WI Hitler's "scorched earth policy" was strongly enforced?

Just finished reading the Monuments Men book last night, and there's several chapters about the Nero Decree and its enforcement. In more than one location, sane German officials stopped the SS men from doing it, the best example being the Altaussee mine where the bulk of the stolen artwork by Hitler had been kept--we're talking the best of the best art, sculptures, et cetera. I think the level of cognitive dissonance required to do that is too extreme--few fanatics were left. Kaltenbrunner, Himmler, Göring, all of them had given up, fled, tried to open their own peace negotiations with the Allied forces. In the case of Altaussee, the miners, the mine director, and the head art official all rebelled against the fanatical gauleiter, smuggling out the bombs he'd placed in there and blowing the mine entrance to prevent the art from destruction. Speer refused to destroy the infrastructure.

I think a good point to keep in mind here that while there were a fair amount of fanatics, most of those were dead by this point. The bulk of the remaining people were the regular people and the opportunists, those who became Nazis for their own selfish gain, not because they believed in Hitler's eugenicist bullshit. Those people won't destroy their potential future to satisfy his last suicidal wishes.

So have the whole thing start kicking off with the (In TTL)Destruction of Paris. At that time there were more fanatics.
 
So have the whole thing start kicking off with the (In TTL)Destruction of Paris. At that time there were more fanatics.

If you had given another week prior and some SS men sent to make the order would have been carried out there. Based on his audio conversations after taken POW the man had little in the way of balls when dealing with Hitler.

During the Second World War, British intelligence secretly bugged the cells occupied by some of the most senior German army, navy and air force commanders who had been captured by the Allies. General Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander who defied Hitler's orders by not allowing Paris to be destroyed, admitted that he had been involved in killing Jews; Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been fully briefed about the 1944 attempt to kill the Nazi leader, and refused to betray the plotters.

The British bugging operation took place in the then country estate of Trent Park on the north-west outskirts of London, in a building now used by the University of Middlesex.

He became known as the "Unlikely Saviour of Paris" when he defied a direct order of Hitler who demanded that the city should be destroyed rather than fall to the Allies. He was captured and sent to Trent Park. Speaking of an earlier episode in the war, Choltitz - who had previously been stationed on the Eastern Front - said: "The gravest task I ever undertook, and I did it at the time strictly, was the liquidation of the Jews."

https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/german-officers-knew-of-holocaust-1-1406430

Though he was stuck in a situation in Paris were his survival favored stalling. For what you want to work, well you aren't going to get all Germans to follow it as some would take the bullet now rather then later, but most ordinary people would take a bullet later over one now.

But, beyond starting the Cold War in an even worse position I am not sure if it means a massive change in Allied policy in Western Europe.
Post war there would probably be a rather significant break in faith in post war West Germany in regard to their regular army officers who sat idly by or helped out though. It could even create the kind of crisis in confidence between West German society and its military we didn't really see appear until the post Cold War era.

Overall Western Europe in worse shape and West Germans more divided is a good win for Stalin.​
 
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If you had given another week prior and some SS men sent to make the order would have been carried out there. Based on his audio conversations after taken POW the man had little in the way of balls when dealing with Hitler.



Though he was stuck in a situation in Paris were his survival favored stalling. For what you want to work, well you aren't going to get all Germans to follow it as some would take the bullet now rather then later, but most ordinary people would take a bullet later over one now.

But, beyond starting the Cold War in an even worse position I am not sure if it means a massive change in Allied policy in Western Europe.
Post war there would probably be a rather significant break in faith in post war West Germany in regard to their regular army officers who sat idly by or helped out though. It could even create the kind of crisis in confidence between West German society and its military we didn't really see appear until the post Cold War era.

Overall Western Europe in worse shape and West Germans more divided is a good win for Stalin.​

This is quite possible, it is a dystopia after all. Having a few million Germans die of starvation needlessly is hardly what I would consider a good result!
 
In any case, does ANYONE here think it would slow down the Allies even a single week? Personally, as pointed out, I think it might speed up the collapse.
 
It might speed them up.

Postwar, what would be really interesting is the effects on denazification. OTL, Germany was seen as a bulwark against the Soviets, and therefore needed to be a strong nation with a strong army (which entailed some leniency)... TTL, with Germany more of a wreck and a long road ahead of them for rebuilding, a harsher, more complete denazification might be pursued.
 
It might speed them up.

Postwar, what would be really interesting is the effects on denazification. OTL, Germany was seen as a bulwark against the Soviets, and therefore needed to be a strong nation with a strong army (which entailed some leniency)... TTL, with Germany more of a wreck and a long road ahead of them for rebuilding, a harsher, more complete denazification might be pursued.

Denazification was pretty successful, pretty quickly. Fortunately for the Allies, the job was half done by the time the war ended. Popularity for the Nazis started plunging quickly sometime in early 1945 although it was on the decline since Stalingrad. When you get into power by promising military glory you can't wind up getting your butt kicked badly everywhere and hope to remain popular.

The general collapse of the German economy and the fact that Germany looked doomed at the end of the Battle of the Bulge for all but the most fanatic (Yes, it was doomed far earlier than that but the clueless could hope for one swift blow to the Wallies might cause them to make peace and then by some miracle win the war against the Russians) and yet no effort was made to make peace either with the West or the East looked ludicrous. Germans were starting to feel that their relatives were dying for no reason. The saying "Better an end with horror than horror without end" started being used by Germans by this time.

