Night of the Long Knives 2.0 (1939)

Hitler, Hess and Hermann Göring are leaving a meeting on early July 1939 when out of nowhere they are knocked backward by an explosion which levels part of the building they are in. Hess is killed instantly as Göring, but the massive girth of the Göring shields Hitler from the brunt of the blast. Hitler lives, but is angry and shaken. He decides its best for Germany to publicly report that a Polish suicide bomber was behind the attack, but in private he believes it had to be an inside job.

An enterprising high ranking member of the Gestapo saw the situation as his chance for true career enhancement and creates a false paper trail leading back to Reinhard Heydrich and even Himmler himself. He organizes a meeting with Hitler in private and presents Hitler with the information. Needly to say Hitler at first has trouble beliving it, but soon his paranoia and anger over the blast gets the best of him and he orders a meeting with his top Army generals in secret and tells them that the SS was behind the attack and is not only his enemy, but the enemy of the Army as well and asks for their help in executing another Night of the Long Knives.

Needless to say the generals were enthusastic to get rid of Himmler and his Pretorian Guard and told Hitler with a secret smile on their faces that they long suspected Himmler and his allies were plotting against him and Germany. In mid July a group groups of armed German soldiers fan out across Germany and liquidate the leadership of the SS placing them against walls in various parts of Germany and gunning them down.

After the purge Hitler decides to turn his attention to planning the upcoming war and decides to put what is left of the SS under the control of the Armed Forces High Command. The war starts as it did OTL.

What would be the long term ramifications of the SS getting its wings clipped as the SA did?
 
The world is a better place

I would assume the most immediate effect would be on Canaris as he decided to actively undermine the regime after touring Poland and seein SS Einsatzgruppen units mass killing Polish civilians. I certainly assume Polish leaders and others deemed to be potental threats to German occupation will still end up dead in this timeline, but I don't think that would be enough to turn Canaris.

Canaris was also vital in keeping Franco from joining the Axis OTL. Here he would actually be trying to get Spain aboard and I think would have been able to do so.

Even early on before the SS became the beast it became OTL it would have real ripple effects on the war as with Spain joining the war Gibraltar would fall and there is a good chance when you add those things together Yugoslavia doesn't flip.

At the end of the day Germany is still certainly likely to lose the war if they can't knock the British out of the war before the invasion of the Soviet Union and America joins the war. But, it would cause real short and long term changes. Mainly more aspects of Europe as well as factions in German society would be supportive of the war effort.

Without Himmler and certain others wispering in Hitler's ear how would he deal with his plans in the East? My guess is he will take a page out of Stalin's book and use mass starvation more then he did OTL as a weapon to try to depopulate areas of Russia he wants colonized in the future. The war in the East will still certainly be horrible, Hitler will likely be able to be convinced that more groups in Eastern Europe should be regarded as allies against the Russians at least for the time being. Life will still suck for the Jews and many of them will still be used as forced labor and the Army will likely be able to convince Hitler to use many more Jewish men then OTL on front line cannon fodder like positions during the war. But, no Final Solution as we think of it, just a really bad time to be Jewish in Europe.
 
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Hitler would pull other fanatical anti-semites like Adolf Eichmann and Wilhelm Frick to his side to help him answer the jewish question. Holocaust will still happen, but differently. I guess Goebbels or Bormann will come Hitlers succesor after his death, with Goring dead.

Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Berger, Hauser, Eicke, Meyer, Darré, Daluege. All dead. Definitly a good day for the world. Especialy everything East of Germany.
 
Hitler would pull other fanatical anti-semites like Adolf Eichmann and Wilhelm Frick to his side to help him answer the jewish question. Holocaust will still happen, but differently. I guess Goebbels or Bormann will come Hitlers succesor after his death, with Goring dead.

Would it? Or would the policy end up being using the Jews as more of human tools of the regime like blacks were under the CSA? I have no doubt life is going to be total shit for the Jews in Europe regardless. But, the army did want their young men and at times were receiving them to make up for critical manpower shortages even in 1942.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f132/jmc247/Misc/Jewsinafrica.png

And, you are going to have German factories and others who have no or few people to spare with so many off to war who are going to be lobbying Hitler as they did OTL to use them as a forced labor source for the duration of the war. Its entirely possible in my view Hitler decides to treat the Jews of Europe as expendable tools at very least for the duration of the war with the view in the back of his head that he can get rid of them them all if he decides to once its over and Germany has no more use for them.

Hitler still even if he gets convinced of that policy could and I suspect likely would decide to order they be killed when its starting to become clear to him that Germany is going to be defeated and of course he is angry and wants people to blame and people to die and knows he won't have a chance to 'deal' with the Jews after the war. How many Jews die in that case would be when in fact he ends up realizing he is going to lose.

But, as to the grand picture of the war with Spain entering the war, a certain overweight drug addict dead and the Heer with more influence then OTL I wonder if Hitler might be convinced to go for a Mediterranean centric strategy to drive the U.K. out of the war before the war on Russia starts rather then decide on an air battle over England to knock the British out of the war. In that case he will have about a year after the fall of France to manage to do so. It would be there that the war would be won or lost as if the UK leaves the war before the U.S. enters it the Soviet Union will be on its own and while it still might be able to fight long enough to drive the Axis out of Russia. It won't be able to do much more then that I suspect fighting on its own a one front war without Lend Lease.
 
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