler "escaping" to London, or Bormann "escaping" to Washington DC. It's fucking insane! There's a reason most Nazis moved to South America. It's because the government wasn't going to throw them in a cell the second they found out about them!

How can Heydrich compete against the whole apparatus of both the CIA, MI6, and KGB?

How can the Gootafrikansryk compete with the other powers? Unfortunately, consigning ~98% of your population to servitude is no way to build up a healthy economy. Apartheid era South Africa managed to grow as much as it could using it's inefficient economic structure and it utilized fully 20% of it's population.

Rhodesia, with only 3-4% whites, was much more liberal in its racial policies and thus was able to approximate South Africa's economic development.

Marius is right. This scenario is ASB in the extreme.
 
How do Skorzeny and Heydrich manage to escape to South Africa without being caught by the British? Or moderate Afrikaners? Or the Mossad? If Skorzeny was "suspected" of moving to Johannesburg, he would have been caught within the month. That's like Himmler "escaping" to London, or Bormann "escaping" to Washington DC. It's fucking insane! There's a reason most Nazis moved to South America. It's because the government wasn't going to throw them in a cell the second they found out about them!

Okay. Remove the Big Names and make the smugglers unimportant functionaries who aren't likely to be prosecuted after the war. (The Lebensborn program, unsettling as it will seem in ATL 1945, is going to be completely overshadowed by the Holocaust. And since it doesn't properly constitute a crime against humanity -- unless making babies by unconventional means is interpreted as an atrocity -- there's absolutely no reason why its middle management should be hunted down and imprisoned/killed.) They might even openly present themselves as humanitarians, finding homes in other countries for children no postwar European will adopt because of their "tainted" origins.

How can Heydrich compete against the whole apparatus of both the CIA, MI6, and KGB?
If my choice of high-profile personalities bothers you that much, see the fix above.

How can the Gootafrikansryk compete with the other powers?
The Ryk does not even come into being until after World War III, when the U.S. is hobbled and most of Eurasia is an irradiated battelground. Competition with the former superpowers is a non-issue. There is simply no surviving Western power with sufficient force-projection to contest a gradual Afrikan expansion. And the post-colonial indigenous regimes, such as they are, can barely control their own territories.

Unfortunately, consigning ~98% of your population to servitude is no way to build up a healthy economy. Apartheid era South Africa managed to grow as much as it could using it's inefficient economic structure and it utilized fully 20% of it's population.

Rhodesia, with only 3-4% whites, was much more liberal in its racial policies and thus was able to approximate South Africa's economic development.
I made no statement that Greater Afrika is an economic powerhouse. The Ryk's objectives are not rational, and their economy is not structured to be "efficient" in Western liberal terms. I am essentially describing a post-apocalyptic world here. It hasn't degenerated to Mad Max-style primitivism, but the postwar governments have ideological imperatives shaped by a pervasive bunker mentality, not a desire to champion free trade and global consumer culture. All of the postwar powers -- even Brazil and Australia -- have troubled economies by OTL standards, due partly to damage suffered during the war, partly to the postwar constriction of trade, and partly to deeply ingrained dirigistic policies necessitated by the "Long Emergency" of the second half of the 20th century. Compared to their neighbors (some of which have degenerated into hell holes), however, the Great Powers are irresistible giants.

Marius is right. This scenario is ASB in the extreme.
Sigh. I disagree. It is my opinion also that you've just illustrated my point about the abuse of the ASB label. In many cases I've observed, it serves only to short-circuit constructive conversation. If you find aspects of a TL problematic, kindly suggest fixes, but don't cry "ASB!" and then walk away. It's rude and unproductive.
 
OK, fine. Here's my first piece of advice. The entity should be called Groot Afrikaanse Ryk. But, remember in the context of the Afrikaans language and South Africa, although Afrikaans means African, it generally refers to white South Africans with Afrikaans as their home language, not the continent. Therefore this new entity would more likely be called Suid Afrikaanse Ryk (South African Empire). However, the Afrikaners are quite anti-monarchy/empire etc., and have something of a republican streak. Therefore, it is more likely that it would be called something like the Herstigte Suid-Afrikaanse Republiek (Reestablished South African Republic).

Still thnk its ASBs though.

Despite all the faults of Afrikaners (and I have an Afrikaans name and my father was an Afrikaner) they are essentially decent, religious, hard-working people (witness our largely bloodless revolution from 1976-1994), and I do not see them condoning the use of surrogate black mothers to bear unwanted babies.
 
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