How would a modern 21st century Nazi Germany look like?

[xerex]

Thoughts to consider.
Even victorious Germany does not have the manpower to occupy and exterminate the USSR. Some sort of Free Russia is going exist beyond the Urals or even closer.

Vassal states are going to have to be created to run the former USSR. Which means many Slavs have to survive.

Hitlers blueprint was the British Raj. But the Raj kept the political structures mostly intact just inserting themselves at the top.

I dont see Germany being able to maintain this without heavy Thatcher/Deng level reforms by the 60s.

Which means a 21st century Third Reich may have had to do a French style decolonization, keeping Eastern Europe as some sort of Association rather than colonies.

 

[RedSword12]

I think it’s important to acknowledge that the wistful remorse of late 19th and early 20th century Americans vis a vis indigenous extermination was not really introspection, regret, and reconciliation. It was more of a cultural fetish for the noble savage who roamed free on the plains and was inevitably doomed to be subjugated by the white man and his guns and railroads and cities. The same sort of lament went along with popular feeling about the general demise of the west and the closing of the frontier. It was linked to the flood tide of progress and Manifest Destiny - regrettable and perhaps even vicious but distinctly Greek in its tragedy. I don’t think it was insincere and it generated some comparatively noble efforts, but I think we can distinguish that introspection from the more forceful reassessments of indigenous-American contact that started to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s. A reassessment that *did* involve significant indigenous activism and input, especially with movements like the AIM. That’s spawned it’s own virtues and vices, but I think the distinction is important because it was a more serious and sustained effort at introspection and understanding than anything that came out of the post-war quiet of the late 19th century, and I don’t think the earlier sentiments deserve the lions share of the credit for the attitudes of today. Especially when serious historical works of the 1950s and early 1960s were still describing native peoples as “savages” and portraying them as unduly aggressive barbarians who wrought much of their own destruction.

I was referring to that when I noted the faux reconciliation that took place after the Indian Wars.

 

[Scerus]

I do wonder what the perception of tourists from Nazi Germany would be of Western democracies in this scenario.
You will eventually get people who question their fanatical indoctrination when traveling.

 

[Kalga]

I do wonder what the perception of tourists from Nazi Germany would be of Western democracies in this scenario.
You will eventually get people who question their fanatical indoctrination when traveling.

Those who ask too may questions would be so few that they're a rounding error, nothing the gestapo couldn't handle. If anything most of those traveling to other countries would have their existing biases reinforced, much like a lot of mainland Chinese tourists in OTL...

 

[Scerus]

Those who ask too may questions would be so few that they're a rounding error, nothing the gestapo couldn't handle. If anything most of those traveling to other countries would have their existing biases reinforced, much like a lot of mainland Chinese tourists in OTL...

How would they have their biases reinforced?

 

[Vabasion]

How would they have their biases reinforced?

They’d see the non Nazi west as “Liberal degenerates” Kids are soft, trans issues, race rights, gay rights, abortion debates, deep divisions within nations, wealth inequality gap, lack of healthcare, globalization, immigration would all be issues that would reinforce their beliefs to them. People forget that just 20 years ago being gay could be the end of you as a politician, soldier, preacher, whatever. That being trans meant being a freak just 10 years ago. And that is with decades after Nazi defeat and basing our society in opposition to their beliefs. A victorious Nazi Germany would spend resources in continuous propaganda and reinforcement of already held beliefs. It takes actual conscious effort and education to get rid of racism and it’s way easier to fall into “those people” way of thinking even today for way too many.

 

[Kalga]

How would they have their biases reinforced?

Hypocrisy and doublethink. Things going well is boring, so there's no reason for and nazi tourists to go to everytown suburbs or generic industrial city of middle class american dream. They're going to tourist traps, party places, and maybe the flawed parts of the USA. Places that openly display the debauchery and decadence of the degenerate west, unlike the morally virtuous leadership back home (rumors of the most heinous of shit are just american propaganda anyways).

Remember how the 9/11 hijackers lived and partaken in american debauchery for quite a period of time before their terrorist act, and yet that time only reinforced their sense of moral virtue in taking down the americans despite their blatant hypocrisy?

 

[Interdimensional Nomad]

I do wonder what the perception of tourists from Nazi Germany would be of Western democracies in this scenario.
You will eventually get people who question their fanatical indoctrination when traveling.

There would likely be about as many German tourists in Allied countries as there are North Korean tourists in South Korea (or other Western-aligned countries) in OTL. As in, none, and the only citizens there would be very occasional visits by the highest-level government officials (and plenty of secret agents).

