The New Order: Last Days of Europe Thread II

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Tiger

Tiger

Bbone91 said:
Nazi German practiced such an extreme form of Social Darwinism that it makes SENSE for a civil war to break out.
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Also, as Haffner noted, the very fact that Hitler systematically destroyed what would have allowed the issue of a successor to be resolved more or less in an orderly manner (constitution, for example) , practically guaranteed Germany's problems after the Hitler's death.

But I must confess, reworks are really annoying (IMHO) - especially when there are no full content, for example, for Stirling in Britain.
 

Tolkiene

Tiger said:
Also, as Haffner noted, the very fact that Hitler systematically destroyed what would have allowed the issue of a successor to be resolved more or less in an orderly manner (constitution, for example) , practically guaranteed Germany's problems after the Hitler's death.
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Hitler named a successor in OTL, even before his speech to the Reichstag on 1 September 1939. And actually talked quite frequently about setting up the Nazi 'Senate' that would choose future Führers in order to avoid a bloody clash between Party comrades, though its composition was a matter of debate. There's memorandums from Nazi officials such as Lammers and Frick about it. As for the constitution, technically the Weimar constitution was never abolished, though it was hollowed out and rendered meaningless. It's quite possible that the Nazis would've eventually introduced a new one. It's likely something Bormann and the Control Faction/PK would've pushed for to institutionalise their power.

The whole German Civil War, as it happens in TNO at present, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the regime worked. Yes, the Nazis were utterly vile people...but they generally didn't kill their own. By their own I mean people in the Nazi movement/power structure and 'ordinary' Germans. Their genocidal violence was directed against people who'd been 'othered' by mainstream German society.

The Night of the Long Knives was bloody...but the number of people who were killed by it is far dwarfed by the number of Nazi officials who were simply forced into retirement or kicked out of the Party after the bloodletting. Aside from the Night of the Long Knives, the only internal purges within the power structure of Nazi Germany were the purge after the 20 July Coup and the bloodletting that occured in the final phase of the war. No one was killed during the Blomberg-Fritisch Crisis. Various generals and diplomats simply lost their jobs or were sidelined by being given less important ones. Power struggles in the Nazi regime generally took the form of bureaucratric turf wars, not Himmler or Bormann ordering their thugs to assassinate German officials.

The regime was a mess, but popular history frankly overestimates its dysfunctionality a fair bit. The idea that German soldiers would immediately turn their guns on each other and the evil empire would wreck itself the moment Hitler dies is appealing, but fanciful. Frankly the German army's behaviour during the 20 July Coup disproves it...because they followed the chain of command. There were literally cases where officers in the Wehrkreise who sympathised with the coup on some level, though they weren't in on it, obeyed orders from OKW that told them commands coming from Stauffenberg and Co were treasonous.

And the oath SS members swear is to Hitler (and after his death they'd have to swear an oath to whoever becomes Führer)...not Himmler. An internal crisis, a power struggle, a political purge and street battles are likely and that might potentially escalate into civil war-like conditions if there's a protracted deadlock, but full-blown civil war would require way more than just Hitler dying. Never mind the fact that the candidates even having access to armed force would be pretty variable.

Also if Hitler names a successor, as he does in vanilla TNO...that's the legitimate leader of Germany. As Hitler decreed when he appointed Göring in OTL, all civil servants, Party people, officers etc. would have to swear allegiance to him. Which is why Hitler not naming anyone and a contested senate election (whose legitimacy might be questioned since it's an untested institution) leading to a protracted power struggle and intense political intrigue is a better way to go about things.
 
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Gukpard

Gukpard

Tolkiene said:
Hitler named a successor in OTL, even before his speech to the Reichstag on 1 September 1939. And actually talked quite frequently about setting up the Nazi 'Senate' that would choose future Führers in order to avoid a bloody clash between Party comrades, though its composition was a matter of debate. There's memorandums from Nazi officials such as Lammers and Frick about it. As for the constitution, technically the Weimar constitution was never abolished, though it was hollowed out and rendered meaningless. It's quite possible that the Nazis would've eventually introduced a new one. It's likely something Bormann and the Control Faction/PK would've pushed for to institutionalise their power.

The whole German Civil War, as it happens in TNO at present, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the regime worked. Yes, the Nazis were utterly vile people...but they generally didn't kill their own. By their own I mean people in the Nazi movement and 'ordinary' Germans. Their genocidal violence was directed against people who'd been 'othered' by mainstream German society.

