By the end of 1941 Hitler's rule was so absolute that he, and he alone, controlled almost all of the major activities of the Third Reich.
He enjoyed tangling things up and the Gaulieters were given near total control over their gaus. He seldom disciplined them. Non-annexed areas would each probably have patrons from within the German government, be they the SS, army, navy, or whoever else is about.By the end of 1941 Hitler's rule was so absolute that he, and he alone, controlled almost all of the major activities of the Third Reich.
Hitler wanted to retire.
He enjoyed tangling things up and the Gaulieters were given near total control over their gaus. He seldom disciplined them. Non-annexed areas would each probably have patrons from within the German government, be they the SS, army, navy, or whoever else is about.
He seemed pretty intent upon building giant monuments and collecting art from all over the world. He might have kept the title as Fuhrer while giving away the jobs of president, chancellor, and his heading the party to others. With the belief in micromanaging and doing whatever the hell he wants. Whatever way he decides to do it would have a major effect on the future as to whether people can leave the offices of leadership in retirement, shame, or feet first.He did. But after USSR was defeated and Germany controlled entire Europe. He might as well said 'I am going to retire when the pigs start to fly!'
Probably would allow him to keep making decisions later on as he arranges it that people needed to come to him for their blessing on disputed things. That or those in charge give him options they know he will choose to make him feel good.After ensuring that men who would "Work towards Fuehrer!" were in charge, he would leave certain areas to individual control. Besides, Hitler would assign similar responsibility to rival services and then intervene as they fought with each other and side with one or the other, depending on his whim.
He seemed pretty intent upon building giant monuments and collecting art from all over the world. He might have kept the title as Fuhrer while giving away the jobs of president, chancellor, and his heading the party to others. With the belief in micromanaging and doing whatever the hell he wants. Whatever way he decides to do it would have a major effect on the future as to whether people can leave the offices of leadership in retirement, shame, or feet first.
Probably would allow him to keep making decisions later on as he arranges it that people needed to come to him for their blessing on disputed things. That or those in charge give him options they know he will choose to make him feel good.
Unless he has decided upon a new heir to replace Goerring or if his will said who got what position, unless everyone keeps the one they are in at the time. Martin Bormann would probably be in the best position for being bribed to forge or withhold certain papers.And once he dies - the result is scramble for power.
I don't mean of regime transition, but rather of personal transition. Fuhrer role in Nazi Germany was pretty much unique. Granted, before the war broke out, there could be hopes of some sort of order crystallizing. You and I both have done it in our timelines. But as the war progressed and as Hitler grabbed more and more power to himself the succession process would result in more and more chaos as many people would feel entitled to take his place. The result would be utter chaos. If it survived, Nazi regime would then be 'nazi' only in the name. It would probably more resemble Franco variety of fascism, than anything else, or perhaps the regime in South Africa. Nazism, in its fundamental form it certainly would not be.
Again, unlike the Nazis, Soviets ideal was justice and equality for everyone. Stalin may have perverted this ideal up to a measure, but even his rule rested upon some outside, impersonal legitimacy. Theoretically, at least. Fuehrer's decisions were unquestionable, his person irreplaceable. Fuehrerprinzip almost guaranteed that upon Hitler's death no committee would sit around to discuss and hammer out a compromise succession. Hitler purposefully pitted institutions of the Reich against each other. So, all potential successors would derive their legitimacy from the power to grab the position.
Unless he has decided upon a new heir to replace Goerring or if his will said who got what position, unless everyone keeps the one they are in at the time. Martin Bormann would probably be in the best position for being bribed to forge or withhold certain papers.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor. He had only gotten German citizenship a few years before when he was appointed to head the delegation from Brunswick to the Reichstag. I am unsure if he was ever even elected to the Reichstag, as I can't find where it was from.Meh. Call it as you want, both were just absolute lunatic dictators bent on killing people. Soviet ideal was "justice and equality for everyone" meaning Soviets; German ideal was "justice and equality for everyone" meaning Germans. Hitler probably had more legitimacy to his rule than Stalin since he was elected after all. A succession would not avoid blood being spilled, but anyone who would take power is in my opinion more likely than not to legitimise his rule by calling a Reichstag session (or NSDAP rally) and confirm it.
