If the July 20th Plot Had Succeeded...

Members of Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst did many atrocities against other Jews in Ghettos, and helped with deportations to death camps-they were Nazis?


I don't think he included the Jewish Poles when he said Poles, only ethnic Poles.
Poland has a long history of antisemitism, much worse than Germany until the Holocaust changed things.

You had massacres of Jews in Poland after the Holocaust, for example in Kielce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_Pogrom

Many Jews who had escaped to the Soviet Union were driven out from Poland after the war.

One of the Problems for the Jews in Poland was that they were associated with the Communists. Jews have always been high-achievers, so a disproportionately high number of Communist leaders had Jewish names, as do a disproportionate number of bankers.

To make things worse, when the Poles were turning to Catholicism to keep their national identity intact during the partitions of Poland the Jews did not fit in with that, they instead saw the promise of socialism, of an egalitarian society without nation borders as a better solution for them, so many embraced socialism. So Jews were in many Polish eyes, just as in Nazi German eyes, associated with the hated Bolsheviks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBydokomuna

and they were made to suffer, when opportunity was given.
 

Adler

Banned
I don't think he included the Jewish Poles when he said Poles, only ethnic Poles.
Poland has a long history of antisemitism, much worse than Germany until the Holocaust changed things.

You had massacres of Jews in Poland after the Holocaust, for example in Kielce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_Pogrom

Many Jews who had escaped to the Soviet Union were driven out from Poland after the war.

One of the Problems for the Jews in Poland was that they were associated with the Communists. Jews have always been high-achievers, so a disproportionately high number of Communist leaders had Jewish names, as do a disproportionate number of bankers.

To make things worse, when the Poles were turning to Catholicism to keep their national identity intact during the partitions of Poland the Jews did not fit in with that, they instead saw the promise of socialism, of an egalitarian society without nation borders as a better solution for them, so many embraced socialism. So Jews were in many Polish eyes, just as in Nazi German eyes, associated with the hated Bolsheviks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Żydokomuna

and they were made to suffer, when opportunity was given.

Indeed that I mean.

Adler
 
Poland has a long history of antisemitism, much worse than Germany until the Holocaust changed things.
It is why Poland had biggest jewish population in Europe by centuries.
And antisemitism is not equal to Nazism! In another case tsarist Russia or 15th century Spain should be considered as Nazi states.
 
An alternative way to break the Nazi system open

...well, you can make guesses at what happens next. Can also pick the POD as to how they pull it off. ;)

I think a better question is, what if the SS prosecutor Georg Conrad Morgen had succeed in bringing Adolf Hitler to trial/exposing the Holocaust? I think this would have stood a better chance of completelly changing the timeline.

If the Holocaust could have been forced to the surface of public knowledge it would have resulted in a popular break with the Nazis. Morgen managed to bring many concentration camp bosses to trial, and convicted.

This is from his statement at the Nuremberg trials, where he was called as a witness:

The circumstances prevailing in Germany during the war were no longer normal in the sense of State legal guarantees. Besides, the following must be considered: I was not simply a judge, but I was a judge of military penal justice. No court-martial in the world could bring the Supreme Commander, let alone the head of the State, to court.

...it was not possible for me as Obersturmbannfuehrer to arrest Hitler, who, as I saw it, was the instigator of these orders.

On the basis of this insight, I realized that something had to be done immediately to put an end to this action. Hitler had to be induced to withdraw his orders. Under the circumstances, this could be done only by Himmler as Minister of the Interior and Minister of the Police.

I thought at that time that I must endeavor to approach Himmler through the heads of the departments and make it clear to him, by explaining the effects of this system, that through these methods the State was being led straight into an abyss. Therefore I approached my immediate superior, the chief of the Criminal Police, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Nebe; then I turned to the chief of the Main Office SS Courts, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Breithaupt. I also approached Kaltenbrunner and the chief of the Gestapo, Gruppenfuehrer Muller, and Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl of the Economic and Administrative Main Office, and the Reichsarzt, Gruppenfuehrer Dr. Grawitz.

But aside from taking these necessary steps, I saw a practical way open to me by way of justice; that is, by removing from this system of destruction the leaders and important elements through the means offered by the system itself., I could not do this with regard to the killings ordered by the head of the State, but I could do it for killings outside of this order, or against this order, or for other serious crimes.

For that reason, I deliberately started proceedings against these men, and this would have led to a shake-up of this system and its final collapse. But these activities had another far-reaching effect in the near future, for through the big concentration camp trials against Commander Koch, of whom I spoke earlier, and against the head of the political section at Auschwitz-Kriminalsekretur Untersturmfuehrer Grabner, whom I charged with murder in 2,000 cases outside of this extermination action-the whole affair of these killings had to be brought to trial.

