For modern times, I would suggest looking at figures in the far-right in West Germany and post-reunification Germany for potential future leaders of the Reich.
The Iron Eagle - The History of the Cold War
- Thread starter Kaiser of Brazil
- Start date
What about adding fictional characters from 1945 onwards assuming that OTL people will never born?
But what about the template from other election games?
I think that a great problem with this is that far-right ideals were and are fringe in post-war Germany, which means that their prominent members are some among a restricted pool, that generally draws from the absolute worse 1% of society. In a world were Germany is governed by NSDAP, and the Nazi ideals are indoctrinated into the people and the children constantly and from an early age, the pool of talent the Nazis can draw their leaders from will basically be most of the German population, which means that the guy that in IOTL wrote a book with far right ideals and gathered a hundred angry outcasts will have the competition of thousands, millions of convinced Nazis that IOTL were judges, engineers, managers and voted or were part of CDU, SPD or FDP.
Exactly. A victorious Nazi Germany would be a nation of fanatics and ideologues that put Imperial Japan to shame. The young men who were willing to charge Soviet tanks in the rubble of Berlin and the young women who desired nothing more than to be broodmares for the master race IOTL would become the norm within a decade of a Nazi victory.
Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Bormann would be doing their best to make sure everyone in any position of importance or authority is politically vetted and reliable. Anyone who isn’t sufficiently devoted would be warned, replaced, demoted or at worst put in a camp or executed along with their families. Given the nature of the SS, Gestapo and the countless people willing to inform they would be very successful at shaping society according to their beliefs. Even when Hitler dies Goebbels, Himmler and Bormann would still have been young and able enough to stay in charge into the 1960s. Moderation of any kind would be a fantasy.
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IX - GNADENLOS!
THE IRON EAGLE
GNADENLOS!
"I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public
I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people."
-Heinrich Himmler, 1942
Anti-Semitism in Europe has two distinct phases according to the motivation for the hatred of the Jewish people, the first being the religious phase and, after the late 19th century and the introduction of Social Darwinism, of the racial phase embraced by Adolf Hitler and the New Order. The Religious hatred on Judaism came from the accusation of "Deicide", used several times first by the Medieval Catholic Church and latter adopted by Protestants and Orthodox churches, claiming that the Jews committed the highest crime by condemning Jesus Christ to crucifixion, many times that violence came in the form of popular riots nicknamed as "Pogroms", where the blame for great tragedies such as the Black Death, the 30-years war, and Natural Disasters was pinned on European Jews. In other ways, the religious antisemitism was used by monarchs in order to seize the wealth of Jews, such as the Iberian monarchs in the late 15th Century following the end of the Reconquista, accusing them of usury and other "sinful acts", the fact that the possession of land being forbidden to Jews for most of the period led many to pursue the means of survival in merchant and financial networks, creating some of the oldest banking institutions in the world, which led to a clash with many monarchs who used antisemitism as an excuse to not pay their debts. However, as the enlightenment reduced the influence of religion on national policies, especially in the age of nationalism following the French Revolution, it seemed as if hatred was beginning to dissipate, with nations such as Prussia providing equal rights to Jewish citizens in the mid-19th century, and by the turn of the Century, specifically in German society, the Jewish population was far more integrated into the German culture than it ever was, with marriage rates between Jewish and German citizens reaching higher levels every year, alongside conversions to Christianity, if someone was to point a nation in 1900 that would become the center of Antisemitism, countries such as the Russian Empire and the French Republic could be easily appointed, yet nobody could predict that Germany would spring the most brutal and violent form of hatred in History. The Racial hatred is believed to have started in 1879 when Champlain and Politician Adolf Stoecker blamed the Jewish people for the ills of the Second Reich, this time not emphasizing their religion, but their race, using of Social Darwinism and Eugenic ideas, comparing them as insidious parasites in the German society. And from there on, racial hatred would begin to grow in German society, but it did not remain more than a fringe element in conservative and radical circles until the defeat in the Great War, when Adolf Hitler, a man raised in an antisemitic background in Austria that only became more radical during the war, turned those fringe elements into a centerpiece of the NSDAP, and eventually of German Society as a whole.GNADENLOS!
"I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public
I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people."
