@ABWorsham4 probably still scared the starving civilians , carrying rifles and 2 bullets each, half to death at the time though .
What if the Axis won the War?
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It looks like Bunnies P Wrath has provided an interlude between my two posts. Thank you for that, Bunnies. (I think.)
Part 2 will explore the consequences of the Axis victory scenario I outlined earlier. In the postwar era, the world’s two strongest powers would have been Germany and the United States. The Soviet Union and Japan would also have been strong, and China could have become strong after it had gotten its civil war sorted out. The Nationalists would likely have won the Chinese civil war; resulting in a China run much like Taiwan has been run.
There were only two sides to the Cold War, which tended to simplify the diplomatic situation a bit. In the Axis victory scenario there would be multiple sides: Germany, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Japan. Possibly a fifth and sixth side as well. It’s impossible to predict how such a complex diplomatic situation might have played out. Overall, the diplomatic situation might have become more like it had been in the 1800s–back when things were less black and white, and when there tended to be multiple parties pulling in multiple different directions.
Germany would likely have developed nuclear weapons on its own, and the Soviet Union would of course have stolen the required technology from the United States. Due to its advanced rocketry program, Germany would have been the first to develop ICBMs, and the first to put a man on the Moon. It’s worth noting that between the '60s and the present, the inflation-adjusted cost of putting a ton of cargo into orbit has not changed. It’s worth wondering whether a victorious Germany would have done the research and development work necessary to cause a decrease in that cost. Had such an effort been successfully undertaken, a number of space-based opportunities which are currently impractical would have become possible.
Another effect of an Axis victory is that the British food blockade would have ended, thereby allowing Germany to feed all the people within its borders. Some people–such as Poles–would have been relocated eastward; with their lands resettled by Germans. The percentage of Europe inhabited by Germans would have slowly increased. While the Soviet Union would have continued engaging in mass murder, the scope of that murder would have been contained within a much smaller geographic area. Neither Operation Keelhaul nor the Morgenthau Plan would have taken place; thereby sparing millions of lives.
Immigration patterns would have been different. The Nazi government would not have allowed large-scale immigration of non-whites into European territory under its control. It would likely have pressured its European neighbors to adopt similar immigration policies. This would have prevented the slow, but large-scale demographic changes currently underway in Europe.
An Axis victory would have had another effect on the gene pool as well. The Nazis were concerned about the fact that less intelligent people were having more children than their more intelligent counterparts. They were unable to do much to correct that problem, in large part because they were in power for a relatively short time, and were distracted by other, more pressing matters. Had they been given more time, they would likely have found a way to encourage intelligent people to have more children; thereby resulting in a gradually improving gene pool. After two or three generations of this slow, steady, upward genetic pressure, there would have been a noticeable improvement in Europeans’ levels of intelligence. On the other hand, a certain percentage of those highly intelligent people would have moved to the United States; especially if they found themselves in disagreement with Nazi ideology.
That ideology would likely have mellowed over time. The Nazis who joined Hitler’s party during its early, beer hall days tended to be much more radical than those who joined a decade later. After Hitler gained power, a number of people pretended to be more committed to Nazism than they really were, in order to avoid penalties and gain rewards. As Hitler’s early followers died of old age and were replaced by those who became Nazis after '33, Germany’s commitment to Nazism would have become less intense. (A similar process occurred in the Soviet Union, as Lenin’s followers died of old age and were replaced.)
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I think we would be not as advanced, cause hitler killed every one.( Think if Hitler killed Einstien) Japan and Germany would be in a cold war…… When a World war 3 starts between them, end of story.
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Yeah, it’s not like the Germans were known for technology like jets and rockets and stuff. Einstein’s role in the nuclear bomb was over by the time Hitler came to power. In fact, in July 1940, the U.S. Army Intelligence office denied Einstein the security clearance needed to work on the Manhattan Project. Einstein’s role was limited to writing a letter to the president explaining the US should enter the race. In 1938, three chemists working in a laboratory in Berlin made a discovery that would alter the course of history: they split the uranium atom.
