The Flag on High: As The World Went Dark
- Thread starter Star Eater
- Start date
The Meteor is in service in 1944 in this timeline too, but they didn't really warrant mentioning until '51. Operation Pharaoh was more a slapped together invasion put together as an emergency action, hence poor planning which forced its eventual failure, and the 1946-47 winter was indeed in our timeline; it was in our world severe enough to provoke famine fears and effectively shut down the economy, so you can see how it could affect the war effort. As for Churchill, he's become the first Secretary-General of the United Nations; given that the UN in this world is more a formalisation of the Allied Powers, this isn't too surprising.
I intend to have the next update discuss Reich domestic politics in the early/mid 1950s, so we shall see
Wendigo
Banned
By the 50s the German population (and that of Western Europe to an extent) will be heavily indoctrinated and devoted to National Socialism once the education system is hijacked completely by the Nazi Party. Young adults would be the biggest zealots due to being raised their whole lives under Hitler's rule plus membership in the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls.
They'd be just as brainwashed and fanatical as a large number of the Japanese population during the 30s and 40s were.
It'd be frankly terrifying and sad.
They'd be just as brainwashed and fanatical as a large number of the Japanese population during the 30s and 40s were.
It'd be frankly terrifying and sad.
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Wendigo
Banned
Crimea only had a population of 1.1 million during WW2 so it wouldn't be too hard to work the inhabitants to death using Extermination through Labor in a short period of time.
Also Crimea is 27,000 kilometers or 10,425 square miles (As big as the state of Massachusetts.)
That's a whole lot of burial space meaning the Reich's death toll has to be in the tens of millions.
As a point of comparison Arlington National Cemetery is around a square mile and holds 400,000 graves. There would be plenty of space to build a memorial and bury people in the Crimea.
Eastern Europe is going to end up the world's biggest tomb. The Reich will turn it into an absolute nightmare fueled hellscape, pure Hell on Earth.
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5.
The Battle of the Stratojets was to be the last bout of extreme violence between the United Nations and the Axis for a long time. Yet the 1950s would not be without their own crises, some harmless, some bloody. Indeed, the battle was not even the last crisis of 1951.
The next clash was to take place on November 8th, when the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer was tasked with a new attempt at power demonstration, a practice the Reich was so recklessly fond of. Admiral Scheer was tasked with traversing the Suez Canal and entering the Indian Ocean, the first time this had been attempted by the Kriegsmarine, in an open challenge to the British owners of the canal. If they refused to grant it access, the Reich could gleefully trigger yet another crisis knowing the U.N. would never dare restart the war. The Battle of the Stratojets had been a curse for the Allies, as it instilled in the mind of Himmler particularly that even outbreaks of significant bloodshed would not ultimately lead to war. So it was that Admiral Scheer attempted to cross into the Red Sea. Having made it past Gibraltar despite repeatedly being buzzed by RAF Mosquitoes, Captain Franz Wolfram was somewhat confident that his ship might make it through the canal. Instead it found itself escorted all the way by no less than six destroyers of the Royal Navy. It was pretty clear what kind of signal they were trying to send. Then, upon reaching the canal, Scheer was politely but firmly denied passage. Furious, Berlin ordered Wolfram to fire on the nearest Allied warship. Wolfram looked around and counted seven. He instead turned around, only to find his path blocked by a British destroyer as the warships began to close in, trapping him. They intended to board the Admiral Scheer. But Wolfram was a devoted Nazi, having openly wept in front of his subordinates when announcing Hitler’s death, and as the Royal Navy closed in he ordered the flag of the Kriegsmarine lowered. The British ships thought he intended to raise the white flag, but instead the red, white, and black of the Nazi Party banner rose in its place.
