Inglourious Basterds WI - SPOILERS!

So Quentin Tarantino has given us some AH material! Again, do not read this if you intend to see the film but haven't yet done so.

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The result of the film is that in June 1944 - shortly after D-Day, before the liberation of Paris - Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Bormann, along with about 350 seats worth of the top Nazi brass and their wives, all get incinerated/machine gunned/blowed up real good in a Parisian theater by a motley crew that includes a vengeful French Jewish woman, her African boyfriend, a semi-literate Tennessean with his Jewish-American raiders, and an opportunistic SS interrogator. What would be the ramifications of this? Who would take power in Germany, and how quickly would they make a capitulation? How would the Eastern Front be resolved, with the Soviets just reaching the eastern bounds of Poland? How many Holocaust deaths would be averted, and what would come of Israel?
 
Who would take power in Germany, and how quickly would they make a capitulation?

I was thinking about this same thing after I saw the movie. I don't think they ever mentioned what happened to Himmler. If he did survive he could have possibly taken control.

Assuming it really did kill all the upper level Nazi leadership the German Resistance might try to take over and then you could basically get all your answers about capitulation ect. from the Operation Valkyrie thread.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=112821&highlight=Operation+Valkyrie
 
Fabulous, arse-kicker of a flick. Tarantino at the top of his game once again!

On to the WI: This means good things in the short term as Nazi Germany is going down faster. Doesn't matter who takes over in the immediate aftermath; Unconditional Surrender is still gonna be insisted on by the Allies and post D-Day is too late for even Rommel to pull any miracles out of his hat. A crash A-bomb programme, mayhap? Yeah, good luck with that. I say Winnie, FDR & Uncle Joe are all touring the ruins of Berlin by Christmas at the latest. Seasons greetings, Nazi mofos!

Long term, however, things may not be quite so great. Blowing up Hitler and Co. means that National Socialism gets to use the “Stab In The Back” excuse. Again. As in, “that war was going JUST FINE and Hitler was about to whip out [insert SOOPER SEEKRIT wonder weapon here] which would have brought us final victory if those TRAITORS hadn't kilt him!” So Neo-Nazism might be a somewhat larger phenomenon in post-war Germany and elsewhere. Plus more Holocaust deniers. Ew. Though I can't quite see them actually winning power anywhere. Still......
 
Yupp, fabulous idea. - The Red Army launched Operation Bagration as scheduled, gutting the German armies in the east.
And in late 1944/early 1945 Stalin's muzhiks greet the Western Allies at Remagen Bridge.
 
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Pretty much a collapse in order at first. Himmler did not have the backing for the top slot; the army is much more likely to take over, especially as members of it were already planning to kill him themselves. This way they gain legitimacy in the eyes of the people and prevent a counter-coup from being organized. Bagration is just about to start, so instead of trying to maintain the front, the Germans might just decide to pull back and preserve AGC instead of standing and dying.

The main problem is going to be that the Western Allies considered Hitler to be only a front for the Pan-Germans that were seeking to dominate the world. And Prussian militarism. They did not realize, or chose not to, that there were several different strands of thought in Germany at the time. Yes, the Prussians had similar goals to the Nazis, in that they wanted to dominate the East, but not to the same extremes that the Nazis desired.

So unless the new government surrenders, the war will go on as usual, though perhaps with a bit less enthusiasm among the civilian population. Also, without the concentration camps being discovered and seen first hand by the Allies, there will be some ambiguity after the war ends, with many people questioning in the west if the war was necessary, especially as the cold war heats up. It happened OTL and many soldiers were wondering what the heck they were fighting for by the time they came across the camps, which steeled their hearts against the enemy. Without that direct physical evidence, perhaps there will be some sort of leniency for Germany that did not exist OTL. I have no idea what that would be, perhaps only just in the court of public opinion.

(I also assume that the new government is going to surrender rather than fight to the bitter end)

I don't know if the Nurnberg trials would still happen if the top people had already been killed/rounded up. Without evidence of the Holocaust (I assume it will be covered up by the new government), perhaps any war crimes trials are looked at as victor's justice instead of actual justice. Frankly, I don't think Germany is going to be able to get very many concessions in their surrender, if they manage to negotiate one. The difference is going to be postwar, as Germany is rehabilitated quicker and with less malice. Without the experience of grinding through Europe, the Americans and maybe the Brits will be less bitter toward the whole experience. The Russians are going to be an interesting case though. I don't know what they will do now that they never have the opportunity to conquer much of Germany. The occupation is still going to be brutal as will the prison sentences of the captured soldiers, just as OTL. But without battlefield running through Germany things will be less bad. I am curious to see what happens in Prussia, if the Germans don't flee. They will definitely be a majority in the 1914 borders, thanks to colonization. So I wonder if the Americans will sanction the ethnic cleansing of the East.
 
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