The primary Allied demand for peace was unconditional surrender. Absent that, the two sides will be left perpetually technically at war, like the Koreas.

 

[rfmcdonald]

In terms of geopolitical sway. Europe would still be a massive force in the world, as opposed to the geopolitical equivalent of a nursing home. To be clear, instead of the European Union, you would more or less have Germany and Friends(Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, maybe Vichy France) dictating things and acting the part of "Europe's main Representatives" as sort of a mirror-world European Union. They would exercise considerable sway as not only being head honchos in Europe, but also substantive '''commitments''' in Africa(more due to Italy and Vichy and Portugal, Hitler thought the desire for colonies in Africa was foolhardy). In terms of Italy it would be continuous guerilla warfare with Ethiopian Rebels. For Vichy it's holding a vise grip behind a curtain of a West-African "Confederation" along with Algeria directly integrated.

Europe is hardly a nursing home now. You are correct in pointing out that a Nazi-dominated Europe will be an assertive Europe. How assertive? We could surely have a German-American Cold War.

The question of population is certainly an interesting one

The preferred Nazi response would be to have as many Heroes of the Reich mothers as possible with a dozen or more children, over several generations

Plus, I would suspect some version of the SS idea of unmarried women for soldiers, so that there is a resource there.

Coercive pronatalism, along the lines of Ceaucescu's Decree 770, will certainly be present.

Decree 770 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This said, I question how successful this coercive Nazi pronatalism will be. As the example of Romania demonstrates, you did get a notable upwards bump in birth rates, but not that much of a bump and with tremendous human costs. German families and individuals will be sensitive to the costs and the benefits of having children, and will respond accordingly. If nothing else, the example of 18th century France and coitus interruptus shows how even primitive birth limitation techniques are controllable (and, without a panopticon security state, impossible to control--to be crude, how can Nazi Germany ensure men will ejaculate inside their wives?).

In practice, it is possible they would need a new underclass of worker, especially as such people can be subjugated and controlled. There could certainly be some sort of programme in co-operation with the Spanish government, which provides outlets for Spaniards without having to consider either war or unemployment. But it is ironically quite possible that you might be looking at Turkish immigrants, different enough to be controlled, but acceptable to the Nazis in theory, whilst being from a modern nation and thus capable of fitting in with the requirements of modern industry.

I think that Germany may end up attracting many guest workers from its external empire and client states, though much depends on what form Europe takes after the war.

It's not like the US' own history is fundamentally very different from a surviving Nazi Germany: you have a continental colossus fundamentally settler-colonial and racist in nature, peopled by a (not my words here) "master race" stock having wiped out the inferior untermensch—really, the primary difference there is one of degree, not of class. But the genocides of Native Americans were mostly gotten away more than a century ago; the genocides of Slavs and Jews (and...) would well be in recent memory, pretty much contemporary with our own times.

Basically: the 21st century isn't "good" enough for full-fledged historical rehabilitation of a surviving Third Reich, PR-wise, on the scale of the US. *Maybe* the 22nd.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that the wistful remorse of late 19th and early 20th century Americans vis a vis indigenous extermination was not really introspection, regret, and reconciliation. It was more of a cultural fetish for the noble savage who roamed free on the plains and was inevitably doomed to be subjugated by the white man and his guns and railroads and cities. The same sort of lament went along with popular feeling about the general demise of the west and the closing of the frontier. It was linked to the flood tide of progress and Manifest Destiny - regrettable and perhaps even vicious but distinctly Greek in its tragedy. I don’t think it was insincere and it generated some comparatively noble efforts, but I think we can distinguish that introspection from the more forceful reassessments of indigenous-American contact that started to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s. A reassessment that *did* involve significant indigenous activism and input, especially with movements like the AIM. That’s spawned it’s own virtues and vices, but I think the distinction is important because it was a more serious and sustained effort at introspection and understanding than anything that came out of the post-war quiet of the late 19th century, and I don’t think the earlier sentiments deserve the lions share of the credit for the attitudes of today. Especially when serious historical works of the 1950s and early 1960s were still describing native peoples as “savages” and portraying them as unduly aggressive barbarians who wrought much of their own destruction.

I think the big difference between the indigenous peoples killed in the US and British Empire and the populations victim of Generalplan Ost in this ATL is that the latter have many more survivors. Millions of non-German central and eastern Europeans had left Europe before the Nazi conquests; they were powers, well-known, with many survivors and many people who knew about them. There will not be a forgetting.

