Speer/Goebbels after Hitler?

[lucon50]

In a Nazi victory scenario where Germany stretches from France to the Urals, Hitler is expected to die in the years around 1950.

At first glance, the succession revolves around a few key groups: the Party, the Army and the SS. With Himmler toxic to many, could the Party ally with members of the military-industrial complex to bring the SS to heel?

I envisage the following:

• President: Albert Speer
• Chancellor: Joseph Goebbels
• Key industrialists
• Party bureaucrats
• Officers e.g. Rommel

Question is, what does such a post-Hitler settlement look like for domestic and foreign policies? Over the course of events, what does the future hold for Nazi Germany?

 

[Tolkiene]

Göring is Hitler's official heir. And in a total Nazi victory scenario, he presumably has not been discredited by screwups like Stalingrad and the allies bombing German cities. So assuming something else does not lead to him losing Hitler's favour (and here it is pertinet to note that Hitler only disinherited him in April 1945 in OTL) or dies due to illness/assassination, he's the most likely successor.

Of course, his sybaritic life style is not conducive to a long rule, but that actually gives people incentive to back him since he's unlikely to rock the boat. He's also popular with the German people. As for Speer...it's often forgotten that he only joined the inner circle after Todt died in a plane crash in 1942. Before that Speer was already one of Hitler's favourite architects (though not the only one) and a construction supremo, collaborating with Himmler to exploit prisoners as slave labour, but not one of the top dogs. And one of the reasons his ministry got so important was because things were going poorly for Germany and he was able to present himself as the man responsible for a so called 'armaments miracle' (when he was made minister, he was only responsible for Heer armaments, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine remained outside of his portfolio for quite a while).

Speer definitely has the ambition to be Hitler's successor, but if Germany is triumphing on all fronts, he has less ability to make his mark. Same with Goebbels, who got to rise in power when things turned against Germany. Likewise, the SS's position depends on when and how Germany wins the war. In the stereotypical scenario where the Reich makes peace with the UK in 1940 and crushes the Soviets in 1941, the SS will have been very busy murdering 'undesirables' en masse, but the Waffen-SS will have played a secondary role to the Heer and does not get anywhere near as big as it did OTL. Himmler's still important due to his control over the secret police, but weaker than OTL.

 

[lionhead]

If you look at a peace in 1940 then you still have Hess in he government as well, and he was next in line after Goring. I never have known why though, always seemed like a incompetent character to me. Perhaps because he was a sort of cowriter of Mein Kampf and thus a cofounder of the nazi ideology. His understanding of the nazi ideology could help him stay next in line when Goring takes over.

 

[Tolkiene]

If you look at a peace in 1940 then you still have Hess in he government as well, and he was next in line after Goring. I never have known why though, always seemed like a incompetent character to me. Perhaps because he was a sort of cowriter of Mein Kampf and thus a cofounder of the nazi ideology. His understanding of the nazi ideology could help him stay next in line when Goring takes over.

This is correct. The proclamation can be found here: https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft Word - 3328.pdf

In his speech to the Reichstag on 1 September 1939, Hitler proclaimed that should anything happen to him, Göring would succeed him. And if anything happened to him and Göring, Hess would be next in line.

Here it is worth noting that it does not look like Hitler actually viewed Hess as a proper successor. In fact, he once said something the along the lines that if Hess succeeded him, he did not know whom to pity more: Hess or the Party. Plus many bigwigs saw him as a preachey weirdo. Hess was a fanatical Nazi,totally devoted to Hitler and an enthusiastic propagandist of the latter's cult of personality, but was bad at intrigue and power plays, unlike Bormann. Now this does not mean that Hess was a total nonentity. His office had the right to minor state activities such as legislation for ideological correctness, and vet the ideological purity of civil service applicants (though he often complained about the Gauleiters keeping him out of the loop). He could appoint representatives in municipalities and controlled the Foreign Organisation of the Party. But he lacked good instincts for power politics.

The fact that he was a hypochondriac did not help either. As time went by, he increasingly delegated routine work to Bormann, and concentrated on representational task. This marginalised him even further. And Bormann successfully ingratiated himself with Hitler. Hess had the Deputy Führer title...but formal titles did not mean much in Nazi Germany, where politics were a free-for-all in which the various satraps competed for Hitler's favour. For instance, Robert Ley, Reich Organisation Chief of the Party and head the Labour Front, was not subordinate to Hess and the Gauleiters could bypass him.

 

[The Byronic Hero]

Prevent Goering being wounded in the Beer Hall Putsch and he doesn't turn into a drug addict. Army officers reported how suave, commanding, and intelligent he was once the narcotics were out of his system.

With Hitler dead, Goering would have easily secured his base while likely convincing the world of a new era of detente. He never truly supported some of the more extreme beliefs of the Party so Himmler is going to do a Beria and eventually vanish with the sheer number of enemies he has. Does Heydrich replace his boss? Does Goering co-opt him? Goering also likewise does away with the infighting and centralizes his authority. He's pragmatic enough to create puppets in the East once he realizes the scale of the problems they've created and how much easier things are to rule with the locals in charge and how much cheaper exploitation is rather than pushing slavery (hard to re-enter the international community when you've recreated slavery). This is reinforced by the lack of willing Germans to push further than Poland for colonization. So Lithuania annexed and puppets Ostland (Latvia and Estonia), Ukraine, rumor Russia (which is probably fragmented somewhat), and a separate Caucasus broken into statements. Maybe Crimea is annexed.

I'm not calling him a saint, he'll definitely be oppressing the East. He's a much more realistic monster vs Hitler, which is scarier.