US cultural differences in a Kalterkrieg

"Kalterkrieg"= a Cold War between a somehow victorious Nazi Germany and the US rather than a victorious USSR and the US.

Of course, this depends on exactly how such a thing happened. Assume in this case, the end result is Nazi Germany is roughly in the same place vis a vis the US as the USSR was in real life. (Including--getting nuclear bombs real quick after the war.) I'm thinking more about US culture in an alternate Cold War with a different enemy, not in another alternate WWII.

Some random thoughts follow.

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The Pledge of Allegience would be rewritten differently. I imagine the last bit would go something like "...one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, regardless of race, color, or creed." To emphasize US ideological differences from Naziism rather than from Communism.

Most likely, liberals would be more enthusiastic about mandatory Pledging than OTL, and Southern whites less enthusiastic. Those who completely refused in the *1950s (including groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse to take oaths on religious grounds) would be accused of being Nazi sympathizers rather than Commies; this changes how well the charge resonates with different groups of mainstream Americans.

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More emphasis on the civil rights movement is likely; the US is distancing itself from hostile Nazis, not hostile Communists. This isn't all positive--the amount of pushback is going to be greater.

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People have disagreed with me on this before, but I still say that some similarities between TTL and OTL, namely facing a hostile ideology headquartered in a hostile superpower, would mean some similar reactions. Namely, the 1950s will be a period of frightened conformity, with efforts to root out suspected agents of that ideology/superpower--a "witch hunt", even. (Perhaps even led by Senator McCarthy, jumping on the alternate opportunity.)

But the nature of the adversary means some differences, too. First, Hollywood will be firmly on board; there were still Communist Party members in the Hollywood establishment in the 50s, but few if any Nazis. Second, Nazi intelligence never penetrated the US like Soviet intelligence did; there's going to be fewer actual "witches" out there. (I don't know if that would make the "witch hunt" more or less severe, though). Thirdly,if Southerners are targets of the hunt rather than hunters, this could get ugly; they have more numbers and regional power to retaliate than the American Communist Party ever did.

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Expect J. Edgar Hoover to be fondly remembered on the Left; most of the FBI's efforts will be directed at the KKK and the like. The FBI may even get away with a bigger carte blanche than they had in OTL 50s.

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Either outlaw biker gangs adopt hammers and sickles rather than swastikas and iron crosses to flaunt their bad boy credentials; or they get stomped harder, seeing as how they can be reasonably suspected of declaring allegience to the hostile superpower.
 
About the pledge, I think it would sound smoother if it were something like 'one nation, for all peoples, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all'. sounds much more natural and hits all the same notes.

Politically, the OTL Liberal/Conservative divide may be replaced by a Progressive/Libertarian one. The right wing would rally behind Libertarianism out of fear of an all-powerful government, like they united behind Conservatism out of fear of Godless Revolutionaries. The Left wing would be much more open to social programs and the like, but would likely be just as fearful of a powerful government, albeit for different reasons.

If Nazi Eugenics policy is well known, let alone events like the Holocaust, the abortion movement may never gain steam, as a lot of the early abortion supporters expressed sympathy for the Nazi Eugenics policy (Margaret Sanger is a big one), thus the American public may never warm up to the idea of abortion/birth control.

The Civil Rights movement may have MUCH more support than OTL. I can imagine all too well MLK speaking about how we rightfully oppose the Nazi's push to put non-Aryans in ghettos and slavery, only to resign our own minorities to ghettos and servitude.

Communism may end up just as discredited as Nazism was OTL - assuming the Nazis crushed the Soviets, you can bet Stalin would be played up as a tyrant for all the west to fear. Perhaps the Holodomir replaces the Holocaust in our present mindsets, or Green Ukraine actually gets support as an independent nation. Regardless, I don't see Communism as an ideology gaining much new ground in TTL.