It was to be expected that the perpetrators would refer to higher orders also for these individual crimes. This occurred; thereupon the SS jurisdiction, on the basis of the material which I supplied, approached the highest government chiefs and officially asked, "Did you order these killings? Is the legal fact of murder no longer valid for you? What general orders are there concerning these killings?"

Then the supreme State leadership would either have to admit its mistakes and thereby bring the culprits definitely under our jurisdiction also with regard to the mass exterminations, or else an open break would have to result through the abrogation of the entire judicial system.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-08-46.asp
 
Last edited:
I think the Ethnic Cleansing would have happened anyway. Both the West and the East were in favor of it. The West set it in motion since it would weaken a future Germany, and "compensate" Poland (that they still hoped would be in their camp after the war) for the loss to the Soviet Union of its colonial territories in the east.
http://www.alfreddezayas.com/Chapbooks/Anglo_Ampittsb.doc

It's really ridiculous when you look deeper into it. Poland looses territory that they occupied in the early 1920s after winning a war with the Soviet Union, a territory where Poles constitute only a small minority of probably less than 3 million. When they have to give the land back, they are "compensated" with almost purely German territory populated by 10 million Germans. Even the bit where they spoke Polish, Masuria, had voted to remain with Germany in the referendums after World War I.

For the Soviet Union it was a clever strategic move in order to put Poland in the Soviet camp. Give them a huge and rich chunk of German land, and the Poles will eagerly gobble it up. And then they will be eternally afraid that the Germans will one day want to take it back. Therefore Poland will have no choice but to forever snuggle up to Russia as its protector against Germany.

When in September 1946 the US made noises that perhaps Poland should not have so huge a chunk of Germany, the reaction was predictable. General Wojciech Jaruzelski, dictator of Poland in the 80s:

"It was a shocking statement. It made us think that our western border was being questioned by the Germans and by other Western countries. It was one of the most important things that strengthened our ties with the Soviet Union."
http://web.archive.org/web/20070518...com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/02/script.html

Clever Russians.

But would that have happened in a scenario in 1944 where the Nazi state, post-Hitler, unconditionally surrenders to the USSR *and* the democracies?
 
But would that have happened in a scenario in 1944 where the Nazi state, post-Hitler, unconditionally surrenders to the USSR *and* the democracies?

I do think it would have happened. The dismemberment of Germany had been pretty much decided already in November/ 1 December 1943 at the Teheran conference, even if they did not publish any "official statement" about it. A German surrender in 1944 would not have changed their plans. At Teheran they also discussed dividing the remaining part of Germany into smaller "Germanies".

Look at the public records (I would love to see those that are still sealed)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1943CairoTehran

Page:
512. Stalin and Churchill discuss expanding the borders of Poland over German lands west to the river Oder, and Churchill demonstrates with matches how he foresees the border changes.

513. Stalin opposes the "unconditional surrender" demand. He feels that giving the Germans at least some terms, no matter how harsh, will hasten the surrender.

600. President Roosevelt discusses his pet idea for splitting up Germany into several independent states.

602 - 603 Churchill states he is in favor of dividing Germany in two, even if it only lasts for 50 years.

603 Churchill proposes to Stalin giving Poland the German territory east of the Oder river border.
 
Last edited:
...so, what do you think would've happened, then?

If through some miracle the coup succeeded, the new government would have tried to negotiate for surrender-terms. They still had a lot of territory to bargain with. This is the situation in August 1944.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1944-08-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg

The Western allies may have had difficulties explaining to the home-front why they choose to continue the fight, but i think they would have. Both the Russians and the Allies would have held each other to the agreement not to sign a separate peace.

One of the worries of the West, that at this time was facing a very low proportion of the German armed forces, was that a rapid collapse of German armed forces might mean the Communist armies might even end up in France. This fear could complicate things.

Option 1. The new German government offers a separate peace to Russia, giving them everything from Greece, Albania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Maybe even also Norway. If they Russians take the offer, the West will be forced to make peace too.

Option 2. The Allies refuse all offers, which means the Germans surrender at their mercy, or fight to the end as in the real timeline. One difference here, depending on the time of the surrender, could be how Germany is divided between the Allies.

