WI: U.S Government Enslaves German Population After WW2?

Suppose the reaction to the Germans' war crimes was so strong that the U.S government decided that they had to be punished properly for their crimes and as a result, all Germans were sent to work camps like the ones the Jewish people were sent to. What would happen?
 

Deleted member 1487

Suppose the reaction to the German's war crimes was so strong that the U.S government decided that they had to be punished properly for their crimes and as a result, all Germans were sent to work camps like the ones the Jewish people were sent to. What would happen?
I don't see how they could actually formally make that happen for everyone given that the US/UK narrative of the war was to end such atrocities, though it certainly did to a degree:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II
 
Suppose the reaction to the Germans' war crimes was so strong that the U.S government decided that they had to be punished properly for their crimes and as a result, all Germans were sent to work camps like the ones the Jewish people were sent to. What would happen?
eh.. uhm.. America goes bankrupt trying to make such and idiotic thing happen, the French and English laugh .. the soviets and stalin look really good.
 
Suppose the reaction to the Germans' war crimes was so strong that the U.S government decided that they had to be punished properly for their crimes and as a result, all Germans were sent to work camps like the ones the Jewish people were sent to. What would happen?
America starts a slide into increasingly darker policies (you think the Germans will voluntarily submit? And the psychological toll of attempting this?). The enslaving of millions by a capitalist state: the Soviets will LOVE this.
 

Deleted member 1487

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US politicians supporting this would probably lose a lot of support among German-Americans. Even the ones who weren't sympathetic to the Nazis would view the mass enslavement of their ethnic cousins as an ominous sign for the homefront.
 
Stalin wanted 4 million German slaves; he'd be ecstatic if the Allies agreed and got in on the deal.
True, but he could say he was punishing those responsible (primarily men, of which even the Jugend held the youth responsible and only until their debt rebuilding the Soviets is complete). Americans would be enslaving AN ENTIRE NATION including infants (where are they supposed to go if mom is incarcerated) for no other reason than fear/rage of who they were. Expect this to build a truly xenophobic Germany (everyone is against us).
 

Deleted member 1487

True, but he could say he was punishing those responsible (primarily men, of which even the Jugend held the youth responsible and only until their debt rebuilding the Soviets is complete). Americans would be enslaving AN ENTIRE NATION including infants (where are they supposed to go if mom is incarcerated) for no other reason than fear/rage of who they were. Expect this to build a truly xenophobic Germany (everyone is against us).
Read the link, he took women, children, everyone. Rape of the women was endemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union
 
Read the link, he took women, children, everyone. Rape of the women was endemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union
I know about that, trust me. I also know of the Soviet love for propaganda (Soviets commit genocide in Afghanistan while chastising South Africans over Apartheid and American actions in Vietnam).

And why exactly are we diverting to Soviet acts when, if America did this, we'd be seeing similar acts? My father was stationed in West Germany in the Sixties and he told me about the "fun" servicemen had with German locals like casually tossing a German teen off a bridge (which the kid luckily survived).

Things are not going to end well if America creates a gulag system.
 
For the West openly to enslave the West Germans--and there is no way the West could do this but openly--would simply be a propaganda gift to Stalin. (Yes, he used forced labor from ethnic Germans in eastern and central Europe himself, condoned the rape of German women by the Red Army, etc. That's why the key word is *openly.* Stalin's *public* policy was "the Soviet Union celebrates its victory but does not intend to dismember or annihilate Germany." https://books.google.com/books?id=O8TdLzwLtOcC&pg=PA55 "The experience of history indicates that Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state remain." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1942/02/23.htm Etc. And even looking at his actual policy, it would certainly not be true to say that the entire future GDR was "enslaved" unless one broadens that word to mean any subjugation to a foreign-dominated dictatorship.)
 

Deleted member 1487

I know about that, trust me. I also know of the Soviet love for propaganda (Soviets commit genocide in Afghanistan while chastising South Africans over Apartheid and American actions in Vietnam).

And why exactly are we diverting to Soviet acts when, if America did this, we'd be seeing similar acts?
Because I was responding to the question about what the Soviet reaction would be to the Wallies doing this. My response was the Soviets wanted to do this already and the Wallies held them back.

For the West openly to enslave the West Germans--and there is no way the West could do this but openly--would simply be a propaganda gift to Stalin. (Yes, he used forced labor from ethnic Germans in eastern and central Europe himself, condoned the rape of German women by the Red Army, etc. That's why the key word is *openly.* Stalin's *public* policy was "the Soviet Union celebrates its victory but does not intend to dismember or annihilate Germany." https://books.google.com/books?id=O8TdLzwLtOcC&pg=PA55 "The experience of history indicates that Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state remain." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1942/02/23.htm Etc. And even looking at his actual policy, it would certainly not be true to say that the entire future GDR was "enslaved" unless one broadens that word to mean any subjugation to a foreign-dominated dictatorship.)
That's the thing, the Soviets were hardly a great alternative and the Germans knew that. There is a reason that most German soldiers successfully fled west at the end of the war, the Soviets only took about 3 million German PoWs compared to somewhere between 7-10 million Germans (not 100% of what is counted in the Wallied totals).
 