Socially, I imagine the movement to de-Germanize various facets of American culture may be even more successful in OTL. Hope everyone likes their Hot Dogs with Liberty Cabbage and no beer :p

I honestly wonder if counterculture will be influenced by Nazis like it was influenced by Communism in OTL. TTL hippies may listen to Wagner with Adolf Hitler posters adorning their bedrooms, wearing set uniforms of some sort. Peace, love and communes are out - Purity, tradition and conformity are in :eek:

Pop culture is going to be MUCH different - the token enemies will be thinly veiled Germans as opposed to Russians, which will effect everything from Klingons to James Bond. With a drastically different counterculture scene, rock music and pop music may evolve in entirely different ways... if Britian fell to the Nazis, you can kiss the British invasion goodbye, and even if it didn't, without Hamburg, there won't be The Beatles. The dystopias people fear may look a lot more like Rollerball and Stepford Wives, or claim more from Brave New World than from 1984.

If there are streams of refugees from Occupied Europe - and there will be for a few years - these immigrants may have a huge impact on American society. At the very least, I expect there to be a few million more Americans of Russian ancestry than OTL.

Plus, let's not forget, many, if not all of America's traditional European trading partners are now behind a German-branded variety of the Iron Curtain - this means we will likely have to forge new allies elsewhere in the world a lot sooner than OTL. So America may be a lot more multicultural than OTL.
 
I honestly wonder if counterculture will be influenced by Nazis like it was influenced by Communism in OTL. TTL hippies may listen to Wagner with Adolf Hitler posters adorning their bedrooms, wearing set uniforms of some sort. Peace, love and communes are out - Purity, tradition and conformity are in :eek:

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know. We shouldn't want to change the world.
:p

thekingsguard said:
If there are streams of refugees from Occupied Europe - and there will be for a few years - these immigrants may have a huge impact on American society. At the very least, I expect there to be a few million more Americans of Russian ancestry than OTL.

A pity he was dead already, it'd be nice to have Konstantin Tsiolkovsky as a Wernher von Braun of somesorts.
 
Nazi ideology isn't actually staunchly conservative. In fact, the essence of Nazi fascism is that the vigorous and powerful volk shall rise to power after overthrowing their starchy, overpaid, fat, and Jewish upper classes and lead the Vaterland to victory.

So I can see a sort of fascist-influenced "counterculture," though that term is a bit inaccurate--fascism, tied to nationalism, seeks to be a mass movement, to replace or modify existing culture rather than present an alternative. For example, instead of demanding withdrawal from Vietnam, demanding that the current (fat, overpaid, Jewish, out-of-touch-with-reality) commanders of the American expedition to *Vietnam be shot and replaced with competent representatives of the American People.
 

iddt3

Donor
Nazi ideology isn't actually staunchly conservative. In fact, the essence of Nazi fascism is that the vigorous and powerful volk shall rise to power after overthrowing their starchy, overpaid, fat, and Jewish upper classes and lead the Vaterland to victory.

So I can see a sort of fascist-influenced "counterculture," though that term is a bit inaccurate--fascism, tied to nationalism, seeks to be a mass movement, to replace or modify existing culture rather than present an alternative. For example, instead of demanding withdrawal from Vietnam, demanding that the current (fat, overpaid, Jewish, out-of-touch-with-reality) commanders of the American expedition to *Vietnam be shot and replaced with competent representatives of the American People.
Fascism doesn't export nearly as well as Communism, its explicitly nationalist, where as communism is internationalist; I can't see it being a one to one parallel with OTL in that respect. I doubt the Nazis would be anywhere near as good as the Soviets at espionage either, at least internationally, their COINtel was pretty good IIRC.
 
A pity he was dead already, it'd be nice to have Konstantin Tsiolkovsky as a Wernher von Braun of somesorts.
Von Braun's Soviet counterpart was Sergei Korolev, and in the Kalterkrieg TL he might very well emigrate to the US (assuming he survived the downfall of the USSR - in OTL he was imprisoned until 1944, but allowed to work as engineer on aviation design; ITTL, he might be executed by his fleeing NKVD jailers, or be killed by the Nazis (they did not target former Soviet prisoners in general, but Korolev was a highly educated and patriotic Russian, and so a prime target for the Gestapo), or die from famine/disease/common crime in the chaotic post-collapse Russia).

