Technology in Nazi victory world

Is the old trope about superior technolgy in a Nazi victory world valid? I thought the Nazis were superstitious, not scientific.
 
It depends on whats meant by a "Nazi victory world". If its a situation similar to Calbear's excellent TL, technology in the West would definitely develop at a fairly rapid pace, to keep up with Nazi Europe in a "Cold War". Technology in Nazi territory, whether thats Europe in an Anglo-American Nazi War scenario or ASBville where the Nazis have conquered the world is not going to be anywhere near the levels its at in our world-ideas such as some aspects of physics were dismissed as "Jewish science", any key black/Jewish/slavic etc scientists will have no opportunity to develop their ideas, and its unlikely that there'll be the finance needed to pursue big ideas.
 
I think the USA and the USSR did nearly anything that was possible during the Cold war ( in terms of technological developement)

At best the Nazis would be some 10 years ahead.

So at best in 1950 they would have the technology the USA/USSR had in 1960 in our reality.
 
Well one bonus was the Nazi disregard to certain moral concerns. A lot of our medical technology comes from experimentation on Jews and other "undesirables". Without any concerns for the well-being of their subjects, Nazis would have a technological advantage.
 
It depends on whats meant by a "Nazi victory world". If its a situation similar to Calbear's excellent TL, technology in the West would definitely develop at a fairly rapid pace, to keep up with Nazi Europe in a "Cold War". Technology in Nazi territory, whether thats Europe in an Anglo-American Nazi War scenario or ASBville where the Nazis have conquered the world is not going to be anywhere near the levels its at in our world-ideas such as some aspects of physics were dismissed as "Jewish science", any key black/Jewish/slavic etc scientists will have no opportunity to develop their ideas, and its unlikely that there'll be the finance needed to pursue big ideas.

Someone nailed me for saying this on a thread a while back so I'll repeat it for your convenience. The idea of "Deutsche Physik" and that the sciences should not only conform to the standards of the Nazis but that any of the "Jewish sciences" should be thrown out and discredited was an idea that was itself, oddly enough, discredited. It wasn't that Nazi Germany didn't have a great tech sector (which it did) it's just that the regime itself alienated a lot of the Jewish or otherwise "undesirable" scientists. If Germany does very well they'll immediately work on replacing the scientists who have since gone to the Americans or the Soviets or whoever else would have them. Their rocket programs are still going to be topnotch and it'll be a great delivery system (well, if they improve the V2's accuracy anyway, don't want to shoot at DC and hit some Virginia countryside now do we?) if they ever manage to get their hands on an a-bomb, but that is itself riddled with challenges.

So basically I guess the point is that the Nazis didn't politicize the sciences as much as sometimes thought (or at least not as much as the Soviet Union did in some ways) but that the "brain drain" caused by all the scientists fleeing the country had already left them in shambles in certain fields, especially atomic physics. Rocketry they had covered, other, more game-changing things that had less of the "wunderwaffen" (basically awesome, but impractical weapons that wound up hurting Germany more than they helped them in terms of resources that were used on them that could've been used elsewhere) effect going on.
 
Well one bonus was the Nazi disregard to certain moral concerns. A lot of our medical technology comes from experimentation on Jews and other "undesirables". Without any concerns for the well-being of their subjects, Nazis would have a technological advantage.

Yep, pretty much everything that is known about the effects of freezing on the human body comes from records we obtained from concentration camp experimentation. In the medical field a complete lack of ethics will help in a horrible way I suppose.
 
Someone nailed me for saying this on a thread a while back so I'll repeat it for your convenience. The idea of "Deutsche Physik" and that the sciences should not only conform to the standards of the Nazis but that any of the "Jewish sciences" should be thrown out and discredited was an idea that was itself, oddly enough, discredited. (snip)

I don't know why you were 'nailed' for this as you are quite correct. The often repeated idea that the 'Deutsche Physik' movement suceeded is not supported by the facts.

I'd suggest the book German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power by Mark Walker which covers this ground in detail, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik covers the same ground.

