The Holocaust and Zionism in a no-Fall-of-France scenario?

CaliGuy

Banned
So, are you suggesting that the British will give armed Zionist groups the exact same treatment after the end of World War II in such a scenario as they did to armed Palestinian Arabs during the 1936-1939 Great Arab Revolt?
Indeed, I certainly have to say that such a scenario would be very interesting; after all, if the armed Zionist groups are all completely and successfully disarmed by the British, the Zionists will be unable to wage a successful war in Palestine against numerous Arab armies, no?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
One more question, though (and Yes, this question is relevant here): Do you think that the League of Nations would have experienced a shot in the arm after an Allied victory in a short World War II? If so, could the LON be the one who will decide the Palestine question in this TL/scenario?
 
Okay if France doesn't fall, Hitler may well be facing a coup from his own military. Has Italy joined the war in this alt? If they are neutral then the population of Jews there might be saved. But I think the final solution really cranked up in the late stages so without a doubt the body count is smaller. Escape to safe countries is much easier in this scenario also
 
Now, with 500 thousand to 1 million dead Jews, the world will still have a lot of sympathy for the Jews and for the Zionist movement--albeit often not enough sympathy to allow large-scale Jewish immigration into their own countries. Thus, support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine would probably still be pretty large in the West in this TL.

Honestly?

My take on a significantly truncated, <1m death toll Holocaust is that it become "just another genocide" to most non-jewish people. The sort of thing only history nerds know much about. Do you recall the horrors of genocides in Nigeria or Guatamala? No, and neither do most people. Considering that photos of Death Factories and giant pits of naked corpses essentially discredited Racialism in polite society, that alone would cause some profound butterflies, particularly in say, the American South........
 
Schwarze Kapelle? That's a movie. If you mean the men of July 20th, try Kreisauer Kreis.

A lot depends on how the war will go on. If Germany and the WAllies duke it out and weaken themselves, Stalin may decide to attack to "liberate Poland" some years in the future.
 
I'm doing a timeline that covers this whole area (shameless plug) and the conclusions I've come to so far are:
  • The Holocaust will start earlier than OTL, and be concentrated at the three OTL extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec). The reasoning for this is that I buy into the argument in Wages of Destruction that after the war started and deportation was no longer an option the German plan for the Jewish population in areas under their control was to preserve them for "destructive labour" in conquered Soviet territories. If France doesn't fall in 1940 then no matter what happens Germany isn't going to be conquering the Soviet Union any time soon. Therefore their potential utility as future labourers is far lower and the mass killings start a year earlier.
  • Jews in areas not under German military control are essentially safe - there is no way that Hungary for instance would deport them to Germany to be murdered en masse. Italy would probably not have entered the war either, meaning that after a while they will want to distance themselves from the Germans. The net result is that any anti-Jewish laws in non-German controlled areas are likely to have a short shelf life.
  • The Vatican will be far more outspoken about the situation. In OTL a very significant factor was the large number of Catholics of Jewish heritage in Western Europe that they thought they were protecting from deportation - here that population won't exist, and given the narrower area of German occupation they're likely to get far better intelligence back from occupied Poland.
Net result is that far fewer people die, but that the fraction of the Jewish population of Poland killed is probably even higher than OTL. Postwar migration to what became Israel in OTL will still be there but is likely to be significantly smaller as far fewer people are still alive who have personal experience of the Holocaust. Whether that butterflies the state of Israel I'm really not sure - something like it will still exist, but there is at least a chance of it having much better relations with it's neighbours. Some sort of federation with Jordan, for instance, might be a possibility.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Honestly?

My take on a significantly truncated, <1m death toll Holocaust is that it become "just another genocide" to most non-jewish people. The sort of thing only history nerds know much about. Do you recall the horrors of genocides in Nigeria or Guatamala? No, and neither do most people. Considering that photos of Death Factories and giant pits of naked corpses essentially discredited Racialism in polite society, that alone would cause some profound butterflies, particularly in say, the American South........
The thing is, though, that Jews can probably raise more awareness of the Holocaust in the West in this TL than, say, Nigerian-Americans or Guatemalan-Americans can of the genocides in their own countries; after all, many Western Jews are very prominent in society, et cetera and thus would certainly have the power to bring attention to the Holocaust in this TL.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Schwarze Kapelle? That's a movie. If you mean the men of July 20th, try Kreisauer Kreis.

