How long would an American-Nazi Cold War last?

So many variables. Can the German people live with themselves even as recently as 2000 if they know their grandparents killed close to 200 million people for living space they didn’t need? Even if the regime moderates, will they have any choice but to keep up the charade that liquidating that many people was justified? That probably makes full reintegration next to impossible even by 2018, though by now the younger generation would probably feel less guilt for crimes committed by people they never met creating the possibility of Germany becoming more open to how bad their crimes were, but also more indifferent.

Post war, they probably have very high population growth and low economic growth, making a handful of reforms but becoming a basket case. They have enough living space that expansion won’t be useful but attempts to expand will trigger nuclear war, probably preventing war. I’m not sure what countries Germany would support abroad? Sponsoring independence movements?

I think that their economic growth remains poor while they mostly remain isolated due to a combination of their pariah status and desire for self sufficiency. By 2000 Germany is more like a giant North Korea in terms of foreign relations, where all of their neighbors are justifiably scared or concerned of them, but the regime has little actual reason to go to war or harm them and everyone knows war is consequently unlikely. Their past atrocities and military capabilities will still dwarf OTL North Korea’s, but at the same time they will also probably have atleast trade and tourism normalized by the present.

They are probably vaguely normalized internationally by now but still a major concern. Almost like a mix of North Korea (the horror story’s), Russia (former big bad who has gone through some decay but is still seen as a top threat), and China (still ruled by very old totalitarian regime that has reformed over time and no longer really abides by its original ideological principles).
 
With the Nazis controlling territory from France to the Urals, lauching nukes only on German cities wouldn't convince them to surrender.

Considering that the Allies would launch the nukes to save a single Allied life (or to save a million: see the choice that was taken instead of Operation Downfall).
 
With the Nazis controlling territory from France to the Urals, lauching nukes only on German cities wouldn't convince them to surrender.

Well, for one, even if the Allies felt that, for whatever silly reason, they needed to nuke cities in occupied Poland and the USSR, they wouldn't really have to, since the Nazis would already be quite helpfully turning the entire region into a worthless wasteland with their policies. Additionally, targeting Axis territory with nukes(and other territory conventionally) would be more than sufficient to completely undercut the Axis' production and logistics. Sure, Paris hasn't been nuked, but how are all those German armies in France doing when their leaders back in Germany are unable to communicate or are radioactive dust, and their supply lines have been completely severed?
 
With the Nazis controlling territory from France to the Urals, lauching nukes only on German cities wouldn't convince them to surrender.

Emphasis mine; you're assuming that the Allies would ever expect (or even want) any surrender at all, rather than pasting the military-industrial complex of Nazi Germany (which would be in the Inner Reich, as others have pointed out) as hard and often as possible (sans dialogue with the Germans) to disrupt operations throughout their territory, then (albeit slowly and with difficulty) rolling up the periphery in detail. It wouldn't be easy, but then again, Nazis.
 
Well, for one, even if the Allies felt that, for whatever silly reason, they needed to nuke cities in occupied Poland and the USSR, they wouldn't really have to, since the Nazis would already be quite helpfully turning the entire region into a worthless wasteland with their policies. Additionally, targeting Axis territory with nukes(and other territory conventionally) would be more than sufficient to completely undercut the Axis' production and logistics. Sure, Paris hasn't been nuked, but how are all those German armies in France doing when their leaders back in Germany are unable to communicate or are radioactive dust, and their supply lines have been completely severed?

It actually isn't unlikely that the Germans would move more industry East into the Reichskommisariats in order to isolate them from bombers in Britain and make attacking the industry more difficult.

But, as mentioned, the Germans are also going to be ethnically liquidating a large portion of the East. Destroying the strength of the occupiers would be paramount, as that would speed up liberation and hopefully prevent further liquidation.

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Still, I don't imagine the Nazi's surviving. They've shown themselves to be very untrustworthy, are committing a genocidal campaign of such a scale that it cannot be hidden, have gone and defeated the two strongest land powers in Europe and have left no check left on the continent to keep them under control.

They are right opposite of Britain, who will likely face a renewed Blitz attempt before the fighting ends. There will be many memories of the atrocities committed, and they will be very personal, not against some distant foe. Any Cold War will likely be just due to both sides rearming more than anything.
 
That assumes, that, the USA and the UK would be willing to launch at least dozens of nukes, some of them in occupied countries.