Each of the Royal Navy ships received the same order from Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Arthur Power based in Malta, and quickly halted. It was clear what was about to happen. Sure enough, several of Admiral Scheer’s lifeboats were lowered while the more fanatical of crew remained aboard. Minutes later, a mighty explosion tore the stern of the battleship apart. The Royal Navy ships rushed forwards to rescue as many as they could while the burning carcass of the Admiral Scheer sank to the bottom of the eastern Mediterranean. Captain Franz Wolfram’s body was found floating more than ten miles away from the site of the sinking and, in a gesture of good faith which required the personal approval of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, his body was returned to the Reich for a hero’s welcome. Very little German malice over the event was directed towards the Allies; the entire event was seen by many in the Reich government as merely unfortunate. If there was a lesson to be learned, so they felt, it was that the Kriegsmarine needed a far stronger presence in the Mediterranean and so shipyards in Greece, southern France, and the former states of Yugoslavia began finding themselves getting to work. No-one at the top of the Reich government seemed to reflect that maybe sending Admiral Scheer alone to the Suez Canal was, at best, a rather bizarre thing to do but it reflected the occasionally bewildering strain of logic which characterised the government of the Third Reich especially while under the figure of Heinrich Himmler.
Yet Himmler’s rule would often sway from being looked upon with bewilderment to utter revulsion. Within the Eastern Provinces, Himmler’s own passion for ruthless genocide was stepped up many notches. The death camps grew and the food supplies did the opposite, as Himmler brought forward his goals for extermination. The types of racial groups which might be granted the possibility of becoming “honorary Aryans” was whittled down and often to a degree of extreme unfairness even in the Reich’s morally dead system. One account told of how a group of Bosnian Muslims serving in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division were selected for racial examination, as Himmler looked to completely purify his beloved SS. Most were expelled from the SS and sent to the newly founded Bosnian military with their ranks, pay, and pensions intact. Some were found to be of questionable heritage and, uniformly, vanished to the Eastern Provinces. One member was sent to perish in a camp on the Volga for the crime of being born in a village where it was known at least one Jew had once lived. Bear in mind that all these men had served in the SS, on behalf of the Reich, earning glory for the very people who now sent them to their personal Armageddon.
The nightmares which strode across Eastern Europe were too countless to list here, and often it is the individual stories which bring more tragedy to one’s heart than cold statistics. In 1953, the Estonian refugee and philosopher Uku Masing published his experiences under occupation, Reichteous, which became a bestseller through the West. The salvaged diary of a teenage Jewish girl from Nuremberg, Diaries from Nuremberg, saw the same fate after it was smuggled out of the Reich following its handing to the Swiss Ambassador’s staff by the girl’s father, who had kept it with him after his daughter had died in the concentration camp they’d shared, and which he’d escaped from. The ultimate fate of the father, Peter Zorn, is unknown.
The revulsion with the thugs holding sway over Europe was just as intensely felt in the corridors of power as it was on the streets. President Vandenberg, re-elected in 1952, was already overseeing his own domestic efforts to expunge America of any taint resembling the Nazis; segregation of African-Americans, particularly in the South, had been a thorny issue with his Civil Rights Act of 1955 going some way to mend things. More would be needed. But Vandenberg also desperately wanted to find a way to roll back Nazi domination somewhere in the world. He, like Himmler, had been encouraged that the Battle of the Stratojets had not led to wider conflagration and he wondered if this might mean a retaking of Nazi territory somewhere would remain only an isolated incident. Raising these ideas to his generals, not to mention the British (who, with the Reaper glaring at them from across the Channel, had been happy to throw themselves into the new security arrangements of the post-war world), ideas had circulated about a joint Anglo-American operation to occupy Sicily, thus making the Mediterranean a far safer place as Reich aircraft would be less able to interdict shipping. It was the backing out of the idea by the anxious British which killed the concept, not to mention sheer refusal from the Canadian government once they were made privy to the idea. Vandenberg would again raise the proposal to Britain’s incoming Prime Minister in 1954, Anthony Eden, but would get nowhere once again.
