Doomsought
Well-known member
Something with a more interesting impact: Instead of hating the Jews, Hitler hates the French.
Alternate History Ideas and Discussion
- Thread starter AndrewJTalon
- Start date
Buba
A total creep
Not exactly a change
Read the Mein Kampf - he hated both
Peace and Freedom loving Slavic Peoples too - his heart was large enough to house many hates.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Indeed, Hitler hated almost everybody. But he doesn't seem to have been planning to exterminate the French, so that is a possible change. And a big one!Not exactly a change
Read the Mein Kampf - he hated both
Peace and Freedom loving Slavic Peoples too - his heart was large enough to house many hates.
If the "switch" in primary targets also extends to not being so fanatically obsessed with killing the Slavs (maybe just the Poles, and not the Russians), then this can lead to a very grim "Nazi victory" scenario.
Stalin had figured that Hitler's invasion of the Western Allies would lead to a bogged-down campaign lasting years, and then the USSR would pounce to crush the eventual (severely war-weakened) victor of that contest. Instead, Hitler defeated the French in short order. If Hitler has no plans for an insane "must-have-muh-Lebensraum" campaign against Russia, then the German victory in the West kind of means... Hitler and Stalin stay allied. At least until on or the other sees a clear chance to get the upper hand and invade. Such a chance may never come.
Meanwhile, Hitler carries out his gruesome plans in France and Poland. These peoples, rather than the Jews, become his foremost victims. A mixture of the Holocaust and Generalplan Ost is carried out. The occupied countries are divided into military districts, and -- one by one -- subjected to a campaign of extermination. Children (those who look sufficiently "Aryan", anyway) are taken away and (re-)eductated into becoming "good Germans", while most adults are murdered. (And what the occupying forces will do to all young women is... depressingly obvious.)
Meanwhile, if Hitler for some reason doesn't hate Jews beyond some period-typical "garden variety" anti-semitic attitudes, then most German Jews will stay in Germany and will readily serve the German regime. (Jews, before Hitler, were often eager to demonstrate their patriotism. Precisely to avoid anti-semitic prejudice!) This means that the idiotic concept of "Jewish science" is never introduced, and that notable Jewish scientists and engineers remain available for Germany.
Pretty good chance that Germany becomes the first country to develop atomic weapons, then.
Spingtime for Hitler and Germany... winter for Poland and France...
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Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Pretty horrifying outline you've sketched out, @Skallagrim.
However, with regard to this bit:
I mean, even if Hitler doesn't particularly hate Jews to begin with, that doesn't mean he couldn't become rabidly anti-Semitic later in life. For instance, what if turns paranoid during his twilight years and begins to suspect the Jews are a "fifth column" in German society, moving against them at the eleventh hour and implementing a Twilight of the Red Tsar-esque "Great Pogrom" against the "Zionist plotters", with the train cars and gas chambers suddenly repurposed from exterminating French and Poles to exterminating Jews?
That's my understanding of what Stalin was gearing up for post-WWII, at least, as indicated by the whole Doctors' Plot charade, as well as some anecdotes I've come across where he displayed a strong personal dislike of Jews towards the end of his life. Fortunately, he died before anything else came of it, though I'm afraid a world in which the Führer lives to a ripe old age himself may see him follow through where the decrepit, unhealthy, increasingly anti-Semitic Stalin did not.
However, with regard to this bit:
I mean, even if Hitler doesn't particularly hate Jews to begin with, that doesn't mean he couldn't become rabidly anti-Semitic later in life. For instance, what if turns paranoid during his twilight years and begins to suspect the Jews are a "fifth column" in German society, moving against them at the eleventh hour and implementing a Twilight of the Red Tsar-esque "Great Pogrom" against the "Zionist plotters", with the train cars and gas chambers suddenly repurposed from exterminating French and Poles to exterminating Jews?
That's my understanding of what Stalin was gearing up for post-WWII, at least, as indicated by the whole Doctors' Plot charade, as well as some anecdotes I've come across where he displayed a strong personal dislike of Jews towards the end of his life. Fortunately, he died before anything else came of it, though I'm afraid a world in which the Führer lives to a ripe old age himself may see him follow through where the decrepit, unhealthy, increasingly anti-Semitic Stalin did not.
