With the difference that Burgundy is going to be massively settled by Germans. And the remaining French people is going to be 1984-like mindwashed to become perfect Nazi Germans.
Paralyzed in Darkness: A Very Different Cold War (TL)
- Thread starter TheReformer
- Start date
With resettlement of Balkan germans (volksdeucher): Yugoslavia (500 K) and Romania (800 K), as a far more attractive option to that of settling in Russia.
Deleted member 97083
The French people in Ordenstaat Burgundy might be forcibly resettled in Russia.
That's a scary, but likely idea.
At the same time, Germany would be busy in creating a new Burgundy national identity. (Such as the Belgae, Franks, Gunther, Robert I "the Old", Philip the Bold.)
Deleted member 97083
Well, the Nazis probably wouldn't create a "new" Burgundy national identity, they'd want to subsume it directly to Germany. But they might use the names of past rulers of the Duchy of Burgundy for names of German colonies in France and/or SS divisions raised from the area.
No. In the final peace treaty Germany agreed to not exile the French people not escaped to France. I don't think the treaty allows them to exile them to Russia or Siberia.
Trotsky is dead unless you find a way to survive an icepick to your stomach there are no feasible way butterflies will impact his assassination and no Britain will not be going towards bankruptcy considering the war has lasted less than 2 months in TTL and that's no how the economy works an no one gives a fuck about Mexico
Deleted member 97083
Of course, we know from OTL that Hitler wouldn't disobey or use a loophole in a treaty, especially a treaty made with Britain and France.
Ok, but it's unuseful to disobey the treaty here, unless he deports the French in Siberia. Russia or Burgundy, the French are going to be reeducated and Germanized. At this point, he wouldn't have nothing to gain by disrespecting the treaty.
Are you trying to turn this into a secret prologue of 1984.
I see you are having trouble, don't worry we understand your probably have stuff going on right now.
Sorry about that lack of updates recently guys, my internet has been utterly awful so you'll have the next segment when i can post!
So @TheReformer I can't wait until the 1948 election,it will be incredibly interesting to see who comes out on top
Chapter I: The Challenges of an Empire
The Challenges of an Empire
The German Reich in 1942 faced a series of key challenges that to an extent Hitler himself was painfully unaware of. The first challenge was economic; the problem with building an economy based solely on the idea of going to war is that when you run out of conflict or use for those weapons you essentially cease to have a reason for your economy existing. Businesses like Volkswagen for example were established as massive sources of income for the German people that were essentially conjured up by the German state using state funds for one sole purpose; to build tanks. There were hundreds of examples of businesses of the same nature and to make matters worse as Germany expanded into neighboring territories it began to use the exact same methods on the Czech, Polish and Soviet economies - destroying their internal industry and amalgamating everything under a 'corporatist' model that in real terms translated directly into the state informing business exactly what is expected of them. Without war this would be utterly unsustainable, if the German army stops expanding it no longer needs so many guns as the attrition rates for equipment for example will become nil. This means factories have no point of existing, and as such jobs are lost which becomes a spiral of decline that would lead to inflation and economic ruin as the economy is essentially starved of that state provided cash it relied on. This left Germany with an economic mountain to cross after the fall of the Soviet Union. What makes matters worse for Germany is that while Germany had legally defeated the allies in the west, it's neighbors, submitted eastern Europe under it's domain and defeated the Soviets - it never actually legally 'defeated' the Soviet Union for good. As such Germany's response to the collapse of Soviet resistance to their advance was just to effectively keep pushing out any resistance across the Urals and divide up the land conquered between the conquering powers. This meant that there was no 'peace' as such and fighting would continue under guerrilla tactics across the newly conquered lands for years to come - effectively creating a demand for weapons, but not the weapons Germany had or was producing.
