The Anglo/American - Nazi War

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I don't know. I bet quite a few people might see Nappy 3 as being the last person who tried to prevent German unification, especially in France.
But then on the flip side, he was so terribly incompetent at it.

I wonder, would this new view of Germany go so far back as to affect historiography of the Holy Roman Empire? Would all the emperors who vainly attempted to increase their own power now be seen as villains, and would the theoretical idea that the Emperor was in some sense first in status over all Europe now be seen as tyrannical?
 
Bismarck was the one who created unified Germany. The same one that the world holds responsible for the War. The opinion is that Germany's mere existence means it will try to conquer Europe. Bismarck will be a hated figure worldwide.

In our own history, Bismarck's rep took a hit after each of the world wars, on the apparent assumption that past is prologue, and theories that Naziism of some sort was inevitable in some way for modern Germany. Since then, of course, such sentiments have cooled, and Bismarck has become easier to once again evaluate on his own terms.

I expect that in this timeline, this pattern will be (like every other sentiment about Germany) intensified. But I think that eventually, Bismarck will benefit from the passage of time. The truth is that for all of his defects and prejudices, he would have been horrified by Nazi Germany, and not just by its Götterdämmerung.
 
But then on the flip side, he was so terribly incompetent at it.

Bismarck had a way of making lots of people look incompetent. The Austrians didn't come off any better than Napoleon III. Roon and Moltke had a lot to do with Otto's success (and the failure of Francis Joseph and Napoleon III).

I think Napoleon III gets a bit of a bad rap. You can make an argument, in fact, that Napoleon III may have been the best all-around chief of government France had in the 19th century (which, admittedly, is a low bar to clear) - his uncle included.

And yes - I think Napoleon III might look a bit better to this timeline's world; though the present state of France might complicate his evaluation.
 
I was doing research on the Soviet Gulag and North Korean concentration camps and there were many inmates who managed to survive anywhere between 10 to 20+ years before escaping/being freed.

Did this sort of longevity exist among Polish/Slavic laborers in Nazi Europe or was death certain to occur before then?
 
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The difference between the GULAGs in the USSR and NK and any Nazi work camps for Slavs was that neither the Soviet nor NK camps had the goal of killing the workers in the process of getting work out of them. Those laborers who arrived with specialized skills (like machinists or electricians) or who somehow acquired those skills would be maintained as valuable slaves, although in miserable conditions and probably sterilized as a matter of course "to protect Aryan women from contamination". At least in the USSR zeks had a sentence, so if it was 10 years they would be released after 10 years, and so forth (at least for most of them). ALL of the Untermenschen not immediately sent to a death camp or starved out of hand were, in effect, chattel slaves with no hope of manumission. Their children, if allowed any, would be born slaves.

While the Nazis planned for vast killings, they also planned to get labor from many before death, and for an indefinite period survivors to be slaves. Over time you would see either a stable situation with slaves for labor, medical experiments, who knows what else would be maintained (like slaves in other slave societies) or if and when the need for slave labor went away they would die out. I very much doubt the Nazis would be killing Untermenschen and putting themselves in a labor shortage because of it. Obviously as agriculture mechanizes, you need fewer and fewer farm workers, but the wealthy and the middle class will want servants, there is always low level labor better done by slaves than Aryans, etc.
 

CalBear

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I was doing research on the Soviet Gulag and North Korean concentration camps and there were many inmates who managed to survive anywhere between 10 to 20+ years before escaping/being freed.

Did this sort of longevity exist among Polish/Slavic laborers in Nazi Europe or was death certain to occur before then?
The difference is that, for many of those under forced labor the GOAL is to work them to death. Fatalities are a feature, not a bug when the goal is Extermination through Labor.
 

Teshuvah

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You know, in addition to being cartoonishly evil, TTL also taught me the Nazis were really fucking STUPID too. Why would you dismantle the Heer and replace it with a dogmatically loyal branch of the party, getting rid of your best generals in the process? Why murder entire urban Slavic populations when that populace could be used to produce munitions and other military goods for the Reich? Why raid large civilian cities in Allied countries when (as CalBear mentioned during chapter 1) it made more sense to bomb the industrial heartland?

The Allies ITTL really benefited from the Nazis' stupidity, which went hand in hand with their evil.
 
