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

Stalinism was not vindicated because economic growth ceased being more than 5% a year and 'Russia' was still behind her glory days no matter how many people were sacrificed on the altar of the 5 year plans. In 1945 the Soviet Union took Berlin. In 1815 Russian Troops marched through Paris.

With Germany it's the opposite, the place in the sun has been finally achieved. It would only take a Cultural Revolution level of social disaster to cause any sort of Reform. And even then it'd be on the level of the PRC: economic reform and greater openness about how the Cultural Revolution was kinda bad and Mao wasn't 100% correct but that doesn't mean you should remotely throw everything out.
Stalinism was vindicated. It had given the USSR an unprecedented empire in all the history of Russia.. And regardless, the notion that reform is only possible with scenario X isn't true. With real life the possibilities really are endless as to what can happen. Unimaginable things happen all the time.

The USA was for much of its history a genocidal expansionist state, for which it was rewarded with being the most powerful country the world has ever seen. Genocidal manifest destiny ideology was thus vindicated. But Americans still ended up for the disavowing it as wrong.
 
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Stalinism was not vindicated because economic growth ceased being more than 5% a year and 'Russia' was still behind her glory days no matter how many people were sacrificed on the altar of the 5 year plans. In 1945 the Soviet Union took Berlin. In 1815 Russian Troops marched through Paris.
the same could be for nazi germany.
once most of the soldiers come home to find the great promises of lebensraum can't be delivered by the unproductive and underdeveloped post-GPO eastern Europe, there'll be lots of anger w/ no clear ideological target target for it, so people would blame individual ministers and local administrators instead.
this could result in a populist current of nazism which some politicians may use to gain political support of the masses
 
I remember a partly-finished TL about a Cold War with the Nazis where the U.S. starts forming alliances of convenience with communists. I suppose that would depend partly on the extent to which (a) the Nazis try to expand their influence by supporting right-wing authoritarian client regimes, and (b) whether right-wing authoritarian movements in other countries actually want to be part of a Nazi-led "bloc" if they get into power or try to stay neutral.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
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.

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.
 
Stalinism was vindicated. It had given the USSR an unprecedented empire in all the history of Russia.. And regardless, the notion that reform is only possible with scenario X isn't true. With real life the possibilities really are endless as to what can happen. Unimaginable things happen all the time.

The USA was for much of its history a genocidal expansionist state, for which it was rewarded with being the most powerful country the world has ever seen. Genocidal manifest destiny ideology was thus vindicated. But Americans still ended up for the disavowing it as wrong.
A nazi victory in the early-mid 40s would be an incredibly stronger proof of Nazism ideological and system supremacy than Stalinism taking control of half of europe after 10 years of famines and purges and 25 millions death in a war that was almost lost. While nazism has inherently much less external appeal than communism, very few people ITTL, be it in germany, in the beaten USSR or in the USA would say that Nazism isn't the "best" thing to have happened to Germany as a nation and isn't the "most effective" way to rule germans. It'd take a lot of time, maybe a full generation of genocide-scale screw ups at least to damage that myth enough that moderation can be considered.
 
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A nazi victory in the early-mid 40s would be an incredibly stronger proof of Nazism ideological and system supremacy than Stalinism taking control of half of europe after 10 years of famines and purges and 25 millions death in a war that was almost lost. While nazism has inherently much less external appeal than communism, very few people ITTL, be it in germany, in the beaten USSR or in the USA would say that Nazism isn't the "best" thing to have happened to Germany as a nation and isn't the "most effective" way to rule germans. It'd take a lot of time, maybe a full generation of genocide-scale screw ups at least to damage that myth enough that moderation can be considered.
That's not how it works. There's plenty of examples of foundational myths being maintained while their full content is contemporaneously not followed. How many of us praise our slaveholding founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington, while not following their example in its entirety? It's entirely feasible for Nazi Germany to liberalize while keeping Hitler around as a foundational mythic figure. The myth does not have to fall for practice to change.
 