 

[Yankeewolf]

Europe is hardly a nursing home now. You are correct in pointing out that a Nazi-dominated Europe will be an assertive Europe. How assertive? We could surely have a German-American Cold War.



Coercive pronatalism, along the lines of Ceaucescu's Decree 770, will certainly be present.

Decree 770 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This said, I question how successful this coercive Nazi pronatalism will be. As the example of Romania demonstrates, you did get a notable upwards bump in birth rates, but not that much of a bump and with tremendous human costs. German families and individuals will be sensitive to the costs and the benefits of having children, and will respond accordingly. If nothing else, the example of 18th century France and coitus interruptus shows how even primitive birth limitation techniques are controllable (and, without a panopticon security state, impossible to control--to be crude, how can Nazi Germany ensure men will ejaculate inside their wives?).



I think that Germany may end up attracting many guest workers from its external empire and client states, though much depends on what form Europe takes after the war.





I think the big difference between the indigenous peoples killed in the US and British Empire and the populations victim of Generalplan Ost in this ATL is that the latter have many more survivors. Millions of non-German central and eastern Europeans had left Europe before the Nazi conquests; they were powers, well-known, with many survivors and many people who knew about them. There will not be a forgetting.

I think that's where we beg to disagree. Europe is a nursing home and living museum because of its status since World War 2, squeezed in between two Non-European powers and utilized as the playthings thereof, placed in a fundamentally subservient position that has been unchanged since the pen dried on the peace treaties. The centuries-old cultural diversity of national minorities were completely upended with the waves of ethnic cleansing during the war and post-war, creating artificially homogenous states. This 'aftermath of ruin' homogeneity was what allowed the much-vaulted and criticised European welfare states to be created.

Now, decades now, aside from a few success stories and exercises in semi-competent governance(Norway, Gaullist France), the chickens have come home to roost for Europe in terms of energy policy, employment policy, economic durability, and so forth. The median age of European countries are in the 40s, for native-born Europeans it's likely an order of magnitude higher. When you get into your forties and fifties you get weaker, you have less control over your bodily movements. Every year some guy in a lab coat sticks his hand up your butt for a colonoscopy. You undergo menopause. I'm sure you're a stud, dw bro. This is just a metaphor. Europe is in its "getting regularly colonoscopied" era and pretenses otherwise have the same ring as a 45-year-old flabby former high quarterback with a beer belly having a midlife crisis and trying to run an ultra-marathonin a week. The time when it was the rambunctious young driver of capital H History(a more erudite way to phrase it would be simply calling it High Western Civilization)(1492-1945) ended in the ashes of Berlin. It is the rest of the world who gets to be protagonists of history from now on. Some have managed to take the torch and run. Some have fallen flat on their face. And some countries are just getting started. My money is on Rwanda #SuperpowerBy2100.

Any further and we reach PolChat.

A German-American Cold War would be one in which Europe would remain an assertive force, as you state. It would also be one in which Europe does not succumb to Americanization of its of culture and lifestyle. It's not a phenomenon unique to Europe, it's happened all over the world. Americanization of dress, of music, of cuisine, of business, of speaking, of the way people view their domestic politics, of literally everything.

A trend takes over the Imperial Capital:

There was something disappointing about walking into the Capitol in a pair of basketball shorts and a hoodie, his de facto uniform. But this is what everyone wears now. It seems strange that no one cares about wearing clothes that fit their role in society. The word Senate comes from the latin word Senex meaning "old". These are supposed to be the advisors to society who create laws. Instead, he's just going to the gym. It doesn't feel right.

Three Reasons
For most of history clothes served as statements of function and rank within societies. Clothes didn’t make the man, they signified the man already made, usually at birth—as king or commoner, tinker, tailor, soldier, beggar-man, prostitute, priest. That all ended in the 20th century.
I propose three reasons for why casualization has accelerated so fast in the last few years.
1) Comfort replaced fashion
2) We moved from a "scarcity of clothes" era to "clothes are cheap and plentiful" era and we are not going back.
3) The cult of the youth

Why Did Comfort Replace Fashion?
One of the most profound cultural changes of the 20th century: "the rise of casual dress. As Americans, our casual style uniformly stresses comfort and practicality — two words that have gotten little attention in the history of fashion but have transformed how we live. A hundred years ago, the closest thing to casual was sportswear — knitted golf dresses, tweed blazers, and oxford shoes. But as the century progressed, casual came to encompass everything. Americans’ quest for a low-key style has stomped on entire industries: millinery, hosiery, eveningwear, fur, and the list goes on. It has infiltrated every hour of the day and every space from the boardroom to the classroom to the courtroom. Our country’s casual style is America’s calling card around the world. Casual was made in America."
Athleisure is a great example of the comfort over fashion preference. Athletic clothes tend to be pretty comfortable and lightweight. Athleisure, which is a market that didn't exist 15 years ago, is now worth $331 billion and growing at 9% YoY.

