Post War Nazi Germany Economy

My very late thank you

I'm sorry for this being late but here it goes:

I would like to thank each and everyone of the people who indulged my curiosity for this topic. Your information was very enlightening and I thank you once more. If anyone has anymore tidbits to add to this I thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Germania09
 
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People are aware of the existance of collaboration governments? Certainly there would be plenty of Russians who would help in enslaving other Russians.

And the Nazi economy had a fair amount of slack, the Nazi economy didn't even shift to a total war footing until ~1943. Individual goods tend to be more durable then structures. Factories may have been destroyed, but the equipment were fairly undamaged.

Militarism is not harmful to a modern economy, but beneficial, as it was in Nazi Germany before WWII and in the U.S. since WWII. Slavery in Eastern Europe would lead to uprisings, but Nazism actually had considerable support (e.g. in Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, etc. etc.) and a rational policy could have kept Eastern Europe divided and dominated. The Russians, let alone the Ukrainians, could have been effectively exploited while still treating them better than Stalin already was.
Not militarism. Militarism is a waste and diversion of resources. However conquests are beneficial and so is colonization (to the dominant economy).
Unless you're going to talk about how beneficial militarism was to the Soviets.
 
Now, in this scenario Germany definitely has the upper hand, to the point of being able to say "Yes it can win World War II". But it's not out of the woods yet by any means, and the bare fact is...the Allies can take Germany out at any point in time, regardless of what happens on the Ostfront. It just depends on whether the Allies can pay a butcher's bill similar to what the Soviets paid. Germany just has to defend itself to the point where the Allies say "fuck it, it's not worth it". Again, good tactics and an appropriate application of the 262 and other technology will help this.

I thought that this had been(on this forum) thoroughly debunked as a viable way for the Germans to win the war.
 

RousseauX

Donor
And the Nazi economy had a fair amount of slack, the Nazi economy didn't even shift to a total war footing until ~1943. Individual goods tend to be more durable then structures. Factories may have been destroyed, but the equipment were fairly undamaged.
This is kind of a myth: the Nazi economy simply didn't have the resources for full war footing IIRC.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
How the Nazi's win matters. I am assuming Moscow falls in 1941, and the USSR is out of the war by 1942. Both the USA and UK remain hostile and undefeated, but they both make a cold peace with Germany.

The German military continues to consume a high level of resources and the budget. For the 100 million or so Aryans, the standard of living will be above prewar levels. For the elite of the German Reich, the lifestyle will simply be lavish.

Food will be an issue at list initially and there will be famines both cause by bad harvests and intentionally created to starve Slavs. For example, the SS may simply remove any "Aryans" from Leningrad and Moscow, form a perimeter around the cities, and simply starve all the population to death over a year or so. The famines will be more severe than Lenin/Stalin's but will be focused on Slavic areas.

Germany planned to create the "ideal" farming communities, where the Germans are the overlords, and the Slavs are the slaves. The ratio will be about 1 Aryan for every 10 slaves. Treatment of the slaves will be between old time western hemisphere slavery and "extermination through labor" camps. The farms will produce a surplus, but will be wildly inefficient base on any labor or land measure. The Germans tried to setup one of these ideal communities in OTL. All the local Poles had left (majority) or had weapons (partisans, small minority). The Slavs will flee the German area, especially in 1941 to 1943. These fleeing Slavs will be one of the largest migrations in human history. Hitler will continues to run the death camps to at least kill all the Jews and likely continues to run the camp to kill some percentage of the Slavs. At least in some of the planning documents, it was 1/3 of the Slavs killed, 1/3 slaves, 1/3 moved outside of Reich. This probably gives a good ballpark with 100% of the Jews killed, and 66% reduction in Slavic population. This depopulation will be larger than the Black Death, but less severe than what happened after Columbus. Much of Eastern Europe will convert to wilderness or wildlands like the Chernobyl zone or the New World after disease had killed a majority of the natives. The German will likely move enough Slavs from farther east to keep Poland, the Baltic,and the most fertile areas of the Ukraine populated. Likewise the Germans will have industrial cities at mines and other resource areas such as the tungsten mines of the Ukraine. In large parts of Belarus and Russia proper, the population decline will be over 90%, and for all effective purpose, there will be no economic activity. This will be especially true in the colder north of Russia and on poorer/dryer soils.

To summarize, it will be much like any slave/serf economy. It will be poor if you look at the entire population, but it will be rich if you look at only the Slave owners and the average resource per Slaver.
 
Germany does well; it collects tribute from its vassals (Southern Europe) in exchange for their "Protection". With the Soviets ejected behind the Ural Mountains and the UK/USA on a cold-war footing, Germany will have strong military needs. But if there is one rule of how it would work, the Germans aren't going to be paying the price.


Nazi extermination probably turns to Nazi slavery, with that slavery being cruel to the point of suffering a high mortality rate.


The Nazis sought to populate new land with natalist policies: the land grabs and annexations will lead to strong agriculture profits.


Below the Germans, who do enjoy a decent standard of living, are those of its "Vassal" nations. Heavily taxed and run by yes-man leaders, these nations probably do worse than Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold-War. There is, however, the hope of gaining Germany's trust and measures of independence.


Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and potentially other slavs (Czechs? Serbs?) die slowly from overwork, physical abuse and sheer negligence. This is the fate of millions. Worse abuses, such as deliberate torture, rape and medical experiments, continue.


What Jews?


This is basically a pyramidal structure that works as long as Germany can expand and exploit. Presumably, German Slave Raids against Central Asia can replenish any loss of labor. The resources make Germany rich, the divison of costs make its people happy. But it's at least as fragile as the Warsaw Pact, and likely to be much more murderous when it goes down.


There is, of course, the siege mentality that comes with slavery. The creeping fear of a Superpower with a bigger budget and a stronger economy, and the utter inhumanity of a nation that killed off an entire group of people just because. The fruits of peace will not be seperated from the sharp bitterness of these ailments.
 
I think Robert Harris' Fatherland covered this issue well. By the 1960's the Nazi state is having to spend increasing sums on keeping down Soviet partisans east of the Urals who are funded by America. The resettlement programmes in the East have been unsuccessful, there's a line in the book by Artur Nebe about how most of them want to come home and the young don't want to fight. You get the strong impression that a slow rot has set in that is only going to get worse in following years.
 
The Nazi German economy would only survive the end of the war if it was even reasonably somewhere competant. By 1939 they were almost bankrupt it was only war (and more importantly plunder) that kept them going. They were a remarkably crude system. If it had been any other group in power that could competantly manage things they may have been nigh unstoppable.
 
Thank you for your post. My question however wasn't whether they could win or not. Only what their economy would be like if they had.

It would've been a phyrric victory, so probably worse than the Deutsches Reich fared after World War I. Inflation up the arse.
 
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