Effectively Germany now faced a massive question; what should it do with all this land it had just taken and how best would it go about perusing that agenda? Hitler's answer was ironically inspired by Stalin's own policies. Under Stalin there had been introduced a policy of collectivization in agriculture; the policy was astonishingly unsuccessful - leading to the one of the largest famines in European history and causing the death of millions of mainly Ukrainian civilians. Hitler's problem now, in the darkest possible sense, now centered around the fact that Nazi policy had long established that much like the Native Americans were expelled from the United States as the nation expanded westwards - the Slavic peoples too had to be expelled from European Russia. Generalplan Ost therefore encouraged the idea of the 'Hunger Plan' - the transferring of rationed food supplies away from Slavic populations to Germanic ones. This would inadvertently solve a major economic crisis within the German economic model that was likely to develop in the future; Germany's economy as aforementioned was built for a war economy and as such food production had become secondary to the primary goal of military equipment construction, to keep availability of general necessity products Germany now instead would simply force the peasants of the Slavic Steppe to farm and produce produce for them by establishing giant collectivised 'slave farms' and then transfer the vast majority of that produced food to the German Fatherland - keeping the bare minimum to keep enough of the workers going. The policy meant that millions of Russians were rounded up throughout 1942 and 1943 and forced under gunpoint into giant farmlands of up to 200 Hectares to work until they either starved, their bodies gave out or they accepted their position of slavery.
Germany's economic position on necessity goods therefore became considerably more comfortable - this was vital as now the far greater task emerged; converting the vast majority of German industry into a post-war model. Hitler's problem was that under his rule the German economy had experienced it's 'miracle' solely on the basis of military expansion and massive infrastructural investment, remove the need for that and it all comes crashing down. Reich Finance Minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk therefore proposed a solution; that the vast majority of Germany's internal base industry be refocused away from the military effort and instead on the effort of colonizing and building on the new lands in eastern Europe. The argument was simple; such a vast task for the German people would require colossal amounts of investment to make the land that the Russian people had occupied for millennia be essentially habitable by the German people. Massive infrastructural projects would be needed to expand and connect the resources in the Caucuses, Urals, Ukraine and other areas of former Russia to Germany's heartland. These could stem from a massive defensive 'wall' of forts being constructed along the Urals, vast oil pipeline networks being built from Russian oil wells to German industrial centers and vast railroad and autobahn connections being built to encourage access to the new cities that were to be established under German rule across the continent. This would however be costly to Germany's economic machine, effectively re-directing what hundreds of factories - all of which having been essentially built and run by the German Government - were producing would mean the purchase of hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks in new equipment that could take years to revamp. Germany did have one advantage to countries like the United States however which had pulled itself from the brink economically by mobilizing the state to rebuild it's industry; Germany had around 200 million "untermenchen" who were essentially designated for expulsion, slavery or execution throughout the east of Europe. These people would be forced into enormous public works programs, execution or expulsion - however with such a vast number available Hitler's Government first would have to undergo a long plan to ensure these innocent people would never present a threat to the Reich. This would be further expanded by destroying moral bases for Soviet support - including the flooding of Moscow to create an artificial lake through the destruction of the Moscow-Volga Canal after the total dismantlement of the city and murder of it's inhabitants.
Throughout the war Germany had actively sought to sterilize "untermenchen" so as to ensure they would not be able to continue their line of genetics. 350,000 or so women in Germany proper had been sterilized between 1933 and 1942 under German law - this would therefore be replicated among the Slavic peoples on a far more significant scale. The German military therefore established a chain of camps across the Russian Steppe where men and women would be put to work constructing a vast rail based highway to connect Germany with it's new frontier in the Urals. The network would become known as the "Östliche Straße" and would stretch from Berlin to Das Bassenheim (The German central fortress on the Ural Line) while connecting with Warschau (German Warsaw), the German settlements in Minsk, Tula and Hermannsberg (German Kazan). These camps would become manual labour camps to expand the newly conquered territories infrastructure - while also using available medical facilities to proceed with mass sterilization, resistance to being forced into these giant camps - some up to 750,000 in capacity - would result in mass extermination of local civilian populations as reprisals.
The Östliche Straße would have a secondary purpose other than reequipping the German forces on the front line and shipping in resources to construct defences - it would become an effective means of transporting those who were to be expelled from Europe. This would include 15% of Russians, 50% of Estonians, Latvians and Czechs, 65% of Ukrainians, 75% of Belorussians and Ruthenians, 80% of Poles and Lithuanians and all Latgalians - just over 100 million people. Of the people chosen from the population mainly sterilized women, disruptive men, the elderly, disabled and children too young to work would be sent past the Urals first. Hitler's Government requisitioned 16 Locomotives for this sole purpose, aiming to transport 80,000 people per day from across eastern Europe. This would be done at a reduced rate due to the absence of rail routes to sustain such high expulsion rates before the construction of new rail roads. Many of them would die from starvation, injuries or exhaustion even just on the train journey before being forced at gunpoint out into the Siberian steppe past German defences on the border. Equally millions of those who would be worked to death would be executed by firing squad or through more industrial methods - though these features would be added prior to von Krosigk's design of the plan. The remainder of the populace would be exterminated directly or put to work taking apart their own cities brick by brick to be forgotten by history or constructing new Germanic cities designed in Hitler's own image - while also building the roads, rail lines and airports designed to connect the entire massive project.
