HellHound01
Banned
From what I’ve seen most people here say they would have collapsed if they had won WW2. It seems unlikely to me. I mean I can’t see a huge difference between them and the Soviets and the Reds lasted a long time after WW2.
If Nazi Germany won, how long would they last?
- Thread starter HellHound01
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HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
There's a world of difference between the Germans and the Soviets though. The Soviets plus their client states have a population and natural resource stockpiles that can easily build, equip, and maintain a gigantic military force the likes of which the world has never seen. Germany has resources and manpower as well but on a lesser scale. They're a major power that could and did have major victories some of the finest forces the world but ultimately Germany is simply in an untenable position in a lot of ways. Outside of Italy and Japan and other mostly inconsequential Axis powers like Hungary the Germans are largely an international pariah in their time of existence, basically like North Korea if it were surrounded by it's enemies and dangerously overstretched trying to not only fight in, but also to occupy and pacify neighboring regions as well.
In the long term Germany as a Nazi state will not be long for this world, it's a magnitude smaller in its threat level than the Soviets, even with nuclear weapons. Germany would be stupid to pick a fight (and it would do that) after a war victory. It'll find itself in a huge war trying to defend a vastly overextended German empire amid a sea of strong foes, many of which are individually a match for Germany but will devastate it when faced all at once. A victorious Germany only makes itself a huge target and makes it a lot easier for ambitious leaders like Stalin to set up shop in Germany and Eastern Europe once the fighting is over with.
In the long term Germany as a Nazi state will not be long for this world, it's a magnitude smaller in its threat level than the Soviets, even with nuclear weapons. Germany would be stupid to pick a fight (and it would do that) after a war victory. It'll find itself in a huge war trying to defend a vastly overextended German empire amid a sea of strong foes, many of which are individually a match for Germany but will devastate it when faced all at once. A victorious Germany only makes itself a huge target and makes it a lot easier for ambitious leaders like Stalin to set up shop in Germany and Eastern Europe once the fighting is over with.
Solomaxwell6
Banned
Nazi Germany basically created a jumpstart to the economy by building up a big war industry without allowing the rest of the economy to recover. The economic controls they imposed were geared completely towards heavy industry and whatever could help out the war effort at the expense of consumer and light industry. That's great for short term war purposes, but it means most civilians still don't have a great deal of money, which means lowered tax revenues, which means the government can't keep subsidizing the war industry. There are ways to get around this problem. You can cut a section of the population loose, and redistribute their wealth (either to the population as a whole, or to the government to help keep buying more tanks and bombs). You have the same amount of wealth, but within a smaller section of the population, so wealth per capita increases. The Nazis, of course, did that with the various undesirables like Romani, Jews, and homosexuals. Or you can get the wealth of outside sources via conquest. More wealth over the same number of people once again means a per capita increase. And once again, this was a tactic the Nazis used.
Both are unsustainable. In the former, you're eventually going to run out of undesirables, and the population decrease will stall the proper recovery of industry. It's possible that the Germans keep expanding the holocaust (only proper Germanic types are allowed to live, throw the French to the ovens... only true Germans are allowed to live, send the Dutch to take some showers), but that can only go on for so long. And in the latter, obviously there are only so many places one can conquer. In this scenario, with a Nazi world conquest, obviously they've reached the endgame and there's no place left.
So with a decimated population, crippled consumer economy, all the war destruction, the World Nazi economy doesn't have much of a hope.
The consumer and light industry of the Nazi empire was largely nonexistent. The instant they stop the artificial inflation of the economy through war industry, there's not going to be anything to replace it. Of course, they could use their money to fund light industry, which is what I assume you're getting at. But you can't build industry overnight. Economics does not work that way. The Nazis would be plunged back into the state they started with—major depression and inflation—until they could manage to get that light industry underway, a process that would take a few years, minimum. Under normal circumstances, that's fine. A nation can weather a depression. It obviously sucks, but it's something one can get through. But when you control an area dominated by people who hate you, hate your policies, and see you as an occupier, that's not going to happen. If you lower your guard, you will die. Every man, woman, and child living in occupied territories is a potential franc-tireur. In this situation, the Germans are going to be the ones with the big guns. But having a big gun doesn't help when you're thousands of miles away from home and outnumbered 1000:1.
It's a Catch 22. If Nazi Germany tries to rebuild its economy, it will damage its ability to respond to military threats (uprisings and so forth). And if it decides to rebuild its military to respond to those threats, it will lack the funds necessary to fix the economy. Running an empire is fucking expensive!
