How long would an American-Nazi Cold War last?

It does seem to be a common theme in history that slave based empires must be expansionist empires. When the economy is dependent on people you can work literally to death, you always need fresh bodies for the mill.
Generalplan Ost called for the death and enslavement of over 100 million Slavs and was supposed to be finished within 25 years.

After that I can easily imagine the Reich culling “subhumans” from Western Europe, Italy and the Balkans to work to death.
 
Generalplan Ost called for the death and enslavement of over 100 million Slavs and was supposed to be finished within 25 years.

After that I can easily imagine the Reich culling “subhumans” from Western Europe, Italy and the Balkans to work to death.

Yeah, when the average German gets used to the advantage of having slave labor pillowed under their asses, the government isn't going to want to take that away. I could totally forsee an internal purge like the Castillians did after the Reconquista, scouring bloodlines and family trees for signs of pure blood or untermensch taint. But instead of excluding them from the highest positions like the Castillians, they'll be stripping these people of their rights and converting them to slaves.
 
I would expect that the Untermensch/slave population would be maintained at whatever level it was necessary to have to provide the sort of low skill work you can trust to slaves. You have to keep slaves illiterate and with limited education otherwise they can more easily foment insurrection or even organize sabotage etc. Most slave states in the USA in their slave codes made teaching a slave to read and write a crime, there is only so high a level of work you can assign to a person who is illiterate and barely numerate. Sabotage was a problem in slave labor facilities, if someone only sabotages every tenth fuse or so it is really hard to catch, and determine it is sabotage rather than a "normal" quality control failure. A poorly soldered connection that looks OK but fails after installation is a disaster waiting to happen. OTOH literacy is not needed to drive a garbage truck or be the one who dumps the garbage in the truck, or to be a dishwasher, or a vegetable picking farmhand. At some point assigning skilled tasks to slaves has its own cost of lots of supervisors to make sure they don't gum up the gears.

Like OTL, you will see automation begin to displace many low skill jobs over time. Needless to say the Nazis will have no problem ensuring they don't have more Untermenschen around then they have a use for and I can certainly see them using deliberate breeding strategies. Early on you'll see folks being worked to death clearing wreckage, doing pick and shovel work building new roads etc as well as the "useless" being allowed to starve or more actively disposed of. Once you reach a balance working slaves to death is counterproductive, even low skilled tasks are better performed by those with experience so working such a slave to death is counterproductive. People being people, even without breeding farms which may very well come in to being, getting slaves to reproduce is not going to be a problem.
 
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?
Until March 17, 1954...

Read @CalBear '' excellent AANW (angloamerican Nazi war)
 
So the problem with any realistic Allied-Nazi Cold War scenario (insofar as any such thing can be called realistic), is that Germany doesn't end the day with that many Allies. Even if Germany wins the Eastern Front, and manages to do so before an invasion of France is far underway, Italy is likely gone (the Italian government was essentially pro-Allied from early 1943). So is Japan (and with it, a giant portion of Asia).

Germany can (at least in the short term) trust that Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary will be willing participants in the new European order they start building, but Finland, the Baltics, Ukraine, France, the Low Countries, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece and Spain can't be trusted to be willing allies and will need to be occupied by Nazi manpower in order to maintain cooperation. Recall that by the end of the war as it was, Germany was very short on manpower; young boys and old men were being handed Panzerfausts en masse to maintain the illusion of a chance of victory.

On a more disastrous note, Spain and Portugal have a very good chance of siding with the Allies or (far more likely) aggressively maintaining neutrality in this new cold war. Especially if Hitler starts the overtures of Generalplan Ost, which would alienate a considerable chunk of his former allies. Turkey would likely also consider vying for Allied protection as would Sweden, and Norway stands a good chance of rising up against the Nazis.

Meanwhile, while Germany is playing neo-feudal pretend and desparately trying to hold its sphere of influence together, a brilliant US Secretary of State named George Marshall has his eyes on a massive global post-war construction effort that takes place primarily in Asia and Africa (although the UK and Italy would receive the assistance they did OTL). The US has no reason to fear leftist currents of post-colonial states because the trans-Uralic Sovet rump state has no chance of domineering those movements in to its sphere of influence. China, Japan and India start industrialising and reconstructing rapidly with the aid of the American industrial behemoth. When a freshly minted Congolese nationalist named Patrice Lumumba asks for western technical aid, he receives a much warmer reception than OTL. Ho Chi Minh and other less hardline left-nationalists follow suit (difficult to say how other figures like Kim Il Sung and Mao would act in this timeline - their choices would certainly be more complicated, though).

In short not only does Germany start the Cold War from a position of weakness (compared even to the Soviets OTL), but they have to start the game by desparately patching together their European empire with manpower they don't have. I can see the Nazis lasting two decades at the very most before collapsing entirely.
 
So the problem with any realistic Allied-Nazi Cold War scenario (insofar as any such thing can be called realistic), is that Germany doesn't end the day with that many Allies. Even if Germany wins the Eastern Front, and manages to do so before an invasion of France is far underway, Italy is likely gone (the Italian government was essentially pro-Allied from early 1943). So is Japan (and with it, a giant portion of Asia).