However, even assuming Korolev managed to get out of his dying country, he would be just another Russian refugee engineer, while von Braun was carried off to the States specifically for his achievements in rocketry. Korolev would need security clearance to be hired by American rocket industry, and as he would have no von Braun's fame to help him, he might be refused it.

So a Russian von Braun in America is possible ITTL, but not very likely. Korolev would, in all probability, find good job in the US, might even become another Sikorsky or Seversky, while somebody else would get the glory of sending the first American into the orbit (the first man in space would likely be a Luftwaffe pilot).
 
Could a Cold War with Nazi Germany backfire on the US? I mean a LOT of Americans have German ancestry and I can't see people giving up beer and switching to wine or whatever. Also there was a huge amount of racism especially in the South but the North was pretty bad too I mean how many people would let their daughter date a black guy. Most Americans believed white's were superior so if the government tries to force an ideology of racial equality before American's are ready it could make people think Nazi Ideology was better then what the government was pandering.
 
Could a Cold War with Nazi Germany backfire on the US? I mean a LOT of Americans have German ancestry and I can't see people giving up beer and switching to wine or whatever. Also there was a huge amount of racism especially in the South but the North was pretty bad too I mean how many people would let their daughter date a black guy. Most Americans believed white's were superior so if the government tries to force an ideology of racial equality before American's are ready it could make people think Nazi Ideology was better then what the government was pandering.

Well, not so much most(not quite close, even, this wasn't Featherston's Confederacy, you know), but definitely some(virtually all of them would be rightists, though, if with any real stated political aims.).

I think you'd see a much larger backlash against prejudice and outright bigotry compared to OTL, for one.....
 
Who needs schnitzel when you can have chicken fried steak? Mmmmm :)

BTW, it would be Kaltkrieg if a compound noun were to be formed, but it never is: so it's Kalter Krieg.
 
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Could a Cold War with Nazi Germany backfire on the US? I mean a LOT of Americans have German ancestry and I can't see people giving up beer and switching to wine or whatever. Also there was a huge amount of racism especially in the South but the North was pretty bad too I mean how many people would let their daughter date a black guy. Most Americans believed white's were superior so if the government tries to force an ideology of racial equality before American's are ready it could make people think Nazi Ideology was better then what the government was pandering.

And considering there were laws against interracial marriage in most of the South even in the mid-1960s...I don't expect anti-African racism is going away any quicker than IOTL. Plus without the US getting involved in combat in WW2 African-Americans won't have the same experience in fighting for the country, which was a large driver in helping organize the community to fight back against Jim Crow and racism.
 
On the subject of German culture in the US: last I checked, the Bohemians also had a beer tradition which they imported to the US, as did the Irish. So beer, particularly Czech and Irish beer, will survive.

Instead of the social conservatism of OTL's 1950s, which emerged as a reaction to the godless commies and their talk of equality, here I could see a sort of social progressivism emerging instead. The civil rights movement would kick off a decade earlier, for starters, with Southern segregationists too busy facing HUAC to put up "massive resistance" to, say, an alt-Brown v. Board of Ed in 1949 or the Voting Rights Act of 1954. Feminism likely also gains acceptance early on, with Gloria Steinem and others all too happy to remind Americans of the Nazis' belief in Kinder, Küche, Kirche as the "natural" position for women.

And as for the '60s counterculture, it likely won't look anything like the hippies. One angle I could see emerging ITTL is something like the Satanists, a la Anton LaVey. There, you have a countercultural belief system that's highly contemptuous of egalitarianism and obsessed with individualism, including the right to dominate and destroy your enemies. With the aforementioned progressivism getting enmeshed with the post-war era's conformist establishment, there'd probably be a lot of rebellious Baby Boomers interested in "Left Hand Path" religions like Satanism, as well as pagan reconstructionist beliefs like Asatru. They could become TTL's version of the hippies' interest in Eastern religions and movements derived from such. There'd also be more interest in writers like Nietzsche and Spengler from the alt-counterculture instead of OTL's canon of hippie writers.
 