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Its a good thing they did not win! :-D
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Somedays I just wanna change history. Save a lot of lives because of war ;)
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If the Axis won the war , America would have problem…
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@aequitas:
If the Axis won the war , America would have problem…
you got that right!
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There would not be many Jews, Romas or Slavs left. Presumably Germany would not have a food shortage problem any more. We would not be debating equal rights for gays but what form of death penalty gays should get. The French political right wing would be happy.
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@Bunnies:
If you eat English food, your poop smells a certain way.
If you eat Chinese food, your poop smells a different way.
If you eat Indian food, your poop smells yet different again.So if you think about it, when you’re eating different stuff, you’re thinking it’s very different. But really, in the end, it’s all the same poop. Some people think their poop smells better than others, but really, it’s still poop.
That was ah quite disturbing.
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@TheDictator:
@Bunnies:
If you eat English food, your poop smells a certain way.
If you eat Chinese food, your poop smells a different way.
If you eat Indian food, your poop smells yet different again.So if you think about it, when you’re eating different stuff, you’re thinking it’s very different. But really, in the end, it’s all the same poop. Some people think their poop smells better than others, but really, it’s still poop.
That was ah quite disturbing.
+1 to dictator
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if the axis one the Nazis might have mellowed out in time but in the meantime the detahs they inflicted would be unimaginable in all likeliehood, exterminating all “inferior” races within their much increased borders. Yes, Hitler might have found a solution to the intelligence problem, perhaps by laws and perhaps by limited killing of less intelligent people, just enough to bring the average IQ up for the next round of babies.
I don’t think it would be needed for Japan to sue for peace with China, what resistance China offered wasn’t really a match for Japan. Depending on whether or not Germany launched a version of Sealion, peace with Britain might have been superflous as well, since there would be no way for them to offer significant resistance. however if they attacked any US possession, they would have lost with no question. One plot I can see hitler cooking upwould be to stir up tensions between the countries of the “degenerate” races such as a liberated India, or China and so forth and then giving them nuclear weapons i the hope that they would annihlate each other. -
what resistance China offered wasn’t really a match for Japan.
I forget, when did Japan conquer China?
and then giving them nuclear weapons i the hope that they would annihlate each other.
If Hitler had nuclear weapons, why would he give them away in the hopes they would be used by his ‘enemies’ on his ‘enemies’? Hitler would have no problem using nukes on anyone……But nukes would make the land useless. No, I think Hitler would kill the inferiors on his own schedule in order to minimize expense and maximize profit from each body.
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Japan didn’t conquer China, first off there’s no need for sarcasm this is a friendly thread man, second off the USA gave it aid obviously.
He would give them nuclear weapons to minimize controversy in Germany, he’s running a superpower now after all. -
Japan didn’t conquer China, first off there’s no need for sarcasm this is a friendly thread man, second off the USA gave it aid obviously.
He would give them nuclear weapons to minimize controversy in Germany, he’s running a superpower now after all.There is a cold, brutal logic involved with nuclear weapons–a logic which is largely independent of ideology. Communist and capitalist nations had very different ideologies from each other, yet the nuclear weapons logic both sides used was very similar.
Back in the '80s, the Reagan administration was concerned about a possible Soviet invasion of Iran. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had not yet been proven a failure. Were the Soviets to grab Iran as well, they would gain a large quantity of oil, and warm water ports in the Indian Ocean. In part as a result of this concern, the Reagan administration decided to sell arms to the Iranians. But they did not consider the possibility of giving the Iranians nuclear weapons; in large part because Iran was so ideologically different from the U.S. Nor am I aware of any instance of the U.S. having provided nuclear weapons to any nation not fundamentally committed to secular democratic capitalism, or the Soviet Union to any nation not fundamentally committed to communism. It’s hard for me to imagine Nazi Germany providing nuclear weapons to any nation not committed to Nazism.