How Americans ever will enslave millions of Germans? This is just economically and logistically impossible and imparctical. What about they who can't work (small children, old people, them whom have disabilities and illnesses)? And how long this would last? On some point this would cause quickly serious moral problems. And Germans just not say: "Ok. I am slave. No problem.". There would be much of resistance.
 
How Americans ever will enslave millions of Germans? This is just economically and logistically impossible and imparctical. What about they who can't work (small children, old people, them whom have disabilities and illnesses)? And how long this would last? On some point this would cause quickly serious moral problems. And Germans just not say: "Ok. I am slave. No problem.". There would be much of resistance.
Disease would be the worst part of all this. Just look up the concentration camps created during the Boer War and the thousands that died from typhus.
 

Deleted member 1487

Disease would be the worst part of all this. Just look up the concentration camps created during the Boer War and the thousands that died from typhus.
If you can find the US history of the occupation of Germany, given how destroyed the country was and with the dismantling of industry as reparations coupled with the food situation, there was massive mortality among children and the elderly due to hunger and disease IOTL.
 
That's the thing, the Soviets were hardly a great alternative and the Germans knew that. There is a reason that most German soldiers successfully fled west at the end of the war, the Soviets only took about 3 million German PoWs compared to somewhere between 7-10 million Germans (not 100% of what is counted in the Wallied totals).

The reason the Germans considered the Western Allies preferable to the Soviets is precisely that they rightly believed that the West would *not* adopt the sort of policies the initial post here suggests. After all, Churchill had emphasized that "the term 'unconditional surrender' does not mean that the German people will be enslaved or destroyed." http://lincolnandchurchill.org/peace-unconditional-surrender/

Incidentally, even with all the knowledge of what was going on in the Soviet Zone, the KPD won almost six percent of the vote in the first FRG federal elections in 1949. (Not as much as in France or Italy, certainly, but far more than in the US or UK.)
 

Deleted member 1487

The reason the Germans considered the Western Allies preferable to the Soviets is precisely that they rightly believed that the West would *not* adopt the sort of policies the initial post here suggests. After all, Churchill had emphasized that "the term 'unconditional surrender' does not mean that the German people will be enslaved or destroyed." http://lincolnandchurchill.org/peace-unconditional-surrender/

Incidentally, even with all the knowledge of what was going on in the Soviet Zone, the KPD won almost six percent of the vote in the first FRG federal elections in 1949. (Not as much as in France or Italy, certainly, but far more than in the US or UK.)
Remember the German public was propagandized about the Morgenthau Plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#Wartime_consequences
Drew Pearson publicized the plan on September 21, although Pearson himself was sympathetic to it. More critical stories in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal quickly followed. Joseph Goebbels used the Morgenthau Plan in his propaganda. Goebbels said that "The Jew Morgenthau" wanted to make Germany into a giant potato patch. The headline of the Völkischer Beobachter stated, “Roosevelt and Churchill Agree to Jewish Murder Plan!"[27]

The Washington Post urged a stop to helping Dr. Goebbels: if the Germans suspect that nothing but complete destruction lies ahead, then they will fight on.[28]The Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey complained in his campaign that the Germans had been terrified by the plan into fanatical resistance, "Now they are fighting with the frenzy of despair."[29]

General George Marshall complained to Morgenthau that German resistance had strengthened.[30] Hoping to get Morgenthau to relent on his plan for Germany, President Roosevelt's son-in-law Lt. Colonel John Boettiger who worked in the War Department explained to Morgenthau how the American troops who had had to fight for five weeks against fierce German resistance to capture the city of Aachen had complained to him that the Morgenthau Plan was "worth thirty divisions to the Germans." Morgenthau refused to relent.[31]

On December 11, OSS operative William Donovan sent Roosevelt a telegraph message from Bern, warning him of the consequences that the knowledge of the Morgenthau plan had had on German resistance.[32] The message was a translation of a recent article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

So far, the Allies have not offered the opposition any serious encouragement. On the contrary, they have again and again welded together the people and the Nazis by statements published, either out of indifference or with a purpose. To take a recent example, the Morgenthau plan gave Dr. Goebbels the best possible chance. He was able to prove to his countrymen, in black and white, that the enemy planned the enslavement of Germany. The conviction that Germany had nothing to expect from defeat but oppression and exploitation still prevails, and that accounts for the fact that the Germans continue to fight. It is not a question of a regime, but of the homeland itself, and to save that, every German is bound to obey the call, whether he be Nazi or member of the opposition.[33]
 
If you can find the US history of the occupation of Germany, given how destroyed the country was and with the dismantling of industry as reparations coupled with the food situation, there was massive mortality among children and the elderly due to hunger and disease IOTL.
And you think an American gulag system would be better? I'm explaining how such a program would be horrific both for the occupiers as well as the occupied and how a hypocritical regime (the Soviets) would use it for their own gain. I'm not defending Soviet policy.
 
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