The Night of the Long Knives was bloody...but the number of people who were killed by it is far dwarfed by the number of Nazi officials who were simply forced into retirement or kicked out of the Party after the bloodletting. Aside from the Night of the Long Knives, the only internal purges within the power structure of Nazi Germany were the purge after the 20 July Coup and the bloodletting that occured in the final phase of the war. No one was killed during the Blomberg-Fritisch Crisis. Various generals and diplomats simply lost their jobs. Power struggles in the Nazi regime generally took the form of bureaucratric turf wars, not Himmler or Bormann ordering their thugs to assassinate German officials.

The regime was a mess, but popular history frankly overestimates its dysfunctionality a fair bit. The idea that German soldiers would immediately turn their guns on each other and the evil empire would wreck itself the moment Hitler dies is appealing, but fanciful. Frankly the German army's behaviour during the 20 July Coup disproves it...because they followed the chain of command. There were literally cases where officers in the Wehrkreise who sympathised with the coup on some level, though they weren't in on it, obeyed orders from OKW that told them commands coming from Stauffenberg and Co were treasonous.

And the oath SS members swear is to Hitler (and after his death they'd have to swear an oath to whoever becomes Führer)...not Himmler. An internal crisis, a power struggle, a political purge and street battles are likely and that might potentially escalate into civil war-like conditions if there's a protracted deadlock, but full-blown civil war would require way more than just Hitler dying. Never mind the fact that the candidates even having access to armed force would be pretty variable.

Also if Hitler names a successor, as he does in vanilla TNO...that's the legitimate leader of Germany. As Hitler decreed when he appointed Göring in OTL, all civil servants, Party people, officers etc. would have to swear allegiance to him. Which is why Hitler not naming anyone and a contested senate election (whose legitimacy might be questioned since it's an untested institution) leading to a protracted power struggle and intense political intrigue is a better way to go about things.
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Man, I know that I am getting old since when I joined online discussions about the Nazis the idea was that they would unleash high tech and be indestructible to then the "glass cannon" current idea that even if they won the war they still would implode as soon it ended due infighting.

And now that idea is being criticized, and up until the unknown we go!
 

Tolkiene

Gukpard said:
Man, I know that I am getting old since when I joined online discussions about the Nazis the idea was that they would unleash high tech and be indestructible to then the "glass cannon" current idea that even if they won the war they still would implode as soon it ended due infighting.
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Yeah, it's kinda ironic, but I think the popular imagination may have moved from one extreme to the other. The Wehrmacht generals weren't geniuses who would've 'won the war if only the stupid Bohemian corporal had left them alone' (nor were they 'apolitical men of honour who just fought for the wrong side'), Speer wasn't a genius technocrat and industrial miracle-maker, the Waffen-SS weren't supersoldiers, and the Nazi wonderweapons wouldn't have won the war if only they'd had an extra month. The regime was an evil, wasteful mess.

But equally the Nazis weren't an utterly ineffectual glass cannon and, as appealing as that would be, they wouldn't have started murdering each other en masse and implode the moment Hitler died. We shouldn't lose sight of the effort it took to bring this vile regime down, and the many sacrifices people had to make in the process.
 
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Gukpard

Gukpard

Tolkiene said:
Yeah, it's kinda ironic, but I think the popular imagination may have moved from one extreme to the other. The Wehrmacht generals weren't geniuses who would've 'won the war if only the stupid Bohemian corporal had left them alone' (nor were they 'apolitical men of honour who just fought for the wrong side'), the Waffen-SS weren't supersoldiers, and the Nazi wonderweapons wouldn't have won the war if only they'd had an extra month. The regime was an evil, wasteful mess.

But equally the Nazis weren't an utterly ineffectual glass cannon and, as appealing as that would be, they wouldn't have started murdering each other en masse the moment Hitler died. We shouldn't lose sight of the effort it took to bring this vile regime down, and the many sacrifices people had to make in the process.
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It is the blowback from an extreme to another. Always happens.
 
Terran Allias

Terran Allias

Question, does Germany have high tech industry? I've never actually played them, so the impression I get is that they're in the same camp as the Soviets. America has Silicon valley, Japan has Guandong, what does Germany have?
 

chankljp

Donor
Tolkiene said:
The whole German Civil War, as it happens in TNO at present, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the regime worked. Yes, the Nazis were utterly vile people...but they generally didn't kill their own. By their own I mean people in the Nazi movement/power structure and 'ordinary' Germans. Their genocidal violence was directed against people who'd been 'othered' by mainstream German society.
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I supposed the question is that if the German Civil War can be avoided.... Then what exactly would replace it as the inciting seminal event that kicks off the plot for almost the entire world? Why did the Polish Home Army, HMMLR, etc suddenly be in a position to launch a mass uprising against the the Germany occupational forces/the local collaborators? Why did the terror bombing against Western Russia and West Africa suddenly stop after over 2 decades? And without the South African War (Which only took place as a result of the formation of the Afrika-Schild after the African RKs were cut off from their homeland due to the German Civil War), what would be OFN's first collective police action against the Nazis that would determine the future of US foreign policy for the next decade?

