What if Hitler didn’t kill Jews but went through on war?

sharlin

Banned
Okay so they don't kill jews, first of They are not Nazis if you butterfly away the anti-semitism.

A question though, what about the homosexuals, the physically disabled, the 'undesirables' of the Aryan utopia the Nazi's wanted. Are these suddenly not 'removed' like they were in WW2? Soviet prisoners are they not going to be for the most part starved en mass and used as slave labour until they drop?

Can't really do one without doing the other. And not doing both makes then NotNazi's.
 
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, slaves, were going to die, possibly by the millions from the moment Hitler invaded the USSR.
After the conquest of Ukraine, a sane German leadership would've enacted agricultural policies to fully utilise the absolutely massive productivity of chernozem (srsly, that stuff's like Miracle-Gro). A properly administered Ukraine could feed half of Europe (along with itself).

However, as we know, Nazis gotta Nazi. And the rest truly is history.
 

sharlin

Banned
Asking for sane Nazi's is like asking the Klan in the 1920s to be nice to black folks. Not going to happen.
 
Wouldn't that create huge butterflies whereby jewish-german scientists don't flee germany? Einstein being one of them.

Would this have ramifications on germany's nuclear program?
 
So no possibility then of being less anti-semitic (no death camps, but slave labour camps), but perhaps worse anti-communist then?
 
Wouldn't that create huge butterflies whereby jewish-german scientists don't flee germany? Einstein being one of them.

Would this have ramifications on germany's nuclear program?

Einstein himself would undoubtedly have refused to be part of any programme to actually make a bomb, it was litereally only the fact that the Nazis were quite clearly virulently anti-Semetic, anti-Slav etc. that led him to support (though not be involved in) the Manhattan Project. Though a more rampantly militarist Germany might very well cause Einstein to emigrate anyway.

Whether Germany takes weaponising nuclear physics more seriously is another matter, but until '45 it really was a very 'out there' sort of a notion.
 

amphibulous

Banned
After the conquest of Ukraine, a sane German leadership would've enacted agricultural policies to fully utilise the absolutely massive productivity of chernozem (srsly, that stuff's like Miracle-Gro). A properly administered Ukraine could feed half of Europe (along with itself).

However, as we know, Nazis gotta Nazi. And the rest truly is history.

Unfortunately (especially for Ukranian civilians of the day, as well as the Jews, Romany, etc) the above makes no sense at all.

Firstly, food takes time to grow. With the Royal Navy blockading the sea routes, no more exports from the USSR, and most of Europe the Germans needed food NOW. (Or rather, THEN.) Not at the end of next year's harvest. Still less after several years' agricultural reforms.

Secondly, the transport links between Germany and Russia were poor. The only way to supply the Germany army halfway adequately was to strip the Ukraine of food. Not the best circumstances to start agricultural reform.

Thirdly, the Ukraine had to be stripped of material like cattle cake to prop up German agricultural production to make up for the lack of imports.

Talking of reforming agriculture in the Ukraine in time to prevent famine in Europe, while fighting a war, is simply insane. juanml82 is correct; once the German's had decided to invade Russia they had to make the decision to kill most of the inmates of the Camps - and even more people in the Ukraine and Russia.


Bri2k
I've often thought that if Hitler had left the Jews alone and allowed them in the armed forces and also treated the Ukrainians and other Slavs equally, he might've had a shot at winning.

Yes, this seems utterly reasonable until you do some serious reading on economics of Germany in WW2. However, in reality it was not possible - see Tooze's "Wages Of Destruction." In the absence of peace with the UK, Hitler had only two options:

1. Make more and more concessions to Stalin to avoid starvation - during which time Stalin would inevitably gain a superior position

2. Invade Russia and loot like crazy so that the army and Germany wouldn't starve.

This sort of thing doesn't get explained on the History Channel because making people think is ratings poison - it's better just to give them lots of pictures of Tiger tanks.
 

amphibulous

Banned
Einstein himself would undoubtedly have refused to be part of any programme to actually make a bomb

Einstein wasn't part of the Manhattan Project either. His lack didn't hurt, and there's no reason to think he would have been especially useful - he was a brilliant (if past his prime) theoretical physicist, and the problems in bomb production were decidedly practical.
 

amphibulous

Banned
Okay so they don't kill jews, first of They are not Nazis if you butterfly away the anti-semitism.

Of course they are. They are a different sort of Nazi, but the core ideology doesn't change and they wouldn't be redeemed if they decided not to kill Jews but eg still murdered much greater numbers of Slavs. The Holocaust is the shibboleth of Naziness in the West, but that is because acknowledging that most of the victims and heroes of WW2 were in the East was verboten during the Cold War, when the pop history view was formed.
 
I think that the solution (no pun intended) for this would be having a more pragmatical and less idealist (idealist not being a good thing on this case) Hitler, deeming the killings a waste of resources and adopting a 'total war' mindset, putting all the focus on... well, duh, war.
His plans could be to do something like OTL post-war, so if you want to avoid it, you could have him being killed and being suceeded by a more moderate guy or a coup from another party, which i think would be somewhat ASB on a nazi Germany which wins the war, because i think that such a Germany would have a state too strong for something like that.
 
Last edited:
<snip>

Yes, this seems utterly reasonable until you do some serious reading on economics of Germany in WW2. However, in reality it was not possible - see Tooze's "Wages Of Destruction." In the absence of peace with the UK, Hitler had only two options:

1. Make more and more concessions to Stalin to avoid starvation - during which time Stalin would inevitably gain a superior position

2. Invade Russia and loot like crazy so that the army and Germany wouldn't starve.

This sort of thing doesn't get explained on the History Channel because making people think is ratings poison - it's better just to give them lots of pictures of Tiger tanks.

I find your take on this very interesting and certainly welcome more information as the economics of Nazi Germany is a bit of an esoteric subject. So, what you're saying is that even if Germany had acted as true liberators to the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc. and had them fighting with them against the Soviet Union, this would've done them no good? Having the Soviet breadbasket on the German side wouldn't have helped? Why so?
 
Top