Blue jeans spread to other countries. But there has been a bigger push for casual clothes since 2005. An acceleration. Two industries have really shaped this choice. The technology boom of the 2010s and the influence of sport/streetwear.

Athleisure, which is a market that didn't exist 15 years ago, is now worth $331 billion and growing at 9% YoY.

There was this trend in the 90s where regular people wore sports jerseys in public. That doesn't happen much anymore. Instead, we want to wear what the athletes themselves wear. Which is usually very comfortable. Athleisure is the epitome of comfort wear.
Related to Athleisure is the technology boom of the 2010s which created millionaires who dressed in hoodies and t-shirts. Being rich used to come with a certain fashion aesthetic. That has changed. Now, there are many instances of the rich people dressing like they are college kids. The most famous of this is Zuckerberg. Formal dress in the workplace even seems to be looked at as low class, especially a tie. Fashion and class are always intertwined.
There is a long tradition of staff (wait staff, servants) usually one step behind in the evolution of dress. Footmen in 1920s wore white tie as those being served switched to tuxedos. Then tuxedo-clad waiters served business suits. And on it goes. Servants in gold brocade and powdered wigs when the family were wearing the latest "undress" fashions from the Prince Regent's circle or post-revolutionary France.

...
That's how clothes were for most of history. They weren't cheap. They were locally made and you were screwed if someone stole them from you. Then globalization happened, and it got sped up by fast fashion. Some place in China or Bangladesh makes your clothes, and they look good. And they cost like 50 or 100 dollars. That's great, right?
The average middle class person does not want to pay full price for clothes. The availability of cheap clothes made with questionable labor standards has made people lose touch with what clothes should cost given the work required, the cost of materials, and fair wages. To lose touch with how clothes were made for most of history.
The biggest consumer base for fast fashion is the middle class, and many companies can't pay more because the middle class refuses to pay a lot of money for clothes.

It's not even really about the money. It's about the principle. America has a lot of upper middle class people. They'll spend $100 on bottles of wine, fancy electronics, trips, etc.
We've moved into a "clothes are plentiful" era and we're not going back.
The Cult of the Youth
America, which started as an offshoot of European society has become it's own nation with its' own identity. This identity became to form in the late 20th century. One of the characteristics is the promotion of youth. No one wants to get old, to consider themselves old or to look old. There is an active campaign to fight aging at all facets of society. This includes plastic surgery, clothes, fitness, health, and even life extension obsessiveness.
In almost every society, the old are given higher status than the young. In America, that isn't necessarily the case.

-https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/fashion

And the various satrapies rush to copy it.

I've been traveling to and from Europe for decades and I have noticed a shift in how much American culture is being exported to countries abroad.

Take Starbucks for example.

The well-known Starbucks origin story is about how Howard Schultz traveled through Milan, fell in love with espresso bar culture, and introduced it in the US. Before Starbucks, a lot of American coffee was terrible. Folgers and diner drip coffee were considered good. Starbucks led a movement which led to a large increase in independent cafes and the quality of coffee is now very good in the United States.

Starbucks, meanwhile, became a place where adults would buy socially acceptable ice cream drinks for breakfast. The coffee culture that Starbucks initially brought was morphed by the American market into these high sugary, novel caffeine drink concoction we see today. This version is now being to Europe. And it's popular. Wherever I go in Europe I see Starbucks full of people ordering.
This is really part of a larger phenomenon. America is the leading exporter of culture around the world. It seems like, to me, that this influence just keeps growing with time.

Take a Look Around
I was walking around a small town in France last year. They don’t speak english very well there, they only speak french. Yet, when I was walking around I noticed a few things:
1) People were mostly wearing jeans and sneakers everywhere.
2) People under the age sometimes had had tattoos.
3) The only hats I saw people wear were baseball hats.

