What if Hitler kept generalplan-ost a secret?

Other than the high-ranking Nazis at least.

Stalin was not a popular man in the soviet union, especially in areas like Ukraine and the Baltic states. When Germany launched operation barbarosa there were a lot of people who initially welcomed the Germans as liberators - until it was clear that the Germans were going to be even worse.

What if instead Hitler made some sort of grand proclamation that he was fighting against the bolshevik tyranny to overthrow Stalin, and restore an independent Ukraine and other states (with fascist leadership obviously) in order to gather local support and maybe even defections, while actually planning to enact generalplan-ost and the other horrific plans after the soviet union was defeated?

Could such a strategy have produced enough defections and local support to make a meaningful difference? would it be enough to sway neutral countries such as Turkey or Sweden to participate in the invasion?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

Historically, the so called Russian Liberation Army, made up of former soviet POWs that fought for Nazi Germany, managed to peak at around 120,000 troops in April 1945, despite the fact that it was formed in 1944 and only after everyone from Kiev to Vladivostok knew that the Nazis meant bad things for anyone who wasn't German.
It would reason to me that if they just kept a leash on the SS and army (just wait a few years then you can murder them all) they could get far more defections, and it could be just enough to make a significant change, maybe even enough to be decisive.

What do you guys think?
 
Generalplan Ost was a series of SS plans that were secret. There are a lot of misconceptions on this site about the various Nazi plans.

I don't think that it would make much difference if the Nazis allowed a notional independent status for the nations in the east. The Nazis would still need to ruthlessly exploit the people and natural resources of the region. The Nazis would still conduct vicious anti-partisan warfare. They also wouldn't want to encourage too much nationalism, since they still have long term plans to colonize the region.
 
Generalplan Ost was a series of SS plans that were secret. There are a lot of misconceptions on this site about the various Nazi plans.

I don't think that it would make much difference if the Nazis allowed a notional independent status for the nations in the east. The Nazis would still need to ruthlessly exploit the people and natural resources of the region. The Nazis would still conduct vicious anti-partisan warfare. They also wouldn't want to encourage too much nationalism, since they still have long term plans to colonize the region.
Would that really be a problem though? even if they did encourage nationalism, its not like they would have the means to resist if the germans rule europe and defeated the soviets.

Hitler planned for a 1000 year reich, surely they could wait a few years before they start murdering / enslaving everyone.
 
Let's put it this way.

The German nation didn't have the food to feed occupied territories. The German army didn't ha e the logistical capability to transfer equipment and ammunition and food east for a large enough army to beat the Soviets.

The decision was made to start starving the local population to feed the army.

If you don't do that you have to cut rations in Germany and transport less military supplies both of which were not acceptable to the Nazi party and Hitler.

If you do enact starvation policies in occupied territories you won't get local support.

Just be nice to the locals always sounds good on this forum but it wasn't an easy or practical step to take.
 
No. The German war economy relied very much on slave labor, which was sourced liberally from the untermenschen nations, especially the Poles.(1)
This was what allowed them to build the V2 rockets and man the factories that produced their tanks. Without them, Nazi Germany is caught in a bind where it doesn't have enough manpower for both the home front and the Eastern Front, while also not having enough food to feed both Germany and the conquered territories at the same time.(2)

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation#Forced_labour
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
 
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No. The German war economy relied very much on slave labor, which was sourced liberally from the untermenschen nations, especially the Poles.(1)
This was what allowed them to build the V2 rockets and man the factories that produced their tanks. Without them, Nazi Germany is caught in a bind where it doesn't have enough manpower for both the home front and the Eastern Front
The crux of the problem was nazi ideology, which said a woman belonged at home not in a factory. When Speer wanted to draft women for industry, Adolf refused, saying "The sacrifice of our most cherished ideals is too great a price." Unwillingness to employ women in factories--even though it was done in the US, USSR etc--compelled a reliance on slave labor.
 
The crux of the problem was nazi ideology, which said a woman belonged at home not in a factory. When Speer wanted to draft women for industry, Adolf refused, saying "The sacrifice of our most cherished ideals is too great a price." Unwillingness to employ women in factories--even though it was done in the US, USSR etc--compelled a reliance on slave labor.
Does that means Hitler could get a bit farther if we women were working in factories at first? At least it would free up some men for the front.
 