The fact that German economy and industry was pretty much fucked in the 30s shouldn't surprise you, and I can assume you won't argue with that. When the Nazis came to power, they introduced a lot of programs that created illusory boosts in economy (big public works programs that took hundreds of thousands of people and drastically lowered unemployment, but were really just busy work that didn't stimulate the economy or provide any meaningful skills or even long-term jobs to the workers). Much of that isn't going to provide long term changes.
Check out this link for a lot more details. It was written by a history PhD student... he was still a master's degree student when he wrote that, but it looks like he specializes in 20th century administration.
As for your idea of "stealing" Eastern European light industry... keep in mind, this is going to be after a war. A lot of that industry is going to be destroyed. That tends to happen after largescale bombing. They're going to be killing off a big portion of the local population. They might be able to utilize some of the local population as slave labor to run the factories, but the factories are going to be severely underutilized... And you can bet your ass there will be plenty of sabotage. They can bring over native Germans to run the factories, but they won't instantly be able to figure out how it works. Even Germans with experience in industry can't switch from building tanks to building TVs with a snap of Hitler's fingers. You have to factor in decent amounts of time in training... Particularly with maintenance. Rebuilding a lot of the factory equipment is not easy, many of the natives are absolutely NOT going to be helpful, and that's not really something you can just eyeball, try to fix, and hope for the best.
And let's say Germany does do its best to reorient towards light industry. It'll be tough. It'll take a lot of time and money. It'll probably lead towards an industrial crash when tons of money is suddenly taken out of the war industrial sector, and put into a consumer industrial sector that won't pay dividends for years. But let's assume Germany manages to weather the storm. Why should outside nations let Germany be? In the case of a standard "Germany wins and gets hegemony over Europe" scenario, we have a humiliated Britain, an occupied France, a relatively untouched America. While Germany is slowly trading their rifles for toasters, why would all of its enemies stand still? In a "Germany splits the world with Japan," why should Japan sit still? They were tentative allies at best, and the Japanese know very well they're going to be Germany's next target. In a "Germany has conquered the world" scenario, their best hope is switching to a completely agrarian society after wiping out most of the earth. If they don't do that, and merely installed puppet governments, what's stopping those puppet governments from wrestling away control and breaking out of the German sphere? And there's no way Germany alone will be able to directly control the earth unless they've wiped out pretty much the entire human race besides themselves.
Is it possible for the Nazis to successfully shift away from the sort of economic and societal controls that made Germany's economy unsustainable? Yes. But if that happened, the Nazis would no longer be Nazis as we recognize them.
Both are unsustainable. In the former, you're eventually going to run out of undesirables, and the population decrease will stall the proper recovery of industry. It's possible that the Germans keep expanding the holocaust (only proper Germanic types are allowed to live, throw the French to the ovens... only true Germans are allowed to live, send the Dutch to take some showers), but that can only go on for so long. And in the latter, obviously there are only so many places one can conquer. In this scenario, with a Nazi world conquest, obviously they've reached the endgame and there's no place left.
So with a decimated population, crippled consumer economy, all the war destruction, the World Nazi economy doesn't have much of a hope.
The consumer and light industry of the Nazi empire was largely nonexistent. The instant they stop the artificial inflation of the economy through war industry, there's not going to be anything to replace it. Of course, they could use their money to fund light industry, which is what I assume you're getting at. But you can't build industry overnight. Economics does not work that way. The Nazis would be plunged back into the state they started with—major depression and inflation—until they could manage to get that light industry underway, a process that would take a few years, minimum. Under normal circumstances, that's fine. A nation can weather a depression. It obviously sucks, but it's something one can get through. But when you control an area dominated by people who hate you, hate your policies, and see you as an occupier, that's not going to happen. If you lower your guard, you will die. Every man, woman, and child living in occupied territories is a potential franc-tireur. In this situation, the Germans are going to be the ones with the big guns. But having a big gun doesn't help when you're thousands of miles away from home and outnumbered 1000:1.
It's a Catch 22. If Nazi Germany tries to rebuild its economy, it will damage its ability to respond to military threats (uprisings and so forth). And if it decides to rebuild its military to respond to those threats, it will lack the funds necessary to fix the economy. Running an empire is fucking expensive!