It’s been noted that the Japanese Zero was a good plane by the standards of late '41, but had become hopelessly obsolete by '44. More generally, Japan’s piston-driven aircraft were vastly qualitatively inferior to their American counterparts by '44. But German piston-driven aircraft were not. Japan was Germany’s ally, both nations were fighting for their very existence against an overlapping group of enemies, and every American plane sent to the Pacific to deal with Japan was one less which could be sent to Germany. Further, Japan was committed to fascism, and to the notion that the Japanese were racially superior to their Chinese and Korean neighbors. Despite all this, Germany did not initiate large-scale technology transfers to Japan until the war in Europe was nearly over. And this was with piston aircraft technology! You seem like a good guy, but the idea that Hitler would have transferred nuclear technology to non-white, non-Nazi nations, in hope those nations would blow each other up, may not be the absolute best idea you’ve ever had! :wink:
That said, I think you brought up a good point by saying that Hitler would have been loath to himself use nuclear weapons. (For the same reason that, other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had refrained from using such weapons.) Hitler had been willing to take risks to achieve victory in Europe. In large part this was because of his belief that Germany would be at great risk until it had considerably strengthened its military position with respect to its (typically hostile) communist and pro-communist European neighbors. But after he had achieved that European victory, he would want a more cautious approach for Germany.
Part of that cautious approach would have involved the expansion of Germany’s population. Plans had been made to forcibly relocate 30 - 50 million Poles eastward after the war was over. The lands thus vacated would be resettled by Germans. If Germany had still been in the midst of a British food blockade, the deaths of some of those people during the migration would have been seen as an acceptable way of alleviating the famine conditions that blockade had imposed. To the best of my knowledge, there was no plan in place to exterminate large numbers of people during the postwar period except as necessitated by Germany’s food situation.
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All of that is true, but i would like to point out that Adolf wasn’t exactly…sane, assumedly less so as he aged.
Also, all this is hypothetical, I’m not saying this is likely just possible obviously. -
I honestly don’t think the Nazis and Hitler were that concerned with world opinion. Sure, they didn’t overtly advertise the fact they were slaughtering millions of people for being a Slav or Jewish. You can attribute that to several reasons. I don’t think after a total victory over the allies and in possession of nuclear weapons they would be that concerned with anyone’s opinion. The only other party that would matter is Japan and they would be a decade or two behind the Germans in missile and nuclear technology. The authors of the Rape of Nanking would not be that appalled by the use of nuclear weapons against civilian targets.
If Japan had a serious problem with what the Germans were doing then they too would be on the losing end of German might. Germany would have little difficulty in lobbing nukes at mainland Japan from soviet territory by 1950 with upgraded V2 rockets.
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I have read several memoirs of German officers from WW2 and I firmly believe that had the Germans “won” the war, then it would only have been a matter of time before the German officer class and the Wehrmacht overthrew the Nazi’s a slowly turned Germany in to a quasi-conservative democracy. When Hans Von Skeet was forming his 100,000 man army the treaty of Versailles limited Germany to, he stressed they be non-political. The reason many German officers and soldiers did resist the Nazis was because they were trained to stay out of politics. However, after a victorious war I think many would have started to look around at what was going on in Germany and the occupied areas and start questioning the government. The only thing that would have prevented them from acting would have been if Adolf Hitler was still alive. If the Germany pull of a victory in say 1945 (hypothetically; negotiating a peace with the west after a disastrous D-day lets say and then concentrating in the east to bleed the Russians white by 45/46) then really you would only have had to deal with Hitler for about another 3 years before his Parkinson’s claimed him, which many now believe he had. An earlier victory would have to involve an assassination on Hitler of the sort attempted in operation Valkyrie. I think in a non war setting there would have been a greater involvement of German officers and the plot would have been more likely to succeed. In that event there would have been some infighting, some-what like a civil war, between the SS (who I believe would have been framed as though they had killed Hitler) and the rest of the Wehrmacht. Though bloody, the deaths caused by this fighting would pale in comparison to a world where the Nazis where left to their own devices.