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That's not how it works. There's plenty of examples of foundational myths being maintained while their full content is contemporaneously not followed. How many of us praise our slaveholding founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington, while not following their example in its entirety? It's entirely feasible for Nazi Germany to liberalize while keeping Hitler around as a foundational mythic figure. The myth does not have to fall for practice to change.
Sure, but it'd take longer, you then move from one generation to several ones. Nazi germany would still be extreme on the year 2000
 
All this talk of whether or not conquest would “vindicate” an ideology kinda glide over the ways state promulgated ideology actually interacts and reinforces itself among a population. I’ll quote something I wrote in a previous thread discussing Nazi/Soviet indoctrination:

I would just say that I think the idea that proper ideological indoctrination of youth is a thing that would fundamentally stick to the human mind throughout their life with no reason to question it usually never really turns out to be true. The brain reacts to stimuli, and human experiences will almost always clash with an officially rosy state-sponsored narrative of reality. A German kid might be taught that he is biologically superior and lives in a great German rechtstaat where each Aryan son is looked after, but when he’s out in the forests of Belorussia slinging a rifle in the mud and cold or installing toilets for some NSDAP or IG-Farben executive, he’s going to grumble. And sullen grumbling can lead to dangerous conclusions.

The best example of this would probably be the United States. For centuries, the white settler population was indoctrinated with the catechisms of white supremacy and the extermination or enslavement of others. While racist feelings were prevalent, it didn’t create mindless drones who were completely beyond any sort of redemption. Contradictions in the official ideology caused changes among some sectors, and competing interpretations of just how far white supremacy should go (chattel slavery versus free labor, etc.) driven by economic transformations occurred. Things changed and developed from there.

The USSR didn’t collapse because of lack of ideological purity or fervor. Plain apathy was a factor, but a factor downstream of the actual lived experience of its citizens versus what the state-sponsored image of life was. Grumbling and disillusionment because officially you were building socialism but unofficially that appointment you made to fix the faucet is three weeks late and you don’t have the party credentials to speed up the process. It also required the willingness of the nomenklatura to put up the USSR on the international marketplace. That process was downwind of failing economic returns bringing a crisis period.

The same would apply in Nazi Germany, theories of innate human tribalism notwithstanding. You might be educated as a kid that you are great and live in a utopia of genetic supermen, until the necessities of the economy mean you get thrown into a shell factory with shitty pay and a foreman who is constantly denigrating you for wanting to take a thirty minute lunch break instead of a ten minute one. And the labor demanded for maintaining a multi-continental völkisch reich will generate a lot of shitty jobs and unfulfilled expectations that contradict the official ideology. Our friend Donald Duck is actually pretty instructive on this point. Welcome workers of Nazi Land. What a glorious privilege is yours to be a Nazi. To work 48 hours a day for the Führer.” You can lambast the population with official ideology, but if the bread is crusty and the working conditions suck then good luck maintaining that façade. The daily lives experience will be bitter with conscription for far flung occupation duties and the associates psychological toll, economic bust in the years following the war with cartels dominating the market, power struggles among the elite, citizens getting chosen by lottery to leave their homes and livelihoods to go east and start small private farms and estates, etc. It was more effective in the pre-war because it contrasted itself against the world that was made around it. It sought to reverse the “aberration of Versailles” and cleanse the nation so it could be strong. It further benefited from its initial victories in the war. But if you have created your ideal Reich and still things aren’t a paradise, things become trickier.

All this is to say that ideological indoctrination only works if the official state narrative meshes with lived experience. Bread and circuses are primary, and ideology works on top of that to further bind the population into the system. If they aren’t content about day to day humdrum of life, then there’s no reason they would choose to wholeheartedly buy in. If they are then it’s far easier. So instead of asking how we could get stronger ideological programs, a better question would probably be how living conditions could improve for the statistically largest part of the citizenry.

Nazi ideology won’t be glued just because it conquered the continent and then just remain some unassailable bulwark. The ideology will make contact with the day to day lived experience of the citizenry. It will only stick if the German core is prosperous and successful over a period of time. The point has been made on this forum plenty of times (I’ll have to go dig it up), but there’s good reason to believe a post-war Nazi state would be an economic basket case. The colonies in the east will cost far more than they are returning, the settlement plans would fall flat, resistance would require long term occupation and fighting, the army would necessarily have to remain large with conscription in place, blockade imposed by the WAllies would damage the economy, and business-state cartels would dominate the landscape. Nepotism, corruption, and bureaucratic warfare between factions would characterize the political system while a series of forever-war insurgencies drain state resources. I don’t think “they will have their place in the sun and prosperity for Germans ensues” is a solid enough argument considering all the serious problems they’ll face. I’ve seen it said here that they’ll choke trying to swallow. The lived experience of the average German will be forced relocation to eastern settlements, conscription, shortages, and a stifling political environment. That creates disillusionment and resentment over the longue duree.
 