I mean anti-Nazi German officers in the German military; indeed, it would include the officers of our TL's July 20th Plot as well as possibly some other ones (who were too scared to participate in our TL).

A lot depends on how the war will go on. If Germany and the WAllies duke it out and weaken themselves, Stalin may decide to attack to "liberate Poland" some years in the future.

Completely agreed; however, why stop at Poland and not also "liberate" Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany while Stalin is at it?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I'm doing a timeline that covers this whole area (shameless plug) and the conclusions I've come to so far are:
  • The Holocaust will start earlier than OTL, and be concentrated at the three OTL extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec). The reasoning for this is that I buy into the argument in Wages of Destruction that after the war started and deportation was no longer an option the German plan for the Jewish population in areas under their control was to preserve them for "destructive labour" in conquered Soviet territories. If France doesn't fall in 1940 then no matter what happens Germany isn't going to be conquering the Soviet Union any time soon. Therefore their potential utility as future labourers is far lower and the mass killings start a year earlier.
That certainly makes sense; also, though, the Nazis would still have the resources to both wage war and simultaneously conduct the Holocaust in this TL, correct?

  • Jews in areas not under German military control are essentially safe - there is no way that Hungary for instance would deport them to Germany to be murdered en masse. Italy would probably not have entered the war either, meaning that after a while they will want to distance themselves from the Germans. The net result is that any anti-Jewish laws in non-German controlled areas are likely to have a short shelf life.

Completely agreed with all of this.

  • The Vatican will be far more outspoken about the situation. In OTL a very significant factor was the large number of Catholics of Jewish heritage in Western Europe that they thought they were protecting from deportation - here that population won't exist, and given the narrower area of German occupation they're likely to get far better intelligence back from occupied Poland.

Wasn't Pope Pius XII also very eager to preserve the Catholic Church's 1933 Concordat with Germany, though?

Net result is that far fewer people die, but that the fraction of the Jewish population of Poland killed is probably even higher than OTL.

It's kind of hard to go much above 90%, though. Plus, couldn't Hitler and the Nazis get successfully overthrown in the middle of WWII by anti-Nazi German military officers in this TL?

Postwar migration to what became Israel in OTL will still be there but is likely to be significantly smaller as far fewer people are still alive who have personal experience of the Holocaust.

Would the Nazis actually have the time to kill 90+% of Polish Jewry in this TL, though?

Whether that butterflies the state of Israel I'm really not sure - something like it will still exist, but there is at least a chance of it having much better relations with it's neighbours. Some sort of federation with Jordan, for instance, might be a possibility.

Would both the Zionists and Jordan actually be open to this federation idea, though?
 
That certainly makes sense; also, though, the Nazis would still have the resources to both wage war and simultaneously conduct the Holocaust in this TL, correct?
Probably, yes. The death camps really didn't take up all that many resources in the grand scheme of things (the victims were murdered on arrival, so the manpower needed as e.g. guards was quite small), and in any case the Nazi ideology would very probably place killing the Jews under their control as a higher priority than winning the war: they certainly did in OTL.

Wasn't Pope Pius XII also very eager to preserve the Catholic Church's 1933 Concordat with Germany, though?
Possibly, although it needs to be remember that this is the same guy who wrote most of Mit Brennender Sorge. My reading of it (and there are many others) is that he viewed the alternatives to it to be worse. In a no-fall-of-France scenario the areas occupied by the Germans are likely to be Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway and parts of Belgium and the Netherlands - of these the vast majority of the Catholic population under German control is in Poland, and with Hungary still neutral contact between Poland and the Vatican will be much more comprehensive. Given the atrocities committed against the Church in Poland in OTL, and that this is a higher priority, my suspicion is that the Concordat will be seen to be of little residual value, and the Church would act in much more direct opposition to the Nazis. That has all sorts of interesting butterflies just by itself.

