Plans for Moscow in a Hypothetical Axis Victory?

I've read conflicting reports regarding Moscow's intended fate in an Axis victory scenario, with some sources claiming that the city was to be submerged underneath an artificial lake and utterly annihilated, while others have claimed that the city was to be incorporated into the planned Reichskommisiriat Moskowien along with several of the already created Reichskommisiriats. Which theory sounds more plausible and why?
 
Step one: Build a dam.
Step two: Realize that the dam would be too expensive and "recycle" Moscow to create the capital of German Russia.
Step three: Give the money for the dam to Göring so that he can grow even larger.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I've read conflicting reports regarding Moscow's intended fate in an Axis victory scenario, with some sources claiming that the city was to be submerged underneath an artificial lake and utterly annihilated, while others have claimed that the city was to be incorporated into the planned Reichskommisiriat Moskowien along with several of the already created Reichskommisiriats. Which theory sounds more plausible and why?

Both. Either. Neither.

I looked at writing an ATL where the OstPlan is implemented after a Axis win for a vague reason. As far as I could tell, there was no formal plan post gas chambers in an Axis win. Hitler SS would likely hit the kill goals. 97% of this group. 35% of another group. etc.

But this was not what I was really interested in, since I was looking more about writing about the German resettlement around farms and perhaps mines. I can find broad statements of desires by top brass like Hitler. I can find some lower level work. Stuff probably never seen by anyone over the rank of Major. What I can't find is detailed planning the Germans are famous for.

I found one applied model village. It failed. It was the 1/3 Poles killed, 1/3 Poles expelled, 1/3 as slaves. Almost all the Poles fled. And the Germans had trouble finding settlers.

So I conclude the plans simply had not been finished. It is the equivalent of looking at 1937 Germany, and trying to make detailed projections of the locations of the gas chambers. Not really practical.
 
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It honestly depends on the war situation. In an outright win with Germany in very good shape, watch out mass depopulation. In a win, but an ongoing war anything from population transfers to man German factories to being "left alone they have bigger fish to fry" is possible. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I'd say depopulated like Kiev, if it were not for the fact that is Moscow fell, the war is almost over.
 
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I think the Germans would have used the supplies and some manpower from Moscow, but they would be extremely harsh rulers and would likely kill many civilians, as shown in Poland.
 

Deleted member 1487

The long term plan was to turn it into a lake and remove it's existence like Leningrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskommissariat_Moskowien
The administrative capital was tentatively proposed as Moscow, the historical and political center of the Russian state. As the German armies were approaching the Soviet capital in the Operation Typhoon in the autumn of 1941, Hitler determined that Moscow, like Leningrad and Kiev, would be levelled and its 4 million inhabitants killed, to destroy it as a potential center of Bolshevist resistance. For this purpose Moscow was to be covered by a large artificial lake which would permanently submerge it,[1][2] by opening the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal.[3]

Skorzeny apparently was given the job too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Eastern_Front
Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. In October 1941, he was in charge of a "technical section" of the German forces during the Battle of Moscow. His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities, before they could be destroyed. He was also ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them.[7] The missions were canceled as the German forces failed to capture the Soviet capital.[8]
 
end up as giant semi-flooded rail yard due to so much of rail system routed thru/near there ... that complete submersion would prove impractical.
 
I'm convinced that after Hitler had his giant victory parade through the Red Square that he'd keep Moscow as a monument to his victory in the East. After the population was expelled/killed and Speer re-designed the place of course. The same would happen to St Petersburg. The cities are just too much of a symbol of the racial victory over the East to just be razed and flooded.
 

Perkeo

Banned
We also have to determine how the Axis wins. I can imagine some Brest-Lotowskish peace, but not an unconditional surrender to the Nazi Genocide. Even if the Sowjets do want to commit suicide, they do so during the fight and not after it.
 

Deleted member 1487

I'm convinced that after Hitler had his giant victory parade through the Red Square that he'd keep Moscow as a monument to his victory in the East. After the population was expelled/killed and Speer re-designed the place of course. The same would happen to St Petersburg. The cities are just too much of a symbol of the racial victory over the East to just be razed and flooded.
I mean we do have record of Hitler's orders to destroy the cities; the ashes would be the monument to victory and racial dominance. Hitler was that irrationally vicious.
 
I mean we do have record of Hitler's orders to destroy the cities; the ashes would be the monument to victory and racial dominance. Hitler was that irrationally vicious.

I know of the plans. I just think Hitler would change his mind in this particular instance. It seems more in keeping with his megalomania.
 
I mean we do have record of Hitler's orders to destroy the cities; the ashes would be the monument to victory and racial dominance. Hitler was that irrationally vicious.

Irrational? Yes. Vicious? Yes. But not consistent. Hitler's plans could change from week to week or day to day. The fate of Moscow might have been determined by Hitler's whim of the week, or (equally likely if not more likely) by the interpretation by top Nazis of what the Führer would have wanted. So it might have been something of a "present" to Hitler: Himmler saying "We've turned Moscow into a lake" or Göring saying "We've bombed Moscow to rubble." Or maybe a surviving Heydrich would have enslaved the populace and kept the strategic assets intact. IMO, any scenario is a possible one simply because Hitler's desires were so variable.
 