The fact that German economy and industry was pretty much fucked in the 30s shouldn't surprise you, and I can assume you won't argue with that. When the Nazis came to power, they introduced a lot of programs that created illusory boosts in economy (big public works programs that took hundreds of thousands of people and drastically lowered unemployment, but were really just busy work that didn't stimulate the economy or provide any meaningful skills or even long-term jobs to the workers). Much of that isn't going to provide long term changes.
Check out this link for a lot more details. It was written by a history PhD student... he was still a master's degree student when he wrote that, but it looks like he specializes in 20th century administration.
As for your idea of "stealing" Eastern European light industry... keep in mind, this is going to be after a war. A lot of that industry is going to be destroyed. That tends to happen after largescale bombing. They're going to be killing off a big portion of the local population. They might be able to utilize some of the local population as slave labor to run the factories, but the factories are going to be severely underutilized... And you can bet your ass there will be plenty of sabotage. They can bring over native Germans to run the factories, but they won't instantly be able to figure out how it works. Even Germans with experience in industry can't switch from building tanks to building TVs with a snap of Hitler's fingers. You have to factor in decent amounts of time in training... Particularly with maintenance. Rebuilding a lot of the factory equipment is not easy, many of the natives are absolutely NOT going to be helpful, and that's not really something you can just eyeball, try to fix, and hope for the best.
And let's say Germany does do its best to reorient towards light industry. It'll be tough. It'll take a lot of time and money. It'll probably lead towards an industrial crash when tons of money is suddenly taken out of the war industrial sector, and put into a consumer industrial sector that won't pay dividends for years. But let's assume Germany manages to weather the storm. Why should outside nations let Germany be? In the case of a standard "Germany wins and gets hegemony over Europe" scenario, we have a humiliated Britain, an occupied France, a relatively untouched America. While Germany is slowly trading their rifles for toasters, why would all of its enemies stand still? In a "Germany splits the world with Japan," why should Japan sit still? They were tentative allies at best, and the Japanese know very well they're going to be Germany's next target. In a "Germany has conquered the world" scenario, their best hope is switching to a completely agrarian society after wiping out most of the earth. If they don't do that, and merely installed puppet governments, what's stopping those puppet governments from wrestling away control and breaking out of the German sphere? And there's no way Germany alone will be able to directly control the earth unless they've wiped out pretty much the entire human race besides themselves.
Is it possible for the Nazis to successfully shift away from the sort of economic and societal controls that made Germany's economy unsustainable? Yes. But if that happened, the Nazis would no longer be Nazis as we recognize them.
This.
There's a vast difference between a favourable peace with the west and sovs due to mutual exhaustion vs a crushed soviet union but still largely intact west vs a Naziwankers paradise.
In the first two there is likely to be substantial insurrection in occupied territory covertly supported by the surviving world powers which, in conjunction with the possibility of WW2 round II, will imply Germany must maintain a large army which in turn will sap resources which could be used elsewhere and probably ultimatly push a Nazi collapse.
The latter, on the other hand, the Germans face no real imminant threat (well, there is Japan... but you've got a f**k load of Steppes and Ocean in between), so resources can be moved into developing other facets of teh economy, perhaps buying time for reform and ultimatly allowing Germany to survive.
The main problem is the nature of the Nazi regime itself, the effects of warfare would be secondary to the corrupting and debilitating effects of prolonged Nazi rule over Germany.
Corruption, militarism, economic mismanagement, anti-science/intellectualism, cultural sterility. And lack of ideological doctrine beyond Hitler’s disjointed ravings. Along with other crap I haven’t mentioned would screw Germany up so badly in the long term It’d look like a cross between Zaire and North Korea.
Corruption, militarism, economic mismanagement, anti-science/intellectualism, cultural sterility. And lack of ideological doctrine beyond Hitler’s disjointed ravings. Along with other crap I haven’t mentioned would screw Germany up so badly in the long term It’d look like a cross between Zaire and North Korea.
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archaeogeek
Banned
You also have confusing overlapping jurisdictions, competing party and civilian local leaderships apart from each other, all the way to the way the federal administration was set up with nazi Gauleiter overlapping on the various states of Germany.
That you can't see the difference between nazi germany and the soviets doesn't mean there was none. One system was based around a strong bureaucracy, the other around quasi-feudal local strongmen.
This. Also, the Soviets had many bulit-in advantages that the Nazis never would had they "won" the war.
