How populous will a victorious Nazi Germany become

Sebbywafers

Banned
So, as we all know, Hitler wanted to do a certain two things- a) expand the German people east, and b ) encourage so-called "aryan peoples" to prosper demographically. Both of these will generally involve having large families to birth more Germans, which Hitler was certainly in favour of. In fact, Hitler once said in a speech that if he was presented with a female lawyer and a woman with six healthy children, he would prefer to have the mother. It's pretty obvious that this means Hitler was in favour of having his people make lots and lots of Germanic children.

Now, hypothetically, let's say the Nazis win WW2. Germany's lost a lot of men and the ones that do come home will start a baby boom. The amount of settlement planned in the east is enormous, and the government is encouraging birth-rates as well.

Provided a Fatherland-esque scenario happens after WW2, much will a victorious Nazi Germany's population grow? How big might they be by 1960? By the end of the 20th century? By 2016?
 

Daniels

Banned
German population in 1939 was roughly 75 million and growing at roughly 500 000 a year. Assuming the war ends in 1943 and that by this time the Germans had lost around 1 million dead, then in 1960 their population would be around 95 million - including several million Volksdeutsche and several million germanized Eastern Europeans. By the end of the 20th century this number would have stood at roughly 120 million and 130 million today. Even if the birthrates had been a little higher then German population would have doubled to around 150 million today - no more than that.
 
In pondering the same topic I have done a number of calculations based on different assumptions. First, I assume that Greater Germany is Germany and Austria, I take out Bohemia and Moravia, but if the Nazis win they get assimilated, likewise I leave out Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, these let me use just German and Austrian demographics. I used 1925, 1938 and 1939 as well as 1945 census numbers with adjustments to approximate both war dead and territorial shifts not always accounted for, for example German numbers get skewed as it covers only the modern borders post-1945 and in real life populations got moved. Next I used actual trends in West Germany and Austria as in part I feel the population at large would behave like they did, although I tried to adjust upward for a more pro-family policy and its effect. With all that caveat I got the 2015 population to 159,000,000, using a more modern trend of decreased births beginning after a boom and accelerating post-1970, I got approximately 105,000,000. That is just the Greater Germany described. That calculation includes some hand waving for a non-professional demographer, but I think is an arguable base to use if you like.
 
I think they would decide a lot of people were now German/Aryan so the 150M or more figure is likely.
The easiest way to expand the population is to decree existing people are now German.
 
I think they would decide a lot of people were now German/Aryan so the 150M or more figure is likely.
The easiest way to expand the population is to decree existing people are now German.

It all depends on just what sort of Nazi ideology survives. Who is "German" or perhaps more fuzzy who is "Aryan" did become more fluid, so I agree they Nazis could add more populous but that goes hand in hand with adding territory in many regards; thus I did not assume the Czechs are included or "Germanic" Luxembourg, Belgium, etc., that let me focus on the core of what we know is "Germany." Feel free to add them to an expanded Germany as you go, or not, I suggest that the Nazis will pursue the extermination of Slavs so only the children who look Aryan survive and if the T4 program shows us the truest notion of Hitler's ideology, I would argue that there is a cleansing of the less purely Germans at some point, taken to its extreme the dark haired and brown eyed German is not Aryan after all. So I offer a number that is merely a foundation, I let you use it however you see fit. Hopefully it serves as a starting point.
 

Wendigo

Banned
In CalBear's AANW TL the German population was around 115 million in 1959 due to heavy indoctrination of young females (League of German Girls) who were encouraged (and willing) to have sex with any healthy Aryan male if it meant having tons of kids for their beloved Fuhrer and Greater Germanic Reich.

Even IOTL women received the Cross of Honor of the German Mother for having four or more children, with Silver and Gold versions for having 6 and 8 children respectively. There was also a Diamond version planned but whether it was awarded to women who had 12 or 16 kids is still unknown. This would continue in the event of a Reich that stretches from France to the Urals.

Imagine whole generations of females raised from childhood to believe that the height of femininity and success is to have multiple children (preferable male) who can become the next batch of Hitler Youth and from that join the Waffen SS (really just a Nazified Wehrmacht.)