No doubt it would involve guns and such, but the issue is on whether it would constantly be a dictatorship under a single man or if there would be factions, chances to remove the leader, or perhaps positions in the government which people could claim they have tenure with because they were appointed by the previous Fuhrer, if that position would even remain. I am currently reading Hitler's Table Talk so I hope to learn a bit more on how he said things would be.Nonetheless, there would be people controlling other people with guns. Probably Himmler or whomever succeeds him in the position, Goering or his counterpart at the head of the Luftwaffe, someone who controlled the party (perhaps Goebels). A bunch of people willing, used to and able to resort to armed violence and not wanting to accept the purported will of the Fuehrer, considering it either forged or made under duress or even blaming the other faction(s) for Hitler's death.
Don't get me wrong, Germany will survive. Some form of government will arise. It is, however, vanishingly unlikely that Germany could make it to 2012 with the fundamentally Nazi form of government, whatever their vision was for the world after the war. I find it hard to imagine such a world, because Nazi philosophy had strife and conflict as its cornerstone, being the extreme social Darwinism.
Virtually since its inception in Germany, Nazi regime produced escalating crisis. There is no period during which Nazi regime didn't either perpetuate or prepared for a war or some other aggressive act towards the neighboring countries. I find it hard to see any sense to Nazism outside of this.
Given that the Wehrmacht in World War Two was the most tactically innovative and flexible of the armies fighting, and was also the army most willing to explore and adopt new technology as it became available, and was not used domestically for security purposes (the Reich having other administrative branches dedicated exclusively for that task, the SS, ORPO, SD, Gestapo to name a few), I’d have to say that you’re suggestion is very far off the mark.Contrary to what people seem to think, the Reich's military would be backwards both technologically and tactically, fine for internal oppression, but utterly useless for defending the border.
Unlike the USSR, the Third Reich had the real, actual, one man rule.
On the contrary, of the Soviet Union and Third Reich, that was only true of the former, not the latter; in the Soviet Union no provision whatsoever was made for a transition of power in the advent of Stalin’s death; just raising the subject was treasonous and would have guaranteed the immediate execution of the individual fool-hardy enough to do so. Stalin’s paranoia made the possibility of naming a successor impossible and resulted in several promising individual’s carriers being cut fatally short when they were rumoured to be next in line for the throne. Stalin himself ignored his own mortality, eating and drinking excessively despite having reached his seventies and having had at least one minor heart attack and stroke. At the time of his death he’d been planning another purge of the Communist Party that would have included all those in senior government positions at the time. So unprepared were Stalin’s successors that they continued to invoke his name and maintain his cult of personality until 1956, fully three years after his death.They never envisioned any transition or anything.
The entire point of the Third Reich was to make war on everyone and everywhere, forever.
Soviet Union at least had an underlying cause of trying to make a progressive society. Their society at least demonstrated the ability to exist without having to periodically plunder the neighbors.
While there was some lunacy in Soviet method, there was no method in Nazi lunacy.
This is a valid point; Stalin’s Soviet Union still played ideological lip service to the World Wide Revolution, even though Stalin had abandoned it in favour of Socialism in One Country. The Soviet relationship with The West was still affected by The West’s perception of that ideology even long after the demise of Stalin and it should have been otherwise clear that the Soviet Union did not have expansionist ambitions. A post-Hitler Third Reich dominating Europe would, even without radically changing its basic economy, have continued until the 1980s or ‘90s. And as we have seen in the PRC, a complete change to the regime’s economic theories can occur without the collapse of the regime. It is only within the last few years that we’ve seen the least softening of the grip on public opinion in the PRC, and that is yet to be translated to any increase in democratisation.In some ATL somewhere, where the USSR collapsed in World War II, someone is posting a thread asking "WI The USSR survived until the 1970s (or even 80s?)", and people are saying "Impossible! Assuming the whole thing didn't collapse after Stalin's death, they'd still be teaching Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory!"
Again not correct; the Nazi regime was always far more conscious of public opinion and the need to raise the standard of living of the German people than were their Soviet counterparts during same period. Because of the need to keep the German public happy, the Third Reich was far slower than Britain or the Soviet Union in converting to a full war economy and was still producing consumer goods long after the other powers had shifted their industry totally over to armaments. The very foundations of Nazi power were that they and they alone had brought prosperity to the German people. The Nazis were desperately aware that the German public would only consider them legitimate as long as their standard of living continued to improve and feared what would happen when it didn't.