How realistically is the SS Ordenstaat Burgund in TNO portrayed compared to the real Nazi plans?

[OstundWest]

While I personally think TNO is a pretty fun mod to play I still have to admit that I don't think to highly about the plausibility of many of it's portayals of the Nazi planning of how a post-World War II Europe would look like. Some of them can found in the portayal of the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, a state planned but not created Nazi state which serves as the mod's main antagonist-power. The ones I have discowered are the following:
1. The planned state wasn't actually meant to include the Paris region, so the whole "Ost-Paris" thing comes of as a rather lazy allusion to East Berlin but without any of the geopolitical situation that made the latter mentioned partion possible.
2. Burgund's capital was actually meant to be Dijon/Tichen (a city which for some reason is missspelled as Tichau in the mod) or Nancy/Nanzig.
3. The state was also meant to include parts of eastern Switzerland and have land connection to the Mediterranean, which are areas that Burgund can't even conquer in the mod.
4. The French population was meant to be expelled from Burgundy as opposed to forcibly Germanized like in the mod.
Do you here on this forum agree with my objections and can you come up with some more on your own?

 

[RiverDelta]

The mod would be stronger without Burgundy, in my opinion.

It might be the single biggest contributor to the "TNO is an edgelord Naziwank murder mod" sentiments I've seen. That sucks, because TNO is great.

 

[Whiteshore]

Honestly, Burgundy would make more sense if, as I said before multiple times, it had been formed after something like the 1956 Hungarian Revolution occured in France in the WRW as opposed to a failed SS Coup, especially with the fate of the Valkyrie plotters IOTL.

 

[Viking25]

The mod would be stronger without Burgundy, in my opinion.

It might be the single biggest contributor to the "TNO is an edgelord Naziwank murder mod" sentiments I've seen. That sucks, because TNO is great.

Agree with that Sentiment. Especially as they don't seem to do jack shit and you pretty much forget about them unless you are playing as them or Germany because else wise you don't have any fundamental way to meaningfully interact with them

 

[RiverDelta]

Agree with that Sentiment. Especially as they don't seem to do jack shit and you pretty much forget about them unless you are playing as them or Germany because else wise you don't have any fundamental way to meaningfully interact with them

They kind of just come off like The Edgy Faction, which isn't a great reason for a nation to exist in an AH story.

It's like if the Draka were inserted into TNOTL.

 

[varyar]

Are there any primary sources that suggest the "Order-State" was seriously proposed by anybody?

EDIT: Oh, I take it back. The super-reliable source is Himmler's masseur: http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,887399,00.html

 

[Tolkiene]

Are there any primary sources that suggest the "Order-State" was seriously proposed by anybody?

EDIT: Oh, I take it back. The super-reliable source is Himmler's masseur: http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,887399,00.html

There doesn't seem to have been any detailed plans on the level of say Generalplan Ost and other 'lebensraum' schemes. When the Nazi government was looking for a place to settle South Tyroleans who wanted to 'join the fatherland' following Germany's deal with Mussolini, Greifelt, one of Himmler's minions in the SS's resettlement agency, proposed Burgundy.

Himmler liked the idea and seemed enthusiastic about it. However, Hitler turned it down, since the annexation of French territory and expulsion of French citizens would've made a mess of relations with Vichy, which was not acceptable during wartime. In 1942 the Nazis considered colonising the Crimea with South Tyroleans. Hitler and Himmler liked the idea, but had to postpone it. Himmler still seems to have retained an interest in recreating Burgundy, since he told Alfred Frauenfeld, who was supposed to become the Nazi governor of the Crimea, that they'd simply have to find a different population group for Burgundy.

My source for this is 'Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler. A Life'. Longerich's a German specialist on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. His Himmler biography is great. Here's a link to the relevant passage. The book doesn't contain any further info on Burgundy plans comparable to what Kersten said, and overall I'd take the latter with a grain of salt. Now dreaming about becoming the overlord of his own SS kingdom is a very Himmler thing to do. Burgundy strikes me as something that was on his wish list in some form, but his focus and that of the SS lay in the East, where they had very detailed plans for SS bases and colonies of SS warrior-farmers where enslaved Slavs would toil and suffer for the benefit of their 'Aryan' overlords.

 

[varyar]

There doesn't seem to have been any detailed plans on the level of say Generalplan Ost and other 'lebensraum' schemes. When the Nazi government was looking for a place to settle South Tyroleans who wanted to 'join the fatherland' following Germany's deal with Mussolini, Greifelt, one of Himmler's minions in the SS's resettlement agency, proposed Burgundy.

Himmler liked the idea and seemed enthusiastic about it. However, Hitler turned it down, since the annexation of French territory and expulsion of French citizens would've made a mess of relations with Vichy, which was not acceptable during wartime. In 1942 the Nazis considered colonising the Crimea with South Tyroleans. Hitler and Himmler liked the idea, but had to postpone it. Himmler still seems to have retained an interest in recreating Burgundy, since he told Alfred Frauenfeld, who was supposed to become the Nazi governor of the Crimea, that they'd simply have to find a different population group for Burgundy.

