Nazi Occupation of European Russia

In the event of a Nazi victory in WW2, how much territory could the German military physically occupy?

This assumes that the USSR is in no state to continue a war, (it has surrendered and/or survives as a crippled rump state beyond the urals).

It also assumes that the Germans are albeit slowly engaging in some form of genocide/ethnic cleannsing of Poland and at least part of Russia to open them up for German colonisation, and that ultimately rumours of this will spread through occupied Russian territories.

Is an occupation of European Russia feasible, or are we looking at Germany annexing a chunk of territory and leaving the rest to puppet states?
 

Susano

Banned
Puppet states? If there isnt a sudden influx of pragmatism, then no - this is German lebensraum, after all! Such an influx coudld always happen, of coruse, the Nazi elite wa ssurpisingly flexible on a couple of things, but IMO Lebensraum and genocidal antisemitism were the two core areas of Hitlers ideology, so... its unlikely that gets compromissed at a large scale. At most peoples like the Kalmyks get some autonomy.. at most.

I think, what we would see in such a case, is a rather rapid depopulation of those lands, a near complete genocide within a decade or two...
 
I think the Germans could feasibly occupy all of European Russia, especially in the longterm when relieved of having to fight on other fronts.

I once read a book detailing Nazi plans for Eastern Europe and according to that source, the Nazis would sentence a portion of the Slavic population to deportation/genocide, another portion would be reduced to slavery and another portion would be made to undergo a process of "Germanization", like what had been done to Polish children IOTL.

In regards to how much of Russia Germany will take for itself, look at Alfred Rosenberg's "Reichkomissariats" plans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg#Reich_Minister_for_the_Occupied_Eastern_Territories). The only room for puppet states I see would come in the form of very small autonomous areas within the RK's like the Lokot Republic, led by pro-Axis Russians like General Vlasov and Bronislav Kaminsky.
 
I could imagine Germans occupying whole European Russia as good as Britons occupied Indian subcontinent. I mean, Britons never relied on exclusively Island manpower to control the territory, but they controlled it pretty reliably nonetherless. You see, humans are fighting if they see chances of winning. Otherwise they are just trying to survive and hoping to see tomorrow, even if it means that somebody is killed today to fulfil quota. See Jewish ghettoes of 1939-1943. There were no uprisings until ghettoes had families (Warsaw ghetto exploded only when repeated waves of killing left relatively uniform group of young, fit and family-less ones there). Would local population consider Resistance a lost cause, even low-intensity genocide would not lead to widespread struggle. So, combination of hopelessness and "outsourcing" of internal security in "less reliable" regions to "more reliable" groups (extreme "ethnic" example IOTL would be Pskov Region, where Estonian suxiliaries were fully responsible for internal security in 1941-1943, with Germans being spared 99% of job and only doing general overseeing of the enterprise; however, use of Russian auxiliaries in Ukraine, Ukrainian in Russia and Latvians throughout the occupied regions to do dirty or mundane job is very well documented) is able to create pretty reliable structure.

I don't see puppet states as too likely, although I can't exclude possible "autonomous regions" within German Reich (USSR had autonomies and there were princely states in India, there's no reason for Germany to ignore this experience).
 
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Considering the Nazi plans involved allowing all the inhabitants of the metropolises to starve to death, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people, then the occupation should be marginally easier to run than a Stalinist police state.

As long as there is a full ceasefire with the Rump USSR, of course...
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Part of the plan, IIRC, involved soldiers setting up homes in the East(or taking them, whichever is easiest), and using whatever Slavs that aren't shot for slave labor. You'd probably see German majorities occurring quickly in the Courland, obviously Poland(even if both are through 'Germanization' instead of colonization outright).

20-50 years, give or take, and asusming the USSR is kept at bay, you would probably see a whole lot more Germans.
 
In the event of a Nazi victory in WW2, how much territory could the German military physically occupy?
The German Empire had Plans (in case they won WW1), install Puppet states in west Russia
this is some times confused with Third Reich plans

But NAZIs had very gruesome plans

reduction of Local population through ethnic cleansing, starve to death, death in KZ.
until only 20-10% population survive as slave for Germans Settlers
we talk here about extention of holocaust to 65 MILION people !

the Settlers are protect by selfdefence groups (ex Wehrmacht), then by local SS-castle and regional Wehrmacht base

source Books
"wenn Hitler den Krieg gewonnen hätte" by Ralph Giordano
 
But NAZIs had very gruesome plans

reduction of Local population through ethnic cleansing, starve to death, death in KZ.
until only 20-10% population survive as slave for Germans Settlers
we talk here about extention of holocaust to 65 MILION people
The more I think about real-life implementation of those plans, the more I consider them unrealistic as far as massive genocide ("65 mln Holocaust") is concerned. And the reason is actually very simple: it would be extremely disasterous for victorious Reich for very simple reason of European part of USSR as a whole being under- and not overpopulated. And, although Nazi proved that senseless killings to satisfy their racial theories aren't above them, I'm counting on regime dealing with Slavs in more rational way than with Jews.