Sick isn't it?

Relevant except from AANW:

Germany, on the other hand, was doing very nicely population wise, even after the war restarted, until the Allies landed, with a population of well over 100 million. Allied air raids were planned to keep civilian deaths to a minimum, not that they were entirely effective in that goal. Reich policy is to make extremely large families as close to mandatory as possible. Unwed mothers as young as 14 are held up as patriots (assuming the fathers were good Aryans) and as positive examples. Women are encouraged to have football team sized families (this is a straight repeat from OTL). The goal birth rate has been 45 per thousand population.

The Reich is also not exactly shy about "harvesting" Aryan children. While the General Government area is pretty much picked clean of blond and blues (something that was well underway IOTL), the reparation shipments always have a fair number of 17-24 year old females who meet the criteria for producing good strong Aryan children if they are paired with a good SS Man. Like rebels, these poor souls never leave Germany. (Yea, there are LOTS of reasons to hate the Reich.)
 
Nazi German demographic policy is going to be hugely complicated, as will the consequences.

The whole question of who will, and will not, be counted as "German", matters. Will the Dutch and Flemish be considered German, with everything that implies? What of the Scandinavians? Will Slavic children with an Aryan look taken from their families be included, and how will they be included? Will the naturalization and assimilation of adults of suitable backgrounds be possible? Without a clear answer as to who will be and who will not be included as German, any answer as to the long-run demographic future of Germany will be very difficult to come up with.

The many likely contradictions in German demographic policy will also complicate things significantly. The Nazis were committed to a program of traditional mores and very conservative gender roles, and also to a program of extensive rural colonization in the east. In theory, a substantially more rural and conservative Germany might be one with a younger and faster-growing population. Then again, Nazi Germany was also committed to a program of rapid economic growth and improved living standards, of the German nation to the high living standards of the Americans. Is it even possible to have a more rural and conservative Germany that will at the same time be richer and more modern? What will give? Will a country that already experienced liberalism in the pre-Nazi era actually be likely to embrace traditional cultural norms and demographic patterns? Is Nazi Germany going to be run by people capable of overseeing the sort of economic growth that will support a massive boost in fertility?

The only example we have in OTL of a country with coercive demographic policies, that of Romania from the mid-1960s up to the 1989 Revolution, suggests to me that Nazi pronatalism is not likely to result in much change. The imposition of Ceaucescu's policy in 1967 did result in a baby boom, with fertility rates rising in one year from below-replacement levels to rates last seen in the interwar era. In subsequent years, however, Romanian fertility and birth rates continued to decline, by the early 1980s reaching the below-replacement levels of two decades earlier and then shooting up to levels slightly above replacement levels for the remainder of the 1980s. (Afterwards, fertility and birth rates collapsed. I think the legalization of abortion was one of the first things the post-Ceaucescu government did.) Romanians did have more children to start, but they adapted. Even without modern birth control and abortion, it's entirely possible for people to limit birth rates, through coitus interruptus and like measures--the example of pre-1940 France comes to mind. The Romanian government failed utterly to create an environment that made Romanians want to have many more children, and so, no matter how tightly the Romanian government tightened the screwed, birth rates failed to stay high indefinitely.

East Germany did embark on an interesting pronatalist policy from the 1960s on, but in many ways it was the opposite of the Romanian and the likely Nazi German. Instead of forcing East Germans to have more children than they wanted, East Germany's government tried to incentivize childbearing, linking larger families with higher standards of living (access to bigger apartments, say) and supporting non-traditional families (working mothers, for instance) with childcare and other like programs. A Nazi Germany that is devoted to teh causes of cultural conservatism is not going to echo the German Democratic Republic in any significant way.
 