I supposed Germany can fall into MASSIVE political and social unrest combined with an economic collapse after Hitler's death to the point of paralyzing them geopolitically for at least a few years, sort of like the post-POD United States in the KR world did... But keep in mind that even for a country as deliberately screwed due to author fiat as the KR US, Washington was still able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine until the Second Civil War broke out. In the case of TNO Germany, without something as destructive and distracting as an outright Civil War, which exactly would the new Fuhrer not instantly bring down the hammer on any hit of resistance?
 

Tolkiene

chankljp said:
I supposed Germany can fall into MASSIVE political and social unrest combined with an economic collapse after Hitler's death to the point of paralyzing them geopolitically for at least a few years, sort of like the post-POD United States in the KR world did... But keep in mind that even for a country as deliberately screwed due to author fiat as the KR US, Washington was still able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine until the Second Civil War broke out. In the case of TNO Germany, without something as destructive and distracting as an outright Civil War, which exactly would the new Fuhrer not instantly bring down the hammer on any hit of resistance?
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At this point the German Civil War is basically a case of wanting a certain outcome (the big geopolitical eruption you mention), and then tweaking the plot to fit that.

The whole Africa plot is another can of worms since...none of the present Rks make sense.

Worth noting that the civil war doesn't matter that much after it's over...because despite the massive destruction it must have caused, Germany instantly bounces back to being a world power. It matters for all the opposition groups in Eastern Europe, Africa etc. since they can suddenly project an otherwise implausible amount of power (personally I also think that at present TNO kinda overestimates how powerful partisans would be, but that's another matter). But it might as well not have happened for the narrative of say Bormann or Speer. At the moment there's a big disconnect.

If one wants to write a German civil war story, I'd personally scrap the part about Hitler appointing a successor (and Göring is either dead or he lost his status as a successor because Hitler's faith in him diminished after a health scare that put him out of commission for a while) and use the scenario akin to the one outlined by @Tanaka did nothing wrong here.
 
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chankljp

Donor
Tolkiene said:
At this point the German Civil War is basically a case of wanting a certain outcome (the big geopolitical eruption you mention), and then tweaking the plot to fit that.

The whole Africa plot is another can of worms since...none of the present Rks make sense.

Worth noting that the civil war doesn't matter that much after it's over...because despite the massive destruction it must have caused, Germany instantly bounces back to being a world power. It matters for all the opposition groups in Eastern Europe, Africa etc. since they can suddenly project an otherwise implausible amount of power (personally I also think that at present TNO overestimates how powerful partisans would be, but that's another matter). But it might as well not have happened for the narrative of say Bormann or Speer. At the moment there's a big disconnect.

If one wants to write a German civil war story, I'd personally scrap the part about Hitler appointing a successor (and Göring is either dead or he lost his status as a successor because Hitler's faith in him diminished after a health scare that put him out of commission for a while) and use the scenario akin to the one outlined by @Tanaka did nothing wrong here.
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I think the question here is that with all the reworks and removal of existing plot lines, at what point does TNO stops being TNO, and instead being 'WI Axis won WW2 TL number 236'?

Perhaps Kaiserreich have it much easier in that regard, due to WW1 ATLs not being as common, meaning that as long as you keep a victorious German Empire around, even with the removal of iconic elements like the AOG controlled Southern China , La Plata, Genghis Khan II's new Mongol Empire, Lawrence of Britannia, President Curtis avoiding the Second US Civil War, President Kerensky's assassination throwing Russia into a political free-for-all, etc, the KR TL is still recognisably unique... Though I would argue that if syndicalism as the dominate far-left ideology or the continued existence of the Entente operating in exile gets removed, that WOULD be a bridge too far in making Kaiserreich no longer Kaiserreich.

For TNO, however.... Lets be honest, 'Nazis won WW2' ATLs are dime-a-dozen, to the point of being THE default alternate history TL in popular culture, right alongside 'If the Confederates won the American Civil War'. Meaning that in order for TNO to be recognisably unique, it NEEDS to maintain its own niche, to make it different from say... "The Anglo/American – Nazi War", "Fatherland", "The Man in the High Castle", "Wolfenstein", "Thousand Week Reich", etc.