All the while, as per the economic model established by von Krosigk, German colonists began to be dispatched to the new colonies in bulk by 1944 - encouraged by vast Government handouts, free land, free workers and the Government propaganda designed by Goebbels envisioning a bright new future for the German Reich. While small numbers of colonists had been sent not long after the military occupation of Russia, this kind of colonisation would be on a much greater scale. Soldiers of the Third Reich would be offered deals to take their families to the east ad establish a new life as farmers, engineers, administrators and skilled industrial workers. SS officers would be invited to new Lebensborn facilities in the east where young German women from the Fatherland would have bee dispatched or volentarily decided to move to the new settlements where they would be housed and given state support to bear and raise children of SS officers and soldiers to expand the birth rate in the country dramatically and populate the east. This was especially notable in the southern areas of the country in Gottengau, ran by Curt von Gottberg, that was one of the main areas of focus for German colonisation alongside the Baltic states and Poland. Von Krosigk's aim was to establish the southern regions in Gottengau and Reichskommissariat Ukraine as agricultural powerhouses to feed the Reich and thus investment and vast amounts of slave labour were poured into the area. Hitler's bold eastern project however would face challenges - the sheer amount of slave labour (which exceeded 25 million workers by 1944) meant that security for those workers was constantly overstretched - especially as the German army began to be reorganised and refocused to counter tactics used by Russia partisan fighters, terrorism, defence of the Urals boundary and containment of slave laborers. This meant that infrastructural projects such as the Östliche Straße was delayed often due to targetted attacks by Russian partisans and rebels, slave camps would occasionally break free with the most notable taking place in the Lyscovo rebellion of August 1943 that was eventually forcibly put down by the Luftwaffe through fire bombing attacks on the largely wooden camp. This would all however roll into the second major problem facing the Reich; Security.
While the east was largely 'secure' due to the nature of the opposition the Reich faced in the region; ragtag and sporadic, Germany's west was far from secure, verging on unstable. The plans for the state of Burgundy were proceeding as prepared. Millions of Frenchmen and women had left Burgundy in the months following the Treaty of Stockholm, creating a significant amount of free space for a million German peasants to be effectively deported from Germany and into Burgundy. The administration of the region was a logistical nightmare that required the German Army and SS to spend just under a year completing a modern version of the 'Doomsday Book' compiled following the invasion of England by William the conqueror - assessing people's property, lands, incomes, investments etc. This was all carried out by the German Government on behalf of the new Burgundian Government being established in the city of Nanzig (formerly Nancy) under SS member and leader of the Rexist party in Belgium Leon Degrelle. Degrelle, with support of SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, quickly began the establishment of a new Burgundian Government by proclaiming himself Hochmeister of the Order State of Burgundy. A new 'SS' was established among the Flemish, Walloon, French and German people now populating the country wherein the spoken German language was mandatory, along with a series of racial identity checks. A Burgundian army was also established along with conscription requirements for all young men aged 16 and over, the equipping of which financed by the German Reich. This was to be enforced on all Burgundian citizens registered as residents on the "Große Umfrage" or 'Great Survey', with further requirements imposed on lower income Burgundians who were pushed into public works programs if they were not in employment.
Racial regulations too were imposed with all people considered to fall into the racial band as 'untermenchen' with many of the group including Jews, Roma and the Disabled being rounded up by the SS to be transported to German camps in Poland and Russia. A 'Council of Masters' was also elected in a rigged election organized by the Government in which 100 members of the Rexist party were elected - one for every seat. Despite how it sounded however Burgundy faced a series of major problems; it's new administration was hopelessly disorganized and had no basis to work from - including no structured civil service - it's 'SS' was forced to do virtually all security operations as the Army was overwhelmingly against the existence of their own country with significant numbers of their membership being made up of conscripted former Frenchmen, Belgians and Germans - the former two being unable to get along with the latter. Furthermore the country had no shared identity or culture, something that German propaganda experts constantly attempted to overcome with great difficulty by paying artists and writers to produce cultural material. The biggest problem however was the nation's internal instability, there were constant attacks on SS troops, the German Army often had to put down insurgencies and without a clear police force the institution of justice in a codified manner was virtually impossible.