The United States was willing to invade the Japanese home islands, expecting millions of dead and wounded soldiers. Britain considers Fortress Europe to be an existential threat. Why wouldn't they be willing to nuke Germany into the ground?
 
Oh, also, there *would* be a second front. With japan defeated, the US and Britain would secure china and pacific russia, and send their own land invasions from asia sourced from china and india.
 
The United States was willing to invade the Japanese home islands, expecting millions of dead and wounded soldiers. Britain considers Fortress Europe to be an existential threat. Why wouldn't they be willing to nuke Germany into the ground?
Why didn’t they nuke Stalin or Malenkov or Khrushchev into the ground they had nuclear monopoly? The war in the Pacific still happens, America just fought a bloody war and you’re gonna try and convince the public to declare a fully offensive war that will cost millions of lives? The Soviets commited plenty of atrocities after the war and nobody nuked them. Also, the most probable way that this could happen is an unsuccessful Dunkirk where the British Army is captured and London sighns a white peace to bring their boys back home. So no Blitz, no North Africa. And once the Soviets are beyond the Urals, there will be no willingly friendly allied governments in mainland Europe other than Greece. And they aren’t going to last long. Not to mention that as soon as the Allies use nukes, the Reich is going to respond with chemical and biological weapons on England. For how long they’ll survive in Fortress Europe, best case scenario, early to mid 1980s, and that’s if Hitler makes it very clear Goering is in charge and Speer or a different moderate succeeds Goering. After that there’s no way that they could sustain things internally with the SS and everyone else constantly trying to grab power.
 
Nazi governing and economy system was so dysfunctional that it not be going survive long after Hitler. Germany would be hard time achieve Generalplan Ost and keep order in occupied areas. And Germany was unable develope nuclear bombs when it couldn't accept "Jewish science". Hitler is going to die before mid-1950's and then Himmler, Göring and Speer begin bloody infighting over power.
 
Why didn’t they nuke Stalin or Malenkov or Khrushchev into the ground they had nuclear monopoly?

Because the US was not at war with the Soviets, obviously.

The war in the Pacific still happens, America just fought a bloody war and you’re gonna try and convince the public to declare a fully offensive war that will cost millions of lives?

America doesn't need to declare a fully offensive war that costs millions of lives. The Nazis already did that to us.

The Soviets commited plenty of atrocities after the war and nobody nuked them.

Nobody's saying to nuke the Nazis because they committed atrocities. Nuke them because we're at war with them.

Also, the most probable way that this could happen is an unsuccessful Dunkirk where the British Army is captured and London sighns a white peace to bring their boys back home.

Afaik, the British expected Dunkirk to fail, and they still planned to fight on.

Not to mention that as soon as the Allies use nukes, the Reich is going to respond with chemical and biological weapons on England.

They would be unable to sustain those sorts of attacks, as the supply lines needed to build, maintain, and deploy chemical and biological weapons(and their delivery systems) would quickly crumble under a nuclear assault.
 
Because the US was not at war with the Soviets, obviously.
America doesn't need to declare a fully offensive war that costs millions of lives. The Nazis already did that to us.
Nobody's saying to nuke the Nazis because they committed atrocities. Nuke them because we're at war with them.
Afaik, the British expected Dunkirk to fail, and they still planned to fight on.
They would be unable to sustain those sorts of attacks, as the supply lines needed to build, maintain, and deploy chemical and biological weapons(and their delivery systems) would quickly crumble under a nuclear assault.
It isn’t a Cold War if they are still at war with them. The OP was very clear that this was a COLD War. It isn’t a Cold War if you are still bombing each other. There needs to be a truce between the British and Germans before America gets involved. Or else it wouldn’t be a #*$&#* Cold War.
 
It isn’t a Cold War if they are still at war with them. The OP was very clear that this was a COLD War. It isn’t a Cold War if you are still bombing each other. There needs to be a truce between the British and Germans before America gets involved. Or else it wouldn’t be a #*$&#* Cold War.

Well, you're right, it wouldn't be much of a cold war with the Nazis. At best you get something like a brief, unofficial, relative lull in the fighting that AANW had, because the Nazis are simply too unstable and unreliable to actually sustain a prolonged cold war, and the Allies have too many reasons to want to see them gone asap. Then the nukes fall.

So, to answer the question: A very short and not entirely cold one, at best.
 
