With no America and no lend lease could Germany win on the eastern front?

PlasmaTorch

Banned
Hitler planned to liquidate 40 million Slavs before that- building his 'living space'. The Holocaust was the dry run.

Liquidation is a broad category: Mass murderers like stalin, hitler, and mao use it as a euphemism. It can mean 'killed', or it can mean 'resettled.' But WRT generalplan ost, even if the majority of the population was exiled instead of killed, you would still expect a high mortality rate. Being exiled to the siberian wastelands with few resources will result in many, many people dying from exposure to the elements.

This is what wikipedia has to say on the matter: "After the war, under the "Big Plan", Generalplan Ost foresaw the removal of 45 million non-Germanizable people from Central and Eastern Europe; of whom 31 million were "racially undesirable", 100% of Jews, Poles (85%), Belorussians (75%) and Ukrainians (65%), to West Siberia, and about 14 millions were to remain, but were to be treated as slaves."
 
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45 million Slavs is an underestimate if you look at the actual percentages of Generalplan Ost.

Belarus: 6,120,000 out of 8,160,000 (75%)
Ukraine: 25,350,000 out of 39,000,000 (65%)
Lithuania: 2,180,250 out of 2,565,000 (85%)
Estonia: 526,000 out of 1,052,000 (50%)
Latvia: 905,500 out of 1,811,000 (50%)
Czechoslovakia: 5,100,000 out of 10,200,000 (50%)
Poland: 29 million out of 33 million (85%)
Russia: 57 million out of 76 million (60% physically eliminated, 15% deported)


Add up the numbers and the planned death toll is around 115 million. 120 million if you include the deported Russians (most of which would die on their journey.) This doesn't include the "guest workers" who most likely would be sent from the rump USSR behind the Urals as reparations, the majority of whom wouldn't survive their stay in the Reich.

Not only would it have made the Holocaust look like a warm up, if accomplished it would have made the Great Leap Forward, the Cambodian Killing Fields, and Stalin's atrocities combined look tame in comparison.
 
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If you mean the Germans win? Then Yea.
Ultimately it comes down to how the German leadership handles the UK, how its internal politics are and who succeeds Hitler. If it antagonises the UK with the Blitz or forces them, AANW scenarios probably happen however if there is both MAD, competent leadership such as Heydrich or Speer I imagine it is more a series of proxy wars and maybe efforts to destroy the USSR. Plus is the ROC wins there is a good chance it sides with Germany over US backing of a rump USSR.
 
Not only would it have made the Holocaust look like a warm up, if accomplished it would have made the Great Leap Forward, the Cambodian Killing Fields, and Stalin's atrocities combined look tame in comparison.

Yep, the only reason Stalin was "worse" than Hitler is because Hitler lost the war.
 

Deleted member 1487

Yep, the only reason Stalin was "worse" than Hitler is because Hitler lost the war.
Ah no, Hitler was much worse. Genocide historian Timothy Snyder, who studied both regimes and wrote a book about the interaction of them in the war crimes of WW2 has categorically stated Hitler was much worse than Stalin.
As it was Hitler had he won would have killed probably at least 100 million people, while Stalin did win and killed less than Hitler during the course of his regime.
 
Ah no, Hitler was much worse. Genocide historian Timothy Snyder, who studied both regimes and wrote a book about the interaction of them in the war crimes of WW2 has categorically stated Hitler was much worse than Stalin.
Worse in terms of number of victims or worse in terms of their intent/ideology (deliberate killing of entire groups was an end in and of itself to the Reich)?
 

Deleted member 1487

Worse in terms of number of victims or worse in terms of their intent/ideology (deliberate killing of entire groups was an end in and of itself to the Reich)?
Both actually. Stalin killed fewer people than we thought during the Cold War (thanks propaganda) now that the records are available, while leaving us with the knowledge of what he did IOTL. Hitler killed more AND wanted to kill a LOT more than he did IOTL.
 

Deleted member 1487

What is Stalin's estimated death toll now?
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/
All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s. Since the Germans killed chiefly in lands that later fell behind the Iron Curtain, access to Eastern European sources has been almost as important to our new understanding of Nazi Germany as it has been to research on the Soviet Union itself. (The Nazi regime killed approximately 165,000 German Jews.)

Apart from the inacessibilty of archives, why were our earlier assumptions so wrong? One explanation is the cold war. Our wartime and postwar European alliances, after all, required a certain amount of moral and thus historical flexibility. In 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union were military allies. By the end of 1941, after the Germans had attacked the Soviet Union and Japan the United States, Moscow in effect had traded Berlin for Washington. By 1949, the alliances had switched again, with the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany together in NATO, facing off against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, including the smaller German Democratic Republic. During the cold war, it was sometimes hard for Americans to see clearly the particular evils of Nazis and Soviets. Hitler had brought about a Holocaust: but Germans were now our allies. Stalin too had killed millions of people: but the some of the worst episodes, taking place as they had before the war, had already been downplayed in wartime US propaganda, when we were on the same side.
 
