Doomsought
Well-known member
Something with a more interesting impact: Instead of hating the Jews, Hitler hates the French.
Not exactly a changeSomething with a more interesting impact: Instead of hating the Jews, Hitler hates the French.
Something with a more interesting impact: Instead of hating the Jews, Hitler hates the French.
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.
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.
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.Meanwhile, Hitler carries out his gruesome plans in France and Poland.
Fortunately, he died before anything else came of it, though I'm afraid a world in which the Fuhrer lives to a ripe old age himself may see him follow through where the decrepit, unhealthy, increasingly anti-Semitic Stalin did not.
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.
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.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.
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.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.
I'd say that in a scenario where he isn't utterly obsessed with "judeo-bolshevik conspiracy" stuff,
It's both funny and grim to realise that Nazi Germany was essentially defeated by its own ideology.
It's both funny and grim to realise that Nazi Germany was essentially defeated by its own ideology.
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.I suspect that'd happen in the scenario Skall has outlined, too, what with so many fanatics (such as Himmler and his ilk) in positions of power, and thus well-equipped to extend ATL Holocaust to many more groups than just French and Poles.
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.
Fatherland is basically a victorious Hitlerist Germany glossed onto the post-war Stalinist USSR.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.
Almost anything would be more realistic than The Man in the High Castle.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 Greater Germanic Reich dying alongside him as his subordinates circle his deathbed like sharks...
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.Now that would make an interesting "Nazis win" scenario!
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.
German-Italian split akin to the Sino-Soviet split?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.)
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!
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...
Stalin rubbed shoulders with quite a few Jews during his rise to power and his main competitor was Jewish too. He could had been traumatised ...
Indeed.Smart Hitler would disband kolchoz in 1941 and gave land for peasants,russians would kill soviets on their own.It's both funny and grim to realise that Nazi Germany was essentially defeated by its own ideology.
Something with a more interesting impact: Instead of hating the Jews, Hitler hates the French.
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.