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Why Poland? If he's exterminating the French he has his lebensraum in the west. He probably needs to conquer his half to keep Stalin from getting too much, but it'd be generations before France was repopulated with Germans and someone needs to operate all the farms and mines and factories in Poland.
I'm not entirely sure a France obsessed Hitler doesn't tell Stalin he's game for the 1772 or 1793 Polish borders but doesn't want to be distracted occupying the whole country just now.
That would be late enough to not effect the course of 20th century physics and Hitler living to a ripe old age is not terribly likely. Hitler's personal doctor was bad. So bad I think someone could write a convincing narrative that he was a time traveler from the future returned to kill Hitler who was just a little bit too subtle.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Well, what about his successor, or an even more fanatically purist protégé of Hitler's who uses the old man as a mouthpiece to start targeting Jews, too? The Führer may have been the head of the operation, but his personal views weren't the be-all, end-all of how far the Nazis might go in cleansing Europe of "non-Germanic degeneracy". (Since, you know, people like Himmler exist… )
Skallagrim
Well-known member
It's possible, but I wouldn't call it a given. It also kind of defeats the premise of the POD. But in any event, even if Hitler does still decide to target the Jews for extermination in his last years, he'll already have "won the war" by securing a German-led European bloc that is well-established, wedged neatly in between the Anglo-American "Atlantic" bloc and the Soviet bloc.
If the ATL has indeed resulted in Germany securing atomics first, this more than makes up for any disadvantages they face in comparison to the rival powers.
Well, Hitler is still Hitler. I'm sure he wants a good chunk of Poland because it gives him a better border in the East... and I'm also sure that, being Hitler, he wants the Poles to stop existing. Even if he goes "I MUST KILL THE FRENCH!" instead of "I MUST KILL THE JEWS!"... he'll still hate the Poles just like in OTL, because he viewed them as another mortal enemy that had dared to carve off large pieces of Germany.
I'd say that in a scenario where he isn't utterly obsessed with "judeo-bolshevik conspiracy" stuff, and instead centres his hatred on the geo-political foes who "stole our sacred German land", he'll be inclined to hate France and Poland equally (and more so than in OTL, while caring less about the Jews and Russia).
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
It's both funny and grim to realise that Nazi Germany was essentially defeated by its own ideology.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Quite so.
Unfortunately, I suspect that'd happen in the scenario Skall has outlined, too, what with so many fanatics (such as Himmler and his fellow SS flunkies) in positions of power, and thus well-equipped to extend ATL Holocaust to many more groups than just the French and Poles once the aged Führer croaks.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Even if they "just" kill the French and the Poles... they are left with a vast empty land, and not enough Germans to really settle that land or work that land. Massive genocidal ambitions are (obviously) a pretty stupid idea.
Once it becomes clear what Germany is really doing, "Nazi-Europe" is going to become a pariah to the world. And frankly, the world doesn't really need Europe for anything. The existence of a Nazi empire probably means better relations between the Atlantic bloc and the Soviet bloc, too.
So Hitler's sucessors inherit a giant sort of North Korea. With Italy attached as an increasingly despondent vassal, as they gradually realise that they've chained themselves to an Evil Empire governed by what's basically an insane death cult.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Now that would make an interesting "Nazis win" scenario! Granted, I believe Fatherland did something similar, but I haven't read the book or watched the movie in full, so I don't know.
At any rate, it's a lot more realistic than The Man in the High Castle, so it'd be a good opportunity to flesh out what a continent-spanning Nazi superstate would actually look like, though given how demented and deathlike it'd be, I'm not so sure it'd last beyond the declining Führer's lifetime. Who knows, maybe you could contrive a Netflix series set in ATL Sixties, in which the rest of the world waits with baited breath as Hitler closes his eyes for the final time, with the dream of united, Thousand-Year Reich dying alongside him as his subordinates circle his deathbed like sharks...
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Fatherland is basically a victorious Hitlerist Germany glossed onto the post-war Stalinist USSR.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies, meanwhile, is a victorious Hitlerist Germany glossed onto the fall of the USSR.
Authors have a tendency to just run with the obvious analogy here.
Almost anything would be more realistic than The Man in the High Castle.
I'd say Nazi Germany has a considerably higher civil war potential than the USSR. It's not a certainty, and it depends on how much of the "contenders" have been purged by this point, and whether there's any "new generation" of potential leaders... and what they are like...