Vandenberg had also looked towards what remained of the Soviet Union beyond the Urals. Should a general war with the Reich be reignited, the U.N. had two options. One, open a second front through an inevitably horribly costly amphibious and airborne invasion of some part of Europe, or two, send substantial forces to the Soviet Union and drive west until they reached Berlin. This suggestion was taken more seriously by everyone except the Soviets themselves. The Instrument of Surrender had forbidden the stationing of foreign troops on Soviet soil on pain of restarting the entire conflict, and German troops and officials were present in every major city beyond the Urals, partly to ensure this was obeyed and partly to demonstrate to those Russians “lucky” enough to live under the Soviet Union who was boss. The Soviets, economically and militarily crippled with internal plots unfolding daily to change the political landscape, had no intention to restart the war and no ability to resist a renewed Reich offensive especially as Axis aircraft controlled the airspace for two-hundred miles east of the Urals with all other flag carriers, including Soviet planes, forbidden.
The lines certainly seemed to be drawn but, naturally, it would be the Third Reich which tried to shift these lines first.
It was natural in Nazi ideology to seek expansion; had the Third Reich conquered every inch of the Earth, it would have desired Mars. This was all based in the twisted Nazi ideology of survival of the fittest; if one was stronger than another, then one had the right to overpower that other and do as it pleased. This applied to everything from individuals to entire nations in Nazi ideology. Germany felt itself surrounded by weaker states, and inevitably it would be hungry for yet more. On April 16th, 1956 it expressed this by invading Sweden.
Sweden had been a neutral power during the war, but it was effectively trapped between the German-occupied Norway and Denmark, Axis member Finland, and the Baltic. Yet Sweden, fiercely independent, didn’t seem quite ready to accept the status quo. It certainly was no puppet of the Reich, a fact which enraged Himmler to no end. Its arrest of Reich agents and continued trade with the West was also a source of fury. By 1954, the Swedish government had sensed that the wind was blowing a different way as German newspapers began to adopt increasingly anti-Swedish positions. Himmler, in one speech to the party faithful at the mammoth Volkshalle, declared that the Aryans of Germany had assumed the mantle of the greatest race on Earth “where before this crown might have belonged to the Swedes. How far they have fallen.” Anxious, the Swedish government had increased its contacts with the West, which began sending military assistance in the form of equipment hidden aboard Swedish-flagged vessels, which could still enter Reich waters unmolested. It received its first batch of F-100 Super Sabres from the U.S., granting the Swedish Air Force an extra punch already offered by its indigenous Saab 29 Tunnan, a rotund aircraft resembling a bumblebee which could still outfly and outfight most Reich fighters.
The moment of truth came when Sweden, in a moment of hubris, signed a new trade agreement with the United States. There was little particularly unique about this, but it was as good an opportunity as any in Himmler’s red eyes. Declaring that Sweden had demonstrated where it really stood in the world, Himmler withdrew diplomatic contacts. The half-million men of the Swedish Army mobilised and on April 16th, 1956 the attack began. More than 1,500 heavy bombers struck Stockholm and Gothenburg while 650 tanks from 2nd and 15th Panzer Divisions attacked either side of the Vänern lake. Plenty were knocked out by advanced anti-tank equipment, as Swedish troops dug into the fields and forests while also adopting the same hit and run tactics of their Finnish brethren during the Winter War against the Soviet Union. Paratroopers took Gotland while the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin got her first chance to see combat. Two of Sweden’s four cruisers, the spearhead of her navy, had been sunk amid the bombing of the naval base at Karlskrona while the other two raced to intercept the expected amphibious invasion targeting Stockholm. Graf Zeppelin, escorted by a significant complement of destroyers, frigates, and cruisers, slipped out of Norwegian waters and entered the Baltic just hours into the first fighting. Spotted by British agents in Copenhagen, the U.N. did what it could to guide Swedish aircraft to Graf Zeppelin. She suffered several close calls as Swedish aircraft from the country’s south tried to bomb her, but all attempts failed. The two remaining Swedish cruisers, Tre Kronor and Gotland, were hopelessly antiquated but were evading German air attacks for the time being. The Reich government was also flying, but in this case it was right in the face of military strategy. In a ridiculous intervention, Himmler had ordered that the two cruisers be spared to give the Graf Zeppelin a chance to practice on live ship targets. Crewmen aboard the Swedish ships literally watched Reich bombers pass overhead, completely ignoring them.
