What would a post World War Two Third Reich look like?

Important question is how they win the war. But one thing is sure: When Hitler kicks a bucket, collapse of Nazi regime is pretty sure. There would be disastrous power struggle.
 
Important question is how they win the war. But one thing is sure: When Hitler kicks a bucket, collapse of Nazi regime is pretty sure. There would be disastrous power struggle.

Not necessarily. It depends on whether Hitler prepares for a transition. There is a lot he could do via speeches, assignments and the like that would make it clear that he had a desired successor and that that individual had his backing and that a decision to appoint someone else would be regarded as a disobeying orders and a personal betrayal. Someone who became "Deputy Fuehrer" and had been steadily assigned increasing responsibilities, both substantive and ceremonial, would be difficult to dislodge as they gradually amassed their own personal power base among the Nazi leadership and personal popularity among the German public aided by a healthy dose of propaganda. It is also not inconceivable that Hitler might gradually retire over time, remaining Fuehrer in title but de facto ceding away certain of his powers while still in office.
 
Poor and brutally oppressive. The Nazi economic model made that of Maoist China look great by comparison. Depending on plunder, idiotic central management, being cut off from international trade, over-mobilization, and huge debt would have brought the economy crashing down.
 
If they successfully implement Generalplan Ost the Greater Germanic Reich would make Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and any other evil regime you care to name look like amateurs in scope, scale and intent.
 
Poor and brutally oppressive. The Nazi economic model made that of Maoist China look great by comparison. Depending on plunder, idiotic central management, being cut off from international trade, over-mobilization, and huge debt would have brought the economy crashing down.

Economy can suffer, but... just like USSR collapsed right after Stalin died... or how North Korean regime collapsed in 1991 when it's backer disintegrated... or how Putin's Russia came crashing down when Western sanctions hit in 2014.... Dysfunctional regimes can be long lasting and can even improve. How many would have believed Mao's China was able to reform so quickly?
 
There are quite a few traits of a postwar Nazi Germany, even if we assume they managed to conquer all of western and eastern europe as well as Russia:
  • population flight/brain drain: every person that isn't on the Nazi's list of "aryan races" or is politically/religiously opposed is going to flee into the arms of the Third Reich's enemies (remember that in OTL it was Jewish scientists fleeing from Germany into the US that helped create the atomic bomb)
  • economic and scientific disaster: an economy based on war industries and plundering conquered territories is self-destructive; combine that with the brain drain, the Nazi rejection of anything deemed "jewish science", an industrial base that seemed to not understand what an assembly line is, and economic embargoes or even naval blockades (which the Nazis wouldn't be able to challenge very well since their navy was terrible)
  • international pariah: genocide and waging unprovoked wars of aggression and extermination make most nations angry, and Nazi Germany's power projection capabilities are sorely lacking; hell, at some point even Japan will break off of the Axis alliance, since it was understood amongst Nazis that eventually Japan would be an enemy to German domination of the world
  • discontent population: even if Nazi Germany isn't swamped with hundreds of resistance movements in its occupied territories (possibly funded by opposing nations), the above conditions would create much discontent among its citizens, and the Nazis are thus stuck in a morton's fork: relax some of their racial and warmongering policies in order to relieve sanctions, thus giving up their goals and ideology as stated by Hitler, suppress the protests, creating a cycle that would extend until eventually the entire population would rebel and throw them out of power (if not leading to national collapse before), or go to war (and thus invite their enemies to finish the job)
But I'll be brutally honest: a Nazi victory could never have happened the moment they declared war on both the USSR and the US. The industrial, technological, and population advantages the two nations combined possessed would have simply swamped Germany. And Britain was not going to fall to a Sea Lion anytime soon, not with their navy unchallenged. Not to mention if they attack the US after 1945, the US will simply borrow Britain's airfields and start nuking German cities, one after the other, until either the Third Reich surrendered or no longer existed.

I recommend Calbear's Anglo-American Nazi war if you'd like to see what would happen if the USSR somehow fell to the Nazi onslaught: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-anglo-american-nazi-war.211950/
 
Economy can suffer, but... just like USSR collapsed right after Stalin died... or how North Korean regime collapsed in 1991 when it's backer disintegrated... or how Putin's Russia came crashing down when Western sanctions hit in 2014.... Dysfunctional regimes can be long lasting and can even improve. How many would have believed Mao's China was able to reform so quickly?

The difference in those cases was that they had massive WMD deterrence, working institutions and political succession, didn’t have a vast empire of conquered and seething states to complicate everything (a somewhat difference is what led to China reforming and the USSR collapsing) and were led by people far more sane than the Third Reich.

But I'll be brutally honest: a Nazi victory could never have happened the moment they declared war on both the USSR and the US. The industrial, technological, and population advantages the two nations combined possessed would have simply swamped Germany. And Britain was not going to fall to a Sea Lion anytime soon, not with their navy unchallenged. Not to mention if they attack the US after 1945, the US will simply borrow Britain's airfields and start nuking German cities, one after the other, until either the Third Reich surrendered or no longer existed.