That's not how it works. There's plenty of examples of foundational myths being maintained while their full content is contemporaneously not followed. How many of us praise our slaveholding founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington, while not following their example in its entirety? It's entirely feasible for Nazi Germany to liberalize while keeping Hitler around as a foundational mythic figure. The myth does not have to fall for practice to change.
America is a liberal democracy susceptible to the overton window being moved by small but determined minority grouping. Germany, in this case, is not. The most anything would go in terms of reform would be the otl example of the PRC.
 
That's not how it works. There's plenty of examples of foundational myths being maintained while their full content is contemporaneously not followed. How many of us praise our slaveholding founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington, while not following their example in its entirety? It's entirely feasible for Nazi Germany to liberalize while keeping Hitler around as a foundational mythic figure. The myth does not have to fall for practice to change.
Yeah, how the founders might have actually acted in real life doesn't matter in the context of what really is being referred to here, which is their idealized, mythologized collective picture.
The idea here, pretty much, is to take the most positive and charitable interpretation of their own words—nevermind their own lived hypocrisy; that doesn't matter.

You could do something similiar with Adolf Hitler (although I still think, hypocrisy aside, the idealised values of the Founding Fathers are still somewhat more life-affirming than that of Nazism), I suppose, but given chronological recency, people will be much more skeptical.

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.
 
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America is a liberal democracy susceptible to the overton window being moved by small but determined minority grouping. Germany, in this case, is not. The most anything would go in terms of reform would be the otl example of the PRC.
That's just determinism. Again, the possibilities are essentially endless. The notion that ideologue, authoritarian states cannot ever liberalize in any way is just not true. Even the PRC at one point had significant potential to liberalize before the government decided instead to clamp down and purge its reformist elements.
 
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.
The situation between the Americans and the Natives has not dramatically changed over the last fifty years; remember, the Indian Wars were still in living memory into the 1970s. It doesn't take that long for Americans to generally lament what had happened, even while they still hold racist views of the Indians. It took only a couple decades for faux reconciliation to occur, even as the cultural genocide via the Indian boarding schools continued. I don't think it would be that far-fetched for a victorious Nazi Germany to develop a similar regret-complex by the 90s or 2000s, lamenting the unnecessary bloodshed, dubiously valorizing Slavic resistance, but simultaneously viewing the Germanization of the surviving Slavs as a positive good.

I am also of the opinion that Generalplan Ost would not be carried out as planned. The Nazi bureaucracy was very decentralized and a substantial number of local administrators would see greater economic benefit for themselves in not carrying their orders out to the letter, as IOTL.
 
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Vangogh

Banned
the country would calm down over time as the country is purged of its “undesireables” Eastern europe would be a mixture of slaves and vassal states. But still a deeply similar country. Just that the wars would mostly end and diplomacy would increase

Key cities would be mostly german. St Petersburg would be german among many others.

Lots of economic partnerships with other european countries.

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I reckon a cold war with the UK and USA.
 
I'd agree with the general consensus of it depends, and say if you're looking at a nation that could survive until the 21st century you've basically got two likely outcomes.

A significantly shrunk Nazi Germany, that is North Korea-esque
in this scenario they hold onto their ideological purity, which bluntly does not create a functioning long-term economy, and requires that they treat the conquered people and vassal states that they don't outright exterminate terribly. This system makes the issues of the USSR look like nothing, they still face initially at least the US (and likely the UK and Commonwealth) as economic and ideological enemies so it's not going to sustain itself as a European empire until the modern day. So I'd assume what would happen would be within 20 years or so American backed uprisings or coups (which particularly in the coup case might still effectively be fascist governments just fascist governments friendly to the USA), strip them of most of their influence in the West, Italy which was always more pragmatic anyway goes its own way and they find themselves increasingly economically and politically boxed in. However the ethnic German core (which of course now extends much further east) is holdable. I expect the regime blames the massive recession caused by losing access to his loot economy on international jewary, and uses this to construct a isolationist foreign policy with nukes stopping international intervention. You end up with a paranoid party state in the middle of Europe which spends most of his effort on maintaining internal coherence (with occasional bouts of bloodthirsty, internal politics) and keeping its people from trying to leave the 'fascist utopia', it's technically less bloodthirsty than the Nazis at their worst largely as they've killed off everyone who was in the perceived worst categories beyond naturally renewing groups like political dissidents and the LGBTQ community, but I would expect a very unpleasant effective caste system which find some excuse to demote an awful lot of Germans to slave labour status (lesser Aryans) just to maintain the system and the party when the supply of guest workers dry up (beyond those who are presumably trapped there when their countries manage to get independence), I'd expect the state to go hardcore on the more mystic end of Nazim, and push back against Christian heritage, in part as most of the Christian world would be opposed to them (by the modern day the Pope would almost certainly be calling for an end to the oppression of the regime so Catholics obviously in the political dissidents category...) But beyond ongoing eugenics, oppression, and isolation the exact focuses of the state would properly depend on who ended up as in charge post Hitler. Of course the big issue with the state in comparison to North Korea is it doesn't have a small border instead having a massive border in the east and likely a not insignificant border in the west, so I'd expect a declining population to be an increasingly big problem for it particularly once smart phones are invented and can be easily smuggled in to Germany but it feels perfectly possible, that the loot from the initial conquests could have established enough of a military infrastructure the party was still maintaining actual control over the land itself into the modern day.