-Heinrich Himmler, 1942
In 1942, following the Tag das Sieges, Adolf Hitler would go to the Wannsee villa, where several high-ranking officials of the SS were summoned by the head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich, for a new policy protocol. The Führer's visit came as a surprise, in fact not even Goebbels and the Press were told of his presence, only being registered by members of the Schutzstaffel, coming in merely as a solemn visit to the heads of the "Reich's Next War", Heydrich, Eichmann and Himmler, to congratulate them for the war effort of the SS during the "Crusade against Bolshevism", not even making a speech as he met the SS leaders behind closed doors for around half an hour before leaving back to Germania. It is unknown of what was the true purpose of Hitler's visit, especially as he was always reluctant in discussing the "Jewish Question" in previous occasions, perhaps the hubris brought by the end of the war turned his gaze against the ones he perceived as the Reich's main threat, above even the United States and Great Britain, Hitler's presence in Wannsee would've never be even known if not for the description of the day given in the diary of his chauffeur, Emil Maurice. However, what is undisputable is the fact that the conference would mark a turning point in Jewish history as not even the pogroms such as the Kristallnacht, or the randomness of the executions by the commanders of the Einstatzgruppen, would reach the level of terror and death decided that day by the SS, the "Removal" of the Jewish people was given green light, and what was already an ongoing campaign of increased misery and death would escalate into history's first Industrial Genocide, the Endlosung, the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.
There was perhaps only one people who could rival the Jews in the level of hatred and destruction received by the Third Reich, the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Hitler, from his youth, was an admirer of Western stories, of tales of brave sheriffs and delegates, alongside cavalry officers such as General Custer, decimating endless hordes of "inferior and barbaric" tribals to bring civilization into a wild land, and in 1920 he would meet someone who introduced him the idea of bringing such concept to Europe: Rudolf Hess. The idea of "Lebensraum", or Vital Space, was a romantic ideal of many Germans, including geographic determinists and professors such as the ones who introduced the concept to Hess, inspired in the history of the fight between the Slavic and Germanic peoples, especially the Baltic Crusades, which brought along the settlement of Prussia by the Teutonic Knights. Hitler believed that such a German version of the "Wild West" could be introduced through the concept of Drang Nach Osten, the March to the East, where a new order of Knights, which represented the United States Cavalry, would be the harbinger of civilization by driving away the Slavs and settling the land with German colonists, using the vast resources of Eastern Europe in order to fuel the growth of the Aryan race, securing it's hold over Europe and allowing it to launch itself into the world stage. The Schutzstaffel (SS) would be this modern order of Aryan knights, and the defeat of the Soviet Union represented the defeat of the Natives, now the task was given to Himmler to open up Eastern Europe to the settlement of the Aryan Race, and from 1943 onwards, intensifying after the death of Hermann Göring and the crackdown on Warsaw, the policy of Generalplan Ost, the "General Plan East", would be put into it's devastating effect, resulting in the destruction of Eastern Europe and the deaths of tens of millions, alongside the mass exodus towards the East that brought in disastrous consequences to the remnants of the Soviet Union beyond the A-A line.
However, the original Generalplan Ost was not without it's controversies, the idea of massively depopulating Eastern Europe was certainly appealing to radicals such as Himmler and Goebbels, however there were dissenting voices in powerful positions of the Reich, not out of goodwill but for sake of pragmatism. Albert Speer and Walther Funk, the Ministers of Armaments and Economy respectively, alongside representatives of several industrial titans such as IG Fabien, Siemens, and Krupp would approach Hitler in late 1943 as the policies of the plan were being fully implemented and instead appealed for a revision of the plan based around the economic projections of the Reich and the manpower potential of the Slavic population. Late during the war, which showed decisive in the air war and the winter campaign, Speer employed millions of concentration camp prisoners to the factories of the Reich as a measure to bolster the war economy, with the industrial production levels reaching record numbers (Although arguably most of that result was not result of Speer's entrance in the Ministry), with many seeing the potential of a large workforce in the coming years, the group argued that the majority of the slavs, rather than being removed, should be used to fuel the Reich's industry and serve as workers in order to pay off their "Racial debt to the Reich" and support the German economy in a future confrontation against the United States and Great Britain. Hitler was reluctant, however the support of Göring, who at the time wished to expand the workforce of the Reichswerke and weaken Himmler's influence, proved quite decisive in order to sway the Führer to call for a revision of the plan. While the Majority of the Polish, Lithuanian, Latgalians, and Belarusians would still be subjected to the plan, a certain level of leniency was given to Ukrainians and Czechs, mostly being targeted towards Germanization, while the Russians would be employed as "Labor Units" to be distributed around the Reich, separated into small groups towards different industries. It was a harsh blow towards Himmler, one that just increased his animosity towards Göring in the months before his eventual death in 1945, however the SS still retained authority over Eastern matters, with the control of the concentration camps and the policies of Generalplan Ost.