Germany can (at least in the short term) trust that Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary will be willing participants in the new European order they start building, but Finland, the Baltics, Ukraine, France, the Low Countries, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece and Spain can't be trusted to be willing allies and will need to be occupied by Nazi manpower in order to maintain cooperation. Recall that by the end of the war as it was, Germany was very short on manpower; young boys and old men were being handed Panzerfausts en masse to maintain the illusion of a chance of victory.

On a more disastrous note, Spain and Portugal have a very good chance of siding with the Allies or (far more likely) aggressively maintaining neutrality in this new cold war. Especially if Hitler starts the overtures of Generalplan Ost, which would alienate a considerable chunk of his former allies. Turkey would likely also consider vying for Allied protection as would Sweden, and Norway stands a good chance of rising up against the Nazis.

Meanwhile, while Germany is playing neo-feudal pretend and desparately trying to hold its sphere of influence together, a brilliant US Secretary of State named George Marshall has his eyes on a massive global post-war construction effort that takes place primarily in Asia and Africa (although the UK and Italy would receive the assistance they did OTL). The US has no reason to fear leftist currents of post-colonial states because the trans-Uralic Sovet rump state has no chance of domineering those movements in to its sphere of influence. China, Japan and India start industrialising and reconstructing rapidly with the aid of the American industrial behemoth. When a freshly minted Congolese nationalist named Patrice Lumumba asks for western technical aid, he receives a much warmer reception than OTL. Ho Chi Minh and other less hardline left-nationalists follow suit (difficult to say how other figures like Kim Il Sung and Mao would act in this timeline - their choices would certainly be more complicated, though).

In short not only does Germany start the Cold War from a position of weakness (compared even to the Soviets OTL), but they have to start the game by desparately patching together their European empire with manpower they don't have. I can see the Nazis lasting two decades at the very most before collapsing entirely.

Actually, I think, that, if the Nazis defeated the Soviets, the Western Allies couldn't take Italy, because the Nazis could give more support to the Italians. Maybe they could take Sicily but no more than that.
 
The countries occupied by the Germans will either be absorbed/annexed as territories by the Reich (Czechia, Poland, Baltics, any bits of Russia occupied) or be run by fascist governments vetted by Germany and economically tied to the German economy with German bases in these countries and their militaries German equipped and under German control (like the WP). Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria will take whatever spoils they get and be happy they remain relatively independent, treaties with the Germans but probably technically independent military forces although strong economic ties. Italy is a big question mark, however with no invasion of mainland Italy, even with Libya, Sardinia, and Sicily gone, Italy has gains in at least parts of Yugoslavia, Greece and the Aegean so I expect they will still be independent but strongly tied to Germany You may see a sort of independent Croatia, like Slovakia - small and totally dependent on Germany. Finland and Sweden will probably not be invaded by Germany, a large expense for little gain, and Finland was a co-belligerent against Russia. Keeping Finland and Sweden "neutral", as well as Switzerland, gives the Germans access to the west in ways not possible through the countries now fascist.

If the technocrats are given more power over the German economy, they can last a long time. You won't see Norway (or any other country) rebelling, they Nazi response would be without limits - chemicals, even nukes. The only folks who will actively resist are those who already consider themselves dead - those scheduled for death through labor, death camps/extermination, or life as slaves. For most of the folks in Western Europe in the occupied now fascist countries if you keep your head down, stay non-political, and are not a former communist or hiding any Jewish ancestry, you can live your life in relative peace and comfort. OTL "ordinary" folks really did not get the door broken down by the Gestapo in the middle of the night. Furthermore, once the war is ended, Nazi propaganda/education will be molding the minds of the population especially the youth.
 
Actually, I think, that, if the Nazis defeated the Soviets, the Western Allies couldn't take Italy, because the Nazis could give more support to the Italians. Maybe they could take Sicily but no more than that.

This is if the Nazis fully kick the Soviets out of the war by mid-late 1944 (maybe even earlier than that), which I don't think is anywhere close to plausible.
 
Didn't Churchill initially predict the Soviet Union to fall in little time?
During Barbarossa, he understandably could have - it wouldn't have been hard to extrapolate Germany repeating that initial success ad infinitum.

However, Germany exhausted basically all of their fully mobile and offense-capable units in those few months, which left them unable to move further, and vulnerable to Soviet counter-offensives (particularly outside Moscow). A repeat Barbarossa in 1942 once the Winter thawed was simply never anywhere in the cards. As it was, Case Blue required the deployment of many non-German Axis units because it was kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation, and it still didn't go all that well for the Germans. After that was the Battle of Stalingrad, and we all know how that went.

Furthermore, taking Stalingrad (and possibly even Moscow) would have done little for the Germany war machine. All industrial capacity from the city had already been destroyed/moved out east of the Urals. In order to really push things to the next step and, Germany likely would have needed to advance far enough to put pressure on places like Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Tagil. Accomplishing this at all stretches the imagination - accomplishing this by the end of 1944 is basically flat-out impossible.
 
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