Imagine, that, somehow, Nazi Germany was able to defeat the Soviet Union, however North Africa still fell to the Allies and Japan was still defeated in the Pacific, and then the USA and Nazi Germany got in a Cold War. How long would this Cold War last? How long would Nazi Germany survive?
Perhaps not very long if the Allies succeeded in producing H Bombs in quantity before the Nazis ? Depending on what the Nazis did during the "Hot War" and how they conducted themselves during the "Cold War" I can envision the Allies seriously considering a first strike if the Allies get the H bomb first. I suspect they may not want to wait and see what the Nazis might do when they get their own H bombs.
 
Well, you're right, it wouldn't be much of a cold war with the Nazis. At best you get something like a brief, unofficial, relative lull in the fighting that AANW had, because the Nazis are simply too unstable and unreliable to actually sustain a prolonged cold war, and the Allies have too many reasons to want to see them gone asap. Then the nukes fall.

So, to answer the question: A very short and not entirely cold one, at best.
I don’t think the Nazi regime was entirely suicidal, but the US will definitely have the clear advantage, the Reich’s ideology isn’t that compatible outside of Europe, so probably very few proxy wars. The only ones I could see is South Africa, (seeing that they literally elected a Nazi sympathizer after the war) perhaps Katanga or a Katanga analog in the Central African region, and various other white minority sates trying to seize power in Africa. Perhaps Rhodesia, depending on how far the British government isolates them, but I can’t see them embracing fascism wholeheartedly. Otherwise I could see them providing arms and training for the IRA and maybe even the Free Welsh Army! (lol) But the US will roflstomp them on the world stage, their ideology doesn’t have the same global appeal as communism, and that lets the Alies contain and control fascism outside of Europe much more easily. I think we’ll see more of a Containment strategy rather than a Rollback policy.
 
Unlike the Soviet Union,the Nazi economic system wasn't really ingrained in the ideology. It could be changed when necessary
As another poster said there were too many many empires in Nazi Germany , one group could not change the economic system without coming into conflict with other group that's a recipe for a civil war.
 
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The length of a cold war will vary depending on the circumstances of the war. If it's a "UK sues for peace" situation then it could last forever. If it's one where the Reich defeats the Soviet Union while remaining at war with Britain and the US then it depends on whether or not the US is willing to continue the war after the Soviet collapse. If the US is committed to winning it isn't really a cold war so much as a prolonged war that has varying temperatures over time. Nuclear weapons it seems are seen as the ultimate arbiter of victory in such a scenario, and while they might do a lot of damage, I don't know that they'd be all that effective in achieving surrender. As I posited in another thread, if the Reich experiences a nuclear weapon, or sees it used on Japan and understands the gravity of the situation, they're going to move prisoners into urban areas quickly, and publicly. All military installations would immediately get shipments of either POW's, or civilians rounded up to act as forced labor and human shields. Could the US drop the bomb anyways, civilian casualties be darned? Yes. Would they? I don't really know, particularly seeing as many of the prisoners would be citizens of allied governments such as France.

If there's a truce that ends the war and leaves Europe de facto under the control of the Reich I don't really see the cold war ending in the same way the US-USSR cold war did. While there are certainly issues with regards to fiefdoms within the state that the Reich will have to contend with, one could argue there was a similar situation in the Soviet Union, yet there was never a civil war there. I don't know as much about Soviet politics so I'll leave the comparison there. While there'd be rivalry after the death of Hitler, there's a few things I'm pretty sure wouldn't happen: 1. Himmler rising to power. He just didn't have the support outside his fiefdom. 2. Civil war. While there might be a bloody coup/power struggle in and around Berlin at the worst, the state isn't breaking apart over it, at least not in the long term. 3. Bormann coming to power. I think everyone agrees he was nothing without Hitler.

If, as I suspect will happen, the post-Hitler government is run via cooperation between various figures like Goering, Goebbels, Speer, Himmler if he doesn't get offed or make a solo bid for power, maybe Doenitz if the BotA goes differently or something, later probably Heydrich, possibly Rommel if North Africa happens differently and there's no coup attempt, the result will be a reasonably stable Germany. There's still going to be fighting in the East as the Reich probably won't be able to or want to cross the Urals, and the military will retain prominence due to the ongoing simmering "cold" war.