4) At times you could hear hip hop blaring from cars driving by.
5) The stores in this town had video games that I recognized, the movie theaters had American films showing. People were using Apple laptops, and wearing Airpods.

I was surrounded by America even though I was far away. They knew about my culture, what I grew up watching, what I listened to on the radio, the technology I used, and the products I and trends I consumed.

Protests
[CURRENT POLITICS]
The History of American Influence pre-1999


America is a weird place. You do not feel in touch with a deep history because it is a young country. One of the reasons immigrants come here, they have kids, and their kids assimilate hard and fast is because you see yourself as a citizen of the present day. The country is rich, it focuses on making things for the future and has no enemies at the borders.
After World War 2 America had the biggest military in the world, indeed, it still does. It also doesn’t have any hostile neighbors..
I don’t think there’s ever been a world superpower in history without enemies on the borders. Rome had the Gauls, the Germans, the Persians, and then later on the Arabs and Turks. China was surrounded by enemies, they had to build a great wall. Later on the French had Britain, and then Germany border them. Every empire or great power falls to its neighbor that borders it. America doesn’t have that issue. It hasn’t even fought a war on its territory in 150 years, and that was a war with itself. Yet it has the strongest and mightiest military ever known.
Not only that but its the richest country in the world. The biggest market. Every other country relies on the American Dollar as the reserve currency of the world. So not only is all the weapons here, there is also all the gold here. With no enemies at the borders. It’s also the size of a continent. Ever drive across America? It takes 70 hours. All you see is beautiful land. Forests, lakes, mountains, and all types of scenery.
In the 20th century America controlled much of global culture. There was a post war boom in the consumer economy and America beamed its influence around the world. Hollywood stars were global, television, radio, music, plays, you name it. Media broadcasted American influence.

American Influence post 1999
After 1999 the internet started getting big. You had all these tech countries pop up in the last 20 years. They all happened to start in one small part of America, Silicon Valley. The internet itself became a vehicle for American culture. Social media apps like Myspace, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon started dominating. The second great American revolution. The first was about TV, fashion, film and physical music.
The second is about owning the internet and its culture. This was even bigger.

America and the Internet
Where does this look come from?
Social Media and the Internet are spiritually American. They export trends all over the globe.

People who live in other countries have no idea what trend will come out of American tomorrow to dominate their life, their ideas, their clothes, their culture and the way they look at society. It must be a weird feeling.
1KYAE
What does 1KYAE stand for? The one thousand year American empire. Because it’s a super power on an island, culturally, militarily, economically and technologically. It has no enemies at the borders. A completely unprecedented situation. It may be a thousand year American reign we are at the beginning of.

-https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/one-thousand-year-american-empire

Europe as it stands today in its befuddled form only truly exists so that American zoomers can go and make Emily in Paris-inspired tiktoks. Welcome to the 1TYAE.

As that great Canuck George Grant so eloquently displayed in Lament for a Nation:

It was over before we were ever born.

*breathes in* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, I may be looking at it all too myopically. Maybe in an alternate universe, French writers and intelligentsia will be bemoaning significant German military,economic , and social influence in their own country. Instead of trying to kick out Emily in Paris, it's trying to kick out Siegfried and the 1st Panzer-Grenadier Division stationed there "For Protection". On the other hand, you won't hear butchered Euro-English anymore from them, because it won't be taught!

As for your other point.

Here's a good thread by Demographer Lyman Stone on the Romania Decree 770 and its effects on the fertility rate along with second order effects. It's pretty long but give it a decent read
TL: DR-It was absolutely effective. Negative consequences were due to Romania being an insane Communist state dedicated to robbing families of their children and raising them in orphanages as good little marxists rather than the strict policy itself. It's good.

I apologize in advance for the unevenness of the post. I'm tired.

 

[Garrison]

In terms of the OPs question if, somehow, the Nazis defeat the USSR and survive into the present day then I suggest that North Korea or Pol Pot's Cambodia are better reference points for how it would look. The Nazis lack a coherent political philosophy and by the end of a victorious war is going to be a personality cult. How bad things get depends on how hard they push to carry out Generalplan Ost. I imagine that its either empty cities built in the east, designed by Speer and built with slave labour under Himmler's direction, or we end up with large number of German settlers being sent east to establish the Nazi ideal of a vast number of family farms where the German people could reestablish their connection with the soil. It tends to be forgotten that Hitler and many of the other Nazis were far from enthusiastic about industrialization, regarding the movement of people from the countryside to urban centres as weakening the 'Aryan bloodlines'.