The first phase of the plan was the so-called "Hunger Plan", which was already enacted with the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers in 1941, entailing the plan to create a massive artificial hunger in Eastern Europe by seizing food supplies from the countryside and transporting those back to Germany, in order to reduce the "exceeding" population of Eastern Europe. Large cities such as Kiev, Minsk, Rostov, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk etc, would be cut off from receiving supplies deemed necessary for the war effort between 1941 and 1943, later the plan being extended until 1945, considered finished following the destruction of Warsaw. The plan would lead to the mass starvation and emigration of tens of millions over the course of four years, as shown for instance at the census of Kiev in 1944, from around 800,000 inhabitants in 1941 at the onset of the invasion, the population of Kiev had fallen to 210,000, with the majority of the inhabitants being either deported, emigrating, or starved, with entire cities turned into ghost towns, the Destruction of Warsaw in 1945 was merely the nail of the coffin, with the ghettos being "evacuated" in 1944, most of the city was already abandoned by the time it was shelled by the Wehrmacht. The Death plan would cause the death, emigration, or eviction of at least 25 million civilians during it's existence, most of them emigrating into the Soviet Union, further bolstered by forced deportations enacted by the SS, centuries-old cities which stood against invaders for hundreds of years would be finally wiped out of the map by the destructive force of the Reich in less than a decade. One of the plans, which was the destruction of Moscow and the creation of an Artificial Lake were abandoned as cooler heads prevailed, instead the city would be kept mostly as a living museum of the Soviet Era, with many symbols completely disturbed in order to praise the National Socialist ideology, with the Swastika over the Red Square, the Kremlin being kept as a symbol of humiliation to the Soviets and a triumph of the Reich, and if that wasn't enough, the city itself was renamed to "Wesselstadt", in a homage to Horst Wessel, the SA Martyr of the NSDAP in 1931 killed by Communist paramilitaries, with his name being even given to the unofficial anthem of the party. Other cities would be renamed, with Kiev renamed as "Olegsburg", the name of the Nordic conqueror of the city, Stalingrad was renamed as "Adolfsburg", named after the Führer himself (For personal reasons), and Leningrad was renamed as "Haldersburg", in homage to the Chief of Staff Franz Halder, killed during Barbarossa.
One of the tactics of the SS preferred by Himmler was the division and the fostering of rivalries between the conquered peoples, knowing of the historical rivalries between the slavs, the SS was instructed to use collaborators as overseers or guards of several camps, Ukrainians watching over Russians, Russians watching over Balts, Poles being watched by Belarusians, while a climate of hatred and fear was created by the German Masters. Heydrich applied many of his methods used in Czechia by offering rewards such as extra rations and break days for prisoners who volunteered to watch over other ethnic groups, while billinguism was quickly "removed", except for the German language, in order to prevent communication between guards and prisoners, guards who were discovered to be helping prisoners quickly lost their privileged and were deemed "untrustworthy", which generally put them in front of the death row, while more enthusiastic collaborators were allowed to rise into certain power positions within the administration. That would create a terrifying situation where two "subhuman" races, considered equally worthless by the Party, would be turning against one another, sabotaging any attempts of forming a joint resistance against their real overlords while their numbers and strength were reduced on a daily basis. On the Russians, the Germans would use of another similar strategy, yet seeing as they were the largest ethnic group by a fair margin, Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg would approach Hitler with an new directive proposal for the "Russian Question" in 1945 shortly after Göring's death, the plan was an extension of his "Divide and Conquer" tactic but by implementing it on Russia by splitting the Russians between several groups from Pre-Muscovite Unification, such as Moscovians, Novgorodians, Smolenskians, Vologdans, in order to shatter the Russian national identity in what Himmler expected to be a process to finish by two or three generations, not just that but the Russian language would also cease to exist, with regional dialects being raised to the status of "languages" of their own, with minor grammatical and accent changes being sharply encouraged with new dictionaries. Hitler would approve of such plan, adding the fact that millions of Russians would be spread as laborers in the Reich, he expected that these changes would cause the extinction of Russian identity and permanently ensure the Reich's hold over Eastern Europe for a thousand years, educational reforms would begin in Moscowien, and soon a new generation would start to be introduced into this new cultural environment, "Russian" history being taught only as a perspective of emphasizing the role of the "Jewish enemy" in attempting to unite natural enemies as an artificial nation of slaves before being driven to the east and liberated by the German force of civilization, when in fact it was the Germans who were dividing the Russians into artificial groups to keep as slaves.