I honestly wonder if counterculture will be influenced by Nazis like it was influenced by Communism in OTL. TTL hippies may listen to Wagner with Adolf Hitler posters adorning their bedrooms, wearing set uniforms of some sort. Peace, love and communes are out - Purity, tradition and conformity are in :eek:

That seems like a step too far. I mean, OTL hippies/radicals may have read Marx and Lenin, but they didn't wear hammer and sickle badges/traditionally Russian outfits or listen to the Red Army Chorus, and IIRC Mao and Castro/Che were always more popular than the old men in the Kremlin. The hippies in the US looked a lot like their counterparts in '60s Eastern Europe, and I don't see them trading in tie-dye and bellbottoms for starched shirts and uniforms just because the enemy nation is different.
 
On beer, English and Scottish style ales may see an earlier revival than in OTL. This has got to be good, folks :D.
 
Instead of the social conservatism of OTL's 1950s, which emerged as a reaction to the godless commies and their talk of equality, here I could see a sort of social progressivism emerging instead. The civil rights movement would kick off a decade earlier, for starters, with Southern segregationists too busy facing HUAC to put up "massive resistance" to, say, an alt-Brown v. Board of Ed in 1949 or the Voting Rights Act of 1954. Feminism likely also gains acceptance early on, with Gloria Steinem and others all too happy to remind Americans of the Nazis' belief in Kinder, Küche, Kirche as the "natural" position for women.

Though: not a pacifist progressivism, nor one hostile to the FBI and the CIA. The FBI is enforcing progressive policies in TTL (Hoover would have little trouble with that--in OTL he suppressed the Klan in the 20s and again in the late 60s), and the CIA doing dirty tricks on a regressive enemy. And a rather conformist progressivism--it'd be a LOT easier to accuse your conservative opponents of being Nazis in this TL. As I said, in TTL progressives would be mainly in favor of mandatory Pledges of Allegience to the Flag in schools.

Which means the 60s counterculture, if any, would be reacting to *left-wing* conformity, fear, and cultural dominance, unlike OTL. It would probably be directly influenced by the Nazis as much as the 60s counterculture was by Communism--ie, somewhat, but it wasn't the dominant strain in the counterculture. "Anti-anti-communism" was very common, but rather few hippies submitted to Party discipline. OTL CPUSA complained a lot about that, actually.

Ayn Rand might be a very popular counterculture leader in TTL--insisting that all people are not equal in talents or in moral worth would be a very daring message in TTL 1960s. A backlash from young white Southerners might be big--especially if enforcement of the suppression of Jim Crow laws got overzealous. Assuming the US curbstomped Japan (quite likely even if Germany wins somehow), you might see defiantly pseudo-Japanese "bushido" posturing. (Instead of hippie longhairs, you might see "Watchmen"-style topknots.) And if the mainstream takes eating bratwurst as a sign of treason, expect *Beatniks to use Wagner and schnitzel to freak the squares.
 
Hoover might be even more reluctant to challenge the mafia, they being very antifascist.

I don't think many people saw the Mafia as standing for anti-fascism though, nor do I think that many syndicates would actively try to portray themselves politically as being anti-fascist. Crime is still crime and people will probably still have the same feelings towards them.
 
I don't think many people saw the Mafia as standing for anti-fascism though, nor do I think that many syndicates would actively try to portray themselves politically as being anti-fascist. Crime is still crime and people will probably still have the same feelings towards them.
Remember: IOTL, the Mafia were also eagerly anti-communist. They resented the loss of their Havana casinos during the Cuban Revolution; they're one of the more popular culprits in "who shot JFK" conspiracy theories partly for this reason. There's a possibility that the CIA could co-opt some of their contacts in Italy and work with them to undermine the fascists, but as Alex1guy said, Americans aren't going to be that friendly to criminals no matter their politics.
 
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