WI: The Germans fight the WAllies with the same intensity as they did the Soviets

The difference is Hitler's outlook. Inwest hehad problems with states, in the east he had problem with people. So when western Europe fell that was more or less it.
 

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I think the problem is the long mythology of 'clean Wehrmacht', coupled with NATO's reluctance to touch on painful issues too much. The German invasion and occupation in Western Europe was not 'clean'. it was pretty atrocious, all told. People who hear of those things for the first time are shocked and assume that nazis were all the same everywhere. But they were, by theirstandards, behaving 'reasonably'. The war in the USSR was as close to hell as human ingenuity could devise.
Yes basically, the Wehrmacht carried out mass reprisal killings in France and especially Yugoslavia, Balkans and Greece
 
A better question would be what would the Western Allies have to do in order to make the Germans want to resist them with the same intensity as they did the Soviets?
 
Yes basically, the Wehrmacht carried out mass reprisal killings in France and especially Yugoslavia, Balkans and Greece

When the Americans pushed for German rearmament in the early 1950's it was considered politically vital to portray the Wehrmacht as a basically clean, Nazi free bunch of chivalrous professionals. It was horrible SS men that carried out the war crimes.

So you got movies like the' Desert Fox' starring James Mason which whitewashed Rommel as some poor fool misguided by Hitler and the German army as good guys led by a monster etc.

With Hitler gone you get good Germans again. It's all propaganda of course and like most propaganda it worked.
 
They did these things, but there is a huge difference in intensity. Basically, the German troops in Western Europe by and large were still under orders to ight a war much like people understood theconcept. That included a gooddeal of what we consider atrocities today, and especially the SS was well known for its tendency to marry incompetence with savagery, which the leadership did nothing to discourage. But even later, when they committed horrors like Oradour and the mass forced recruitment of slave labour, they did so punctually, in defined incidents, as it were. I know it's not saying much, but a French prisoner of the SS suspected of being in the resistance was treated no different from a German suspected of being part of the KPD. In the Soviet Union and Poland, the atrocities were policy. Not only were Wehrmacht troops told not to prevent them, they were encouraged to commit them. There is an eyxewitness account by a junior officer who cleared out a Ukranian farmstead to quarter troops. An old man came to complain, and he had him shot. His daughter, the farmer's wife, started screaming, so an NCO clubbed her to death with his rifle. Now three young children were all alone in the world, and the officer, deciding to solve the issue, had them shot, too. This kind of thing would have had consequences in France or the Netherlands except in the last days of the occupation. In Russia, it was SOP. The incident wasn't even reported.

I think the problem is the long mythology of 'clean Wehrmacht', coupled with NATO's reluctance to touch on painful issues too much. The German invasion and occupation in Western Europe was not 'clean'. it was pretty atrocious, all told. People who hear of those things for the first time are shocked and assume that nazis were all the same everywhere. But they were, by theirstandards, behaving 'reasonably'. The war in the USSR was as close to hell as human ingenuity could devise.

I agree with this, but unless one alters Nazi ideology itself to the point that a version of the Commissar Order would be released in the West the whole POD is not something realistic. And in any case as I've been reading German resistance in both theaters tended to fanatical adherence to attacks and stay-in-place orders, while by the point the Western Allies had invaded Western Europe the Wehrmacht's leadership class were all diehard ideological Nazis.

Yes basically, the Wehrmacht carried out mass reprisal killings in France and especially Yugoslavia, Balkans and Greece

There was, however, never a Western version of the Commissar Order.

A better question would be what would the Western Allies have to do in order to make the Germans want to resist them with the same intensity as they did the Soviets?

Unless the Nazi ideology itself is changed, there's precious little that would make the Nazis treat French people the same way they treated Belarusians or Russians.
 
There was, however, never a Western version of the Commissar Order.

Uh, SF, the Commando Order?:confused:

BTW, am I the only one who is talking about what the Western Allies would do in response to the Heer fighting like the SS in Russia? Also, to a limited extent, even the SS reigned things in a little in the Western Front in 1944-45 (most of the time) compared to their behavior in Russia.
 
Uh, SF, the Commando Order?:confused:

BTW, am I the only one who is talking about what the Western Allies would do in response to the Heer fighting like the SS in Russia? Also, to a limited extent, even the SS reigned things in a little in the Western Front in 1944-45 (most of the time) compared to their behavior in Russia.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ggiles/barbaros.html

Unless the Germans are willing to issue something like that in the West there's going to be precious little resemblance to the two theaters.
 
It would have to be institutionalized within the German high command (a la the Reichenau order) and it would happen. The Germans still get rolled, but take, and lose less prisoners; all this does is increase body count and make their post war recovery more problematic (especially if the Ruhr pocket and other industrialized areas fight to the death in Stalingrad fashion)
 
A better question would be what would the Western Allies have to do in order to make the Germans want to resist them with the same intensity as they did the Soviets?

So the massed aerial bombardment of German cites doesnt cut it anymore?:p The Germans fought tooth & nail against the Soviets and they hadn’t done anything against Germany. Through some of this can be explained by ideology, racism and knowledge that the massive German atrocities committed in the east was coming to bite em in the arse by 1945 in the form the Red Army.

As to how this could happen. Well I said Hitler was an *ahem* emotional gentleman, so his mixture of disappointed rage at Britain refusing to sue for peace. Combined with the shock caused by the early bombing raids and maybe Vichy French intransigence over some real or imagined issue perhaps causes him to go apeshit, demanding that all captured allied aircrew are shot, any hint of French/Belgian/whatever even passive resistance be dealt with brutally.

Things then start to go downhill fast, after that point…
 
Maybe an Allied atomic, biological or chemical attack?

Somebody else mentions Allied responses at last?:p You don't need to wait for Atom bombs, chemicals, or British anthrax. Just hit the Ruhr River Dam complex. And make it clear to Adolf if he doesn't start making nice the anthrax is next.:eek:
 
Somebody else mentions Allied responses at last?:p You don't need to wait for Atom bombs, chemicals, or British anthrax. Just hit the Ruhr River Dam complex. And make it clear to Adolf if he doesn't start making nice the anthrax is next.:eek:

Anthrax is unlikely, but chemicals could be used. Still chemical, HE or incendiary bombs the effect is much the same. The RAF was all for razing Germany to the ground, still that said Bomber Harris would be happy to have a bigger arsenal of weaponry to use. The Ruhr Dams were a fairly soild target so hitting them wasnt easy/worth the effort OTL.
 
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