To summarise:

There was indeed a movement in Germany to reject relativity and quantum mechanics as 'tainted'. This movement was known as Deutsche Physik. BUT: the high water mark of the Deutsche Physik movement was in 1937. By 1941 the Deutsche Physik movement had been defeated by German scientists such as Heisenberg and by 1942 it had been completely routed.

The simple formula deployed to square the politically inconvenient fact that some of the leading physicists of relativity and quantum mechanics were Jewish was that reality was reality, the facts were the facts the theoretical conclusions were inescapable and although in some cases Jewish physicists may have become associated with the theories, if they hadn't discovered them then someone else would have. The Jewish scientists were not to be mentioned by name but their theories were to be used.
 
Why people say what level technology will X or Y have its really difficult to answer because "technology" is such a broad field. Still I'll try:

Medicine/Biology.
Continued Nazi human experiments push this forward a bit in certain areas (e.g. effects of toxins, gases, radiation, cold, heat etc.). Post discovery of DNA (which should be around the same time, a few other people were close) they are going to chuck buckets of money at genetics at the start to prove Aryan superiority, but they may not like the answers and stop spending. Or maybe they'll try to create the Aryan superman and be light years ahead of us, its difficult to tell.
For genetic diseases (e.g. Autism) they are going to be far behind us as Zyklon-B will probably remain the "solution" in this field.
So Nazi-world will be ahead in certain areas, behind in others.

Rocketry.
Probably ahead. They had a good start, top quality personnel, who can train more top quality personnel, its military useful (after the A-bomb comes along) and it plays to their small-penis compensation needs. Also they are probably going to keep chucking money at it in a way that the SU and USA didn't after Apollo 11.

Computers.
Behind. Up until the 70's the Nazi's are going to keep up and while they'll start off behind the British and Americans the uses are obvious enough that they will expend effort here getting early mainframes. But come the PC revolution they are going to be in trouble. A regime as totalitarian as Hitler's is going to be dead opposed to the PC. They will restrict the market to just top officials and the government meaning it will never get as big as it did in the OTL West post 1970. Lacking the billions of dollars Intel and IBM have made selling computer chips to ordinary consumers they aren't going to be able to fund the research to make Moore's Law possible. Just like the SU in OTL they are going to lag in this.

Other Consumer Electronics.
Millions of miles behind. The Nazi's didn't like the free market, they believed in top down co-ordination of efforts and they cared more for bombs than for butter. While they'll probably be better than the Soviet Union but you are not going to get a Hitler-pod.

In general I suspect a Nazi world will be a more militarised world, meaning that certain fields will be ahead and others behind. But as a more militarised world it will be a poorer world, meaning it will be a more backward world. Because the Cold War showed that American teenagers wanting to play Ms. Pacman are better at driving development of computer chips than Soviet Military Procurement bureaucrats.
 
I don't know why you were 'nailed' for this as you are quite correct. The often repeated idea that the 'Deutsche Physik' movement suceeded is not supported by the facts.

I'd suggest the book German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power by Mark Walker which covers this ground in detail, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik covers the same ground.

To summarise:

There was indeed a movement in Germany to reject relativity and quantum mechanics as 'tainted'. This movement was known as Deutsche Physik. BUT: the high water mark of the Deutsche Physik movement was in 1937. By 1941 the Deutsche Physik movement had been defeated by German scientists such as Heisenberg and by 1942 it had been completely routed.

The simple formula deployed to square the politically inconvenient fact that some of the leading physicists of relativity and quantum mechanics were Jewish was that reality was reality, the facts were the facts the theoretical conclusions were inescapable and although in some cases Jewish physicists may have become associated with the theories, if they hadn't discovered them then someone else would have. The Jewish scientists were not to be mentioned by name but their theories were to be used.

No I was nailed for the fact that I believed the Deutsche Physik stuff too until someone came by and showed me the error of my ways.
 
Ahead in some, behind in others might be a good answer. The Nazis would invest in a lot in prestige projects, so engineering and rockets might be more advanced, but other stuff might be ignored or even rejected on ideological grounds.