Graf Zeppelin finally found the two cruisers after two days of preparation, and launched her complement of Fi 167 biplane torpedo bombers, as testing of jet aircraft for the ship had not yet been completed. A handful of the bombers were swatted out of the sky, but the Swedes had little chance. Both were inevitably torpedoed and sank, with the loss of 273 crew.
Meanwhile on the ground, the Germans continued to slowly press ahead. Or to put it more accurately, the Germans did half of the pressing ahead. The other half of the invasion force was made up of Dutch and Belgian troops, Berlin having kept Nordic members of the Axis away out of questions of loyalty. This was the primary reason why Finland was never used for a two-pronged invasion, amid fears that the Finns might resort to guerrilla tactics to disrupt an invasion. As it was, the Germans chose not to assault Stockholm by land at all. One force, under the command of General Hans von Salmuth and including 2nd Panzer Division and the 133nd and 183rd Infantry Divisions, had driven south to capture Gothenburg which was largely abandoned by the Swedes as they dispersed into the wilderness. Salmuth’s force then swung east to move on Jönköping, which only fell after brutal street fighting, with the intention of completely cutting off the southern tip of the country. Meanwhile, General Carl Hilpert led his mechanised and tank forces to their first major battle at Karlstad (he would die of a stroke two days after victory here), before moving directly on Stockholm. Surprisingly, German amphibious forces never showed their faces.
Once Stockholm fell, the invasion’s result was never much in doubt but the Swedish military weren’t one to surrender. Dispersing into the vastness of the country’s north, a slow battle of weary attrition would follow which showed up the Germans on plenty of occasions. No major urban battles would follow, and soon the conflict would necessitate the deployment of troops from the Eastern Provinces with experience dealing with partisans. But the brutality of Reich foreign policy was there for all to see. A country had been invaded for no particular gain beyond pride and a distorted sense of superiority. No-one knew how far the Reich might go.
Comments?
The Battle of the Stratojets was to be the last bout of extreme violence between the United Nations and the Axis for a long time. Yet the 1950s would not be without their own crises, some harmless, some bloody. Indeed, the battle was not even the last crisis of 1951.
The next clash was to take place on November 8th, when the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer was tasked with a new attempt at power demonstration, a practice the Reich was so recklessly fond of. Admiral Scheer was tasked with traversing the Suez Canal and entering the Indian Ocean, the first time this had been attempted by the Kriegsmarine, in an open challenge to the British owners of the canal. If they refused to grant it access, the Reich could gleefully trigger yet another crisis knowing the U.N. would never dare restart the war. The Battle of the Stratojets had been a curse for the Allies, as it instilled in the mind of Himmler particularly that even outbreaks of significant bloodshed would not ultimately lead to war. So it was that Admiral Scheer attempted to cross into the Red Sea. Having made it past Gibraltar despite repeatedly being buzzed by RAF Mosquitoes, Captain Franz Wolfram was somewhat confident that his ship might make it through the canal. Instead it found itself escorted all the way by no less than six destroyers of the Royal Navy. It was pretty clear what kind of signal they were trying to send. Then, upon reaching the canal, Scheer was politely but firmly denied passage. Furious, Berlin ordered Wolfram to fire on the nearest Allied warship. Wolfram looked around and counted seven. He instead turned around, only to find his path blocked by a British destroyer as the warships began to close in, trapping him. They intended to board the Admiral Scheer. But Wolfram was a devoted Nazi, having openly wept in front of his subordinates when announcing Hitler’s death, and as the Royal Navy closed in he ordered the flag of the Kriegsmarine lowered. The British ships thought he intended to raise the white flag, but instead the red, white, and black of the Nazi Party banner rose in its place.
