You can do this as late as 1940-41. Just have them decide to plan any massacres/genocide as opposed to occasional deaths by overwork/short ration as postwar things and not something to do DURING the war.
WI; Less racially-obsessed Nazis
- Thread starter Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
- Start date
I think this is a misconception that a lot of people have. The Nazi's Brutality wasn't just part of their ideology, it was certainly justified by it, but there is just simply no way to run a total war with the resources that germany had without the brutal occupation policies they inflicted. They essentially looted the land to keep their war machine running, and while Russians, Cossacks, Ukrainians etc never got national autonomy, they were still vital to the day to day running of each village, tax collection and even fighting the war with hilfiswillingers making up a huge percentage of some units.
Up until the 1980s and the widespread adoption of GMO grains and modern herbicides; I believe only ten countries on earth produce enough food to feed themselves, the three I can confirm are Australia, Canada and the USA, I wouldn't be surprised if the other 7 are also part of the allies. Every soldier the Nazis had fighting was not working on farms back home and was essentially a net loss, meaning it had to be made up by stripping resources from the local population.
I'm not justifying the Nazi policies, I just think that the material and logistical realities of war are often overlooked. I don't think any Western European country, no matter their political outlook, that was blockaded from resources could have successfully fed their own troops, as well as the local population. At that point you choose to sacrifice the locals for your war effort and it just becomes a negative feedback loop.
There is surely antisemitism but removing few most murderous Nazi you might get them decide go with extreme segregation and lock all Jews to ghettos with very poor conditions.
This is the Mazower book, yes? Honestly, no that PoD does not make sense and this small excerpt doesn't really prove anything. Forster and other likeminded Party men, as the book explains throughout, still carried a very conscious racial goal and still followed the same basic radical racial and extermination policies as the SS but some of them like Forster chose to do so in a less blatantly ridiculous and fantastical way.
Just having a few prominent examples of NSDAP Party men taking a "soft" stand (soft relative to... mass extermination and population movements based in utter fantasy??) does not come close to coming to the conclusion that a majority or even a great deal of Party men did not practice equal brutality to the SS or would somehow implement "a more rational" (read strong sarcasm) extermination plan. Elevating the Party over the SS is not really solving any of the fundamental contradictions of Nazi pacification policy, reprisals feeding into cycles of resistance, the Hunger Plan, Generplan Ost and related organizational frameworks for operations in the East, elimination of the Polish intelligentsia and upper social stratum, etc. etc.
Really all this PoD does would make a few less instances of blind fanaticism and a few more incidents of pragmatism, but nothing close to creating a "less racially obsessed" NSDAP with "standard" occupational policies as the OP stipulates including Notzi things like no anti-semitism and equal citizenship (?)
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History Learner
Banned
Given the OP only specificed "less racially-obsessed" rather than Notzis, leaving the Slavs alone definitely qualifies. Not sure what's up with the strawman here?
I mean, the OP stated he wanted no anti-semitism and full citizenship for the conquering Slavic peoples. The NSDAP as we know it would never do this regardless of whether the SS or the Party were in the ascendancy, hence my argument.
History Learner
Banned
In that guess, yes I agree; did not see the Anti-Semitism bit. Leaving the Slavs alone on the Danzig model with selective assimilation is the best you can get.
TDM
Kicked
Because leaving the slavs alone would be so counter to core nazi beliefs that while covered by the term "less racially-obsessed" in abstract, it would by any actually useful metric make then Notzis.
Even leaving aside Nazi views on the USSR and slavs in general they considered Poland an illegitimate state, the creation of which had robbed Germany of what was rightfully theirs via the ToV and them wrongly losing the WW1.
Interestingly given the page you quoted of the ATL, there was a bit of a debate in nazi circles about how very Aryan looking poles (and others) fitted into their Nazi nonsense. Unlike in the linked page OTL they instead went for mass kidnapping of children
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History Learner
Banned
Does Hitler qualify for Notzi status given his 1940 alliance attempts with the USSR and his relations with the Croats and Slovaks?
Sure, but that need not directly lead to organzied genocide attempts in of itself.
TDM
Kicked
Yes, because shock horror Hitler was capable of lying when it was to his advantage, unless you are seriously suggesting he had no plans to invade the USSR until he actually did it, considering the M-R pact was in place right up until that point.
Croats and Slovaks were tolerated so long as they towed the line and fought for Nazi ideology without question and dissension often meant the camps. Slovaks especially in 1938
It need not in theory, but given Nazi attitudes it was always going to in practice. The Nazis started rounding up groups they wanted to liquidate immediately after invading Poland. They did exactly the same thing again in 1941 within the USSR.
Organised genocide is also an interesting way to qualify it. I mean I can see why you use that term given we know the extent the Nazis would eventually go in terms of organising genocide. But there is still plenty of room for genocide that is less organised to be genocide none the less (kind of a fitting point given the subject of the thread really!)
