WI: Nazi Germany Annexes Western European Colonies Instead of Invading Russia

Greenville

Banned
What if Nazi Germany in the 1940s had annexed the African and Asian colonies of those it had defeated in 1940 such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and also took control of those it also controlled such as Italy, Spain, and later invaded Portugal instead of trying to get Lebensraum in the Soviet Union?
 
You would have to fundamentally change Nazism from the roots.
Hitler talked about Levensraum in the Ostland as early as 1925.
 
1. It immediately achieves the great strategic goal of driving every overseas French colony into the hands of De Gaulle, avoiding thousands of allied deaths in the campaigns to secure the French Empire. Vichy France is occupied years earlier.
2. The Spanish and Portuguese governments collapse. Either they are replaced by puppet regimes which formally join the Axis, requiring massive amounts of German support to function, or they briefly join the Allied cause before being overrun. Whichever happens, Iberia probably becomes a latter day Spanish Ulcer to rival the partisan movements of Yugoslavia.
3. Mussolini and the pro-German fascists are absolutely humiliated; not only has he failed to secure Italy any of its territorial ambitions but its supposed ally has set out to annex its existing empire! Italy begins looking for a separate peace at the first opportunity. Meanwhile, the Italian colonies will attempt to negotiate with the British rather than wait for German overlords who will never reach their territory.
4. Between the flipping of Vichy France and the Italian colonies, the Mediterranean is secured quickly by the British Navy. If any German forces have made it across the sea, they are cut off and quickly forced to surrender.
5. The USSR continues to rearm after the Great Purge. When they enter the war, they will be far stronger than OTL.
6. The Nazi ideologues wonder why on earth the Fuhrer has given up on the entire overarching policy goal of the party. The military staff get nervous as they realise they have forsaken serious military advantages in the name of annexing colonies the Germans are never in any position to supply, let alone get troops or settlers or even a nominal government to in the first place.

The Allies begin planning landings on the continent years ahead of schedule, probably in Spain or Italy to take advantage of friendly populations in areas that Germany cannot easily supply.

Years later, and with a great deal of irony, it is accepted wisdom that not invading the USSR was the great strategic mistake of the short-lived Nazi regime.
 
Only practical if Nazis install pro-German puppet governments in the colonies (e.g. Vichy).

OTL
The whole "Drang Nach Osten" was based on centuries-old fears of Prussia being invaded by Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Huns, Mongols, Turks, Russians, etc. Germans would only feel secure with huge buffer states in a eastern Europe.
Abandoning the DNO would require Hitler to renege on promises of Germans owning plantations in Eastern Europe. Mind you, Hitler reneged on several other campaign promises (e.g. VW cars). By the time Hitler conquered significant parts of Poland and the Ukraine, few urbanized Germans were interested b reverting to farming.
All those millions of "Slavs" would make poor slaves.
 
What if Nazi Germany in the 1940s had annexed the African and Asian colonies of those it had defeated in 1940 such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and also took control of those it also controlled such as Italy, Spain, and later invaded Portugal instead of trying to get Lebensraum in the Soviet Union?

and how are they exactly going to take control of Belgian Congo, Indonesia and the Dutch Antilles? They have no way of getting there, to even contact it. Those locationss were secured by the British.

Also, Spain was neutral and invading Spain would be a huge waste of manpower and resources for lands you don't want or need, including Portugal. Don't think they won't put up a fight either, no matter how futile it might seem on paper, the German army is going to have a hell of a time taking control of the Iberian Peninsula like that. And again, for what?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
What if Nazi Germany in the 1940s had annexed the African and Asian colonies of those it had defeated in 1940 such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and also took control of those it also controlled such as Italy, Spain, and later invaded Portugal instead of trying to get Lebensraum in the Soviet Union?
In addition to the fact that this was incompatible with Nazi ideology (after all, the Nazis' eastward expansion appears to have been based on the Medieval German Ostsiedlung), would Britain (and the U.S.) actually allow them to do this?
 
Top