Each of the Royal Navy ships received the same order from Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Arthur Power based in Malta, and quickly halted. It was clear what was about to happen. Sure enough, several of Admiral Scheer’s lifeboats were lowered while the more fanatical of crew remained aboard. Minutes later, a mighty explosion tore the stern of the battleship apart. The Royal Navy ships rushed forwards to rescue as many as they could while the burning carcass of the Admiral Scheer sank to the bottom of the eastern Mediterranean. Captain Franz Wolfram’s body was found floating more than ten miles away from the site of the sinking and, in a gesture of good faith which required the personal approval of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, his body was returned to the Reich for a hero’s welcome. Very little German malice over the event was directed towards the Allies; the entire event was seen by many in the Reich government as merely unfortunate. If there was a lesson to be learned, so they felt, it was that the Kriegsmarine needed a far stronger presence in the Mediterranean and so shipyards in Greece, southern France, and the former states of Yugoslavia began finding themselves getting to work. No-one at the top of the Reich government seemed to reflect that maybe sending Admiral Scheer alone to the Suez Canal was, at best, a rather bizarre thing to do but it reflected the occasionally bewildering strain of logic which characterised the government of the Third Reich especially while under the figure of Heinrich Himmler.
Yet Himmler’s rule would often sway from being looked upon with bewilderment to utter revulsion. Within the Eastern Provinces, Himmler’s own passion for ruthless genocide was stepped up many notches. The death camps grew and the food supplies did the opposite, as Himmler brought forward his goals for extermination. The types of racial groups which might be granted the possibility of becoming “honorary Aryans” was whittled down and often to a degree of extreme unfairness even in the Reich’s morally dead system. One account told of how a group of Bosnian Muslims serving in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division were selected for racial examination, as Himmler looked to completely purify his beloved SS. Most were expelled from the SS and sent to the newly founded Bosnian military with their ranks, pay, and pensions intact. Some were found to be of questionable heritage and, uniformly, vanished to the Eastern Provinces. One member was sent to perish in a camp on the Volga for the crime of being born in a village where it was known at least one Jew had once lived. Bear in mind that all these men had served in the SS, on behalf of the Reich, earning glory for the very people who now sent them to their personal Armageddon.
The nightmares which strode across Eastern Europe were too countless to list here, and often it is the individual stories which bring more tragedy to one’s heart than cold statistics. In 1953, the Estonian refugee and philosopher Uku Masing published his experiences under occupation, Reichteous, which became a bestseller through the West. The salvaged diary of a teenage Jewish girl from Nuremberg, Diaries from Nuremberg, saw the same fate after it was smuggled out of the Reich following its handing to the Swiss Ambassador’s staff by the girl’s father, who had kept it with him after his daughter had died in the concentration camp they’d shared, and which he’d escaped from. The ultimate fate of the father, Peter Zorn, is unknown.
The revulsion with the thugs holding sway over Europe was just as intensely felt in the corridors of power as it was on the streets. President Vandenberg, re-elected in 1952, was already overseeing his own domestic efforts to expunge America of any taint resembling the Nazis; segregation of African-Americans, particularly in the South, had been a thorny issue with his Civil Rights Act of 1955 going some way to mend things. More would be needed. But Vandenberg also desperately wanted to find a way to roll back Nazi domination somewhere in the world. He, like Himmler, had been encouraged that the Battle of the Stratojets had not led to wider conflagration and he wondered if this might mean a retaking of Nazi territory somewhere would remain only an isolated incident. Raising these ideas to his generals, not to mention the British (who, with the Reaper glaring at them from across the Channel, had been happy to throw themselves into the new security arrangements of the post-war world), ideas had circulated about a joint Anglo-American operation to occupy Sicily, thus making the Mediterranean a far safer place as Reich aircraft would be less able to interdict shipping. It was the backing out of the idea by the anxious British which killed the concept, not to mention sheer refusal from the Canadian government once they were made privy to the idea. Vandenberg would again raise the proposal to Britain’s incoming Prime Minister in 1954, Anthony Eden, but would get nowhere once again.
