The List Regiment at Havrincourt

Chapter 1, prelude: Hitler becomes an anti-Semite:
Chapter 1, prelude: Hitler becomes an anti-Semite:

Hitler’s perception on Jewish people was a critical factor in his later politics and his success as a rule of Germany. When he was brought up in Austria he had Jewish friends and while anti-semitism was common, nothing suggested Hitler had any extraordinary beliefs. However, Hitler writes in his memoirs on his first appreciation of anti-semitism:

"Once, as I was strolling through the inner city, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought."

"For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: is this a German?"

To answer his own question, he immersed himself in anti-Semitic literature. Then he went out and studied Jews as they passed by.

"...the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity..."

"For me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite."

young-hitler.jpg

One of the few pictures from Hitlers early life in Vienna.

It seems likely from later events that seeing Jewish people in this way profoundly influenced Hitler’s interpretation of nationalism, later foreign politics and ultimately the outcome of the war. Hitler was from then on interested in politics, admired anti-Semitic politicians, and took this debate with him into the trenches of WW1. It was here in the mud, prompted by the introduction of mechanized warfare, Marxism in the ranks, the inexplicable participation of the United States, that Hitler developed his remarkable stance on geo-politics.

[Explanatory remarks:

There is no POD in this first chapter, but an introduction to the main character of the TL and the revelation that this quote is not taken from Mein Kampf as IOTL and that Hitler did get to write his memoirs. Also, while you will see a number of changes, this is as IOTL a deeply anti-Semitic Hitler confusing personal prejudice with world-politics.
 
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Scope of the TL
The List Regiment at Havrincourt is my latest attempt of a full-TL. In all my TL's I have explored the question on whether the OTL WW2 was the worst possible outcome of the post-WW1 instability which left a Scientific, technological and industrial leader weakened, but unbroken, with a self-perceived feeling of humiliation and of beeing betrayed.
In past TL's I have explored various scenarios at the strategic level to tilt OTL towards the worse, and encountered multiple bottlenecks which prevented OTL nazi Germany from doing worse mayhem than they already did. Some worked, some didn't and stitching them together was not easy, nor succesfully achieved in the past.
One of the bigger problems is the cast of Nazi leaders (yes, please keep in mind when it gets glooomy that this is a work of fiction ONLY). An easy way to have Germany perform better is to replace the Nazi's or Hitler, but to see pure evil reproduced at this level once more in history is already stretching belief. I have decided to Work with the OTL characters because they are proven psycopaths, but IOTL they were not up to the task. Hence in this TL, we start way back to change some of OTL Hitler's beliefs and strengthen others. I hope this Works to tie the TL together and I hope you can still recognize Hitler.
Disclaimer: If you did not already perceive it, this is intended to be a Nazi Victory TL. If you do not like to read such TL's, there are many other TL's available. Havingsaid that, comments are welcome.
 
Ah! The long awaited next attempt at a victorious Nazi Germany Alternate History Time Line! I have followed this Author's attempts to write interesting and entertaining works of fiction, and am eagerly awaiting this newest effort. I followed @Gudestein's first efforts, and have enjoyed watching his posting skills grow better and better over time. The things that really caught my attention back in the day, was the insanely deep research efforts He was willing to put into his stories, the idea of a Germany Triumphant in WWII, and the not so pleasant bias that saw much heckling and derision of his efforts. I myself am not a fan of Nazi Germany, nor I think are any members of the forum community, but that does not preclude me from being a fan of fictional works on the subject.

Hopefully this time around, we will see some new and interesting facts brought up, and dastardly plans put in motion, some of which will work, and others that will not, but that combined will give us an entertaining and enjoyable bit of recreational fiction brought to us through AH.com, by the unpaid efforts of an author that is improving and willing to put in the time to bring us better and better works of ATL fiction.

Subscribed!
 
Ah! The long awaited next attempt at a victorious Nazi Germany Alternate History Time Line! I have followed this Author's attempts to write interesting and entertaining works of fiction, and am eagerly awaiting this newest effort. I followed @Gudestein's first efforts, and have enjoyed watching his posting skills grow better and better over time. The things that really caught my attention back in the day, was the insanely deep research efforts He was willing to put into his stories, the idea of a Germany Triumphant in WWII, and the not so pleasant bias that saw much heckling and derision of his efforts. I myself am not a fan of Nazi Germany, nor I think are any members of the forum community, but that does not preclude me from being a fan of fictional works on the subject.