I recommend Calbear's Anglo-American Nazi war if you'd like to see what would happen if the USSR somehow fell to the Nazi onslaught: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-anglo-american-nazi-war.211950/

I mean they did do that in AANW and won, though.

They had a very low probability shot after that but if Stalin had freaked out and completely effed up everything (this is the real story of how the Nazis win in that TL, not Stalingrad falling) it could have happened.
 
The difference in those cases was that they had massive WMD deterrence, working institutions and political succession, didn’t have a vast empire of conquered and seething states to complicate everything (a somewhat difference is what led to China reforming and the USSR collapsing) and were led by people far more sane than the Third Reich.

All those conditions would most probably apply to Third Reich, too. If Stalin's USSR had collapsed in 1941 (and the Allies had still won), we would explain USSR in exactly similar terms. A dictatorship with massive economic problems, no succession and incapable of reform or even surviving after death of it's leadership.

One would have to consider two additional factors as well - Western exhaustion. A detente would provide markets for both Allies and Nazis. Finally, after passing of years, many in the US and UK would not necessarily be that active in hoping of immediate Nazi collapse as it would require massive economic influx of funds to rebuild entire Europe from the Atlantic to Urals. Together with risk of a massive civil war. Like in SK where there's fear of what happens when NK collapses.
 

RNG

Banned
What would happen after Hitler's death, would the Third Reich be unstable, possibly leading to civil war, or would there be smooth transition of power, would this signal the end of the Third Reich?
 
The difference in those cases was that they had massive WMD deterrence, working institutions and political succession, didn’t have a vast empire of conquered and seething states to complicate everything (a somewhat difference is what led to China reforming and the USSR collapsing) and were led by people far more sane than the Third Reich.



I mean they did do that in AANW and won, though.

They had a very low probability shot after that but if Stalin had freaked out and completely effed up everything (this is the real story of how the Nazis win in that TL, not Stalingrad falling) it could have happened.
Quite right, but what I meant was that they could not take on and win against BOTH in a war to the bitter end; a USSR defeat is plausible, but the US ends up being a deciding factor again; the only question (which rightfully is rarely every raised) is if the USSR can survive (the US has the ocean as its barrier, so a land invasion of it is a complete no-no)
 
What would happen after Hitler's death, would the Third Reich be unstable, possibly leading to civil war, or would there be smooth transition of power, would this signal the end of the Third Reich?

Massive civil war. Hitler ensured there was no real process to succeed him and gave private armies roughly coequal in strength to a bunch of medium-functioning sociopathic mass murderers who hated each other’s guts and were in constant competition with each other by design in order to prevent coups.
 
All those conditions would most probably apply to Third Reich, too. If Stalin's USSR had collapsed in 1941 (and the Allies had still won), we would explain USSR in exactly similar terms. A dictatorship with massive economic problems, no succession and incapable of reform or even surviving after death of it's leadership.

One would have to consider two additional factors as well - Western exhaustion. A detente would provide markets for both Allies and Nazis. Finally, after passing of years, many in the US and UK would not necessarily be that active in hoping of immediate Nazi collapse as it would require massive economic influx of funds to rebuild entire Europe from the Atlantic to Urals. Together with risk of a massive civil war. Like in SK where there's fear of what happens when NK collapses.

No, they wouldn’t. The Nazis would have chemical and bio weapons but their nuclear program was completely and unfixably FUBAR. The rest of those conditions...no, just no. Are you saying a victorious Reich wouldn’t have a huge number of restive states under its control? And its pretty demonstrable that the Reich was a lot more nuts and that it’s institutions were in much worse shape.

Detente with the western allies was never in the cards. The Reich was flat out too aggressive to trust. I wrote a post another time on why:

The thing people should remember about the Reich was how aggressive, crazy, and completely untrustworthy it was. That was a major factor to the allies deciding to demand unconditional surrender IOTL and it would have been ITTL as well.

Hitler broke literally every treaty he ever signed in OTL and used every concession he ever got as a stepping stone to demand/take even more. He even broke the treaties he made with his own allies; he shredded the Anti-Comintern Pact by carving up Europe with the USSR in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (and really pissed off Japan and Italy by doing so). Then he spectacularly broke that one by launching Operation Barbarossa!

After Barbarossa Hitler's word was mud. There was literally no guarantee he could make that anyone anywhere could possibly trust.

When people talk about a hypothetical Cold War between a victorious Greater Reich and the WAllies, they implicitly equate the Reich to the OTL Soviet Union. That just isn't right. The Soviets were never that aggressive/insane, and they could be trusted up to a point. Not so with Hitler.

A peaceful negotiated end to WWII was never in the cards. The grounds for it didn't exist and in the end the world wasn't wide enough for the Axis and the Allies.
 
Massive civil war. Hitler ensured there was no real process to succeed him and gave private armies roughly coequal in strength to a bunch of medium-functioning sociopathic mass murderers who hated each other’s guts and were in constant competition with each other by design in order to prevent coups.
You know, that honestly reminds me of the Galactic Empire from Star Wars (not a big surprise, considering that was one of Lucas's inspirations).

