I believe I have found a song which encapsulates the tension that the next chapter will be:
The Iron Eagle - The History of the Cold War
- Thread starter Kaiser of Brazil
- Start date
In the early 20s when he was close to the Strassers and advocating for an alliance with Soviet Russia, which he believed was purging itself of its 'Jewish element', against the 'plutocratic, Jew-controlled West'. But then he changed after the Party conference in Bamberg and became Hitler's enthusiastic acolyte. Significantly, Goebbels barely talked about economic questions in his diaries, and when he did it was in a very generic way. He had a knee-jerk, anti-bourgeois streak that occasionally came to the forefront, such as when he was agitating for total war and demanded that the upper classes should tighten their belts. But it was quite skin-deep. He was no 'NazBol', just like he wasn't an insane 'militarist' who wanted to wage 'forever wars' (popular history really misinterprets the point of his total war speech).
Moreover, popular history really exaggerates how 'leftist' the Strasser brothers were in the first place. The thing about Gregor Strasser is that he was perfectly fine with aligning with big business and conservatives in the army. In late 1932 he was literally saying that the Nazis should reach an accommodation with the old elites and form a coalition...even if it meant foregoing the chancellorship because Hitler's all or nothing strategy seemed to be a dead end. He also received donations from German industrialists.
Gregor is often memed as the 'hardline left Nazi who led a radical fringe group and opposed compromises'...but at the time the conservatives actually viewed him as more constructive than Hitler. Even in the '20s, his programme, while anti-capitalist in some ways and friendlier to trade unions than Hitler, was all about nostalgia for medieval corporative guilds. His differences with Hitler had, at the end of the day, more to do with tactics and personality than ideology. Gregor wasn't under the spell of the Hitler cult of personality and detested the sycophantic Munich clique, but whenever he was at loggerheads with Hitler, he backed down. Then he was killed during the Night of Long Knives after having spent the last two years being politically irrelevant.
Otto Strasser, meanwhile, quit the Party in a fit of pique in 1930, his Black Front remained totally irrelevant and then he had to go into exile.
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TNO makes it clear that speer isn't democratic though, because if he beats the Gang of Four, he installs a pretty brutal authoritarianism. Germany's only path to democracy in TNO is for Speer to be reduced to nonentity by the Gang of Four.
Different Gang of Four.
Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Helmut Schmidt, Ludwig Erhard, Henning von Tresckow.
They ally with Speer in TNO and if he wins the civil war, there's a small path for them to push him out of the way and end up with something resembling a democracy on the other end.
you can read more about it here https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/TNOGermany
Weren't Kiesinger and Schmidt members of the Party ever since 1933? Wasn't Schmidt a literal commander of the Hitler Youth? Wasn't Tresckow still an authoritarian militarist in the Prussian style? Why would any of them want a democracy in a world where Hitler won?
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There are conflicting reports on his views, even if he did hold contempt for some aspects he was still appraised for it in the later years of the war. Schmidt also went immediately to serve in the Wehrmacht after his demotion and kept getting promoted, even receiving an Iron Cross after fighting in the East. It was around the military service time that he was praised for dedication of ideals.
It is very likely that there was a lot of whitewashing involved after the War. We had people like Guderian, Heusinger and Manstein rebuilding the German Army with former NSDAP card holding members going back into politics with supposed "new views" after an apology or after carefully writing their past as to how they "actually opposed that madman all along but we couldn't say it", like Franz Halder (who by all accounts should have been sent to a firing squad if the Allies had any interest in being fair to Wehr officers).
Schmidt seems a lot like one of these cases, I am not sure if he actually held anti-nazi views in the Hitler Youth, sounds like the type of Post-War revisionism that German politicians engaged with all the time after they lost. But the same people who were either apologizing or hiding their past as being secret resistance fighters would likely have been the ones rounding up people into Gas chambers and praising Hitler with all fanfare if they won.
Erhard also worked for the Nazi Party and the SS. Apparently he wrote reports for Gauleiter Bürckel in 1942. One was about the utilisation of the confiscated assets/wealth of deported Jews and undesirable French politicians. The other about the appointment of temporary administrators for companies whose owners had been expropriated. Many of said administrators were, unsurprisingly, corrupt and so Erhard wrote a report on that.
Moreover, he had connections to the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost, which was responsible for confiscating Jewish and Polish property and assets in Poland. He visited Poland for them. It seems he wrote a memorandum about how to best exploit it. He said it was unproductive to wipe out/enslave the Poles and said their wages should not be far beneath the level of German workers, but also characterised them as inferior to Germans.