The Netherlands too held new elections following the return of their Government under the Queen in April 1939, the result being surprisingly less dramatic than the subsequent elections in the United Kingdom and France. The Roman-Catholic State Party held onto power with 32 seats to the Dutch Labour Party's 29, allowing the Catholic party to form a Government in coalition with other parties. France by contrast was a very different case. With the collapse of the French Government following the internal conflict in the nation France turned to one of their most hotly contested elections in decades in September of 1939; the result being a clear victory for the Parti Communiste Français. The victory for Maurice Thorez's party however came as short lived, for months the French Armed Forces had prepared for the possibility of a Communist Victory with a faction emerging among military circles led by Philippe Petain. This faction, indirectly allied with French Nationalists in the Action Française, soon reacted to the election result on September 20th 1939 when Petain allied himself with a series of French military commanders and successfully executed a coup d'etat against the new Government. Instead installing a military regime that largely received the support of the french elite and Armed Forces. Petain knew of Hitler's hatred of communism, and was aware that turning to the ideology would only threaten to damage France's vital relationship with the United Kingdom, therefore after months of chaos having reigned proclaimed himself protector of France. The public mood about the coup was largely mixed, Petain proved popular among middle class circles and the aristocracy having earned the respect of many frenchmen during the first Great War, the working classes by contrast however were less supportive - having just days before voted in desperation for the new Communist regime.
Despite large scale public opposition, with the military behind him and the vast majority of other security forces from across the country including many local police forces sick of dealing with pubic disorder Petain's new Government for the national interest quickly took control of all aspects of power. Communism was banned and a socially democratic Government introduced, including several elected members of the Parti Communiste Français who were convinced to 'shift' their positions in the national interest and to keep their jobs. With support from Attlee's Government - despite opposition to Petain's methods - Britain and France begun the process of rebuilding the shattered French state while making amends with the alienated United States who themselves were dealing with their own problems...
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Sorry for the wait all - glad to see some people have enjoyed the TL while i've been away; had some internet problems, exams, general life things and a bit too much clubbing to do.
Anyway, there's a big update for you - hope you enjoy.
Minor side note btw, if anyone's wondering why despite the last update saying Germany advanced to Kazan the Germans now seem to be at the Urals basically assume that during 1942 after the Winter Thaw ends the Germans completed their advance to the Ural mountains and that while Germany would occupy Arkhangelsk the western Siberia region it is marked as owning on the map is a kind of 'de facto' German region of control as realistically if any Russians have escaped up there... well they may as well not have bothered sadly. Nothing lives up there.
I was going to add an additional section on foreign policy challenges for the Reich and details about things like the Croat independence movement but i decided it would be too long for one update, but it'll appear in a later update, likely in early Chapter 2. Finally as per usual i do not condone or agree with any of these policies nor do i intend to 'celebrate them' as such in this update, but merely explore the realities of how well these kinds of policies could have worked and the effects of them as they will largely define policy in the coming Cold War.
Enjoy the update
Anyway, there's a big update for you - hope you enjoy.
Minor side note btw, if anyone's wondering why despite the last update saying Germany advanced to Kazan the Germans now seem to be at the Urals basically assume that during 1942 after the Winter Thaw ends the Germans completed their advance to the Ural mountains and that while Germany would occupy Arkhangelsk the western Siberia region it is marked as owning on the map is a kind of 'de facto' German region of control as realistically if any Russians have escaped up there... well they may as well not have bothered sadly. Nothing lives up there.
I was going to add an additional section on foreign policy challenges for the Reich and details about things like the Croat independence movement but i decided it would be too long for one update, but it'll appear in a later update, likely in early Chapter 2. Finally as per usual i do not condone or agree with any of these policies nor do i intend to 'celebrate them' as such in this update, but merely explore the realities of how well these kinds of policies could have worked and the effects of them as they will largely define policy in the coming Cold War.
Enjoy the update
I have a question werent the rexists clerio facists? How I hell did they decide that state atheism was what they we're going to do.
You make a valid point that i somehow forgot - amended appropriately