The big difference is that the Empire had effectively complete galactic domination while the Third Reich had multiple equal or greater enemies to deal with and, superweapons notwithstanding, a somewhat better military doctrine.
 
You know, that honestly reminds me of the Galactic Empire from Star Wars (not a big surprise, considering that was one of Lucas's inspirations).

The big difference is that the Empire had effectively complete galactic domination while the Third Reich had multiple equal or greater enemies to deal with and, superweapons notwithstanding, a somewhat better military doctrine.

It was actually even worse than that.

At least the Empire had one military force (the EU makes pretty clear that any other paramilitary forces that might have existed were small fry next to the fleet and its stormtroopers). Nazi Germany had at least three distinct militaries: the Heer/Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe (worth remembering it had armored and infantry divisions in its ORBAT as well as all the airborne troops and nearly all the heavy artillery), the SS, and an arguable fourth with the Hitler Youth and SA if they became big again once older men demobilized. That one probably would have belonged to Goebbels. All of their leaders hated each others’ guts, had no conscience or checks on them other than Hitler, and were made to compete with each other, sometimes to the point of armed conflict (see Night of the Long Knives), to prevent coups. And there was no real plan for who would succeed Hitler when he died. Yeah...

Add to this the multiple independent fascist or other fellow traveler states that were allied with them like Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, all of whom would have been scared utterly to death when they got wind of Generalplan Ost and who would have had their own agendas.

Finally, Nazi wunderwaffen were mostly garbage and the headshed’s gutting of their own scientific sector and political hamstringing of their military would have put them far behind the western allies.

Just an utter soup sandwich.
 
Massive civil war. Hitler ensured there was no real process to succeed him and gave private armies roughly coequal in strength to a bunch of medium-functioning sociopathic mass murderers who hated each other’s guts and were in constant competition with each other by design in order to prevent coups.

Actually Goering was definitely (till about 1944) the second top dog in the Reich. While his standing did suffer after the flop that was the Battle of Britain and the increasing Allied air war, he was never actually removed from his position as Hitler's successor until 1945 when Donitz was chosen in the moment when Hitler was going mad at the end. A Nazi German which (say in AANW fashion) reaches a state of detente with the West will probably have a Goering who remains powerful and Hitler's designated successor. His only real rival was Himmler, and both men trusted each other about as far as they could spit.

Honestly when Hitler dies, Goering assumes power, and if he feels he can get away with it he might purge the senior SS staff, but if he doesn't he keeps token SS guards but replaces them with his Luftwaffe ground formations. If Himmler is still alive then he probably has Goering assassinated at some point and replaces him as Fuhrer, simply put he could boss around others and had the muscle to back it up, as well as control of the Gestapo.

The only thing the two of them could probably agree on is that Martin Bohrman's life will be measured in hours if not minutes before Hitler's corpse is cold they both hated that man so much.

It was actually even worse than that.

At least the Empire had one military force (the EU makes pretty clear that any other paramilitary forces that might have existed were small fry next to the fleet and its stormtroopers). Nazi Germany had at least three distinct militaries: the Heer/Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe (worth remembering it had armored and infantry divisions in its ORBAT as well as all the airborne troops and nearly all the heavy artillery), the SS, and an arguable fourth with the Hitler Youth and SA if they became big again once older men demobilized. That one probably would have belonged to Goebbels. All of their leaders hated each others’ guts, had no conscience or checks on them other than Hitler, and were made to compete with each other, sometimes to the point of armed conflict (see Night of the Long Knives), to prevent coups. And there was no real plan for who would succeed Hitler when he died. Yeah...

Add to this the multiple independent fascist or other fellow traveler states that were allied with them like Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, all of whom would have been scared utterly to death when they got wind of Generalplan Ost and who would have had their own agendas.

Finally, Nazi wunderwaffen were mostly garbage and the headshed’s gutting of their own scientific sector and political hamstringing of their military would have put them far behind the western allies.

Just an utter soup sandwich.

Well that's not completely accurate. The regular military (Heer/Kriegsmarine) was going to most likely be superseded by a more "politically reliable" force if the Nazis won, with soldiers being given the opportunity to continue serving so long as they joined the SS, and the SS expanded from its historic 38 to something like 100 Divisions or so, while the Luftwaffe might keep the (18?) field formations they formed or expand them when Goering becomes Fuhrer. The general staff will be put out to pasture. However, the Kriegsmarine will probably be the only one that survives intact (absent the planned carriers which from what I know of Goering would be a clusterfuck of the highest order).

The SS was the second strongest (and arguably second best, with some elite units) in the whole Nazi military structure. The Luftwaffe ground formations were nowhere near up to scratch, so its not much of a contest as to who was the second most powerful. The Hitler Youth was not a military organ per-se, but would simply end up as a recruiting ground for the SS.

Essentially the SS was going to become the Nazi military machine since it was loyal to the Party and had no unfortunate memories of the old Germany to fall back on or any moral scruples. The other organs of the party never held a candle to its raw strength, which was why Himmler got the SA gutted, and they would never be coming back on his watch, or Goering's.
 
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