The SS wasn't happy about the first part (and today his advocates say that this is proof he was trying to save lives etc.), but seems to have nonetheless paid him 6000 RM for a memorandum detailing how the Wartheland could be best developed economically - under the assumption that there were no Poles in it anymore. He specifically asked them for the opportunity to write the study for them, though he never finished it. He received the Kriegsverdienstkreuz 2nd Class.
He also had connections to Otto Ohlendorf. When he wrote his famous study 'War Finances and Debt Consolidation' he was technically committing treason, since he wrote it under the premise that Germany would lose the war. However, he was protected by the Reich Group of Industry, which had essentially commissioned the study, and Ohlendorf, who received a copy.
As for Tresckow, he had good relations with Arthur Nebe. Post-war Nebe's apologist Gisevius claimed that Nebe had exaggerated the number of Jews murdered by his Einsatzgruppe, but this has since been thoroughly debunked. It's known that Tresckow supported the creation of 'dead zones'. When he received the following report from Georg von Boerselager, another officer in Army Group Centre and participant in the conspiracy against Hitler, he personally sent copies to all armies within the army group and the OKH. Which is something he didn't need to do. Gerlach writes about this rather thoroughly in 'War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II' and 'Kalkulierte Morde'.
'It is impossible for a German soldier to distinguish between partisans and non-partisans... The regiment's view is that the area must be subdivided into a) pacified areas, b) areas threatened by gangs, c) gang infested areas. In areas threatened by gangs the men should be permitted to leave town and work only in groups; all males passing through such areas alone or in small groups must be shot or imprisoned at once... The bandit infested area must be swept clean of all males. Up to specific point in time, males up to the age of 50 will be seized and turned over to the economic office as laborers. After the deadline, men in this area will be shot.'
Now Tresckow came to radically oppose the Nazi regime, and there's some basis for the assumption that there was ethical foundation to him turning on them, but he was still an authoritarian German nationalist and militaristic imperialist, not someone who suddenly converted to democracy. By and large, the 20 July coupists were not democrats, their constitutional plans were oligarchic at best and their main motivation was averting German collapse.
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in these types of stories I always wonder what would be the reaction if a portal between this world and OTL was opened in, say, 1969, what would be the reaction of both worlds?
The Chinese continue business as usual, maybe glad they have Taiwan.
The Japanese would be horrified at Operation Sunset and it's consequences.
The Americans would be outraged at Huey Long and claim he was a crypto-socialist dictator. Johnson from The Iron Eagle will take a mental note to not get involved in Vietnam.
The Germans likely would prefer to live in a world where they are the winners of a world War instead of being bombed and divided, although they would be uncomfortable over the Swastika.
The Soviets will have a collective sigh of relief over the fact they won the war and then coordinate with Russian socialists to restore the Soviets and retake the west.
Italians, probably glad the Mafia is gone at least but they won't be all too happy to see Almirante in power.
Brazilians will cry over the fact the Carnaval is gone and they are slowly turning into a Theocratic dictatorship.
De Gaulle will help De Gaulle to defeat the French State out of pure spite.
Jews would likely enter an argument with the other Jews if they should leave this cursed world or they should fight to keep it. Either way the Mossad will have a lot of work to do.
One Nasser will attack the other for being a puppet of the Italians, the other will attack him for being a puppet of the Soviets.
Would 64 be butterflied by that then?
Because if it came on schedule I think the two dictatorships would be rather sympathetic to each other, with this world's Brazil just thinking the OTL Junta isnt going far enough
The Junta would be loathed by Integralists because of just how Pro-American and "Positivist" they are. The military in 1964 was not the same of 1930. Monteiro's dictatorship would certainly have some good relations with the Junta as they acted very much alike.
And I wonder what would be the reaction to the fact that Kennedy killed the emperor of Japan and what OTL speer and Hess would think about their counterparts, probably envy
The TNO gang of Four isn't necessarily all that realistic, though it does include three post-war chancellors of Germany from OTL, so presumably there's room for them to have had some democratic impulses. Membership in the Hitler Youth doesn't necessarily disqualify someone from later turning on Nazi ideology later, as a basic principle, and living through the disfunction of TNO's nazi Germany would be enough to disillusion a lot of people.
Honestly Hess would probably be relieved that he did not end up falling into complete schizophrenia with all the pressure and paranoia of a political system he could not lead.
Speer is definitely going to feel jealous and will frantically try to explain the CIA and Joachim Fest that he has nothing to do with his successful counterpart.
If they are still alive, Kennedy might like being considered the most famous soldier war hero in post-war America. Robert would have to deal with the fact he is dead.