In pondering the same topic I have done a number of calculations based on different assumptions. First, I assume that Greater Germany is Germany and Austria, I take out Bohemia and Moravia, but if the Nazis win they get assimilated, likewise I leave out Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, these let me use just German and Austrian demographics. I used 1925, 1938 and 1939 as well as 1945 census numbers with adjustments to approximate both war dead and territorial shifts not always accounted for, for example German numbers get skewed as it covers only the modern borders post-1945 and in real life populations got moved. Next I used actual trends in West Germany and Austria as in part I feel the population at large would behave like they did, although I tried to adjust upward for a more pro-family policy and its effect.

Would this actually be a pro-family policy, in the sense of encouraging larger families? I'm not at all sure. Things like Hitler's quote above, talking about preferring women in their traditional role to women doing anything new, seems to suggest that a victorious Nazi Germany would be a conservative one so far as gender roles as concerned. Keeping women out of the professions and prominent positions in public life is one thing; getting them to embrace this cultural conservatism is another; having this cultural conservatism manifest itself in a higher birthrate is still another.

The Romanian example aside, the examples we have of moderately to highly developed countries with reasonably stable and high fertility rates suggest that very liberal policies are much more likely to promote large families than conservative ones. Policies which encourage and support family diversity are more likely to result in higher fertility rates than policies which involve heavily subsidizing traditional families, simply because not all families are traditional ones. I can imagine a Nazi Germany embarking on coercive Romanian-style policies, but even these aren't likely to result in very significant changes.

Meanwhile, the extent to which non-Germans can and can not become incorporated into the German population, and the extent to which they actually are, matters hugely. A scenario where everyone from Lille to Narvik happily identifies as German and descendants of Aryan immigrants from the east are likewise accepted as German is going to have look very different from a society where northwestern Europe's occupied Germanic peoples resent the German yoke and the Aryans from the East are excluded as a foreign underclass.
 
Would this actually be a pro-family policy, in the sense of encouraging larger families? I'm not at all sure. Things like Hitler's quote above, talking about preferring women in their traditional role to women doing anything new, seems to suggest that a victorious Nazi Germany would be a conservative one so far as gender roles as concerned. Keeping women out of the professions and prominent positions in public life is one thing; getting them to embrace this cultural conservatism is another; having this cultural conservatism manifest itself in a higher birthrate is still another.

The Romanian example aside, the examples we have of moderately to highly developed countries with reasonably stable and high fertility rates suggest that very liberal policies are much more likely to promote large families than conservative ones. Policies which encourage and support family diversity are more likely to result in higher fertility rates than policies which involve heavily subsidizing traditional families, simply because not all families are traditional ones. I can imagine a Nazi Germany embarking on coercive Romanian-style policies, but even these aren't likely to result in very significant changes.

Meanwhile, the extent to which non-Germans can and can not become incorporated into the German population, and the extent to which they actually are, matters hugely. A scenario where everyone from Lille to Narvik happily identifies as German and descendants of Aryan immigrants from the east are likewise accepted as German is going to have look very different from a society where northwestern Europe's occupied Germanic peoples resent the German yoke and the Aryans from the East are excluded as a foreign underclass.
I have read some good articles regarding European birthrates and pronatalist policy success and failure, in my honestly rough calculations I did not give them the best redults, better than actual Germany and closer to France but even not as good. A complex subject that is dependent of women becoming mothers, give them the incentive, the confidence and the desire, and births go up, to a point, the forces often cross cut, it is not easy to just get more babies. I tried to be forthright about my guess, it is more a touchstone rather than an answer.
 
I have read some good articles regarding European birthrates and pronatalist policy success and failure, in my honestly rough calculations I did not give them the best redults, better than actual Germany and closer to France but even not as good. A complex subject that is dependent of women becoming mothers, give them the incentive, the confidence and the desire, and births go up, to a point, the forces often cross cut, it is not easy to just get more babies. I tried to be forthright about my guess, it is more a touchstone rather than an answer.

Why would it necessarily be better than Germany OTL? Romania maintained its coercive pronatalism for almost two decades, but the subsequent reaction against this pronatalism led to a rapid drop in fertility and birth rates that so far as not substantially reversed. It's open to question whether even voluntary pronatalism could work again in Romania. We could easily have a bump in the first decades after the war followed by a subsequent collapse.