 

[Jürgen]

A major problem is that people imagine that the Germans could repeat the Holocaust on the Slavs, I don’t think that’s possible. The Holocaust as it happened was only possible because Jews was a minority and one disliked by its neighbors. The Slavs is in a much better position, as they make up the vast majority of the population, is economic necessary to deal with by the German and they’re far more able to fight a guerrilla war (even if they will lose). So the Germans will have to deal with different Slavic group in different way, from local Holocaust style Genocide to ethnic cleansing to assimilation, some times all three the same place with some Slavs (intellectual and community leaders) being murdered, other being expelled to new “homelands” or abroad and at last some will be assimilated. This also means region may be much less depopulated than we imagine and there may be a lot of “New Germans“ who do their best to hide their ancestry. I have argued before that the “New Germans” will likely be the most loyal group To the Nazi regime simply because they will be forced to internalize support to Nazism to survive.

 

[spoonzandforkz]

I think that's where we beg to disagree. Europe is a nursing home and living museum because of its status since World War 2, squeezed in between two Non-European powers and utilized as the playthings thereof, placed in a fundamentally subservient position that has been unchanged since the pen dried on the peace treaties. The centuries-old cultural diversity of national minorities were completely upended with the waves of ethnic cleansing during the war and post-war, creating artificially homogenous states. This 'aftermath of ruin' homogeneity was what allowed the much-vaulted and criticised European welfare states to be created.

Now, decades now, aside from a few success stories and exercises in semi-competent governance(Norway, Gaullist France), the chickens have come home to roost for Europe in terms of energy policy, employment policy, economic durability, and so forth. The median age of European countries are in the 40s, for native-born Europeans it's likely an order of magnitude higher. When you get into your forties and fifties you get weaker, you have less control over your bodily movements. Every year some guy in a lab coat sticks his hand up your butt for a colonoscopy. You undergo menopause. I'm sure you're a stud, dw bro. This is just a metaphor. Europe is in its "getting regularly colonoscopied" era and pretenses otherwise have the same ring as a 45-year-old flabby former high quarterback with a beer belly having a midlife crisis and trying to run an ultra-marathonin a week. The time when it was the rambunctious young driver of capital H History(a more erudite way to phrase it would be simply calling it High Western Civilization)(1492-1945) ended in the ashes of Berlin. It is the rest of the world who gets to be protagonists of history from now on. Some have managed to take the torch and run. Some have fallen flat on their face. And some countries are just getting started. My money is on Rwanda #SuperpowerBy2100.

Any further and we reach PolChat.

A German-American Cold War would be one in which Europe would remain an assertive force, as you state. It would also be one in which Europe does not succumb to Americanization of its of culture and lifestyle. It's not a phenomenon unique to Europe, it's happened all over the world. Americanization of dress, of music, of cuisine, of business, of speaking, of the way people view their domestic politics, of literally everything.

A trend takes over the Imperial Capital:


-https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/fashion

And the various satrapies rush to copy it.



-https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/one-thousand-year-american-empire

Europe as it stands today in its befuddled form only truly exists so that American zoomers can go and make Emily in Paris-inspired tiktoks. Welcome to the 1TYAE.

As that great Canuck George Grant so eloquently displayed in Lament for a Nation:

It was over before we were ever born.

*breathes in* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, I may be looking at it all too myopically. Maybe in an alternate universe, French writers and intelligentsia will be bemoaning significant German military,economic , and social influence in their own country. Instead of trying to kick out Emily in Paris, it's trying to kick out Siegfried and the 1st Panzer-Grenadier Division stationed there "For Protection". On the other hand, you won't hear butchered Euro-English anymore from them, because it won't be taught!

As for your other point.

Here's a good thread by Demographer Lyman Stone on the Romania Decree 770 and its effects on the fertility rate along with second order effects. It's pretty long but give it a decent read
TL: DR-It was absolutely effective. Negative consequences were due to Romania being an insane Communist state dedicated to robbing families of their children and raising them in orphanages as good little marxists rather than the strict policy itself. It's good.




I apologize in advance for the unevenness of the post. I'm tired.

That's an apt visualization of all this: Europe as the tired old man, locked in a nursing home, with regular anal probes as a metaphor for its geopolitical "retirement", aging and relative non-relevance post-1945, and current status as an essential collective of American Empire satrapies—though I would note your allusions of using an effectively American media sport trope ("flabby former high school quarterback") to hammer your points in a post bemoaning the Americanization of Europe is in itself darkly ironic; or perhaps intentional.