Let's assume Hitler's wet dreams came true, Communist system collapses under weight of it's own sins and victorious Germany establishes control over Urals-Caspian Sea line (this strikes me as much more realistic than arbitrary AA line and gives Germans control of Ural industrial region, "Ruhrgebiet" of Russia, plus large swath of sparcely populated no-mans land between Volga and Urals to act as a buffer in case that "Siberian Republic" ever becomes adventurous). After some period (I would say "two winters", give or take, and within that period occupational forces would be too busy to carry out Slavic Holocaust) of initial mayhem Germans established reasonably firm control over the territory and started to implement Hitler's colonization dream. Now what? They have pretty substantial heavy industry and some rich mineral deposits to exploit (known but unused at this point, like Estonian shales, for example), plus all that agricultural land to re-settle "Race of Masters" on. Some areas of Central Russia (roughly within borders of medieval Muscovite Duchy) do suffer from agrarian overpopulation. But even those areas have underdeveloped urban areas. But a lot of places are underpopulated (I'm talking about Southern Ukraine, Lower Volga and Northwestern Russia, latter being conditional on implementation of modern agriculture). So, would Germans want to have a workforce to tile the land, it would absorb much more people than they can imagine.

And then there's a "little" matter of industry. Yes, Hitler did not plan to create Reich's powerhouse in Russia, but can Germany ignore the mineral wealth of the region? And now, once you dug the stuff out, isn't it natural to process it locally, rather than haul it across half of the continent? So, OTL industrial areas of Ukraine (which are powering Ukraine today, pro-Western region being heavily subsidized agricultural backwards), Russia (coal and iron of Southern Russia, wood and paper industry of Northern Russia, Lower Volga oil), Georgia (metals), Azerbaijan (oil) are more likely here to stay and often expand. And with them a lot of Slavic workers and some Slavic engineers. Some of Russian/Ukrainian/Belarussan workforce can be replaced by Poles cleansed from "Germanized" areas (Poland did suffer overpopulation to a much larger extent than the USSR). Now, fate of educated Russian class would be pretty grim. They would be reduced to lower positions under German supervisorship and their chances of career advance would be nil. However, it is still far cry from "65 mln Holocaust" thing. I can imagine pretty complicated system of ethnicity-based career opportunities, with Germanic peoples (Netherlanders, Scandinavians, French) and Italians being just one step under "true Germans", Hungarians, Czech, Romanians (a lot of them would likely move to "Ostland", either in search of career and/or business opportunities or to escape Germanization of their homeland) and Balts (who would likely be Germany's primary enforcers, with Nazi ideologues never being able to determine their proper position in racial system) occupying intermediate slot and Eastern Slavs being reduced to oppressed (but not actually genocided) group of forced labourers. However, Russian "high-tech" of the day (aircraft and machine-building industry of Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, Stalingrad etc.), as well as education and R&D centers would likely be wiped out, Reich does not really need Russian science.

Now, back to $100,000 question. Can Germany ignore the Russian agricultural and mineral wealth and actually stun development of those territories to Hitler's idealistic vision of quasi-medieval network of baronies, employing Russian slaves? I don't see this as particularly likely, given that *EU (Germany-led European Union ITTL) would be locking horns with USA-dominated Western Hemisphere in *Cold War. Nazi-led Europe would need to exploit it's resource to a full extent to maintain parity or near-parity with America, and then there's a "little" matter of Siberia (it would have much more numerous population and solid industrial base plus unlimited support of USA ITTL, so it could become a big pain in German behind by 1950s).
 
your right CanadianGoose

but Hitler made it clear position in his book "Mein Kampf"
(by the way one of worst written book in the Literature history)

His "Lebensraum" is a idealistic Agriculture vision of quasi-medieval network of baronies,

employing Russian slaves with no education, no medical care
only with sufficient German language skills to understand commands.

Hitler made vage remarks
that (heavy) industry Base stay in Germany
 
but Hitler made it clear position in his book "Mein Kampf"
It isn't the first time when reality throws a monkey wrench into idealistic vision of the world. However, it is one of very few examples when reality would likely correct idealistic picture to better, not to worse.

IMHO "Ostland" would be similar to OTL South Africa during apartheid, with Germans being "whites", Eastern Europeans being "coloured" and Eastern Slavs "bantu".
 
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I have definitely read that Goering declared a policy intended to divert most of the food resources in the USSR to the West, starting in 1942 after a victorious Barbarossa. He predicted a massive die-back amongst Russians that the Germans fully intended to let happen.

I agree with Michael that common sense or not, this would have happened. Not an engineered and mechanised Holocaust using a KZ system, but a duplication of the Collectivisation events carried out in the Ukraine by Stalin in 1930 , except on a stupendous scale.

After all, this is exactly how the Germans treated the 5 million Red Army prisoners they took in 1941...just deprived them of food and water, herded in vast encampments and laughed when canibalism happened. This was regardless of the potential opportunity of enlisting most of them in an Anti-Communist army.

Basically nazism was a belief system that took little account of economic and social realities, which went a long way to making them lose the war.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Killing 65 million people is easy, Stalin created the modern template in the Ukraine in 1932.

Go into a area large enough for you to control with troops in a perimeter, take out all the food, destroying structures and poisoning wells as you gather up the food. Do not let the people living there get outside of the perimeter while you herd in as many people as live in a 20-40 kilometer area around the now foodless area into the pocket and seal the perimeter. Kill anyone who tried to escape.

Since there is no one except your troops for miles around the pocket you have no smuggling or rescue attempts. Wait until everyone, or nearly everyone, is dead (damned cannibals) enter the area, finish off the few survivors. Repeat as necessary. Stalin killed a minimum of 7 million people this way over about 18 months (probably a good chunk more, but close enough) and he didn't have the resources that the Wehrmacht would have available in this sort of a TL.

Easy to do. Assuming you are a sociopath dictator.
 

Stephen

Banned
Did the Nazis have any plans to assimilate or germanise the blond nordic looking russians and slavs. When I was there on a holiday I saw quite a few especially in the baltic regions.
 
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