A Europewide fascist light system
there was actually a really good timeline which touched on a couple of similar concepts I think about a year ago (although I feel it was a bit too positive about their economic prospects) which I now can't find, in this case with the death of Hitler relatively moderate forces take power and they start cutting a deal with moderates both within Germany and the numerous puppet/client states they've set up in Europe. I don't think this leads to a prc-esque scenario. National Socialism just has too much of an element of red in tooth and claw, while with Maoism it's pretty easy to shift to a oligarchic approach via collectivist logic and leading to a more pragmatic authoritarianism. Instead I think you see something more like Goering's tactics/ mindset at times. So the east is ruthlessly pillaged (with probably some parts of it outright depopulated and settled by Germans although this probably doesn't reach the extent that was originally planned as outside the most profitable parts it's not worth the effort) while supporters maintained in both Germany itself and Western Europe by a kleptocratic system of rewarding local dictators and party members. Possibly not dissimilar to Putin's Russia pre-war with Ukraine but with a much more openly vicious side in East, and a little bit more ideological coherence (not to mention much more actual wealth and power just given what it controls). Things likeky loosen substantially socially, you likely get more of a presentation of some democracy and freedom (but in reality the party apparatus keeps control) and generally the regime shift to something which the West may not like but can at least tolerate leading to a degree of opening up. Eugenics sticks around in some form (it's such a core part of the regime), but I'd expect Aryan status to become effectively purchasable for the elites from the client regimes, it probably evolves (outside of the East which continues to be horrific/evolve into a pseudo-serfdom) into a sort of tiered welfare system, and is one of those things that occasionally shocks Westerners/discourages tourists (very firm warnings not to visit if you can't arrange your paperwork demonstrating you Aryan and even post-liberalisation every now and again someone ignores this and bad stuff happens) My suspicion is the resulting state is an awful lot poorer than Europe OTL, but still a major power just due to the sheer volume of territory it controls and has some intentional trade eh big souce of sweatshop labour.
Internationally politically it's firmly a big regional power but with not many friends abroad (even the relatively mild streak of eugenics makes it a lot harder for it to do what Russia or China has done OTL of appeal to say Africa as an alternative to the USA and built its own sphere of influence), 50-50 odds ends up on the Security Council of the UN equivalent just given its vast size and presumably substantial nuclear arsenal.
 
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There is an excellent Alternate History book called "The Children's War" by J.N. Stroyar that addresses this. It is the first of a short series of books. Unlike some AH, this is a very serious, sober, well-written and plausible set of books. It shows that Nazi Germany absolutely could have won WW2, and what would have likely happened if it had prevailed. It has only two Points of Divergence: 1) Nazi Germany never attacks the USSR and 2) it focuses much more of its resources on developing atomic weapons. I could actually see number 1 happening, and the book does give an explanation. IF Germany never attacks the USSR, and IF the USSR continues to supply large quantities of oil, food, and other raw materials to Germany by the trainload, in exchange for finished goods from Germany, than I actually think it is quite likely that Germany, with much more time/money/resources would, in all likelihood, focus much more energy on developing a nuclear weapon. In the books, it is shown that Germany gradually infiltrates and takes over all of France, including the "Vichy France" that existed IOTL, Italy, Spain, and pretty much all of Western Europe, and eventually invades and occupies Great Britain. After that a Three Sided Cold War starts between the USSR, the USA, and the Greater German Reich. Germany develops a system of actual slavery, and works to "Germanize" England and other nations, and uses racial classification systems to separate people. It shows how once large, powerful countries acquire nuclear weapons, and armed peace between perceived equals or near-equals results. If I recall correctly, Nazi Germany even develops allies with like-minded countries, such as South Africa.
 