Hopefully this time around, we will see some new and interesting facts brought up, and dastardly plans put in motion, some of which will work, and others that will not, but that combined will give us an entertaining and enjoyable bit of recreational fiction brought to us through AH.com, by the unpaid efforts of an author that is improving and willing to put in the time to bring us better and better works of ATL fiction.

Subscribed!
Thank you for this introduction. I'll try my best to follow.
Next follows chapter 2 containing the actual POD.
Were it goes from here could have been in many directions. I obviously have a set of knock-on effects in mind, but I'd like to know how they match whatever guesses the readers might have.
 
Chapter 2: The defeat at the battle of Cambrai – The List regiment transferred to Havrincourt November 1917*.
To understand the event unfolding more than 20 years later the participation of the List regiment in the battle of Cambrai has been highlighted by Hitler as one of the key moments that shaped his beliefs on modern warfare.

The List regiment was transferred to Havrincourt in mid-November 1917 as German intelligence had begun to expect a British offensive, but unlike the 54th division that was moved into nearby Flesquires, it was not specially equipped or trained in anti-tank warfare. The List Regiment, and with it the Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler were completely overrun in the morning on November 20th by what may be considered the first massed tank offensive. Hitler himself was wounded for the second time of the war in the leg and knocked unconscious by a machine gun shot deflected of his helmet. He would later write in his publicized memoirs:

tank-battle-at-cambrai-1917-E003E7.jpg

Broken British mark IV tank similar to the one Hitler encountered - Picture is from the battle of cambraix.

“When I awoke in the afternoon I was dazed from the wound and the blood loss, behind enemy lines and left for dead. Right in front of me was a British mark 4, stopped dead, not by us, but by its own mechanical failure. I shall never forget this sad monolith of lost victory. I saw then that we had been thoroughly defeated by the introduction of a new weapon the likes of which I had never dreamed about. It was a true marvel of the modern age which left us with little chance in the defence. I later came to realize that we had been saved by the inexperience of those wielding this weapon. The British had pierced our lines, but their weapons were too unreliable to exploit their break-through. Had their mechanics been probably developed before introduction and had their support train and reserves been ready, they could have rolled up our front, instead, the attack petered out and the British became the victims of German counter-attacks that infiltrated their lines. I saw their failure not as a success of our defenders, but as an inadequate commitment of the British forces to seek a decisive victory. I wowed that if I got the chance I would not make the same mistake.

After having recovered, I exploited the confusion to crawl back through the British lines, and I was able to supply vital intelligence on the British positions before I passed out from blood loss and fatigue.”

[*This is the POD. Hitler may overestimate the importance of the information he provided, but he was never to be contradicted.]

Edit, correct century inserted
 
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This could be interesting, a German victory in a 'Second Great War' is an interesting variation of alternate history. However a story advocating a 'Nazi German Victor' in world war two can nether be anything other a historical pornography. The Trick is can Hitler ever in a credible ATL lead a political entity that is not morally corrupt and reprehensible to all civilized folk. I wait this stories development and will reserve judgement until the PO has laid out his stall for all to see.
 
The List regiment was transferred to Havrincourt in mid-November 2017 as German intelligence had begun to expect a British offensive, but unlike the 54th division that was moved into nearby Flesquires,


Don't you mean 1917?
 
The List regiment was transferred to Havrincourt in mid-November 2017 as German intelligence had begun to expect a British offensive, but unlike the 54th division that was moved into nearby Flesquires,


Don't you mean 1917?
That was an impressively obvious typo. Red this part at least a couple of times but still I missed it
 
This could be interesting, a German victory in a 'Second Great War' is an interesting variation of alternate history. However a story advocating a 'Nazi German Victor' in world war two can nether be anything other a historical pornography. The Trick is can Hitler ever in a credible ATL lead a political entity that is not morally corrupt and reprehensible to all civilized folk. I wait this stories development and will reserve judgement until the PO has laid out his stall for all to see.
That is the classical dillemma. I will say that TTL's Hitler is every bit as morally corrupt as the one IOTL. I try to make Hitler recognizable, but still more dangerous than IOTL.
I will upload the third chapter tomorrow.
 
