So were the Germans planning on living in Europe after their WWII victory?

gridlocked

Banned
After reading about various German WWII atrocities, my question always was as per the thread title: “Were the Germans planning on living in Europe after they won the war and pissed off almost all of their neighbors?” Let me show you what I mean.

This is sample Nazi Victory scenario, be free to substitute your own if it helps you answer.

You are the leader of Fascist Germany (you don’t care about Nazism per se, Just what is good for Germany and your continued rule) in 1951, you occupy a bunch of nations that hate you -- now what?

Background: after managing to defeat the USSR, but not the Commonwealth (aided by American Lend Lease) Nazi Germany is the master of continental Europe. In August 1945 a truce is declared with the UK. Hitler’s health (being a drug addict) continues to decline and he dies of a heart attack in 1948. It has taken you 3 years to become the new Fuhrer.

Nazi Germany occupies countries from France to the Urals, but the American and British lead in A-bombs make further military conquest impossible. Although there is a lot of heated rhetoric, currently there is trade between the Fascist bloc (Europe) and the rest of the world. Italy’s scandal plagued and wobbly Fascist government is in danger of falling and joining the Anglo-American diplomatic camp, if not in danger of holding free elections outright.

In 1951 there is a rising generation of Germans who have known nothing but victory and growing prosperity and have no identification with the grievances that drove the Nazis into power back during the ancient days of the Great Depression. They dream of having the life style similar to that of an American teenager, a dream which the new German prosperity is starting to put into reach, they do not dream of farming the Ukraine or occupying Norway.

Here are the options as I see them, each worse for Germany than the last

1) Act the same as the Soviet Union in OTL and sign the Berlin Pact of fascism and have an Iron Curtain . Problem: The Soviets had to keep under control a handful of low population states in Eastern Europe. There will have to be German bayonets from the Atlantic to the Urals indefinitely. Including probably Italy. Every couple of years there will be a crisis somewhere and Germany will either have to crush the locals, with all the bad PR that entailed (The attraction of communism basically died in the 1956 Hungarian crack-down) or grant concessions (like with Polish Solidarity – and that lead to problems for the Soviets too). In some areas of Europe, especially in the east, this promises to be a particularly expensive and thankless task.

2) Declare Victory over Bolshevism, redraw the map of Europe and then go home. Except that German brutality has left a lot of enemies, more even than even the withdrawal of the Soviets in OTL. Despite the Treaties, where Germany leaves, a potential anti-Nazi government springs up, (perhaps Spain and some Balkan allies being the exception). Also it is not going to take the Europeans long to trade atrocity stories and figure out what went on in those concentration camps and how extensive it was. Germany will be surrounded by a ring of pro-Anglo-American foes.

3) Form a Fascist EU with Germany in the Driver seat. By supporting home grown fascist movements Germany can create a “Common European home for Fascism". I think of this as the Gorbachev option and we know how well that worked. Without German bayonets, reform Fascism probably does not work any better than reform Communism works in OTL. There is simply no way a peacetime 1950s Norway gives popular approval to a fascist government even to get the benefits of joining the EU. With no Jews or Communists around, the local fascist cannot run against those bogeymen, so they will have to win approval on the merits of fascism and the German alliance.

4) Mein Kampf-colonize the East; because a bad plan is better than no plan. How many people in 1950s Germany had lots of kids and can be lured by the promise of ‘free land’ to a life on the Russian Steppes? Probably just a trickle. I can possibly see Germany absorbing Poland, but there is no way Germans can Aryanize all of Europe. What is the government going to do, force Germans to procreate at gunpoint?:eek: Ship them against their will to points east? I won’t go into what world and European reaction to this scheme (and keeping the concentration camps going against the Slavs) would be during peacetime.

5) Loot Europe. Since Germany is the richest part of Europe, how is this to work exactly? Send the products of the German Education and prosperity to Greece to crack heads and extort olive oil. I mean it would be cheaper for Germany just to buy the stuff or even give out big loans:p. I can really see the German youth of the 1950s-60s wanting to be a big part of this occupation scheme.:rolleyes:

So What would you do?
 
Last edited:
A good example of this is Fatherland by Robert Harris.
You have a 1964 Germany that is managing to hold favourable regimes in power in the West (we have no idea how successfully but we see no complaints from Western Europeans). However 20 years of living off the riches of Europe means the Baby Boomers aren't very eager to head of to the East where Generalplan Ost is being implemented and kill some Slavs.
Despite massive lures no where near enough people are moving east to settle the now empty land and the Americans are helping the USSR beyond the Urals prop up an insurgency which is a bloody sore for Germany (60,000 dead in the last 4 years). Continued Conscription is causing social problems and generally things are not good.
The actually story is a standard detective spiel but the background strikes me as very plausible once you get past the very vague description of victory.
 

loughery111

Banned
Your best bet is probably a variation on #5; use the Slavs in the east as slave labor to produce goods and services with which to bribe the rest of Europe; resettle Poland entirely and pray that natalist policies can keep your population up long enough to sway at least the French, Dutch, and Nordics to your side. Prop up Italy and Spain with streams of cheap goods from out East, until their respective leaders die and they can be replaced with more pliable ones, then fold the entire mix into a unified European economy and ditch your own insane policies. Form an EU of sorts along the lines that an Imperial Federation would have formed; i.e. power centralized in Germany to the extent that it can control the whole mess with minimal support from the Parties in other nations.

After that... pray that your nuclear deterrent keeps the much more dynamic economies of the United States, Pacific Rim, UK, and Commonwealth off your back. Because Japan definitely did not survive, and you're all alone against everyone else.
 
You seem to mistake the nazis for people who did long-term thinking. :p

Seriously though, beyond brutaily and anti-communism, the nazis had a very sketchy idea of how to rule, how to build a new society and what they would do after they had won the war.

Shortsightedness was a very common trait in the nazi party.
 

Typo

Banned
The whole Lebensraum thing is retarded, so that needs to be ditched asap, but by the time politics allows this the eastern territories is probably a massive money sinkhole to occupy and full of people who want revenge so ummm...split them up into different puppet states (which probably falls without German troops) and hope they don't recover from the starvation plan anytime soon? But most realistically Lebensraum gets ditched unofficially and the area gets turned into another slave labour camp, profitable or not.

Western Europe might still be delivering enough loot to still make it worth the cost, so I guess it stays occupied for the time being, hopefully as OP proposed eventually into Nazi Warsaw Pact.

The General Government stays as a slave labour camp and a buffer against the east, hey it might even generate enough money to make the occupation not bleed the country too bladly. But there might be enough arm smuggling into that area from the east now it's free of the German occupation, so ummm, yeah it's dicey too.

Southern Europe is easier, partition Yugoslavia to keep allies happy and just leave weak component states, though knowing the Balkans this is most likely going to cause problems somewhere down the line too. Greece...oh well, let's it go too, poor country, not strategic enough without a war.

Domestically some sort of Khrushchev reform analogue would be nice, but that might not be possible.

So yeah, the Nazi state is now Cold War USSR with a lot more opposition to it than the USSR ever had, with more internal problems than the USSR ever had post-Stalin since Hitler's death wouldn't get rid of the quasi-states within states that each of the Reich ministries and Nazi Pary departments had became. Which means that the whole thing is even more inefficient than the USSR, but at least free market economy is practiced to some extent.

And another interesting thing is foreign labour in the Reich, this might not actually end with the war since OTL post war Europe also needed labour, this would be very interesting.
 
Last edited:
Top