How long a victorious Nazi Germany will last depends on many factors:
First of all, what is the exact question:
How long will Adolf Hitler's rule last? How long will Germany have a ruler who is a member of the Nazi party? How long will Germany be a dictatorship? How long will Germany be a great power? How long will any entity called Germany last?
The possible answers depend of course on which of these questions you are asking.
Then of course a lot depends what kind of Nazi Germany victory you have in mind. Victory after a successful Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union? Victory in a war of mutual exhaustion? Victory in a nuclear war?
Another important factor is the extent and the speed with which Germany re-adopts free-market mechanisms for its economy.
Still another important factor is whether the Nazis manage to come up with a peaceful mechanism for transition from one ruler to the next, which did exist in the Soviet Union, but which cannot at all be taken for granted in a dictatorship.
All in all, the answers could vary between "several months" and "several decades longer than communism."
BlairWitch749
Banned
the biggest factor is how and why they won, followed by when
If in 1940 Britain bows out and Germany engages in no other conflicts and maintains a cold war anti communist thing against the USSR, they would be fine... their economy would just have to spool down off of constant war footing and they would have to demobilize a lot of the army... at this point Hitler has known nothing but victory, he can revert back to a regular sleeping and eating schedule and probably live till 1955 or 1960 without any special difficulty
some reorganization of the party would be inevitable for stability purposes
winning that early butterflies away the growth of the power and influence of the SS and Himmler... he would be replaced by someone more competent... after a short successful war, Todt and Goering might retire relatively shortly after to be replaced by younger more effective men
With a victory this early hitler never gets himself into the micromanage the hell out of the army mode he got into in late 1941, he reverts to head of state and commander in chief... ideally (from a functional sense) hess and goering are replaced by more capable men (even more ideally Goering's many offices are split up amongst several people) and Hitler is able to delegate more effectively and keep his stress levels manageable and keep the number of important decisions he has to make minimal, and take lots of vacations with eva to ensure he doesn't get overworked and make lots of mistakes
In a scenario where Germany forces Russia to the table from a position of strength (probably some time in late '42 after a successful case blue) and the allies make peace due to a lack of strategic options against germany its a whole different ball game
If in 1940 Britain bows out and Germany engages in no other conflicts and maintains a cold war anti communist thing against the USSR, they would be fine... their economy would just have to spool down off of constant war footing and they would have to demobilize a lot of the army... at this point Hitler has known nothing but victory, he can revert back to a regular sleeping and eating schedule and probably live till 1955 or 1960 without any special difficulty
some reorganization of the party would be inevitable for stability purposes
winning that early butterflies away the growth of the power and influence of the SS and Himmler... he would be replaced by someone more competent... after a short successful war, Todt and Goering might retire relatively shortly after to be replaced by younger more effective men
With a victory this early hitler never gets himself into the micromanage the hell out of the army mode he got into in late 1941, he reverts to head of state and commander in chief... ideally (from a functional sense) hess and goering are replaced by more capable men (even more ideally Goering's many offices are split up amongst several people) and Hitler is able to delegate more effectively and keep his stress levels manageable and keep the number of important decisions he has to make minimal, and take lots of vacations with eva to ensure he doesn't get overworked and make lots of mistakes
In a scenario where Germany forces Russia to the table from a position of strength (probably some time in late '42 after a successful case blue) and the allies make peace due to a lack of strategic options against germany its a whole different ball game
archaeogeek
Banned
On that one: not very long, he was drugged up, had advanced Parkinson's disease and was 56 in 1945. If he remains in power much longer, he'll probably be mostly used as a puppet king.
There are all sorts of other problems too:
1. As Urban Fox says, cultural sterility. Which in time can lead to political revolt when cultural revolt takes off.
2. Nazism was fundamentally based on fear of enemies and the need to crush them- once they are settled as masters of Europe, they either turn on nobody and lose their raison d'etre, or they suddenly pick some new enemy, internal or external. I could see a victorious Nazi regime making the mistake of settling scores with the Catholic Church.
3. The point you make about the local strongmen is a good one. In time, there would surely be internal conflict, especially if some elements demanded the original socialism aspect to be stressed.
BlairWitch749
Banned
In 1945, he had 6 years of horrendous eating and sleeping habits, massive levels of stress and depression and worked too much; on top of being VERY close to a large explosion which damaged his inner ears and might have caused brain damage
If the war ends in 1940 he hasn't been subjected to the overwhelming majority of this and has a much higher chance of being able to live longer/healthier
He might have long term health issues that where going to come up BUT surely the war made them worse and probably earlier than they would have been other wise... I mean his father lived to be like 80 something
How big Germany's resources would have been, depends on several factors.