You know, in addition to being cartoonishly evil, TTL also taught me the Nazis were really fucking STUPID too. Why would you dismantle the Heer and replace it with a dogmatically loyal branch of the party, getting rid of your best generals in the process? Why murder entire urban Slavic populations when that populace could be used to produce munitions and other military goods for the Reich? Why raid large civilian cities in Allied countries when (as CalBear mentioned during chapter 1) it made more sense to bomb the industrial heartland?

No more stupid (actually less stupid) than Stalin's purge of the Red Army in 1937-38.

And Stalin won the war.
 
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I suppose the Nazis of this world have no concept of maximizing output while killing, which is what the DPRK camps do.
The difference is that not everyone in North Korean camps dies there. A significant amount of inmates are released (like in Soviet Gulags) after their sentence is up while Slavs under the Reich's control are given a death sentence simply for existing. It depends on the particular role the laborers have and what counts as maximum output in that specific field. A skilled Russian factory worker may survive several years before dying whereas a Pole toiling in a mine may die within a few months. Extermination Through Labor is a very broad doctrine but the end goal of death is constant nonetheless.

It's one thing if you have a limited workforce that you're obligated to treat well and another if you have a pool of tens of millions of people you are actively trying to wipe out. A starving and abused slave laborer may be worth half or a third of a normal Aryan worker but if you have multiple slaves for every German it balances out as awful as that is.
 
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@CalBear, so, your answer to my question regarding whether the Cabal is killing off the Zhuang, Miao, and other non-Han ethnic groups and removing loan words from the Chinese language (in an attempt to "purify" it)?
 

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I suppose the Nazis of this world have no concept of maximizing output while killing, which is what the DPRK camps do.
One of the differences between the sites like the DPRK prison camps or the Soviet Gulag system and the Nazi Extermination through Labor set-up is/was that the Gulags and prison camps are not designed to kill but to act as both punishment and deterrent to others. Besides the actual political prisoners both the DPRK & Soviet systems included "ordinary" criminals sentenced for things like assault or manslaughter; with both groups being used as an example to others. If people simply disappear they are actually much less useful as corrective examples compared to some broken husk of person returning to society after five or ten years.

The Reich was not interested in punishment per se, the goal was to eliminate undesirable groups while extracting as much useful labor from them as possible along the way.
 

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@CalBear, so, your answer to my question regarding whether the Cabal is killing off the Zhuang, Miao, and other non-Han ethnic groups and removing loan words from the Chinese language (in an attempt to "purify" it)?
Killing them? No.

Clearly showing overall preferences to Han individuals? Absolutely. Loan words are not sought to for elimination, even "Western" words are in use, the Cabal is more practical than that. If something was in common use prior to the take-over it is still used. Since there is almost no outside contact since the Cabal's take-over there is very little opportunity for the common language to add loan words from outside.
 
Killing them? No.

Clearly showing overall preferences to Han individuals? Absolutely. Loan words are not sought to for elimination, even "Western" words are in use, the Cabal is more practical than that. If something was in common use prior to the take-over it is still used. Since there is almost no outside contact since the Cabal's take-over there is very little opportunity for the common language to add loan words from outside.
But (failed) attempts to destroy the languages and eliminate the distinctive customs of said ethnic groups (along with eliminating whatever intelligentsia they might have) might have been carried out by the Cabal, right?
 
North Korea Camp
The Reich was not interested in punishment per se, the goal was to eliminate undesirable groups while extracting as much useful labor from them as possible along the way.

I was thinking in terms of the "total control zones" of the Kwalliso, the political penal labour colonies. You would put entire families of the "unpure" "counter-revolutionaries" who must be exterminated one way or another.
 

Teshuvah

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Killing them? No.

Clearly showing overall preferences to Han individuals? Absolutely. Loan words are not sought to for elimination, even "Western" words are in use, the Cabal is more practical than that. If something was in common use prior to the take-over it is still used. Since there is almost no outside contact since the Cabal's take-over there is very little opportunity for the common language to add loan words from outside.
So what exactly is the ideology of the Chinese Confederation? Nationalism mixed with totalitarianism?
 

CalBear

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So what exactly is the ideology of the Chinese Confederation? Nationalism mixed with totalitarianism?
That is as good a description as any. It is also a "fascist" state since the needs of the State greatly outweigh the needs of the individual, but without the single "strong man" that we tend to associate with fascist states.
 

Teshuvah

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That is as good a description as any. It is also a "fascist" state since the needs of the State greatly outweigh the needs of the individual, but without the single "strong man" that we tend to associate with fascist states.
Of course, they'd never officially call themselves fascist, I assume...
 
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