Vandenberg had also looked towards what remained of the Soviet Union beyond the Urals. Should a general war with the Reich be reignited, the U.N. had two options. One, open a second front through an inevitably horribly costly amphibious and airborne invasion of some part of Europe, or two, send substantial forces to the Soviet Union and drive west until they reached Berlin. This suggestion was taken more seriously by everyone except the Soviets themselves. The Instrument of Surrender had forbidden the stationing of foreign troops on Soviet soil on pain of restarting the entire conflict, and German troops and officials were present in every major city beyond the Urals, partly to ensure this was obeyed and partly to demonstrate to those Russians “lucky” enough to live under the Soviet Union who was boss. The Soviets, economically and militarily crippled with internal plots unfolding daily to change the political landscape, had no intention to restart the war and no ability to resist a renewed Reich offensive especially as Axis aircraft controlled the airspace for two-hundred miles east of the Urals with all other flag carriers, including Soviet planes, forbidden.
The lines certainly seemed to be drawn but, naturally, it would be the Third Reich which tried to shift these lines first.
It was natural in Nazi ideology to seek expansion; had the Third Reich conquered every inch of the Earth, it would have desired Mars. This was all based in the twisted Nazi ideology of survival of the fittest; if one was stronger than another, then one had the right to overpower that other and do as it pleased. This applied to everything from individuals to entire nations in Nazi ideology. Germany felt itself surrounded by weaker states, and inevitably it would be hungry for yet more. On April 16th, 1956 it expressed this by invading Sweden.
Sweden had been a neutral power during the war, but it was effectively trapped between the German-occupied Norway and Denmark, Axis member Finland, and the Baltic. Yet Sweden, fiercely independent, didn’t seem quite ready to accept the status quo. It certainly was no puppet of the Reich, a fact which enraged Himmler to no end. Its arrest of Reich agents and continued trade with the West was also a source of fury. By 1954, the Swedish government had sensed that the wind was blowing a different way as German newspapers began to adopt increasingly anti-Swedish positions. Himmler, in one speech to the party faithful at the mammoth Volkshalle, declared that the Aryans of Germany had assumed the mantle of the greatest race on Earth “where before this crown might have belonged to the Swedes. How far they have fallen.” Anxious, the Swedish government had increased its contacts with the West, which began sending military assistance in the form of equipment hidden aboard Swedish-flagged vessels, which could still enter Reich waters unmolested. It received its first batch of F-100 Super Sabres from the U.S., granting the Swedish Air Force an extra punch already offered by its indigenous Saab 29 Tunnan, a rotund aircraft resembling a bumblebee which could still outfly and outfight most Reich fighters.
The moment of truth came when Sweden, in a moment of hubris, signed a new trade agreement with the United States. There was little particularly unique about this, but it was as good an opportunity as any in Himmler’s red eyes. Declaring that Sweden had demonstrated where it really stood in the world, Himmler withdrew diplomatic contacts. The half-million men of the Swedish Army mobilised and on April 16th, 1956 the attack began. More than 1,500 heavy bombers struck Stockholm and Gothenburg while 650 tanks from 2nd and 15th Panzer Divisions attacked either side of the Vänern lake. Plenty were knocked out by advanced anti-tank equipment, as Swedish troops dug into the fields and forests while also adopting the same hit and run tactics of their Finnish brethren during the Winter War against the Soviet Union. Paratroopers took Gotland while the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin got her first chance to see combat. Two of Sweden’s four cruisers, the spearhead of her navy, had been sunk amid the bombing of the naval base at Karlskrona while the other two raced to intercept the expected amphibious invasion targeting Stockholm. Graf Zeppelin, escorted by a significant complement of destroyers, frigates, and cruisers, slipped out of Norwegian waters and entered the Baltic just hours into the first fighting. Spotted by British agents in Copenhagen, the U.N. did what it could to guide Swedish aircraft to Graf Zeppelin. She suffered several close calls as Swedish aircraft from the country’s south tried to bomb her, but all attempts failed. The two remaining Swedish cruisers, Tre Kronor and Gotland, were hopelessly antiquated but were evading German air attacks for the time being. The Reich government was also flying, but in this case it was right in the face of military strategy. In a ridiculous intervention, Himmler had ordered that the two cruisers be spared to give the Graf Zeppelin a chance to practice on live ship targets. Crewmen aboard the Swedish ships literally watched Reich bombers pass overhead, completely ignoring them.