A victorious Nazi Germany is going to see significant cultural change over time. What will happen to the economy? At a first approximation, a stagnant German economy weighed down by the costs of its eastern programs of settlement and war and by mismanagement generally is not necessarily going to support buoyant demographics. I'd suggest that Greater Germany under the Nazis is more likely to suffer from mismanagement than not.
 
Why would it necessarily be better than Germany OTL? Romania maintained its coercive pronatalism for almost two decades, but the subsequent reaction against this pronatalism led to a rapid drop in fertility and birth rates that so far as not substantially reversed. It's open to question whether even voluntary pronatalism could work again in Romania. We could easily have a bump in the first decades after the war followed by a subsequent collapse.

A victorious Nazi Germany is going to see significant cultural change over time. What will happen to the economy? At a first approximation, a stagnant German economy weighed down by the costs of its eastern programs of settlement and war and by mismanagement generally is not necessarily going to support buoyant demographics. I'd suggest that Greater Germany under the Nazis is more likely to suffer from mismanagement than not.

Although I agree that the Nazis were not likely to be great managers, in fact I would argue they would be quite incompetent as peace time leaders; however, that means they go on the slow death spiral akin to the USSR, too much spending in defense, lacking investment in the civilian/consumer sector, too much top-down command planning and not enough market freedom, autarky alone would collapse them, so yes, a Nazi victory would be rather pyrrhic. My suggestion is that a Nazi led Germany tracks like the Soviet Union minus the abundant natural resources, without trade it soon withers, that knot must get cut and autarky evaporate, unless you want a North Korea like realm.

I would argue that a SPD led government would be most likely to implement the reforms and policies most likely to lead to better than actual population growth, but that would be get me closer to a high side number, the Nazis would likely do as well as the Soviets did and you get a stagnant and then negative growth earlier. Underpinning my estimate is for a Germany that shakes off the Nazis and retains the core of what we regard as "Greater Germany." It is one educated guess for thought, not much more, I suggest you take the 1945 population and apply Soviet Russian rates of growth and you likely get the dystopian Germany with Nazi policy running amuck. Since I am not interested in how the Nazis might succeed I did not, I offered what I did to illustrate how 1945 to 2015 a Germany with 1914 territory (only Posen and West Prussia retained) with Austria might grow and assuming comparable economics OTL to avoid another variable, that is all you get, as I said, it is a touchstone, nothing more.
 
I think it's possible to come up with scenarios, but we would have to be quite clear about the boundaries of what was and was not occurring in each scenario. What will be the borders of the German nation, the populations included? What sort of political trajectory will there be, what sort of economic development? Will there be any more wars, and if so, of what size? What about immigration, whether permanent or of guest workers?
 

Wendigo

Banned
I think it's possible to come up with scenarios, but we would have to be quite clear about the boundaries of what was and was not occurring in each scenario. What will be the borders of the German nation, the populations included? What sort of political trajectory will there be, what sort of economic development? Will there be any more wars, and if so, of what size? What about immigration, whether permanent or of guest workers?

By guest workers do you mean workers from Aryan nations like France, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands who get treated somewhat OK and get to return to their original country or Slavs and other undesirables designated for Extermination through Labor who die within a year from exhaustion, overwork, disease, abuse and starvation?
 
By guest workers do you mean workers from Aryan nations like France, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands who get treated somewhat OK and get to return to their original country or Slavs and other undesirables designated for Extermination through Labor who die within a year from exhaustion, overwork, disease, abuse and starvation?

Both, and other. For all we know, Nazi Germany may well end up developing an underclass of Slavs, if only to save on training costs.

Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium--at least Flemish Belgium--also matter inasmuch as these countries might be added to Greater Germany, and their peoples to the ranks of first-tier Aryans. What will happen here?

That's why any scenarios of population futures in Nazi Germany have to be tightly constrained. What will happen? How is Nazi Germany imagined as evolving?
 
Hitler definitely wanted to include Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians in his "Greater Germanic Empire". Not so sure about the English/Brits, although they should count as well. (Whether they all would have liked it, is a different question.)
 
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