The Allied Committee on Dismemberment (rather partitioning) of Germany from March 1945 never reached any conclusion, at least no conclusion that has been declassified.
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box32/t298x01.html

Churchills partitioning proposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duitslandchurchill.png

Roosevelts partitioning proposal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duitslandroosevelt.png

The Morgenthau proposal (he made it before coordinating with Roosevelt which borders Roosevelt prefered)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_Morgenthau_Plan.png

In option 2, possibly a different division (and maybe also a different dismemberment) of Germany could have happened from the division Germany had in the real world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_occupation_zones_with_border.jpg

One important difference in this timeline, and it's not originally mine as i've seen it suggested in the NYT in a memorial article to the resistance, is that with Hitler removed and the resistance surrendering to the Allies, you would still have the dismemberment, partitioning, and ethnic cleansing of Germany. The big difference would be that all that suffering would be blamed on the resistance, and the neo-Nazis and a general thirst for revenge against the Allies would play a much larger role in German politics after the war even until today. Probably there would never be a European Union.
 
Last edited:

Adler

Banned
Perhaps that's just the reason, why the Widerstand needed to continue the fights once it was clear that the Allies would want a Finis Germaniae. And each day of the fightings would let the war weariness in the Western Allies grow. Roosevelt would at one point be forced to rethink the whole situation, as he wanted to be reelected again. And also the three partners, Stalin and Churchill/Roosevelt, would want to get as far as possible to grab as much as they could. You never know, if the other really holds the promises.

Churchill was a realpolitician enough to act accordingly. And Stalin was also not very reluctant to accept offers, which were too good. To offer Stalin the Balcan, Poland, Baltic States and Norway would be a good move for the Germans. Stalin would accept. As he feared, otherwise the Western allies would make a deal with Germany. It might be ironical, but I think, he would be more alligned to sign a treaty with the Germans first.

That would soon free millions of German soldiers from the Eastern Front to be sent to fight the Allies in the west. And likely the Allies would have now severe troubles. They would be forced to sign a peace treaty also with Germany.

OTOH Churchill could be convinced to make a kind of seperate treaty with Germany. Without the Allied air strikes and the logistical help from the western Allies, Stalin would have severe troubles. The logistical chain was near to collapse, when Berlin fell. Now it would be much worse. Stalin would be now forced to sign an agreement with Germany as well.

Adler
 
I know I'm exaggerating quite a bit now, but if the Germans are faced being occupied by friendly G.I.s, distributing chewing gums to german kids and nylon strockings to german Fräuleins or asiatic hordes raping and pillaging their way across Germany it doesn't require an Einstein to make the right decision, i.e. letting the western allies enter Germany unopposed, if possible up to Breslau and Königsberg.

The idea that the Germans were so sanguine about getting occupied by the people whose ‘’sky-pirates’’ were bombing them every night is hard to sustain, and has more to do with retrospection.

The German fear of the Red Army also had more to do with outright racism and the guilty knowledge of the horrifying things their army had done in the East. I also note you used the same term for the Russians that the Nazis did themselves.

In any event, had the Nazis inflicted the equivalent horrors on the British’s or US populations there wouldn’t be a German state in existence today. Churchill would have dropped bloody Anthrax bombs on the lot.

You mean like sending off every possible postwar opposition straight away to the gulag archipelago? Or letting the national resistance bleed itself white while they try to free themselves from german occupation by not helping them?

In fact the Soviets tended to support local Communist parties and their armed-wings. Even in Poland the situation was more like a civil-war with the weaker side having a Great Power to support it.

As for letting the resistance ‘’bleed itself white’’ if you refer to the Warsaw Uprising. The Poles f**ked themselves up. The Red Army units near Warsaw had only just beaten back fierce German counter-attacks and were exhausted. The Poles also didn’t even bother to tell the Red Army about their plans. Oh, and their political goals ran counter to those of the government & army they needed to assist them.:rolleyes:


And why would the G.I.s not make the same "mistake", i.e. treating the vanquished german population kindly, especially since there would not have been the atrocities commited against captured american soldiers as IOTLs Battle of the Bulge or the hardships they had to go through in the the Battle of the Hürtgenwald ITTL.

To be frank most G.I's didnt give half-a-damn about Germany one way or the other and only wanted to the hell out of Europe in one piece. Their attitude towards Germans had more to do with apathy than ‘’kindness’’.
 
Last edited:
The German fear of the Red Army also had more to do with outright racism and the guilty knowledge of the horrifying things their army had done in the East. I also note you used the same term for the Russians that the Nazis did themselves.

I think you are missing a big component here as well. Rommel refered to what Stalin did to the Ukraine as Germany's potental future if conquered by them. The point being the state press in Germany played up the crimes of Stalin for years while the Western media hardly reported on what was happening in the Soviet Union.