Graf Zeppelin finally found the two cruisers after two days of preparation, and launched her complement of Fi 167 biplane torpedo bombers, as testing of jet aircraft for the ship had not yet been completed. A handful of the bombers were swatted out of the sky, but the Swedes had little chance. Both were inevitably torpedoed and sank, with the loss of 273 crew.
Meanwhile on the ground, the Germans continued to slowly press ahead. Or to put it more accurately, the Germans did half of the pressing ahead. The other half of the invasion force was made up of Dutch and Belgian troops, Berlin having kept Nordic members of the Axis away out of questions of loyalty. This was the primary reason why Finland was never used for a two-pronged invasion, amid fears that the Finns might resort to guerrilla tactics to disrupt an invasion. As it was, the Germans chose not to assault Stockholm by land at all. One force, under the command of General Hans von Salmuth and including 2nd Panzer Division and the 133nd and 183rd Infantry Divisions, had driven south to capture Gothenburg which was largely abandoned by the Swedes as they dispersed into the wilderness. Salmuth’s force then swung east to move on Jönköping, which only fell after brutal street fighting, with the intention of completely cutting off the southern tip of the country. Meanwhile, General Carl Hilpert led his mechanised and tank forces to their first major battle at Karlstad (he would die of a stroke two days after victory here), before moving directly on Stockholm. Surprisingly, German amphibious forces never showed their faces.
Once Stockholm fell, the invasion’s result was never much in doubt but the Swedish military weren’t one to surrender. Dispersing into the vastness of the country’s north, a slow battle of weary attrition would follow which showed up the Germans on plenty of occasions. No major urban battles would follow, and soon the conflict would necessitate the deployment of troops from the Eastern Provinces with experience dealing with partisans. But the brutality of Reich foreign policy was there for all to see. A country had been invaded for no particular gain beyond pride and a distorted sense of superiority. No-one knew how far the Reich might go.
Comments?
Wendigo
Banned
Chilling yet plausible considering how obsessed Himmler was with racial purity. IOTL even pets that belonged to Jews were put down so they couldn't "taint" their German owners. There's no turning back from that kind of crazy. Good call putting it in the update.
Two questions:
1: When you say "Death camp" do you mean JUST explicit extermination camps like Treblinka/Belzec/Sobibor where 95+% of inmates were gassed within hours of arriving or are you also including concentration camps as well where inmates are worked to death through starvation and hard labor gradually?
IOTL there were around 6 dedicated extermination camps most of which were abandoned due to lack of sufficient Jews to be gassed while there were hundreds/thousands of concentration and labor camps plus subcamps within those.
2: How many troops are stationed on the Eastern Frontier fighting against partisans?
Haven't read it all yet, but it's a very good TL, though I'm glad it never actually happened. OTL's Nazis were bad enough.
Wendigo
Banned
I wouldn't say MORE grimdark I'd say it focuses more on the Nazis' genocidal policies throughout the story as opposed to just at the very beginning like in the Angle American Nazi War.
In this case grimdark is good because it represents the nightmarish Hell that a Nazi occupied Europe would become. I don't mind it in this case because it's historically accurate to what the Reich and its leadership was like.
Having read through this TL so far, I can say that it is a very fluent and well written dystopia. But as to historical accuracy, I just have to disagree with you. This is a massive Naziwank, and as such I can only see it as implausible. The Third Reich is simply doing things it should not have had the resources to do, annexing and holding down most of Europe, and now even inexplicably conquering Sweden it could simply force into submission by a combination of non-military means. This TL will probably lead into a nuclear war with the West at some point, but realistically I think this Nazi empire should implode due to its own unsustainability brought about by insanely unrealistic policies and actions by the late 60s or so.