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I have read several memoirs of German officers from WW2 and I firmly believe that had the Germans “won” the war, then it would only have been a matter of time before the German officer class and the Wehrmacht overthrew the Nazi’s a slowly turned Germany in to a quasi-conservative democracy.
Alternately, it might only have been a matter of time before Hitler started liquidating the Wehrmacht’s senior leadership, the way Stalin did with the Red Army in the 1930s. Hitler’s long-standing dislike of the German officer class turned into firm distrust after the failed assassination attempt against him in mid-1944.
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That is very true CWO and I think you’ve touched on the “catch-22” of all this. The officers would have a hard time justifying their actions in assassinating Hitler had they won the war as he would have been extremely popular with the public and, the other side of this coin, Hitler would of had trouble bumping off the officer corps like Stalin did as they had just helped him prosecute a victorious war. So it really is all hypothetical but I think Germany would have been better off with Hitler and the Nazis gone shortly after victory.
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I have read several memoirs of German officers from WW2 and I firmly believe that had the Germans “won” the war, then it would only have been a matter of time before the German officer class and the Wehrmacht overthrew the Nazi’s a slowly turned Germany in to a quasi-conservative democracy. When Hans Von Skeet was forming his 100,000 man army the treaty of Versailles limited Germany to, he stressed they be non-political. The reason many German officers and soldiers did resist the Nazis was because they were trained to stay out of politics. However, after a victorious war I think many would have started to look around at what was going on in Germany and the occupied areas and start questioning the government. The only thing that would have prevented them from acting would have been if Adolf Hitler was still alive. If the Germany pull of a victory in say 1945 (hypothetically; negotiating a peace with the west after a disastrous D-day lets say and then concentrating in the east to bleed the Russians white by 45/46) then really you would only have had to deal with Hitler for about another 3 years before his Parkinson’s claimed him, which many now believe he had. An earlier victory would have to involve an assassination on Hitler of the sort attempted in operation Valkyrie. I think in a non war setting there would have been a greater involvement of German officers and the plot would have been more likely to succeed. In that event there would have been some infighting, some-what like a civil war, between the SS (who I believe would have been framed as though they had killed Hitler) and the rest of the Wehrmacht. Though bloody, the deaths caused by this fighting would pale in comparison to a world where the Nazis where left to their own devices.
Good post. :)
There’s a significant chance the scenario you’ve outlined would have come to pass. Even if CWO Marc is right and it hadn’t, you’ve still touched on a larger issue. Hitler would not have lived for very long after the war, and his death would have left a gaping hole in German leadership. Hitler wasn’t sold on anyone in particular as his successor. For a while that successor had been Goering by default. But Goering’s incompetence had cost him significant credibility in the eyes of almost everyone. Even Hitler himself had referred to Goering with derision. (And rightly so.)
Back in the early '20s, the Nazi Party was small, and consisted largely of dedicated revolutionaries. As it became larger and more mainstream, the people who joined it were often less radical, less completely committed to its ideology. After Hitler came to power in '33, a number of people claimed to have a greater adherence to Nazism than they really felt. There were social and economic rewards for being pro-Nazi, and penalties associated with being anti-Nazi. The earlier someone had joined the Nazi Party, the more fully committed he or she was likely to be to its ideology.
This meant that Hitler and the other core members of the Nazi Party had a problem. As they died of old age, their replacements would be milder, more moderate men–men less fully committed to the Nazi ideology. The Soviet communists had the same problem. Stalin had been a communist revolutionary back when the czar was still in power. But after Stalin’s death, his successors were milder and less revolutionary than Lenin, Trotsky, or Stalin had been.
Traditionally, Germany had been a more humane nation than Russia. During WWI, the world’s Jewish community had supported the Axis, on the theory that, while European nations in general tended to be deplorably anti-Semitic, Russia was significantly worse than the others. (And was associated with pogroms.) Working conditions in czarist Russia were appalling, and peasants were clearly considered expendable. That brutality was considerably intensified during Lenin’s and Stalin’s regimes. Given these cultural differences, post-Hitler Nazi Germany would likely have been more civilized and humane than the post-Stalin Soviet Union.
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