He uses a low estimate for the number of victims of the Holodomor (3.3 million) compared to the usual estimate of 7 to 10 million deaths.

Also the Reich has a higher death toll than 12 million if you're more inclusive. Here's a breakdown of those the Nazis directly killed and those who died as a result of their policies (from Wikipedia and Google Books):

6 million Jews (the Shoah/Holocaust).

3.3 million Soviet PoWs.

2 million Poles.

300k Greeks due to famine.

22k Dutch due to famine (Audrey Hepburn was a survivor).

270k mentally/physically ill or disabled.

250k-500k Roma.

4 million famine deaths in the occupied USSR including Leningrad.

A minimum of 1 million Soviet deaths from reprisals/massacres/brutality.

A minimum of 1 million Soviet deaths from privation, exposure and slave labor.

50-100k combined deaths of Freemasons, homosexuals, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, priests, Slovenes, Spanish Republicans, trade unionists, Communists, vagrants and small groups.

This makes for a combined death toll of 18 to 19 million deaths.

The biggest factor is exactly how many Soviet deaths you hold the Reich responsible for. Around 15 million out of 68 million or 20% of the Slavs in the occupied East died during the war on the Eastern Front.

I used 6 million as a middle estimate for Soviet deaths from starvation, reprisals, massacres, exposure and disease that the Wehrmacht/Reich is responsible for out of neglect or premeditation. 4 million are estimated to have died from famine alone with Leningrad being the most infamous example. I'm sure I forgot some groups like Serbs and Western Europeans who died in reprisals and executions.
 
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PlasmaTorch

Banned
For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s.

That number is most likely too low. This website does an overview of the megadeaths that occurred in the 19th and 20th century. There are various estimates available for the number of people joseph stalin murdered, but one of the most balanced accounts comes from robert conquest. He gives a figure of 20 million deaths during stalins reign, and breaks it down as so: 7 million in 1930-36, 3 million in 1937-38, and 10 million in 1939-53.
 

Deleted member 1487

That number is most likely too low. This website does an overview of the megadeaths that occurred in the 19th and 20th century. There are various estimates available for the number of people joseph stalin murdered, but one of the most balanced accounts comes from robert conquest. He gives a figure of 20 million deaths during stalins reign, and breaks it down as so: 7 million in 1930-36, 3 million in 1937-38, and 10 million in 1939-53.
Why is that website to be trusted as accurate over the statements of a genocide scholar that specifically studied the Soviet government of the period about their atrocities? It looks like the books they are citing came out in the 1990s before much of the documentation about the Soviet records had been discovered; prior works (early 1990s and before) were laden with Cold War propaganda. Conquest's book was written deep in the middle of the Cold War right after De-Stalinization tried to make Stalin look as bad as possible. I mean Stalin was a PoS, but we have to disaggregate what is real, what is propaganda, and what is myth and what is even reasonably attributable to Stalin specifically. Snyder makes the point in his article that it can be very hard to neatly categorize deaths in the column of one or another dictator during WW2.
 

PlasmaTorch

Banned
Why is that website to be trusted as accurate over the statements of a genocide scholar that specifically studied the Soviet government of the period about their atrocities?

For the holodomor, snyder gives a figure of over 5 million deaths, which is much too low. The best study on this matter comes from oleh wolowyna, who concluded that over 7.6 million people died in the famines.

For the gulags, snyder gives a figure of 1 million deaths. The minimum accepted number is actually 1.6 million. Thats what the NKVD themselves said after the war, and you can bet that they were giving a low number!

So tally up the number of deaths that occurred during stalins reign, in roughly chronological order:

7.6 million civilians killed in the holodomor
390,000 kulaks killed during relocations
750,000 to 1 million prisoners killed in the purges
100,000 to 150,000 polish POWs killed
130,000 to 320,000 polish and volga germans killed during relocations
380,000 to 1 million axis PoWs killed
140,000 chechens and inguish killed during relocations
1 to 2 million axis civilians killed during occupation
1.6 million prisoners killed in the gulags

So even if we ignore the multitude of smaller massacres, and use the smallest number possible for the gulags, stalin is clearly responsible for anywhere from 12 to 14 million deaths. Robert conquests figure of 20 million deaths isn't nearly as far fetched as we would like to think.

It looks like the books they are citing came out in the 1990s before much of the documentation about the Soviet records had been discovered; prior works (early 1990s and before) were laden with Cold War propaganda. Conquest's book was written deep in the middle of the Cold War right after De-Stalinization tried to make Stalin look as bad as possible. I mean Stalin was a PoS, but we have to disaggregate what is real, what is propaganda, and what is myth and what is even reasonably attributable to Stalin specifically. Snyder makes the point in his article that it can be very hard to neatly categorize deaths in the column of one or another dictator during WW2.

Robert conquest actually wrote two books, one in 1969, and one in 1992. In the first book, he stated that stalins kill count was a minimum of 20 million, and probably more like 30 million. In the second book, he had come to the conclusion that 20 million was the most likely number of people murdered by stalin.
 
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