Happy to see an update to this timeline. Thanks for the great story!
Thank
you, sir!
Still, unless German has become "a language spoken only in Oxford and in hell" (Now where did that one come from? I can´t remember.), the modern scholarship perspective would acknowledge that "Ausschluss", while a pretty nice play on "Anschluss", actually means "exclusion", not "expulsion" - one more reason to call the term "erroneous", as you did.
Sure... it´s your TL, and a very good one... but "Ausschluss" as a contrast to "Anschluss" would be more fitting for the policies excluding non-Aryan inhabitants of the (pre-war) Reich (Jews for example) from the full range of rights and privileges "true" Germans enjoy.
I think Weber, who is way more of an intellectual than Hitler and most of the OTL Nazis, might be seeing the Reich´s re-settlement programs as a contrast to the Migration period where all manner of barbarian hordes swarmed in Europe, driving the people already living there before them; now the Reich is moving in the opposite direction, the unstoppable tide of the Reich´s civilisation driving the "sub-human" barbarian riff-raff before them.
Fair enough, so I'll leave it as one of those words which isn't actually really the thing it's describing at the time, like feudalism (first used in the Age of Enlightenment), or homosexuality (first used in the 19th century).
As for the second point, essentially, yes, with a touch of Manifest Destiny as well.
I have to say I find these policies a mixed bag from the German point of view. On the one hand, having the Poles as a group which everyone can trod on will help bind ethnicities such as Belarusians and Ukrainians to the new regime. On the other hand, Weber is creating this large, permanently discontented mass in the middle of his new empire. At the minimum, I would think it makes for a big asset for foreign intelligence agencies in determining things like troop movements. In a more general sense, there is now a large portion of the Wehrmacht's rear area that is ready to rebel at the first opportunity. None of this is to say this is anywhere near strong enough by itself to threaten Weber's rule, but it could be a big problem in combination with other stresses. I have to think it might be a better idea to set up some kind of puppet state which, while remaining completely under German control, would provide the Polish population some sense that they could have a tolerable life under the new regime, by comparison to the Soviet alternative, at least until the Germanization policies can take irreversible effect.
All of the above are true, and perhaps this is one of the few times that ideology really gets in the way of Weber's pragmatism. He's willing to put on the appearance of
primus inter pares for Czechia, Slovenia and the Baltic states, given their history with German entanglements, and Belarus and Ukraine are currently too useful as frontier guards for him to truly turn on, leaving the Poles sandwiched between Germany proper and
Festung Mitteleuropa. This "Polish ulcer" is almost certainly going to bit him in the ass (now there's a medically implausible metaphor!), even if they'll probably never link up with the USSR (which would be fatal for Weber) and it just goes to show that a Nazi can't really change its spots.
Great and depressing update!
The after-Reich is going to be ugly, since not only the local ethnic croups will be at throats but part of the Polish nation, he Stracone pokolenie, had been taught to hate their heritage and their countrymen.
And how is the colonisation organisated? OTL, Hitler was for small villages of Aryans with a Slavic workforce who will be presumably be "sent East" after mecanization; TTL, I could see Gothica becoming huge latifundia owned by absentee owners living in the towns, along with German managers - these owners could be Wehrmacht officers rewarded for their fidelity and their wartime exploits, Nazi bigwigs living in the Altreich or even companies, and the farmhands Poles; the rest of annexed Poland could be populated by veterans, and I could imagine some workers in Hamburg and elsewhere left jobless by the closure of the Allied markets being tempted to go there, and the local welfare just consisting of a plot of farmland or a workshop and Polish workers, with the alternative being the nearest KZ.
Given the "(First)" bit for the Warsaw Insurrection, Gothica may be restless for the following decade, and the repression will not endear Weber to the Allies, even with Frank sent to house arrest.
That model sounds very Roman, and is definitely an interesting one; I'd imagine that Weber would also court the
Junkers and the unemployed by offering them the industries and mines in Poland, and encourage the farmers to seek new homes in Gothica, probably enticed with laundered loot from the expulsions.
Poland is going to take a massive drubbing over the years, but in many ways the uprisings have only strengthened the resolve of the resistance, given that the resistance movements weren't really responsible for the uprisings, which were considerably more spontaneous than OTL's Warsaw Uprising, and in many cases they've continued to endear themselves to the Polish population by providing ratlines to those who ended up coming under the suspicion of the security forces.
EDIT: Ooh, Ninja'd!
The now Balbo led Italy will try to transfer more slovens possible from their home to Croatia but (if things go as OTL) try to govern with a light hand the new aquired territory at least initially (till violent resistance start naturally) and at the same time continue the program of massive colonization there, in Albania and the rest of the african empire (even if Abyssinia need to be fully pacified...and good luck with that.)
Italy position will be very ackward, from one point is now one of the winner, get territory, prestige and influence in the balkans...on the other side they are allied with Germany.
Balbo (a know germanophobe) and both the royal and fascist enstablishment will not like very much live under Berlin shadow and it will be painfully clear to everybody who's really call all the shot.
Not counting the racial thing; the OTL racial law were not very popular in Italy and seeing what Germany is doing or even the Croats (as i assume things between them and the italians will be tense as OTL) will not made many confortable (more due to the fear that nothing will stop people in Berlin to later decide that latins are also inferior than to true moral outrage).
As said before, Rome will slowly try to patch things with the allies and go to the path of neutrality if not go for a true ideological split.
All good points too, and Italy's path will be elaborated on later, if not in this chapter, at least when shit's going down. Balbo's pragmatic enough to see a sinking ship for what it is. Not too sure what you mean by that first point: Germany has no real policy in Croatia, though; the NDH (and the successor Grand Duchy of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) was fully in the orbit of the Italian sphere of influence (especially now so that it can concentrate its gains), and Balbo had already ousted Pavelic at this point. Italy and Germany will be happy to do population exchanges between Styria and Croatia, and Weber is turning a blind eye to Croats being evicted from Serbia during the German occupation.
25 years of the Reich will be bad for eastern Europe.
That, my boy, is an understatement.