Nazi Germany is not going to fall like the USSR, especially as many region would either be ethnically cleansed or simply be fully under the German boot to rebel. If Germany does last to the 80s any hope of restarting the old nations is going to be near impossible especially as their is likely going to be a lot less of the original people left to revive them and a lot more Germans. Weather it reforms or not this Germany is still going to be the major continental power and would still hold a lot of land.
Would they cleanse the French or Dutch or Scandinavians or Italians? Sure the Slavs would be wiped out or used as a slave class( though I’m sure it would only be those who took up arms against them) but do the French or Danes just simply go along with Nazi Germany? I don’t know if it quite goes like that. Granted if you install Quisling and Petain types it might be easier.
 
To me, one of the worst tropes of Alternate history is the ludicrous claim that "Germany never could have won WW2." I actually think Germany did win WW2, and then Hitler chose to lose it by invading the USSR and declaring war on the US. If he had just stopped after the Fall of France, as discussed in the work I referenced supra, and allowed Germany to continue to enjoy its ongoing trade relationship with the USSR, vitiating the need to conquer for oil or other raw materials, the war was theirs to lose. I have long thought that all they had to do was stay on course, gradually subverting first the Vich government, than Italy, than Spain, turning them from allies of Nazi Germany to part of the German empire over time. The Germans demonstrated the ability to peacefully take over allied countries with the bloodless Anschluss of Austria. As the German empire grew ever bigger, ever stronger, ever more populated, it would continue to exploit natural resources from the USSR and from Europe--perhaps just taking things they needed, like Iron ore and coal, instead of trading for them. It would field more and larger armies, open new airfields, build and deploy more ships and submarines, until England had no chacne to survive and onslaught from a very large, very powerful, motivated Empire of all of Western Europe arrayed against it. Germany absolutely could have won WW2, and if alternate timelines do exist, perhaps it did win in most of them. It took a pretty amazing set of very bad choices to lose the war after not only crushing France, but chasing the British Expeditionary Force off of continental Europe at Dunkirk. Just making rational, common sense decisions--like NOT letting so many British troops get away, and NOT invading a nation providing Germany much needed oil, food, and other resources--a modicum of common sense, and the Allies would have been wholly defeated over time.
 
Would they cleanse the French or Dutch or Scandinavians or Italians? Sure the Slavs would be wiped out or used as a slave class( though I’m sure it would only be those who took up arms against them) but do the French or Danes just simply go along with Nazi Germany? I don’t know if it quite goes like that. Granted if you install Quisling and Petain types it might be easier.
I read the series of books long ago, and don't remember, but I think it had to do with how "Aryan" a person was considered to be. In addition, remember, being Scandinavian and speaking/writing/reading German and understanding German culture are two different things. Respectfully, to me, installing phony dictators was a temporary measure. Long term, Germany's plan was to invade and absorb these nations wholly, to be run and governed by native Germans. Again, I think that all of this could have happened, and in fact was happening, right up until Germany invaded the USSR. I honestly believe they had the war won after the Fall of France. They could have just seized and occupied more and more territory throughout Western Europe, built more ships/submarines/harbors/naval yards/airfields and gone from strength to strength. Absent the massive deployment of resources on the Eastern Front, destroying England's holdings in the Middle East would have been quite easy. Hitler himself acknowledged that invading the USSR was a mistake later in the war. Hitler "believed his own BS". He had this idea that the USSR was on the verge of collapse in his head, and no facts, objective reality, or simple common sense could divest him of that notion. It's called Confirmation Bias, where people believe what they want to believe, and ignore what is objectively true and sensible. It brings people and nations down all the time.
 
Would they cleanse the French or Dutch or Scandinavians or Italians? Sure the Slavs would be wiped out or used as a slave class( though I’m sure it would only be those who took up arms against them) but do the French or Danes just simply go along with Nazi Germany? I don’t know if it quite goes like that. Granted if you install Quisling and Petain types it might be easier.
Why would they cleanse them? The Germans did not want to exterminate them and just wanted them under their heel rather than extermination. Plus let's face it unlike say Ukraine or Poland the entirety of Western Europe is going to be dominated by German economy even if they do not wish to simply on account of geography and population.
 
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