The notion in the West among the U.S. public that Uncle Joe was a monster really didn't sink in until the Cold War started and then belatedly the U.S. government started telling people of his crimes and that you know some of those massacres in Eastern Europe that we said were German, well we might have been not totally honest with you.
 
Perhaps that's just the reason, why the Widerstand needed to continue the fights once it was clear that the Allies would want a Finis Germaniae. And each day of the fightings would let the war weariness in the Western Allies grow. Roosevelt would at one point be forced to rethink the whole situation, as he wanted to be reelected again. And also the three partners, Stalin and Churchill/Roosevelt, would want to get as far as possible to grab as much as they could. You never know, if the other really holds the promises.

Churchill was a realpolitician enough to act accordingly. And Stalin was also not very reluctant to accept offers, which were too good. To offer Stalin the Balcan, Poland, Baltic States and Norway would be a good move for the Germans. Stalin would accept. As he feared, otherwise the Western allies would make a deal with Germany. It might be ironical, but I think, he would be more alligned to sign a treaty with the Germans first.

That would soon free millions of German soldiers from the Eastern Front to be sent to fight the Allies in the west. And likely the Allies would have now severe troubles. They would be forced to sign a peace treaty also with Germany.

OTOH Churchill could be convinced to make a kind of seperate treaty with Germany. Without the Allied air strikes and the logistical help from the western Allies, Stalin would have severe troubles. The logistical chain was near to collapse, when Berlin fell. Now it would be much worse. Stalin would be now forced to sign an agreement with Germany as well.

Adler

After 1941 Germany has nothing to offer the USSR short of an immediate and unconditional surrender. The memory of 3 million POWs starved to death in a mere six months and the indiscriminate butchery of Nazi execution squads is far too raw for the USSR. Likewise the West was the one that was more insistent on unconditional surrender (at least IMHO the Soviet hesitation here was fear that their military *would* collapse in an uncertain, long war more than anything else) than the USSR was.

I think you are missing a big component here as well. Rommel refered to what Stalin did to the Ukraine as Germany's potental future if conquered by them. The point being the state press in Germany played up the crimes of Stalin for years while the Western media hardly reported on what was happening in the Soviet Union.

The notion in the West among the U.S. public that Uncle Joe was a monster really didn't sink in until the Cold War started and then belatedly the U.S. government started telling people of his crimes and that you know some of those massacres in Eastern Europe that we said were German, well we might have been not totally honest with you.

The West actually had plenty of proto-Cold War rhetoric as regarded the USSR pre-WWII. The problem was that it sincerely expected the USSR to impose a "democracy" in a meaningful sense in its postwar empire, and that they thought totalitarian monsters were going to change their stripes had nothing to do with what Stalin and company ever said or did. The "betrayal" of Yalta was nothing but Western self-delusion, the USSR never changed anything at all.
 
The West actually had plenty of proto-Cold War rhetoric as regarded the USSR pre-WWII. The problem was that it sincerely expected the USSR to impose a "democracy" in a meaningful sense in its postwar empire, and that they thought totalitarian monsters were going to change their stripes had nothing to do with what Stalin and company ever said or did. The "betrayal" of Yalta was nothing but Western self-delusion, the USSR never changed anything at all.

The NY Times reporter in Russia which was supposed to be the West's voice to the world about what was going on was paid off by Stalin so no the West did not get a real depiction of what was going on in the Soviet Union in the 30s.
 
The NY Times reporter in Russia which was supposed to be the West's voice to the world about what was going on was paid off by Stalin so no the West did not get a real depiction of what was going on in the Soviet Union in the 30s.

So the entire West relied on the New York Times? :rolleyes: There were plenty of sources out there and there were equally plenty of people who thought Palmer had the right idea. The Palmer Raids, in fact, were a sort of first shot of the Cold War before the USSR was even a threat that actually justified that (as the outcome of the Polish-Soviet war showed). There were plenty of people who saw what the USSR was, and who realized fully the kind of man Uncle Joe was. Only those who were deliberately self-deluded genuinely would have expected the USSR to put in place any kind of democracy in 1944.

If people expected that smiling Georgian devil who was the kind of man to shoot his entire set of enemies and put them on show trials in the timeframe leading up to WWII to suddenly change by virtue of winning a protracted, gruesome war, that's not the fault of the totalitarian butcher, that's their fault for deluding themselves. The Soviets never pretended to be anything but a totalitarian dictatorship.
 

Adler

Banned
Snake, if you read carefully the sources then you should know, that Stalin was seriously considering a seperate peace as of late 1943/early 1944. Hitler was not interested.

Adler
 
Top