The first three that come to mind are:
1. Which territories does Germany rule?
2. How badly is the economy of these territories affected by the war?
3. How soon and how thoroughly will Germany re-adopt market mechanisms for its economy?
If Germany rules over most of what it has conquered during World War II, the destruction is not worse than destruction through the air war in the historical WW II, and Germany re-adopts market mechanisms soon and thoroughly, then Germany's gross domestic product will be vastly bigger than that of the OTL post-war Soviet Union.
Yes, that's right, not just bigger, but vastly bigger: The GDP of tiny West Germany was always very much bigger than that of the contemporary Soviet Union, though the Soviet Union was several times bigger in population and umpteen times richer in territory and natural resources. Now imagine the industry of a capitalist East Germany, Silesia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, the Baltic states and the Ukraine added to the West German market economy...
Admittedly in the scenario mentioned above all three factors (territory, degree of destruction and the degree to which the economy is a market economy) work in favor of Germany. But even in a scenario where this is not the case - in OTL where many elements of a command economy hampered the German economy - Germany's economy was stronger than that of the Soviet Union:
During any given year between 1938 and 1944 Germany (as defined by its 1937 borders) produced more steel than the Soviet Union. If we add the various territories occupied by Germany after 1937, Germany's superiority over the Soviet Union becomes quite marked: in 1940 it was 19,1 million tonnes for Germany (1937 borders) + 10,7 million tonnes from the German-occupied areas versus 19,0 million tonnes for the Soviet Union.
During the next two years in OTL the situation shifted dramatically in Germany's favor:
1941 20,8 + 11,7 for Germany 14,5 for the Soviet Union
1942 20,5 + 12,9 for Germany 10,0 for the Soviet Union
Even in 1944 Germany produced 18,3 million tonnes and the Soviet Union 16,4 million tonnes.
Italy and Japan are much more important allies than the OTL Soviet Union ever had, after Mao ended his alliance. Nazi Germany will be seen as the brutal totalitarian dictatorship that it is - just as OTL's Soviet Union - but it will be impossible to overlook it or ignore it
Nazi Germany would be like North Korea in so far as it would be a totalitarian dictatorship (otherwise it would no longer be Nazi Germany), and in all probability also in so far as it would have a sycophantic cult of the "beloved leader", whoever that might be. The parallells probably end here. Germany would be far wealthier than North Korea, because:
A even in a worst case scenarion, it would still have strong market elements in its economy
B Germany rules over a vastly greater territory and has a vastly greater population, which allows for many economies of scales.
C In all probability, Germany would also trade far more with other countries than North Korea.
For the end of this post, the simplest argument:
Let's just assume that, against all likelyhood, Nazi Germany does become like North Korea. Why would that mean that it would "collapse"?
North Korea has not collapsed, either. Starvation and brutal repression, yes, but that is not the same as "collapse".
about making external enemies, it is easy for the Nazis to do so. They can point to the United States and their propaganda mills can act as a lifeline, though I don't know how long that lasts, especially as the industrial juggernaut that is the USA can easily outproduce the bloodied reich, which will inevitably crumble as a result of an impossible challenge to crush both external and internal enemies.
The USA could even more easily outproduce the economy of the USSR (substantially smaller than the German (or West German) economy), the USSR had to wage an internal guerilla against Baltic and Ukraine partisans for years after WW II, the loyalty of its Warsaw Pact allies was more than just a little dubious, China, its most important ally, turned into an enemy ... and yet the "inevitable crumble" happened only after many decades after WW II.
It is perfectly possible that Nazi rule in Germany would have lasted equally long or longer, although of course a much shorter Nazi rule, perhaps ended by an internal power struggle within the Nazi party, is also possible.
I say Nazi power lasts to the present day. with Adolf Hitler and Eva's grandchild running the shizham. and the Jewish Population of Germany extinct (no Jews in Germany)
That doesn't sound right. This source has the following figures:
1950 Germany 265; USSR 510
1960 Germany 558; USSR 843
1970 Germany 843; USSR 1352
1980 Germany 1105; USSR 1709
1990 Germany 1264; USSR 1988
Admittedly the table does not break out West Germany, but I think we see a clear trend. Comparing West Germany with Russia would be a lot closer, but vastly bigger? I think not.
Regards
R