By the late 1940s, the Majority of the European Jewish population was dead, and the ones left were the ones who made a choice: Fight or Flee, and while many did flee Europe, mostly through Italy and Iberia towards Britain and the Levant, others remained to fight. Abba Kovner, a Jew who identified the Final Solution plans and fled the Vilnius Ghetto before it's "Removal", would be one of those, forming the radical terrorist group named "Nakam", or Revenge, made up by escaped Jews in the Baltic States, began a campaign of resistance and terror against the German authorities and settlers, planning to kill one German for every Jewish civilian executed, with the group joining with other guerrillas such as the Forest Brothers and Red Army remnants, Kovner would orchestrate terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and massacres of settler colonies across the Baltic States, evading the grip of the local SS authorities in the Reichskomissariat under Frederick Jeckeln. On the 5th of November 1947, the Nakam group would launch it's greatest attack, by assassinating Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse and at least 7 civilians in Riga with a bomb attack, the death of Lohse would prove to be an event of large effects in the Baltics and Germania. In the aftermath of the attack, the RSHA would have it's attention turned towards the group, with Gestapo agents eventually managing to track down Abba Kovner and the Nakam leadership in July 1948 as they planned for an assassination against Collaborationist commander Michal Vituska, agents under Otto Skorzeny would be able to surround and ambush the group, none of them would be taken prisoner as Kovner spared the last bullet to himself alongside his closest men, inspired by the Jewish resistance against the Romans in Massada, they would prefer to die as free men than live through the horrors that the Germans planned to put them through.
It is suspected that there were failings in the security check up, leading to the hypothesis, similar to the one of Göring's death two years earlier, that there was a deliberate sabotage by the SS to secure the grip of the organization over the Baltic States. Lohse, as Rosenberg's deputy and Reichskommissar, was one of the main authorities in implementing the Generalplan Ost in the Baltics, however Himmler considered him to be far too lenient on the job, following his assassination, Himmler would propose Jeckeln to be made Reichskommissar of Ostland, showing by a terrorist attack how it was necessary a stronger hand to secure the Baltics, similarly to what happened in Poland two years earlier. But to Himmler's surprise, Jeckeln's promotion was refused and instead Hitler would appoint Alfred Rosenberg to be Reichskommissar of Ostland, much to the shock of the Reichsführer-SS, however that is where the machinations of Germania came into play due to the intervention of two men in specific: Goebbels and Bormann. Goebbels and Rosenberg despised one another as rivals, the first representing the more "Volkish" aspects of National-Socialism while the latter was called as a "Reactionary", one was an orator and the other a theoretician, two figures that just could never see eye to eye, which is why Goebbels arranged for Rosenberg to be "Promoted" far from the center of power in Germania, reaching out to Martin Bormann who was getting increasingly worried by the rise of the influence of Himmler in the Reich and so was Hitler, with the death of Göring, no one in the Inner Circle could quite match Himmler's power individually. Goebbels and Bormann would even get the attention of Speer, who saw this as an opportunity to prevent the Slaves from Ostland from being under firm grip of Himmler, with a more moderate figure with contacts of powerful Corporative groups such as Rosenberg seen as a far more palatable leader for the several industrial interests he came to represent. He was also a relatively harmless figure, being considered as the second worst orator in the Reich besides Bormann, as a joke, Hitler even named him Party leader in the 1920s while he was imprisoned because he knew Rosenberg would not be a threat to him, in the end even Hitler feared that keeping "Loyal Heinrich" with an unrestrained power over half of a continent could make him lose the "Loyal" part of his nickname. Himmler would end up being defeated... for now.
Breathes in
SIX MILLION GERMANS!
Nice update, it shows pretty well the brutality of the third reich
Another horrific chapter. Keep up the good work.
Also, have you thought about getting a beta reader to edit your work? I've hired (begged them to help) a couple while writing my own TLs, and they've been a godsend to me and my writing. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who want to help. If you want, you can even PM me with a draft.
Also, have you thought about getting a beta reader to edit your work? I've hired (begged them to help) a couple while writing my own TLs, and they've been a godsend to me and my writing. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who want to help. If you want, you can even PM me with a draft.