The next update is going to note issues the Reich is having when it comes to occupation, and I should point out that the invasion of Sweden certainly makes sense when you think about the sheer nonsense of Nazi ideology and its twisted Darwinian attitude towards foreign relations.
trurle
Banned
I find strange what in the divided world like this ATL organization called "United Nations" do exist. I can still imagine the formation of NATO, but United Nations would be impossible to form. Basically, every state which waited with declaration of war to Germany to late 1942, is going to be in the German sphere of influence.
Notably it would be Brazil, Iran, Argentine, Turkey and may be Egypt.
Therefore, the questions for Star Eater:
1) What happened with Iran in this ATL? Was it invaded in 1941 as IOTL? Was invasion successful?
2) What happening in Egypt? IOTL, 1952 would see high nationalism demanding British to leave, and it would be much worse in this ATL
Notably it would be Brazil, Iran, Argentine, Turkey and may be Egypt.
Therefore, the questions for Star Eater:
1) What happened with Iran in this ATL? Was it invaded in 1941 as IOTL? Was invasion successful?
2) What happening in Egypt? IOTL, 1952 would see high nationalism demanding British to leave, and it would be much worse in this ATL
Deleted member 94680
"The Declaration by the United Nations was a World War II document agreed on 1 January 1942 during the Arcadia Conference by 26 governments: the Allied "Big Four" (the US, the UK, the USSR, and China), nine other American countries in North and Central America and the Caribbean, the four British Dominions, British India, and eight Allied governments-in-exile, for a total of twenty-six nations." Wikipedia page - Declaration by United Nations
OTL a "United Nations" was formed in 1942, the UN we all know today grew out of that. It's entirely plausable that ITL the WAllies name themselves "United Nations" to combine in their opposition to the Nazis.
I'm still trying to figure out how this didn't end with immediate nuclear carpet bombing.
trurle
Banned
1956 A.D. US have about 4,000 nukes in stockpile, capability to produce 3 nukes per day (half of them heavy thermonuclear bombs), and an operational fleet of ~80 nearly-unstoppable B-52 bombers to deliver bombs over most of Europe from US bases. Reich is likely to have some sort of SAM, but with technology level of 1956 (stationary launchers capable to strike high-flying target ~30km away) it can cover only few most important sites.
Would i be US minister of defense, i`d start nuclear carpet bombing right now..
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trurle
Banned
So this ATL "United Nations" comprise of 18-22 states. The same name, but much difference in scope from OTL.
Wendigo
Banned
1956 A.D. US have about 4,000 nukes in stockpile, capability to produce 3 nukes per day (half of them heavy thermonuclear bombs), and an operational fleet of ~80 nearly-unstoppable B-52 bombers to deliver bombs over most of Europe from US bases. Reich is likely to have some sort of SAM, but with technology level of 1956 (stationary launchers capable to strike high-flying target ~30km away) it can cover only few most important sites.
Would i be US minister of defense, i`d start nuclear carpet bombing right now..
Unless you were willing to depopulate German occupied Europe killing tens of millions and losing all claims to moral superiority in the eyes of the world, nuclear carpet bombing isn't feasible.
The only sure way to defeat a nation as formidable and large as the Greater Germanic Reich is through a strategic air campaign combined with a ground invasion like in the Anglo American Nazi War. The Reich hasn't given the Allies a good enough Casus Belli yet (@Star Eater can change that in later updates) so in the meantime the Reich will continue to dominate the continent, working millions of slaves to death and depopulating the East of its "subhuman" inhabitants a bit more each year.
Remember that under Generalplan Ost 85% of Poles, 75% of Russians, 65% of Ukrainians, 50% of Czechs, Estonians, and Latvians, 85% of Lithuanians and 75% of Belarusians were designated for death by starvation and Extermination through Labor with the rest being enslaved as serfs on German plantations/farms in the East. So Eastern Europe and the rest of the Reich is basically history's largest charnel house at this point in the TL. We're talking over 100 MILLION people being killed over 30 years because they were born the wrong "race."
The Nazis were evil incarnate.
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