The fact that the SS and Gestapo was turning the screws on the German people themselves now that they didn't have Slavs to push around anymore took a toll. Having them kill innocent Russians was one thing but killing innocent Germans was another. After all it could be them or one of their relatives!

In TTL it is even worse for the Nazis. Not only is this going on but the SS and the Nazi Party is destroying all hope for post-war Germany. The Nazi Party and the SS are going to be primarily blamed for the total destruction of Germany. There is little way around that. I don't think denazification necessarily will be more intense as there is less left to do.
 
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Germany ceases to exist as a nation after the war is a likelihood in this case.

Possibly, how would you see it being split up? I would think a good deal of it would go to France. The Netherlands and Denmark may pick up a province or two. Poland would gain more than East Prussia. Hungry would pick up a few provinces including possibly, all of Austria. Czechoslovakia could well pick up a few provinces.
 
few provinces including possibly, all of Austria
Maybe Blessed Karl's son Otto in this case is able to take back his throne as a reaction and backlash to the even worse Nazis in this timeline. Karl almost retook the Hungarian Throne in otl. And they Hapsburgs never formally abdicated so he could technically present himself as the legitimate government. Churchill in otl wished that the monarchy was retained in Germany to prevent the Rise of Nazism. Maybe this rump Austria-Hungary could be reformed into the Imperial Habsburg Commonwealth as a counterbalance to the Soveits in the Cold War who would have more success in this timeline.
 
Maybe Blessed Karl's son Otto in this case is able to take back his throne as a reaction and backlash to the even worse Nazis in this timeline. Karl almost retook the Hungarian Throne in otl. And they Hapsburgs never formally abdicated so he could technically present himself as the legitimate government. Churchill in otl wished that the monarchy was retained in Germany to prevent the Rise of Nazism. Maybe this rump Austria-Hungary could be reformed into the Imperial Habsburg Commonwealth as a counterbalance to the Soveits in the Cold War who would have more success in this timeline.

Possibly, depending on how the war ends. Churchill certainly wouldn't have been opposed, he thought the breakup of Austria-Hungry was a bad thing.
 
Possibly, how would you see it being split up? I would think a good deal of it would go to France. The Netherlands and Denmark may pick up a province or two. Poland would gain more than East Prussia. Hungry would pick up a few provinces including possibly, all of Austria. Czechoslovakia could well pick up a few provinces.
Hungary was on the Axis side.
 
But Scorched Earth is what Germans did to other peoples countries.

True enough, nobody is denying that. However, it is far more unusual to do so to your own out of spite. Hitler didn't give the order because he thought it would help defend Germany but because he thought the German people failed him and deserved to die.
 
Most of the Heer is fighting, the ones carrying it out would be SS.

Most the Heer is fighting, and yet what did the Walküre plan rely on? The replacement army. Germany was full of training units. Short on equipment and on, well, training, but it's not as if you can take elite Waffen-SS units from the front and use them for this; Himmler will have to rely on third-rate SS units at home, and on the Allgemeine-SS.
Then there are the AA defense units, which depended from Goering who's not going for the Götterdämmerung option.
And the Volkssturm. Now, I know they historically lacked equipment, training and motivation - because they were aware that fighting was hopeless. Also, they're interesting because they are territorial units; by definition they are all from the same village or town or neighborhood and they are there to defend their houses.

Now, in OTL, the opposition to national suicide orders was strong, but covert. Officers dithered and obfuscated, delayed and misled. Engineers did not wire the charges or removed them. It was a matter of buying time without directly challenging the guys wanting the demolitions done.
But in this situation, you'll just have spontaneous shoot-outs flaring up, and eventually a low-intensity civil war.

This won't slow the Allies down. Yes, systematic tearing up of highways and demolition of buildings along the main throughways in cities will be a factor, but the diversion of efforts, explosives, and counterinsurgence work will more than cancel that out.

The months immediately after the end of hostilities will be apocalyptic. In OTL, food largely had to be brought in; in this scenario, internal food stockpiles will have been mostly destroyed. There will be more Germans on the "starvation" ration card than in OTL. Come winter, there will be no coal for heating. Even in the West the DEP, while eating way too little, will be used as slave labor for restoring coal production, repairing the acqueducts, etc.

Come the time when the Germans are put in charge of criminal prosecutions - and in this ATL that will be later than in OTL - there won't be the OTL sweep-that-under-the-carpet attitude.

The territorial integrity of Western Germany will be in doubt. The Saarland population, for instance, might well be enticed to opt for the country that did not try to kill them all.
 
I seem to remember a previous thread on this in which someone suggested that if they’d managed to destroy the German railway system, there’d have been a full on famine in 1945 as the harvest wouldn’t have been able to reach the cities.
 
I seem to remember a previous thread on this in which someone suggested that if they’d managed to destroy the German railway system, there’d have been a full on famine in 1945 as the harvest wouldn’t have been able to reach the cities.

Seems likely, the harvest doesn't do you much good if it is all stuck in the country because there is no way to get it to the cities.
 
The best way to do this is to secretly rig up the sabotage in advance - explosives near dams, underground mines, rail junctions and electric stations. If discovered it’s a ready made sabotage opportunity but you can also propagandize the evil English commandos or disloyal groups destroying Germany.
 
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