It's kind of hard to go much above 90%, though. Plus, couldn't Hitler and the Nazis get successfully overthrown in the middle of WWII by anti-Nazi German military officers in this TL?
Yes and yes. However, if you're one of the ~10% of Polish Jews who survived in OTL then it's pretty bad. And just because the Nazis might get overthrown doesn't mean the Jews would be treated any better - the record of the Wehrmacht rather than SS is pretty black in this regard (being somewhat whitewashed in OTL), and the Nazis being overthrown would in any case not necessarily lead to a peace treaty. The British and French at the time regarded the problem as being Prussian Militarism rather than Fascism: a military coup isn't going to make them think the problem has gone away, nor will they accept any terms that aren't "unconditional surrender" in all but name. Essentially that means the only thing to stop this Alt-Holocaust would be British or French tanks in Poland.

Would the Nazis actually have the time to kill 90+% of Polish Jewry in this TL, though?
Almost certainly. By a relatively early stage in the war (at least a year before the OTL extermination camps started work) they were ghettoised and being severely maltreated - the three extermination camps by themselves are enough to kill virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland in the likely timeframe for such a war (ending mid-1942ish, depending on a number of other factors).

Would both the Zionists and Jordan actually be open to this federation idea, though?
That's the wrong question. In an Alt-WW2 where France doesn't collapse then Italy is very unlikely to enter the war and Japan will either stay out or get bitchslapped by a combination of the RN and USN in double-quick time. That means after the war the opinion that counts is in London, not Amman or Jerusalem. Whether London would go for it I have no idea - they're likely to try and conform to the Balfour declaration somehow however, but exactly how I have no idea.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Probably, yes. The death camps really didn't take up all that many resources in the grand scheme of things (the victims were murdered on arrival, so the manpower needed as e.g. guards was quite small), and in any case the Nazi ideology would very probably place killing the Jews under their control as a higher priority than winning the war: they certainly did in OTL.

OK.

Possibly, although it needs to be remember that this is the same guy who wrote most of Mit Brennender Sorge.

Didn't he write that encyclical under the orders of Pope Pius XI, though?

My reading of it (and there are many others) is that he viewed the alternatives to it to be worse. In a no-fall-of-France scenario the areas occupied by the Germans are likely to be Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway and parts of Belgium and the Netherlands - of these the vast majority of the Catholic population under German control is in Poland, and with Hungary still neutral contact between Poland and the Vatican will be much more comprehensive. Given the atrocities committed against the Church in Poland in OTL, and that this is a higher priority, my suspicion is that the Concordat will be seen to be of little residual value, and the Church would act in much more direct opposition to the Nazis. That has all sorts of interesting butterflies just by itself.

Please keep in mind, though, that the Concordat appears to have been sufficiently important to the Catholic Church in 1933 for them to disband the Center Party in Germany in exchange for Hitler agreeing to this Concordat.

Yes and yes. However, if you're one of the ~10% of Polish Jews who survived in OTL then it's pretty bad. And just because the Nazis might get overthrown doesn't mean the Jews would be treated any better - the record of the Wehrmacht rather than SS is pretty black in this regard (being somewhat whitewashed in OTL), and the Nazis being overthrown would in any case not necessarily lead to a peace treaty. The British and French at the time regarded the problem as being Prussian Militarism rather than Fascism: a military coup isn't going to make them think the problem has gone away, nor will they accept any terms that aren't "unconditional surrender" in all but name. Essentially that means the only thing to stop this Alt-Holocaust would be British or French tanks in Poland.

Were anti-Nazi German military officers as rabidly anti-Semitic as Hitler was? Indeed, even if they were anti-Semitic, would they actually be crazy enough to support continuing the Holocaust?