But it's not like any of this is a bad thing. Not to get too political, but besides, how much does geopolitical relevance really matter to your average man-in-the-street? Does a personal perception of "my country swings its dick around widely in the international stage" really help when your mother is dying with cancer and you can't pay the bills, which I assume most people are more concerned with than tribalistic impulses of nationalism?

I suppose being politically independent would still have its own benefits, but Western Europe, in terms of quality of life—relative to other regions or itself throughout history—is firmly at the top, at least for now. A loss of geopolitical relevance, to me, seems an acceptable price to pay for finally being united and regularly free of war, for the first time in centuries.

(You could have both, maybe—an independent European Union, somewhat aligned with but not subservient to the US, which I suppose is sort of Macron's vision. But even that would incur at least somewhat substantial military costs, leaving less money for funding welfare, social programs, etc., in general. Maybe not to the point of the highly-militarised US, but still, that money has to come from somewhere.)

 

[xerex]

I do wonder what the perception of tourists from Nazi Germany would be of Western democracies in this scenario.
You will eventually get people who question their fanatical indoctrination when traveling.

Strength Through Joy disagrees

Strength Through Joy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

QUOTE
Set up in November 1933 as a tool to promote the advantages of Nazism to the German people and internationally, while also being utilized to ease the process of the rearmament of Germany. It was also intended to compensate for the poor increases in wages and for the loss of trade union rights. Through its structure of organized events and promotion of propaganda, it was also intended to prevent dissident and anti-state behavior. By 1939, it had become the world's largest tourism operator.[2]
..............................................................
Through these cruises Nazism was promoted internationally, and KdF travelers therefore were expected to represent its positively by dressing modestly and behaving appropriately. Drinking alcohol was prohibited, and the government planted spies on ships instructed to pose as passengers and monitor participants' behavior. Cruise trips were sometimes offered as prizes in KdF competitions, but were largely affordable; an eighteen-day trip to Madeira cost 120 Reichsmarks, the equivalent to about four weeks' average salary at the time, and a seven-day trip to Norway cost about 50 Reichsmarks.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Now, decades now, aside from a few success stories and exercises in semi-competent governance(Norway, Gaullist France), the chickens have come home to roost for Europe in terms of energy policy, employment policy, economic durability, and so forth. The median age of European countries are in the 40s, for native-born Europeans it's likely an order of magnitude higher. When you get into your forties and fifties you get weaker, you have less control over your bodily movements. Every year some guy in a lab coat sticks his hand up your butt for a colonoscopy. You undergo menopause. I'm sure you're a stud, dw bro. This is just a metaphor.

It is manlier to not get appropriate medical care, including colonoscopies, and die of colon cancer at an early age?

I do not think that this metaphor worked the way you thought it would.

A German-American Cold War would be one in which Europe would remain an assertive force, as you state. It would also be one in which Europe does not succumb to Americanization of its of culture and lifestyle. It's not a phenomenon unique to Europe, it's happened all over the world. Americanization of dress, of music, of cuisine, of business, of speaking, of the way people view their domestic politics, of literally everything.

Arguing that American influence would not be at least as big in this TL as OTL is more than a bit odd, since the United States would be one of the two superpowers fighting for control of the world order. If anything, American influence might be even bigger for lack of alternatives: The Soviet Union will be defunct, and western European social democracy will not have had a chance to come to full fruition.

Here's a good thread by Demographer Lyman Stone on the Romania Decree 770 and its effects on the fertility rate along with second order effects. It's pretty long but give it a decent read
TL: DR-It was absolutely effective. Negative consequences were due to Romania being an insane Communist state dedicated to robbing families of their children and raising them in orphanages as good little marxists rather than the strict policy itself. It's good.

While Lyman Stone is someone I used to respect, I lost this respect after he came out in Twitter saying that the metric that matters most to him is the proportion of religious Christians in a country, not matters like income or human development. The sort of person who is willing to ignore actual metrics in favour of something arbitrary and unprovable is, perhaps, not the sort of person who should be trusted as a judge.

Beyond that, we know that in the longer run this coercive pronatalism failed: Instead of creating a culture supportive of families, this and the oppressive police state used to enforce these policies ended up triggering a revolution that resulted in a complete turn away from this. Romania has consistently seen some of the highest rates of population decline and aging and lowest fertility rates in central and southeastern Europe since 1989. This is common: One reason West German fertility rates dropped so low from the 1970s on, unlike in France or elsewhere in northern Europe, that the trauma of intrusive Nazi family policies discouraged the FRG from adopting the sorts of family policies that would keep fertility rates up.