Chapter 3: Hitler experiences the home front in 1917.
Chapter 3: Hitler experiences the home front in 1917.

While the experience at Havrincourt would shape Hitler’s beliefs on military strategy, the experience of being away from the front would be decisive in shaping his views on geopolitics. Hitler needed to recover from wounds, and his conduct at the battle of Avrincourt had made him a minor war hero. He was ceremoniously awarded the Iron Cross, first class*, but it was not this decoration, but rather his impressions in the famished Berlin that he visited during his recovery that would become important later on. In Berlin, he experienced the shortages of anything and the deterioration of conditions as compared to when he had been in the hinterland in 1916. Reading the news about the U-boat war, the inexplicable American entry and experiencing the effects of the blockade, this let him to the conclusion that an international agency had intervened to prevent German rise to prominence.

Hitler sensed that the stateless supranational Jewish communities represented the prime suspects to influence and organize these events. While he during his 1916 recovery had blamed the German people of being too weak to support their military adequately, the situation in 1917 was so grim and the people so divided that it was no wonder support was failing. Germany was under attack at the front, on the oceans and from within. His now famous conclusion that the American/British alliance was forged - not by the British and American people that had themselves been severed by war - but rather by the Anglo-American Jewish scheming to hold down Germanism and all other races, was shaped by this experience. Indeed, he would explain that the realization came to him like a flash in the back of his head, along with the belief that he was the sole vessel with these insights. He was the only person that could bring Germany back to greatness once more.

Hitler wrote in his memoirs: “The whole development of the war (ww1, edit) seemed incomprehensible, if not as by a deliberate act to lure the Kaiser into a war together with the deluded megalomanic leaders of a broken empire of the past (Austro-Hungarian Empire, edit), against an opposition falsely uniting races that had no reason to stand united. Clearly, the intention had been to destroy Germany quickly by an assault from the Slav hordes, but the strength of the German people prevented this plan. It is my belief that the Jews had not only conspired to make sure that Russia would defeat Germany as a global power, they had also planted the plague of Marxism in Russia to ensure that Russia would not eventually take Germany’s place. What had backfired on the Jewish plotters had been that Germany bravely held out, and now the Russian regime were collapsing too soon from Marxism from within. While the Anglo-American Judaism preferred to let the French, Italians and Slavs do the fighting from them, now even the affluent Americans had been forced to go to war as well. All nations could seemingly be called upon to ensure that Germany would finally bleed to death, either on the front or from Marxism from within.*

I saw now that the world order was not British, European or Asian. The real instrument of power was the Judaic conspirators. Judaism in its inner circle had chosen to parasitize the anglo-american powers as their main host and managed to orchestrate the rest of the world to enhance the fatness of their host. They could mobilize their French and Slav puppets, plant a plaque like Marxism and mobilize all powers to make sure no other powers based on honesty and integrity – like Germany – could rise to prominence. It was far more convenient for the Jewish conspirators to control the decadent western democracies with a loose rein. Perhaps that had been the real folly of the empires. It had been folly to think that the democracies were weak when they were the very opposite. They were controlled by an iron will, a parasite perfectly willing to bring down civilizations as long as the parasite remained safe.

[*As you can see the Hitler of this TL is no less paranoid and delusional than the Hitler of OTL]
 
"It had been folly to think that the democracies were weak when they were the very opposite. They were controlled by an iron will, a parasite perfectly willing to bring down civilizations as long as the parasite remained safe."
So this is one of the tricks of the POD. We have a Hitler strengthened in an OTL belief who takes it further, thus reaching a logical, if surprising conclusion. The Nazis needs this respect to make a better performance, but nobody wants a Notler.
 