I would argue that at its core, TNO's niche would be, 'If the Axis powers were able to inexplicably maintain the same lucky strike that in OTL, enabled them to defeat France in 6 weeks, make as much headway against the Soviets as they did during Operation Babarosa, and for Japan to overrun Singapore and the Philippines with relative ease... But for reality to ensue when said plot armor suddenly wear off the moment they won WW2, resulting in their regimes getting slowly crushed under the weight of their own inherent issues that prevented them from winning WW2 in OTL'.

Hence, it can be argued that even with Atlantropa and the German Civil War removed, as long as the victorious Axis powers still suffer from the weight of their own self-inflicted problems, TNO with all the 'unrealistic' elements removed will still be TNO... However, at the moment, I feel that a TNO without the German Civil War might as well be a Kaiserreich without syndicalism... Or even a Kaiserreich in which instead of falling to a leftist revolution, Britain became a fascist republic.... With it being so removed from the original material that you might as well create your own TL instead of reworking the existing one.

But I guess we will wait and see if this rework will actually be carried out, and if the devs can pull this off...
 

Twiggierjet

I know this is unnpopular in some AH circles, but hoi4 mods being unrealistic is not actually a bad thing. It's when it becomes tonally inconsistent that problems arise, which is the real reason that so many meme mods are garbage.
 

chankljp

Donor
Twiggierjet said:
I know this is unnpopular in some AH circles, but hoi4 mods being unrealistic is not actually a bad thing. It's when it becomes tonally inconsistent that problems arise, which is the real reason that so many meme mods are garbage.
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I for one will confess that while I still follow the development of the mod, and download the mod so that I can extract the event folder and read them in a text file... I have grown to become disinterested in TNO as a HOI4 mod that I actually want to play. Due to all the increasingly (No offense intended) convoluted and confusing mini-games and mechanics, making it so that simply pressing fast forward on the map and wait for national focuses to be completed is no longer an option.

If there is one aspect of 'de-Panzerization' that I would fully support, that would be that the TNO devs need to stop approaching TNO as a HOI4 mod that hates the gameplay mechanics of HOI4. By all means, deconstruct HOI's gameplay mechanics all you want narratively... But do not do so mechanically... The same way that Bioshock might have deconstructed many of the tropes of the first person shooter genera such as missions objectives... But still stuck to it for the sake of being a fun game anyway.
 

Twiggierjet

chankljp said:
I for one will confess that while I still follow the development of the mod, and download the mod so that I can extract the event folder and read them in a text file... I have grown to become disinterested in TNO as a HOI4 mod that I actually want to play. Due to all the increasingly (No offense intended) convoluted and confusing mini-games and mechanics, making it so that simply pressing fast forward on the map and wait for national focuses to be completed is no longer an option.

If there is one aspect of 'de-Panzerization' that I would fully support, that would be that the TNO devs need to stop approaching TNO as a HOI4 mod that hates the gameplay mechanics of HOI4. By all means, deconstruct HOI's gameplay mechanics all you want narratively... But do not do so mechanically... The same way that Bioshock might have deconstructed many of the tropes of the first person shooter genera such as missions objectives... But still stuck to it for the sake of being a fun game anyway.
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Well that's another matter entirely. I can definitely see your point, but for me it was more about people supporting major plot elements of TNO like the GCW for the sake of making the story itself "more realistic".
 

Tolkiene

chankljp said:
Hence, it can be argued that even with Atlantropa and the German Civil War removed, as long as the victorious Axis powers still suffer from the weight of their own self-inflicted problems,
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And I'm totally in favour of that. I don't view them as glass cannons and ineffectual paper tigers destined to instantly fail, but I don't see the Nazi bloc as really sustainable in the long term because of a myriad of self-inflicted issues and, lest we forget, opposition from their enemies. I'm all for their cheat codes running out. I just don't view the German Civil War, as it presently exists (and as mentioned earlier, I can see a variant of it happening, but not in the sense that Hitler dies and Germany instantly explodes) or Atlantropa as necessary to convey that message.

Atlantropa wasn't even a project the Nazis had any interest in, but I digress.

But, yes, we'll have to see. I'll admit I didn't have an attachment to old TNO in the first place, hence why I'm analysing things rather dispassionately.

I'm not a supporter of overloading things with convoluted mini-games either.
 
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chankljp

Donor
dcguy3 said:
How does one do that? Feel I may just read a ton on my tablet on a plane to save time in a couple weeks, then.
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No problem. So... Assuming that you got the mod via Steam Workshop, go to:

'Windows (C)' > 'Program Files (x86)' > 'Steam' > 'steamapps' > 'workshop' > 'content' > 394360' > '2438003901' > 'localisation' > 'english'

Once there, you can open the YML files using Notepad or TextEdit. With all the events and National Focuses under the files with the 'TNO_[Country name]' files.

Hope that this helps!
 
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