Plus unfree societies don't develop their population's talent as well. If someone who'd be a major Soviet scientist in the 1960s or 1970s is plowing a field for some Aryan overlord (or, if said overlord is reasonable, is a reeve or accountant for him), there goes scientific advances.
 
The Nazis had screwed up the existing German education system to such a degree that in the long-term it's prospects are really truly awful. Added to that a radical regime most of whose leading figures to didnt even pretend to believe in science or a key role for any intelligentsia. (unlike the Soviets, who were very pro-science and invested a lot in createing a world-class education system, through somewhat lop-sidedly).

The Greater German Reich will be much further behind than the Soviets vis-a-vis the USA whatever the short-term achievements of the Weimar & Kaiserreich trained scientists or engineers. Plus they'll screw up all of Europe to boot.

You cant consider Germany on it's own TTL. As any advancements made OTL by the U.S.S.R and other European nations are likely gone.
 
The simple formula deployed to square the politically inconvenient fact that some of the leading physicists of relativity and quantum mechanics were Jewish was that reality was reality, the facts were the facts the theoretical conclusions were inescapable and although in some cases Jewish physicists may have become associated with the theories, if they hadn't discovered them then someone else would have.
You know, this actually sounds correct. It might've taken another hundred years without Einstein, but someone would almost certainly have come along with the same theory or something even better.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Well one bonus was the Nazi disregard to certain moral concerns. A lot of our medical technology comes from experimentation on Jews and other "undesirables". Without any concerns for the well-being of their subjects, Nazis would have a technological advantage.

Indeed this. I think the Nazis advanced medical and other scientific fields dramatically, mostly via through not caring about experiementing on humans. i think it's the difference between demolishing an empty house, and demolishing a house with people in it. one is a whole heck a lot easier than the other.
 
On a different note German rocketry was more advanced because they stole the more important of Robert Goddard's work. It would be interesting to see how far Von Braun
 
It depends on whats meant by a "Nazi victory world". If its a situation similar to Calbear's excellent TL, technology in the West would definitely develop at a fairly rapid pace, to keep up with Nazi Europe in a "Cold War". Technology in Nazi territory, whether thats Europe in an Anglo-American Nazi War scenario or ASBville where the Nazis have conquered the world is not going to be anywhere near the levels its at in our world-ideas such as some aspects of physics were dismissed as "Jewish science", any key black/Jewish/slavic etc scientists will have no opportunity to develop their ideas, and its unlikely that there'll be the finance needed to pursue big ideas.
Which key black scientists are you thinking about?
 

Hkelukka

Banned
That truly depends on just pure luck.

If they win a total victory, world tech is less than today.

Anything below that, where there is a strong will to develop depends entirely on the resources they have, the space they have and just who succeeds Hitler after he dies of lead poisoning as soon as the war is over. Failing lead he could also die from anything else but he will very likely die before 1950.


After that, if there is a civil war then all bets are off. But if not, and one nazi emerges relatively in charge its a matter of personality. If the leading nazi is someone who is relatively mild in the Nazi scale, either someone who we couldnt think of now due to butterflies or someone like Speer then we COULD see development that could be decades ahead of what we have today.

That really depends on who leads the movement after the old leader is dead.

And more than that, it depends on how large the axis victory is. If it is near total, say they have the entire Eurasian continent - UK and the commonwealth. Then they would certainly be anywhere between a decade to a century ahead of us by now.

That is because most of the world surface area if ineffectively used because democracies are hesitant to exploit people. Now, if you assume a Axis control of the entire african continent then the Axis population could balloon to billions in a few decades. While the average person would be less scientifically literate than the average Democratic citizen, they would have the sheer numbers to back it up. Even with a badly working system they would simply outclass the US.

If they manage to hold onto Africa and keep colonialism going and effectively replace the population of that continent and push the ecological capacity to European high standards you could have 10 billion people living there. That would be far far more than needed to outperform modern day scientific establishment.

Anyway, the answer is this. Anywhere between vastly behind to vastly ahead, depending on the axis luck.
 
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