The long term plan was to turn it into a lake and remove it's existence like Leningrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskommissariat_Moskowien


Skorzeny apparently was given the job too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Eastern_Front

Would it even be possible to permanently flood Moscow by breaching the canals? It seems like that would only work if Moscow sat in a natural depression in the landscape, like New Orleans.

I think the only plausible way to turn Moscow into a lake would be to detonate a megaton-class nuclear warhead on the ground to form a giant crater, which would then fill with water over time.

Given that Moscow is the transportation hub for European Russia (the major roads and railways converge in the city), turning the city into a lake would adversely affect the Nazis' logistics in the region. It would impede the movement of military forces, or German settlers, or cargo/supplies.

I think it would be more likely that the Nazis would ultimately keep Moscow as a city, albeit killing/enslaving its native population and drastically reconstructing the city like they planned to do to Warsaw (the Pabst Plan) before the 1944 uprising.
 
I notice the 'Destroy Moscow' plans have no significant detail for maintaining the rail hub that existed there. Some seem to refer to it, others like the flood idea kind of waive it away. Exploitation of the 'vast resources' requires a transport system at least as good as Soviet industry had. A huge reconstruction project was needed & replacing the hub track net of the Moscow area, plus all the foundries, machine shops, work sheds, and support systems is going to make that task larger.
 

Deleted member 1487

I notice the 'Destroy Moscow' plans have no significant detail for maintaining the rail hub that existed there. Some seem to refer to it, others like the flood idea kind of waive it away. Exploitation of the 'vast resources' requires a transport system at least as good as Soviet industry had. A huge reconstruction project was needed & replacing the hub track net of the Moscow area, plus all the foundries, machine shops, work sheds, and support systems is going to make that task larger.
Hitler planned on rebuilding the entire Russia rail system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
 
Would it even be possible to permanently flood Moscow by breaching the canals? It seems like that would only work if Moscow sat in a natural depression in the landscape, like New Orleans.
I'm not totally sure how to interpret the topographical maps I'm finding, but it's a city on a river, and it floods with some regularity, based on results for that when I search. I assume it could be done at least partially.
 

Deleted member 97083

I notice the 'Destroy Moscow' plans have no significant detail for maintaining the rail hub that existed there. Some seem to refer to it, others like the flood idea kind of waive it away. Exploitation of the 'vast resources' requires a transport system at least as good as Soviet industry had. A huge reconstruction project was needed & replacing the hub track net of the Moscow area, plus all the foundries, machine shops, work sheds, and support systems is going to make that task larger.
Hitler planned on rebuilding the entire Russia rail system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
Since the Reichskommissariats "Ostland", Ukraine, and Moskowien were intended to be three different colonies all dependent on Germany, then economic connections between them, except for the bare minimum of resources to sustain the territory, likely would have been minimized in favor of direct connections to Germany--such as the Breitspurbahn or railroads connecting German settler colonies.

If even non-Nazi empires tried to decrease the self-sufficiency of their colonies and suppress and weaken them to aid in continued control, then certainly a Nazi empire would do so at a minimum.

The Moscow rail hub would have only been used during the war, and despite immense costs Moscow would have been destroyed, some new center built as the center of "New Germany".
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
As has been noted the chances of the destruction of Moscow are largely dependent on how the war ends. Assuming a complete Reich victory (i.e. the A-A Line is the basis for territorial transfer the result is vastly different than a much lesser, negotiated settlement.

Assuming a complete Reich victory it is almost certain that historic Moscow would be utterly destroyed and obliterated from history. The work would have been done by the civilian population as part of the planned "extermination through labor" that was to be employed to eliminate the undesirable parts of the population (the same methodology was slated to be used on Kiev, Leningrad and Warsaw). The artificial lake covering the entire city has always struck me as being somewhat overly ambitious; however, there would likely have been some sort of lake/pond that covered the region where the Kremlin once stood along with the rest of central Moscow. The hideous apartment blocks surrounding the city itself might be saved for use by the slave laborers, until they were no longer needed, then those structures would also be demolished using the same bloody-minded methods.

One of the real difficulties that one can run into regarding the Reich's plans (beyond the already noted short attention span of Hitler) is that there is a tendency to look at the plans with the expectation that they somehow, somewhere, make the slightest bit of sense. That is not something that can be expected of the Reich leadership. They operated from a shared set of delusions centered on National Socialist theory. If reality contradicted the theory then reality was wrong and needed to be ignored or worked around. The members of the Nazi leadership who were closer to reality (Speer was relatively sane, at least he could do sums and act on them while telling the Fuhrer what he wanted to hear) tended to try to find some new shiny thing to distract Hitler from whatever disaster he was creating by ignoring economics, logistics, and common sense. That frequently worked, except for cases where he wanted to see something with his own eyes. Moscow Lake would have been one of the things he would have wanted to see. If it cost a million Slavs lives to make it happen, well, in Nazi eyes,that was a feature, not a bug.

Evil bunch of bastards.
 

Kaze

Banned
Since Stalin did not even live within Moscow, he would not be concerned about the loss. Unless his dacha is captured or Stalin himself is captured, the war would continue.
 
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