Chapter 4: Hitler participates in the 1918 offensive
Chapter 4: Hitler participates in the 1918 offensive

I was disgusted by these prospects and when I was transferred to front units in the spring of 1918, I participated in Ludendorfs last great offensive with only a faint hope. I saw this as our very last chance of success and leaving behind the despair from the home front, I swelled with pride that the German soldiers could achieve with cunning and bravery, what the British had needed steel juggernauts to accomplish at Cambrai. However, although far more successful and ambitious than the British attempt, famine, lack of supplies and the influx of brave but hapless American soldiers stemmed our final grasp at victory. We had the commitment to victory that the British had lacked, but we now lacked the strength and support to carry out the offensive. When we finally retreated, and in light of the situation at home, I knew that our moment had passed. Although I find their defeatism repulsive, objectively I don’t blame our leaders their decisions to seek a peace at this time, rather, I blame them their naïve belief in our enemies’ promise of an honorable peace. But then again, had they recognized the enemy we were facing behind the scenes in our society, they would never have allowed the Jew to take leading roles in our country. Nor would they ever believe that Germany could remain strong once the Jew could whisper in the ears of our opposing negotiators. Of all the people I met in those days, I knew that I alone could see the bigger picture. This staggered me and I could see my path ahead of me. From then on, I decided it was my task to save Germany. Also, already then, I was acutely aware that the cunning and scheming Jews could only be defeated if I kept my cards hidden.”

In these words Hitler reveals his insights into the geopolitics that lead to WWI, and would attempt to hold down any resurrecting continental power in Europe*. As Hitler then saw it, by 1914, Germany was becoming the major power of continental Europe and therefore had to be broken to ensure the supremacy of Anglo-American Jewry. With scheming and murder, the alliance system was destabilized and Germany tricked into war to save the honor of the fatherland. The introduction of Marxism in Russia, Germany and France, but not really in Britain was clear evidence that all these countries were pawns in the Jewish game of domination. Without Hitler, no one could see this pattern and the Anglo-British Jew would continue to dominate world trade, politics and their hosts would remain the richest countries in the world. Conversely, no doubt can exist that Britain will be manipulated to oppose any emerging power on the continent and can count on the US support while doing so. Thus, the Anglo-American Jewry is the ultimate enemy that Germany will have to defeat before it can dominate Europe, and Hitler would have to lead Germany with much more cunning and determination that those preceding him.

[In this chapter you have been provided a unified version of Hitlers belief system ITTL. ITTL it has matured early and the struggle against Judaism on a global scale dominates before Hitler is introduced to the “lebensraum” concept. As IOTL, when something becomes fixed in Hitler’s mind, reality must yield to it.

This is a major divergence from OTL, were Hitler strongly believed in the “stab in the back” myth and the struggle for lebensraum was the overall theme. While the Germans were perceived to be stabbed in the back ITTL, he perceives that had the war not ended, Germany’s fate would have become that of Russia’s. However, Hitler will not be against exploiting the myth politically, in fact he realize that he will need to exploit peoples own beliefs rather than necessarily communicate the complete picture as he sees it. This will help him tremendously in his rise to power and beyond as will his own belief that the Germans have lost a war of the minds.

*In text narrative writes from a position of hindsight and the perspective of this ATL]
 
Before posting the next chapters I’d like to hear if there are 1) problems with the changes in Hitlers mentality/belief/fixation points brought on by the pod and 2) if you think there are other key changes that would be logical.
Its better to do it now, before I Spell out my plans.
Post-WW1 Germany coming soon.
 
I would also argue that the POD would/should make Herr Hitler far more interested in logistics, as well as in field reliability, of all types of military equipment, with the obvious areas that needed improving from OTL, and with his ability to learn things, this should be interesting.
 
I would also argue that the POD would/should make Herr Hitler far more interested in logistics, as well as in field reliability, of all types of military equipment, with the obvious areas that needed improving from OTL, and with his ability to learn things, this should be interesting.

In the Chinese sense of the word perhaps.
 
So Hitler's beliefs are less expansionist and more anti-Semitic?
He sees the major struggle as beeing with international judaism. In his words “a parasite” Living off the western democracies. So that is the real enemy. Soviet Union is an enemy because socialism is a jewish plague (in his belief system).
 
I would also argue that the POD would/should make Herr Hitler far more interested in logistics, as well as in field reliability, of all types of military equipment, with the obvious areas that needed improving from OTL, and with his ability to learn things, this should be interesting.
I’m glad you see this as well.
 
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