Personally, I had -- in this scenario -- envisioned a scenario where Nazi-led Europe turns into a paranoid autarky, with its nukes pointed outward to prevent invasion, and otherwise largely isolated from the world. It would become increasingly poor, and backward, and... strange.
Bassoe
Well-known member
Thousand Week Reich. I think it was on either AH.com or deviantart. Nazis win, then logistics and practicality and succession have the last laugh. Especially when Atlantropa accidentally fucked rainfall all over Europe in exchange for some reclaimed seabed which was useless for growing crops anyway because of all the salt.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Save for Wolfenstein, I absolutely agree!
Yeah, I think the North Korea analogy would hold more and more true with time, though the fact the Nazis have a continent of resources and slave labor to plunder makes them way more dangerous than Lil' Kimmy and his tinhorn, half-peninsular hermit kingdom. (This isn't to rule out gross mismanagement of Europe's riches, of course, especially given how badly the Nazi leadership administered what resources they already had IOTL.)
Eventually, I assume things would get dicey for the Reich, and considering how external threats make both great scapegoats and the Nazi leadership's guaranteed blame-shifting—rather than honest acknowledgement of their own shortcomings, much less their utter insanity—I don't think it's long before nuclear sirens start sounding off on both sides of the Atlantic. (At the very least, I can see a "plot" of sorts underway in the Italian government to convince the Americans and Soviets to come to their aid somehow, even if it makes for better television than reality, as far as success goes.)
Doomsought
Well-known member
Sometime around the beginning of the extermination, leaning towards prior with warning signs, the Germans field a deal sell some parts of northern France to the UK, mainly Normandy and some other areas that have been held by the Normans/British/United Kingdom even if only briefly occupying the location before being repelled. In this Hitler's mind anyone else holding french territory automatically gives them a more legitimate rule to it than the French.
This isn't a rational decision, it is not supposed to be, but there is an insane genius to it:
This gives the British a conundrum, take the deal and they will not only have a beach head but also very likely save the lives of the inhabitants. But this would also mean they have taken the deal and granted some legitimacy to Hitler's conquest even if they plan on negotiating with perfidity.
This isn't a rational decision, it is not supposed to be, but there is an insane genius to it:
This gives the British a conundrum, take the deal and they will not only have a beach head but also very likely save the lives of the inhabitants. But this would also mean they have taken the deal and granted some legitimacy to Hitler's conquest even if they plan on negotiating with perfidity.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
German-Italian split akin to the Sino-Soviet split?
It wouldn't be the same kind of process, and even the exact motivations would differ, but Italy would certainly have good reasons to detach themselves from the Germans if at all possible.
It seems likely to me that in the event of France being conquered with the goal of exterminating the populace, there won't be a Vichy government. Instead, I could see the Germans handing South-Eastern France off to the Italians. So if Italy distances itself from the Nazi regime, then the insane hermit kingdom is entirely North of the Pyrenees-Massif Central-Alps line.
In fact, it would be OTL's wealthy, developed (and haughtily progressive) North-Western Europe that would primarily be turned into this ATL Nazi nightmare state. And presumably, refugees would be fleeing South.
True - but,in that scenario,soviets would attack anyway,just like they planned to attack in 1941 in OTL.
Becouse they did so not becouse they feared germans,but becouse they wanted conqer Europe.
Which would not change.
True - and bothe Trocky aand Zinowiew had better chances for winning.Maybe Bucharin,too.
But - he planned to purge jews not becouse of that,but becouse he planned WW3.Just like he purged party,army and NKWD in 1937-39 years before WW2.
In that regard,pity that he do not did so- becouse he would lost such war,and Poland would be free in 1960 or earlier.
Indeed.Smart Hitler would disband kolchoz in 1941 and gave land for peasants,russians would kill soviets on their own.
Later,of course,he would take that land again,just like Lenin planned to do and Sralin did - but,it would be too late then.
We would have United Europe from Ural to England in 1945.
Too many French to exterminate. You're talking about exterminating 40 million people in a country where they are the overwhelming majority of the total population. Much harder than exterminating a 6 million-strong Jewish minority where they numbered no more than 15% at the very most in any of the countries that they lived in.
Quite interesting: The Nazis turn Germany into a dystopic barbarian state in the North while the Italians recreate the glories of the Roman Empire in a modern form in the South!