I think that all this does give insight as to how badly Nazi pronatalism would work in this scenario, whether we are talking about Ceaucescu-like forced birth policies for the general population or a whole Lebensborn system for the racial elite. Nazi Germany simply was not capable of everything that the leadership might have believed. The Nazis could certainly kill lots of people and make Europe to the east of Germany a human desert, but they could hardly count on having a large German population to repopulate it. They might indeed be able to slow down the demographic transition of Germans with coercive and intrusive measures, but they cannot count on being able to do this indefinitely. Maybe they could make a fanatical Lebensborn subculture, but they cannot count on this being productive.

 

[rfmcdonald]

That's an apt visualization of all this: Europe as the tired old man, locked in a nursing home, with regular anal probes as a metaphor for its geopolitical "retirement", aging and relative non-relevance post-1945, and current status as an essential collective of American Empire satrapies—though I would note your allusions of using an effectively American media sport trope ("flabby former high school quarterback") to hammer your points in a post bemoaning the Americanization of Europe is in itself darkly ironic; or perhaps intentional.

More to the point, I think this argument overlooks both how western Europe is a geopolitical centre of note and how letting a partner take on the costs of being a world power can be perfectly plausible. Why, exactly, does the European Union need to be a fully autonomous military power of the same scale as the United States? As we have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, that American military power does not seem obviously able to produce successes, a lesson reinforced by the Russian experience in Ukraine.

(You could have both, maybe—an independent European Union, somewhat aligned with but not subservient to the US, which I suppose is sort of Macron's vision. But even that would incur at least somewhat substantial military costs, leaving less money for funding welfare, social programs, etc., in general. Maybe not to the point of the highly-militarised US, but still, that money has to come from somewhere.)

I do think that underestimating the degree to which opting not to develop a military establishment of dubious use is an issue in this analysis.

Going back to the original theme being discussed, that of a surviving Nazi Germany in command of Europe, what exactly would be the benefit to Europe of this? Hosting a superpower not invested in the status quo but rather wedded to dreams of racial apocalypse seems potentially fatal for Europe.

 

[Jürgen]

More to the point, I think this argument overlooks both how western Europe is a geopolitical centre of note and how letting a partner take on the costs of being a world power can be perfectly plausible. Why, exactly, does the European Union need to be a fully autonomous military power of the same scale as the United States? As we have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, that American military power does not seem obviously able to produce successes, a lesson reinforced by the Russian experience in Ukraine.



I do think that underestimating the degree to which opting not to develop a military establishment of dubious use is an issue in this analysis.

Going back to the original theme being discussed, that of a surviving Nazi Germany in command of Europe, what exactly would be the benefit to Europe of this? Hosting a superpower not invested in the status quo but rather wedded to dreams of racial apocalypse seems potentially fatal for Europe.

I doubt Nazi Germany would stay anti-status quo, Nazi Germany have to deal with having gotten a far large cake than it stomach can eat, so it have a interest in upkeep the status quo while it slowly find a solution on the problem of having won and gotten a lot of “worthless“ land in the east. Some of the solution will be the Germanification of parts of the East European population, other solutions will be to use population like Scandinavians, Dutch, Belgians, and northern French as semi-voluntary settlers and do it in a manner which doesn’t destroy their entire economy (I could see the Nazi thinking about relocate the entire Dutch population to Poland, but the economic disruption would likely be so major that even they decided against it).

In general I expect that Nazi Germany will deliver solid middle income living standards, anything below that will result in their population rising up (so a nominal GDP per capita of 12-15.000$ and in PPP 20-25.000$).

 

[Grey Wolf]

Do you think there would be statues of previous Fuhrers everywhere like Roman emperor gods, or would each one be erased by their successor, like Soviet leaders?

 

[TheSpectacledCloth]

Do you think there would be statues of previous Fuhrers everywhere like Roman emperor gods, or would each one be erased by their successor, like Soviet leaders?

Depends on who succeeds who.

 

[Aluma]

Depends on who succeeds who.

I think, unless something like Valkyrie succeeding is the POD, there wouldnt be a Nikita Kruschev equivalent
All of the possible Hitler successors were sycophants trying to attach their image to that of the Fuhrer, who - if Germany is victorious - would be seen as a messianic figure of the likes of
Kim the First