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The economic crises of the thirties justified strongarm control: Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in Russia, Franco eventually in Spain. Even FDR compromised a strong American value of rights to property when he outlawed gold currency by executive order. As economies recover, that control can lessen and countries can become more democratic. But strong business regulation and control does not inherently lead to genocide. Take away Hitler's obsession to kill off Jews and conquer too much land and you might have a way to rebuild an economy.
History Learner
Banned
So....exactly as I've been saying?
Jews, yes, but my point was with the Slavic majority.
Sure.
TDM
Kicked
One problem is Hitlers rearmament programme is gong to screw the economy anyway unless it can be fuelled by some nice quick military victories. Plus invading his neighbours is him delivering on his core tenet of righting the wrongs of WW1 and it's aftermath and achieving what it should have achieved first time round.
It's easy to forget given the other excesses of the Nazis, but a lot of their motivation at the time in the run up and early years of the war was getting a do-over for WW1 and the result they felt they had always deserved and been robbed of..
When he made the French sign their surrender in the same train car as the Germans had at the end of WW1, he's not just being a cheeky bastard, he is very much making a point about how the way things should have been and will now be corrected too
basically there are just too may reasons for why Hitler did what he did,
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TDM
Kicked
I'd don't think so? You replied to my basic point that Hitlers not going leave the slavs alone because not leaving the slavs alone is a core tenet of his beliefs, with your point aha but he made a peace treaty with the USSR (slavs) in 1939
No not just Jews, see above. Now yes sheer disparity in numbers between Jews and Slavs mean different priorities and different selection processes will be used, but slavs in Nazi ideology are untermench. General plan Ost makes this very clear. and while GPO might have been be first formally drafted in 1940 (and then revised a few times). It didn't spring out of nothing in 1940.
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Honestly, you don't even need them to not be genocidal just do what I said and have them decide to do any mass murdering once they own europe.
That should be enough to keep the war going on until 1946-47 when a rain of nukes plus the red army ends it in ways not exactly favorable to them.
That should be enough to keep the war going on until 1946-47 when a rain of nukes plus the red army ends it in ways not exactly favorable to them.
BlackDragon98
Banned
TBH I wonder why the Nazis didn't used Soviet POWs as farm workers in occupied USSR?
AFAIK POWs were used by Nazi Germany as farm workers back in Germany itself (many French POWs were used as farm labor).
So why not go a step further and use captured Soviet troops as farm workers in captured Soviet lands (under heavy guard of course)?
Nazis were for the most part delusional druggies.
Take away the drugs and the delusion, add some pragmatism and you get the same evil genocidal Nazis, but far more efficient than OTL.
Arguably, intelligent, pragmatic Nazis are far more terrifying than OTL Nazis, because they are actually competent.
AFAIK POWs were used by Nazi Germany as farm workers back in Germany itself (many French POWs were used as farm labor).
So why not go a step further and use captured Soviet troops as farm workers in captured Soviet lands (under heavy guard of course)?
Nazis were for the most part delusional druggies.
Take away the drugs and the delusion, add some pragmatism and you get the same evil genocidal Nazis, but far more efficient than OTL.
Arguably, intelligent, pragmatic Nazis are far more terrifying than OTL Nazis, because they are actually competent.
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A solution to the problem of the Nazis being too extreme for their own good is to simply not have Hitler and the NSDAP rise to political prominence. Instead, the people who went to the Nazis IOTL could join another right-wing nationalist party and impose an authoritarian program on it, giving you your militarist, Drang nach Osten-minded regime without the Final Solution, explicit desire to exterminate the Slavs or reduce them to illiterate servitude, and other comically evil policy goals. Of course, that'd probably just result in a Germany that looks more like wartime Imperial Japan, which isn't much better than OTL.
EDIT: Unfortunately for the purposes of the scenario, it might not be plausible for a Notzi regime to undertake the extremely reckless diplomatic and military actions that Hitler carried out in the mid-30s through to the invasion of France. A conventionally right-wing nationalist government may not have the unity of purpose to, for instance, strike an alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union only to completely and utterly betray that alliance in short order.
EDIT: Unfortunately for the purposes of the scenario, it might not be plausible for a Notzi regime to undertake the extremely reckless diplomatic and military actions that Hitler carried out in the mid-30s through to the invasion of France. A conventionally right-wing nationalist government may not have the unity of purpose to, for instance, strike an alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union only to completely and utterly betray that alliance in short order.
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BlackDragon98
Banned
The policeman who shoots the fatal round misses Scheuber-Richter because he fellow policeman Hans bumped into him and instead the bullet hits Goering right between the eyes.
TDM
Kicked
Yep not only was it a waste of resources for a country for whom resources were always an issue (to be cold blooded about it), but it lost them potentially quite lot of good will in the east from several groups of people who weren't that sad to see the the Russians/communists pushed out in abstract.
But that's the thing about these kind of threads it's pretty clear the Nazi's are gonna Nazi come what may, and at some point you have to conclude that for the Nazis all the racism and extra death wasn't just an unfortunate by product of their goals,
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