My source for this is 'Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler. A Life'. Longerich's a German specialist on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. His Himmler biography is great. Here's a link to the relevant passage. The book doesn't contain any further info on Burgundy plans comparable to what Kersten said, so I'd take the latter with a grain of salt. Now dreaming about becoming the overlord of his own SS kingdom is a very Himmler thing to do. Burgundy strikes me as something that was on his wish list in some form, but his focus and that of the SS lay in the East, where they had very detailed plans for SS bases and colonies of SS warrior-farmers where enslaved Slavs would toil and suffer for the benefit of their 'Aryan' overlords.

I'm highly skeptical that the idea of an independent Burgundy existed outside of Kersten's imagination. Eventual German settlement of the area (and the entire closed zone of German-occupied France) is a different story entirely, though.

 

[Tolkiene]

I'm highly skeptical that the idea of an independent Burgundy existed outside of Kersten's imagination. Eventual German settlement of the area (and the entire closed zone of German-occupied France) is a different story entirely, though.

Agreed. There were some Nazi bigwigs who proposed further annexations in France, as well as German settlement. Werner Best, Heydrich's 2IC until 1940 and then chief administrator in German-occupied France and Hitler's proconsul in Denmark, suggested annexing French territory north of the river Loire, along with the Netherlands and Flanders, into the Reich (also turning Wallonia and Brittany into German protectorates, merging Northern Ireland with the Irish Free State, creating a decentralized British federation and splitting Spain into independent entities of Galicia, Basque Country and Catalonia...he had some interesting views lol Ulbrich Herbert describes this in his biography of the man).

However, neither the German military administration nor the SS took interest in that proposal - for obvious reasons, I'd say. A memorandum from July 1940 that's often attributed to Stuckart or someone close to him in the Interior Ministry discussed weakening France to ensure it could never rise again by reducing it to its medieval borders and expelling the French population in the to be annexed zone to replace them with German settlers. Cities and regions within this area were supposed to revert to old German names. This seems to have formed the basis for the so-called north-east line. Neither of these proposals envisaged an independent SS state and both men were SS generals. Best in particular always identified himself with the SS even after his falling out with Heydrich.

So in summation I could see the Nazis, full of hubris, victory disease and plain vindictiveness, tearing out more pieces of France and calling it Burgundy or whatever medieval country they want to larp as and trying to Germanise it. But it wouldn't be independent and left to do whatever it feels like.

 

[Boss Tweed]

While I personally think TNO is a pretty fun mod to play I still have to admit that I don't think to highly about the plausibility of many of it's portayals of the Nazi planning of how a post-World War II Europe would look like. Some of them can found in the portayal of the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, a state planned but not created Nazi state which serves as the mod's main antagonist-power. The ones I have discowered are the following:
1. The planned state wasn't actually meant to include the Paris region, so the whole "Ost-Paris" thing comes of as a rather lazy allusion to East Berlin but without any of the geopolitical situation that made the latter mentioned partion possible.
2. Burgund's capital was actually meant to be Dijon/Tichen (a city which for some reason is missspelled as Tichau in the mod) or Nancy/Nanzig.
3. The state was also meant to include parts of eastern Switzerland and have land connection to the Mediterranean, which are areas that Burgund can't even conquer in the mod.
4. The French population was meant to be expelled from Burgundy as opposed to forcibly Germanized like in the mod.
Do you here on this forum agree with my objections and can you come up with some more on your own?

I'd say your first two objections make sense, as for the 3rd and the 4th though:

3. Invading Switzerland would be more trouble than it's worth, especially since it provides access to non-Nazi markets and serves as a neutral meeting ground. Burgundy could conceivably attack them or Italy but this would require approval from Germany—and this gets into one of my other problems with Burgundy...

4. Expelling the entire French and Belgians would leave Burgundy a depopulated wasteland with no workforce. No (realistic) amount of German settlement could make up for that, especially when Germany itself is doing pretty well. It's possible that even the Nazis would conclude that this was an utterly insane idea and keep the French around as slave labor instead. Which is only slightly less insane but this is Himmler we're talking about here.

The main problem I have with the Ordenstaat's portrayal is that they would not last long without German support and definitely shouldn't have the freedom of action they have in TNO. At best they would be something like Ceacescu's Romania to the USSR. They're not stealing the German nuclear arsenal and starting WW3 though (really the German Civil War shouldn't happen in the first place but that's a separate issue).

 

[chankljp]

Honestly, Burgundy would make more sense if, as I said before multiple times, it had been formed after something like the 1956 Hungarian Revolution occured in France in the WRW as opposed to a failed SS Coup, especially with the fate of the Valkyrie plotters IOTL.

I absolutely agree that the lore of SS Ordenstaat Burgund in TNO needs to be changed. I mean... I just cannot see Hitler not only allowing Himmer to live after an attempted coup by the SS, but instead reward him with his own person fiefdom in the form of Burgundy. Instead, your idea of Hitler creating the Ordenstaat deliberately as a means of punishing France makes a lot more sense.