This is not an easy chapter to write about, it is shorter than some of the previous one as it is very much centered on the German policies in Eastern Europe. There was not much detail in how the Holocaust itself happened as it is very much common knowledge in the forum of how the Death camps worked and I did not have the time to fully cover it. I desired to give more of an overall view, alongside a showing of how the intrigues of the Inner Circle still continue as hateful and deathly as ever. If I have made any mistakes or if you have any questions, feel free to ask. You may also start speculating on who is going to be Hitler's most likely successor after the death of Göring.
As for Britain, they will be probably covered in a future chapter.
Besides Hitler I wonder who actually decided what Slavic cities would be renamed as. It sounds like a very interesting task.
Himmler though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Hitler designated Goebbels as his successor. IOTL once Goering and Himmler were accused of treason by Hitler he appointed Goebbels as Reich chancellor with Doenitz as the Reich president.
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In my opinion, from what I have seen of it, The New Order focus on a narrative story which ignores realism many times, such as Atlantropa (There wasn’t even enough concrete in the world for such project), German colonies in Africa (Hitler had no interest in them other than giving trinkets to a colonialist fan club), or Operation “sea-animal-who-must-not-be-named” working. The developers also seem to greatly overestimate the capacity of partisans such as Kovner or the Polish Home Army of surviving for so long, really going great lengths to make Hitler and Friends (TM) as incompetent as possible. It is a fairly optimistic scenario overall, a Russia that spent decades being bombed to dust and falling into a maze of warlord states would never be able to challenge the German control over Eastern Europe, which would be almost impossible to take back after 2-3 decades under Germania. Another point I must add is that Himmler was not AS insane to the point of wanting a nuclear Armageddon to wipe out the world, he for sure was one of the most fanatical and esoterical of the bunch, but even that wouldn’t be enough to make him go the lengths he go in the game. Not even counting the German Civil War, which seems to just throw away the nature of the rivalries in the Inner circle and the character of the pretenders (Bormann being charismatic at all and being so vulgar, or Göring being practically the opposite of who he was, or making Speer more influential than he actually would be in that situation, while also ignoring pretty much every other major figure of the Reich) for sake of giving the player a war to play in a war game. Hitler’s death would be very unlikely to start a civil war on its own, at most I would see the SS attempting a coup and perhaps that could even become a civil war in the worst (or best?) of the hypothesis. The fighting in the Inner circle was one fought in the shadows by sociopaths constantly trying to outmaneuver the other in power games and using Europe as its pawns, all while Hitler only encouraged such division to keep them from ever turning on him. It’s more likely that the power struggle would be a series of assassinations, coups, and betrayals that would make the Death of Stalin look like a Democratic power transition.
Overall, this scenario here is darker than TNO in some aspects such as the Nazis being more effective at killing people (Which they clearly showed themselves capable of in our timeline) and implementing their plans. Alongside the Klan and Dixiecrats being currently the ones in charge of America and Asia descending in a far more brutal war than it already was IOTL. In TNO Asia under Japan could be probably considered worse in the long term, but the destruction that will be caused by the dying sun in this Timeline will be far more damaging in the short term, think of how millions of Japanese soldiers with no hope of winning would act like when pressed against the wall, if you want a hint, see the Philippines campaign of 1945.
While there was certainly influence from Himmler, Goebbels was the one who had the most saying into that matter, after all who better than the Propaganda Minister to better think of how to... well... propagandize your triumph?
What happened to Willy Brandt and all the other Germans who were in exile in Scandinavia ITTL?
I'll throw a wild card out here and say Hess.
On the plus side, now they can finally return to their Fatherland, on the bad side, they return to their Fatherland ruled by Hitler. As you may expect, it isn’t an exciting fate that is waiting for them. Perhaps some were able to flee to Finland in time to get the next plane to London, but most of them didn’t.
I forgot Hess is still in Germany ITTL. He’s the Deputy Fuhrer so that makes him officially next in line after Goering though ultimately Hitler can choose whoever he wants. If Hess does manage to become the leader I can easily see him getting toppled and replaced. He wasn’t exactly leader material and Goebbels, Bormann and Himmler would be out to get him from the start.
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And yet some might have more to gain by having a weak-willed puppet in charge while ruling from the shadows, and others might prefer the neutral guy who wasn’t involved in the chaotic intrigue wars than a rival.