Almost certainly. By a relatively early stage in the war (at least a year before the OTL extermination camps started work) they were ghettoised and being severely maltreated - the three extermination camps by themselves are enough to kill virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland in the likely timeframe for such a war (ending mid-1942ish, depending on a number of other factors).

Out of curiosity--when exactly do you think that a successful anti-Nazi coup is likely to occur in your TL?

[quote\That's the wrong question. In an Alt-WW2 where France doesn't collapse then Italy is very unlikely to enter the war and Japan will either stay out or get bitchslapped by a combination of the RN and USN in double-quick time. That means after the war the opinion that counts is in London, not Amman or Jerusalem. Whether London would go for it I have no idea - they're likely to try and conform to the Balfour declaration somehow however, but exactly how I have no idea.[/QUOTE]

Wouldn't forcing the Zionists and Jordan into a federation require a lot of British military force, though? If so, would Britain actually have the stomach for this?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Okay if France doesn't fall, Hitler may well be facing a coup from his own military.

Completely agreed.

Has Italy joined the war in this alt?

No; after all, I don't see why exactly they would join the war in this TL.

If they are neutral then the population of Jews there might be saved. But I think the final solution really cranked up in the late stages so without a doubt the body count is smaller. Escape to safe countries is much easier in this scenario also

Completely agreed with all of this.

Also, though, I've got a question--do you agree with pdf27's statement that anti-Nazi German military officers would have continued the Holocaust after a successful anti-Nazi coup? Indeed, wouldn't that be extremely unlikely?
 
Completely agreed; however, why stop at Poland and not also "liberate" Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany while Stalin is at it?

If he isn't going further, e.g. all of Germany, Italy and/or France. And since Spain and Portugal are fascist, he may attack those too. Of course, he'll have to wait for that until both Germany and France are bled dry.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
If he isn't going further, e.g. all of Germany, Italy and/or France. And since Spain and Portugal are fascist, he may attack those too. Of course, he'll have to wait for that until both Germany and France are bled dry.
Please keep in mind that he wouldn't have U.S. Lend-Lease logistical supplies in this TL, though.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Were anti-Nazi German military officers as rabidly anti-Semitic as Hitler was? Indeed, even if they were anti-Semitic, would they actually be crazy enough to support continuing the Holocaust?
To be honest, I hope that I'm not misunderstanding what pdf27 wrote here; after all, I still can't fathom this! Indeed, even if anti-Nazi German military officers didn't care much about the Holocaust when Hitler was doing it, I certainly can't imagine them actually doing this themselves if/after they themselves overthrow Hitler and the Nazis and come to power in Germany.
 
To be honest, I hope that I'm not misunderstanding what pdf27 wrote here; after all, I still can't fathom this! Indeed, even if anti-Nazi German military officers didn't care much about the Holocaust when Hitler was doing it, I certainly can't imagine them actually doing this themselves if/after they themselves overthrow Hitler and the Nazis and come to power in Germany.
The issue is that there was an awful lot of personal loyalty to Hitler and a very substantial Nazi party membership, not to mention a lot of ingrained anti-semitism in the Wehrmacht. Suppressing an ongoing Holocaust will cost them political capital they probably don't have after coup - indeed, could precipitate some sort of civil war with the SS. The other thing to remember is that even if a coup were to succeed in killing Hitler that's a long way from successfully taking power - it is entirely possible that Himmler or Goering might emerge victorious from the ensuing power struggle.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The issue is that there was an awful lot of personal loyalty to Hitler and a very substantial Nazi party membership, not to mention a lot of ingrained anti-semitism in the Wehrmacht. Suppressing an ongoing Holocaust will cost them political capital they probably don't have after coup - indeed, could precipitate some sort of civil war with the SS. The other thing to remember is that even if a coup were to succeed in killing Hitler that's a long way from successfully taking power - it is entirely possible that Himmler or Goering might emerge victorious from the ensuing power struggle.
Can't the SS leadership be quickly decapitated in a successful anti-Nazi coup, though?

However, Yes, you are correct that such a coup can result in ultimate failure--even with Hitler's death!
 
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