At least it would free up some men for the front.
It would mostly just lessen the use of slaves in the factories. Lessen, but not stop.
At bare minimum, Jews, Poles, Roma and Soviet POWs are still enslaved by Organization Todt for their construction projects.(1)

The Soviet POWs who "volunteered" to fight against the Soviet Union did so because it was either that or be worked to death(2) by the Nazi slave labor machine, and the former meant they got access to proper rations instead of being slowly starved to death.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_through_labour

btw that same article also has the following quote.
The Nazis also had plans for the deportation and enslavement of 50% of Britain's adult male population in the event of a successful invasion.[26]
 
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Other than the high-ranking Nazis at least.

Stalin was not a popular man in the soviet union, especially in areas like Ukraine and the Baltic states. When Germany launched operation barbarosa there were a lot of people who initially welcomed the Germans as liberators - until it was clear that the Germans were going to be even worse.

What if instead Hitler made some sort of grand proclamation that he was fighting against the bolshevik tyranny to overthrow Stalin, and restore an independent Ukraine and other states (with fascist leadership obviously) in order to gather local support and maybe even defections, while actually planning to enact generalplan-ost and the other horrific plans after the soviet union was defeated?

Could such a strategy have produced enough defections and local support to make a meaningful difference? would it be enough to sway neutral countries such as Turkey or Sweden to participate in the invasion?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

Historically, the so called Russian Liberation Army, made up of former soviet POWs that fought for Nazi Germany, managed to peak at around 120,000 troops in April 1945, despite the fact that it was formed in 1944 and only after everyone from Kiev to Vladivostok knew that the Nazis meant bad things for anyone who wasn't German.
It would reason to me that if they just kept a leash on the SS and army (just wait a few years then you can murder them all) they could get far more defections, and it could be just enough to make a significant change, maybe even enough to be decisive.

What do you guys think?
It not just keeping the long term plans secret it's basically stopping Nazis being Nazis. The targeting of specific minorities happens literally within days of the German army crossing the border of Poland, let alone the USSR.

And as has been said Germany was always going to use the East as an economic resource including it's people right from the get go. they literally can't afford to be the liberators of eastern Europe.
 
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Does that means Hitler could get a bit farther if we women were working in factories at first? At least it would free up some men for the front.

No German female labour force participation was high anyway ( mythology notwithstanding arguably higher than US or UK pre war) it was just in family farms, as clerks and bookkeepers in small business just not in factory production. The big difference is the Anglo Saxons made a big deal about it and rationally mobilised the entire workforce from the beginning assuming a long war.

Let's put it this way.

The German nation didn't have the food to feed occupied territories. The German army didn't ha e the logistical capability to transfer equipment and ammunition and food east for a large enough army to beat the Soviets.

The decision was made to start starving the local population to feed the army.

If you don't do that you have to cut rations in Germany and transport less military supplies both of which were not acceptable to the Nazi party and Hitler.

If you do enact starvation policies in occupied territories you won't get local support.

Just be nice to the locals always sounds good on this forum but it wasn't an easy or practical step to take.

Which is the deal. the German armies take food and fodder as they move forward as long as they are moving they don't take much from the rural population in any one place. As soon as they stop they eat them out very quickly.

Ofc they totally screw up food distribution to the towns and cities so they starve no matter what. By eo 41 medium sized Russian towns had lost around half the population pre war mostly due to starvation.

The other issue despite the wishful thinking of a very few germans early on the Soviet proletarians rallied to Stalin and the Communist party. Cold war and post cold war nationalisms nothwithstanding.
 
A scenario I had considered was having Hitler assassinated within a year after becoming chancellor, and Goering takes over. The assassin is captured and found to be a communist with ties (however tenuous) with the NKVD. Goering then goes vapid anti-communist (so the OTL anti-Jewish persecution doesn’t occur), and manages to bring Poland into the anti-Red fold, as Poland still has fresh memories of the Soviet invasion. Poland and Germany ramp up the “Soviets must go” rhetoric and the sabres begin rattling. This puts Britain, France, and the US in the position to “look the other way“ or throw Germany/Poland their support.

ric350
 
Which is the deal. the German armies take food and fodder as they move forward as long as they are moving they don't take much from the rural population in any one place. As soon as they stop they eat them out very quickly.
The Hungerplan was not just roving German units requisitioning food á la Napoleonic legions. It was the systematic confiscation of food on a bureaucratic level in order to feed not only combat units but the civilian population of Germany deemed worthy enough to be fed at a standard rate. Plans for it were drawn up and carried out by the economic ministry, which the Green Folder shows. So I don't think it had any correlation at all with the German soldier's specific rate of advance.
 