Economics are going to vary depending on the outcome of the power games, but I'll be honest I don't buy into the notion of the economy being the thing that brings the Reich down. If the Soviet Union can have its economy nearly collapse due to invasion and have to pilfer its satellite states just to stay alive, and last until the 90's, then a victorious Germany will probably be fine for a lot longer. Obviously there's going to be a lot of resources wasted on mega projects and the "emptying" of the East under GP Ost, but with an eventual economic bloc that's going to spread from Lisbon to Moscow, and Stockholm to Naples, I don't see the exact recipe for disaster people often talk about.

What might actually severely damage the Reich is oil shortages. If North Africa goes badly for them, and the region stays Western aligned, they may be lacking in oil supplies unless the Caucuses can supply them everything they need, and the Soviets didn't absolutley wreck the fields in the process of leaving. In the long term the Germans could adapt by using nuclear power, but it might be enough to damage them early on. A problem with that though is Portugal. Their colonies in Angola are going to get attention as soon as oil is discovered in large quantities and can be extracted. I could imagine the Allies seizing Angola just as they nearly seized the Azores for their strategic value IOTL.
 
I think the Reich would collapse slightly earlier than the USSR-my guess is anytime between the sixties and the eighties, the Reich would fall. I could see it being either a relatively peaceful dissolution a la the USSR in theory, but I think a messy, violent collapse (including a possible civil war or World War III) is overall more likely
 
Why didn’t they nuke Stalin or Malenkov or Khrushchev into the ground they had nuclear monopoly? The war in the Pacific still happens, America just fought a bloody war and you’re gonna try and convince the public to declare a fully offensive war that will cost millions of lives? The Soviets commited plenty of atrocities after the war and nobody nuked them. Also, the most probable way that this could happen is an unsuccessful Dunkirk where the British Army is captured and London sighns a white peace to bring their boys back home. So no Blitz, no North Africa. And once the Soviets are beyond the Urals, there will be no willingly friendly allied governments in mainland Europe other than Greece. And they aren’t going to last long. Not to mention that as soon as the Allies use nukes, the Reich is going to respond with chemical and biological weapons on England. For how long they’ll survive in Fortress Europe, best case scenario, early to mid 1980s, and that’s if Hitler makes it very clear Goering is in charge and Speer or a different moderate succeeds Goering. After that there’s no way that they could sustain things internally with the SS and everyone else constantly trying to grab power.

In order:

1) The United States wasn't at war with the Soviets, and public opinion was strongly pro-Soviet in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi surrender. They were comrades in arms, fellows who helped crush Hitler, they were the good guys! By the time relations had deteriorated far enough to consider an attack, the Soviets had the ability to hit back, something the Germans could never do to the US.

2) If a disaster at Dunkirk ended up causing Churchill's government to fall and a pro-peace faction to take over, and the Germans still declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, the United States is perfectly capable of cracking Fortress Europe open. They'll funnel arms to the remnant Soviet Union (and ensure that plenty go to partisan's in occupied territories) to keep the Germans tied down, try to strongarm the British back into the war, and crush Japan first while sniping off the easier German targets - North Africa, Norway, and other areas away from the German heartland.

These also provide aircraft basing points for the Americans to bomb German industry, army bases, naval docks, or really anything they feel like. Losses will be high, but the Americans can outproduce Germany even if the British never join back in.

3) The moment the Germans break out the chemical and biological warfare against the British Isles, Operation Vegetarian goes into effect and Germany suffers. Millions expected dead due to anthrax infection, even before starvation from lost livestock kicks in. The United States is outside Germany's ability to meaningfully hit (a few submarine attacks on ports isn't meaningful) and so this escalation has a clear loser, and it isn't the Anglo-Americans.
 
In order:
2) If a disaster at Dunkirk ended up causing Churchill's government to fall and a pro-peace faction to take over, and the Germans still declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, the United States is perfectly capable of cracking Fortress Europe open.

Why would Germany declare war on the US in the case however? The only reason I can see is if Japan is ALSO at war with the Soviets already, which however sort of puts all sorts of obstacles to Pearl Harbor happening on schedule.
(I agree with all the rest of your points).
 
Let someone else Sieg heil, and yell at the volkshall. I’m talking about quietly, without fuss. Like the Andropov era technocrats, of the late 70’s.

This sounds a bit like you wanted to imply that the regime would break down a decade later, although I'm sure you didn't. ;-)

Why didn’t they nuke Stalin or Malenkov or Khrushchev into the ground they had nuclear monopoly?

The first few years after 1945, the feeling "the USSR are our allies" wasn't suddenly dead. Only in 1948, with the Berlin blockade, it went bad.
 
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