What if instead Hitler made some sort of grand proclamation that he was fighting against the bolshevik tyranny to overthrow Stalin, and restore an independent Ukraine and other states (with fascist leadership obviously) in order to gather local support and maybe even defections, while actually planning to enact generalplan-ost and the other horrific plans after the soviet union was defeated?

Could such a strategy have produced enough defections and local support to make a meaningful difference? would it be enough to sway neutral countries such as Turkey or Sweden to participate in the invasion?
Basically, the plan of the Germans in this scenario is We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill.

In that case, the people of the Ukrainian SSR will see the Germans as liberators. Perhaps Germany would do an initial "hearts-and-minds" campaign for the "liberated" Ukrainians, only to betray them and the occupied countries later. Ukraine would be an ideal target because of the fertile farmlands and access to the Black Sea.
 
Historically, the so called Russian Liberation Army, made up of former soviet POWs that fought for Nazi Germany, managed to peak at around 120,000 troops in April 1945, despite the fact that it was formed in 1944 and only after everyone from Kiev to Vladivostok knew that the Nazis meant bad things for anyone who wasn't German.

The Germans only started taking an interest in the Russian Liberation Army when it was clear they were losing...because they expected not to need an army of Russian collaborators. Again, the German leadership and high command, including the field marshals who got to live to write self-serving memoirs where they blamed everything on Hitler, expected a rapid victory over the Soviet Union. France was supposed to be the difficult campaign, and they did what they failed to do in the last war in the matter of weeks.

By contrast, their opinion of the Soviet military was low, due to a combination of racism, Russia's defeat in WW1, the Great Purge and the Soviets' poor performance in Finland. The idea that the war would be a long, brutal slog that could end with the Hammer and Sickle flag being raised on the ruins of the Reichstag goes against their whole planning, world view and what they've actually seen play out. Also the Hunger Plan was explicitly backed by the military since it was to their benefit. As well as the bureaucrats in the economic ministries. The guys who came up with it weren't the SS or Nazi ideologues in the Party Chancellery.

Even Rosenberg, who was a relative 'moderate' when it came to eastern policy in the occupied Soviet territories (except against Russians and Jews), ironically, supported it. Most of the food seized by the Germans during the occupation of Belarus was used to feed German troops in the area. This was a systematic, bureaucratic process. Roving bands of soldiers looting and stealing as the troops advanced (or stayed put) did happen, as well as wanton destruction for the sake of it, but that didn't constitute the majority of the 'confiscations'. Bottom line, it's not all down to Hitler's obsessive hatred of Slavs.

Also Generalplan Ost itself is only really relevant for future German policy...since the Nazis never got to carry it out, and it was literally a colonisation and mass murder plan for after victory. Hungerpolitik, on the other hand, was something they actually attempted. Same with all the murders committed by the army and the SS-Police and natives being rounded up for slave labour in German industry. The average Ukrainian or Russian didn't know about Generalplan Ost...but it was pretty obvious that Nazi rule was hell on earth for them.

Hitler didn't give speeches about GPO on German radio or at rallies or hold a cabinet meeting where he declared it to be state policy (well, cabinet meetings had stopped years ago, but I digress). He didn't need to because it was one of many plans to fulfil his vile 'vision'. One big reason the Nazis got Ukrainians and such signing up for Schumas and the Trawniki men was because they wanted to escape starvation and certain death in German prison camps. And such policies weren't implemented because GPO said so (for one, many of these were Heer POW camps).

Truth be told, it's a misconception to treat GPO as one single plan. There were multiple drafts over the years. The first didn't take the Soviet Union into account since it was written at a time when Germany hadn't advanced further in the east than Poland. They were also written by different people and agencies. The main stuff came from Professor Konrad Meyer, an agronomist who worked in the planning department of the RKFDV (Himmler's 'settlement' Reich commissariat), but there was also one version drafted by Amt III B of the RSHA. That was the craziest, I believe. Another one was written by the agrarian policy institute of a German university in Berlin.

As for the Nazis being unwilling to use German women as workers, that's a myth that's been debunked by Tooze and also by German economic historians. In truth, for all that Nazi ideology wanted to put women back in the kitchen and in the maternity ward, many women still worked. Lots of them were just tied up working in Germany's inefficient agricultural sector. Speer's claims that Germany maintained a peace-time economy until he was put in charge are similarly as untrue as they are a reflection of his incredible egotism.
 
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To answer the general question posed here, the reason the Germans did not make any serious preparation for political warfare or cultivating allies is that they only planned for a three month war. The general assumption behind Barbarossa was that the USSR would collapse within months and so there was no need to 'hide their intentions'. We must assume that if the Nazis were aware the war would drag on much longer, I'm not sure they would even attempt it. So you need the German leadership to paradoxically plan for a long war while kicking off one they hope to be short. Not to mention all the issues with food and slave labor that have been raised.
 

Garrison

Donor
Other than the high-ranking Nazis at least.

Stalin was not a popular man in the soviet union, especially in areas like Ukraine and the Baltic states. When Germany launched operation barbarosa there were a lot of people who initially welcomed the Germans as liberators - until it was clear that the Germans were going to be even worse.

What if instead Hitler made some sort of grand proclamation that he was fighting against the bolshevik tyranny to overthrow Stalin, and restore an independent Ukraine and other states (with fascist leadership obviously) in order to gather local support and maybe even defections, while actually planning to enact generalplan-ost and the other horrific plans after the soviet union was defeated?

Could such a strategy have produced enough defections and local support to make a meaningful difference? would it be enough to sway neutral countries such as Turkey or Sweden to participate in the invasion?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

Historically, the so called Russian Liberation Army, made up of former soviet POWs that fought for Nazi Germany, managed to peak at around 120,000 troops in April 1945, despite the fact that it was formed in 1944 and only after everyone from Kiev to Vladivostok knew that the Nazis meant bad things for anyone who wasn't German.
It would reason to me that if they just kept a leash on the SS and army (just wait a few years then you can murder them all) they could get far more defections, and it could be just enough to make a significant change, maybe even enough to be decisive.

What do you guys think?
I think that means German workers going hungry and German factories running out of labour. The Hunger Plan was completely separate from GeneralPlan Ost and the Germans needed slave labour to keep their system running. the brutality of the occupation of Ukraine wasn't a bug it was a feature.
 
The crux of the problem was nazi ideology, which said a woman belonged at home not in a factory. When Speer wanted to draft women for industry, Adolf refused, saying "The sacrifice of our most cherished ideals is too great a price." Unwillingness to employ women in factories--even though it was done in the US, USSR etc--compelled a reliance on slave labor.
When was this? By 1941 Junkers was employing as many women they could to help production, as other factories later on would do.
No German female labour force participation was high anyway ( mythology notwithstanding arguably higher than US or UK pre war) it was just in family farms, as clerks and bookkeepers in small business just not in factory production. The big difference is the Anglo Saxons made a big deal about it and rationally mobilised the entire workforce from the beginning assuming a long war.
That is clearly not true, a quick search would give results that easily place a minimum of a million women working in factories with the number of employed/conscripted women rising higher the war progressed. (And why couldn't it be higher than the UK or US? Compared to those 2 countries Germany had a significant lack of manpower to work in factories + many workers would be conscripted for the front in 1941-43, which left little choices for alternatives - given the establishment of Women Auxiliaries - )
 
There were also millions of forced labourers imported from occupied western europe who were also useful as hostages. Cooperation - other than at the point of a gun - wasn't a part of the Nazi way.
But wasn't subjugation of eastern Europe covered in Mein Kampf? That doesn't mean it can't be passed off as hyperbole, or simply overlooked while the actual plans are being developed by a very small group.
I have to question if secrecy would even be seen as useful because the people who thought that Kristallnacht was a good thing aren't likely to worry much about openly planning moves against the next target group.
 
Classic case of "the Nazis would have won if they didn't do Nazi things".

It doesn't really matter, does it? If they didn't do any war crimes, then they wouldn't be Nazis. Since they are Nazis, it's impossible.
 
Classic case of "the Nazis would have won if they didn't do Nazi things".

It doesn't really matter, does it? If they didn't do any war crimes, then they wouldn't be Nazis. Since they are Nazis, it's impossible.
They can still be Nazis, they can still plan to wipe out all the Slavs and have their war crimes, but they can also be pragmatic and just wait a bit to finish the war before they start.

Regardless it seems that the bigger problem was not having enough food.

So here's a new question, in an alternate 1930s, what if after the anchluss and Sudetenland crisis Hitler decided to court the poles and Baltic states and anyone else he can (china or Japan?, Turkey?, Finland?) On some great anti communist crusade, and then after they control the east, backstab their so called Slavic allies and launch WW2 against the west? Huge butterflies I know.
 
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