The Anglo/American - Nazi War - The on-going mystery

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

A significant element that helps set OTL Operation Valkyrie into motion was revulsion at the atrocities in the East, which were MUCH greater in TTL.

The July Plot: When German Elites Tried to Kill Hitler | HISTORY

Fed up with Hitler, though only partially for moral reasons, high-level German resisters nearly succeeded in assassinating him in July 1944.

www.history.com

While that was a primary factor in their coup attempt, the Valkyries were largely opposed to Hitler for throwing them into an unwinnable war. They held very racist, authoritarian, and militaristic views and were angling to keep some of the spoils of Hitler's war. If they ended up ruling Germany, German society would be far more militaristic, nationalist, and racist than OTL, and probably without the nationwide soul-searching Germany underwent after the 1960s.

In a world where Hitler did win, they would be far more likely to side with Hitler and profit from the spoils of his war. OTL, this isn't the relatively optimistic history where Hitler died blowing his brains out and West Germans witnessed Americans dropping chocolate into their cities, this is a history where Hitler's madness actually won, causing almost all Germans to think that he was a prophet speaking the truth.

 

[Fire and shadow]

How many people were able to escape from Berlin/Nuremberg and how much does the world know about the last days of the Nazi high command?

 

[Lalli]

OTL, he died in 1951.

TTL, I wonder if any surviving Weimar politicians who brought Hitler to power, like Franz von Papen, spent their nights lying awake over the monster they inadvertently unleashed on civilization. They would view their actions as having shaken hands with the devil.

Von Papen if he was still alive by end of the war, probably had really bad last years when he was thinking what monster he has created. I wouldn't be surrprised if he would had choiced suicide.

A significant element that helps set OTL Operation Valkyrie into motion was revulsion at the atrocities in the East, which were MUCH greater in TTL.

The July Plot: When German Elites Tried to Kill Hitler | HISTORY

Fed up with Hitler, though only partially for moral reasons, high-level German resisters nearly succeeded in assassinating him in July 1944.

www.history.com

True that some plotters were motivated by outright opposition of Hitler and nazism but many just wanted to end the war what Germany couldn't win. It should remember that many of them were conservatives and even authotarian military officers. And they were too thought that they just could keep lot of German conquests and just could give peace offers to Wallies and turn their both weapons against Soviets. But ITTL Germany defeated Allies on first phase so there is pretty low support to oust nazis. Even in OTL OV hadn't too much general support. ITTL there would be even lesser.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

Von Papen if he was still alive by end of the war, probably had really bad last years when he was thinking what monster he has created. I wouldn't be surrprised if he would had choiced suicide.

OTL, Papen made one of the last voices of protests against the Nazi regime as the last vestiges of Weimar Democracy burned out. He was already a man who seemed horrified by the Frankenstein monster he had unleashed on Germany.

I can imagine Papen sitting in a dark room, shedding tears, when he sees his beloved Germans gleefully and happily destroying Paris.

True that some plotters were motivated by outright opposition of Hitler and nazism but many just wanted to end the war what Germany couldn't win. It should remember that many of them were conservatives and even authotarian military officers. And they were too thought that they just could keep lot of German conquests and just could give peace offers to Wallies and turn their both weapons against Soviets. But ITTL Germany defeated Allies on first phase so there is pretty low support to oust nazis. Even in OTL OV hadn't too much general support. ITTL there would be even lesser.

In this TL, they would quietly go to their plantations and maybe give their serfs an extra slice of ham for Christmas (how generous!)

 

[TheMaskedDiscombobulator]

I'm not sure the A4 cared what part of Stettin it hit. The question is just how large would the misses be?

Well, as I said, if one 'just' wants to kill nearly everyone in an urban area, carpet-bombing it with kinetic impactors can assuredly make that happen.

The trouble, from our aspiring mass murderer's perspective, would then be that doing so is likely to be more expensive and complex than just tossing an ICBM at the place and watching it go 'kaboom.'

Because many satellite launches plus the cost of maintaining a large fleet of satellites (bombardment platforms) in precise orbits for a long period of time will be MUCH more expensive than maintaining a single nuclear-tipped ICBM in a land-based silo. Especially if you can build the silos relatively cheaply (see 'coffin launchers') because you don't really expect anyone to try and take the launchers out with a first strike.

There's a reason so many nations have standardized on nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs as major components of their military force. It's because they honestly are one of the most cost-effective ways to be confident of delivering mass destruction to the heartland of the enemy. Maintaining almost any other kind of armed force capable of doing the same thing will tend to cost more.

OTL, Papen made one of the last voices of protests against the Nazi regime as the last vestiges of Weimar Democracy burned out. He was already a man who seemed horrified by the Frankenstein monster he had unleashed on Germany.

I can imagine Papen sitting in a dark room, shedding tears, when he sees his beloved Germans gleefully and happily destroying Paris.

Given how many of those German authoritarian conservatives seems to quiet down and accept Hitler as soon as he'd won a bunch of victories circa 1940, and only started questioning him when he started losing, I'm a bit skeptical of that.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

OTL, he died in 1951.

TTL, I wonder if any surviving Weimar politicians who brought Hitler to power, like Franz von Papen, spent their nights lying awake over the monster they inadvertently unleashed on civilization. They would view their actions as having shaken hands with the devil.

And I bet that history will not be kind to them, and that measures might be taken to prevent another Papen, another Hugenberg.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

Given how many of those German authoritarian conservatives seems to quiet down and accept Hitler as soon as he'd won a bunch of victories circa 1940, and only started questioning him when he started losing, I'm a bit skeptical of that.

Yeah. The pre-Nazi aristocracy and ruling class always had a relationship with Hitler that bordered on crass opportunism. The Kaiser called Kristallnacht a barbarity, praised Hitler for "avenging" Germany's defeat against France, but also refused to allow the Nazis to use his funeral for publicity.

And I bet that history will not be kind to them, and that measures might be taken to prevent another Papen, another Hugenberg.

I think the very harsh division of Germany into tiny states was partly because of this: the so-called civilized ruling class of Germany not only put this man in power but willfully and gleefully accepted the collapse of civil liberties and oppression of countless racial and political minorities.

 

[TickTock The Witch's Dead]

I wonder what @CalBear himself would be doing in this TL. I assume the Bear would be doing fine?

 

[Lalli]

I wonder what @CalBear himself would be doing in this TL. I assume the Bear would be doing fine?

Would CalBear even born ITTL unless he has born on first half of 1940's or even before POD?

But if he still exist, his life would be very different.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

Would CalBear even born ITTL unless he has born on first half of 1940's or even before POD?

But if he still exist, his life would be very different.

He'd be writing alternate history about what would happen if he chose to write alternate history.

 

[Alex1guy]

He'd be writing alternate history about what would happen if he chose to write alternate history.

I wonder what @CalBear himself would be doing in this TL. I assume the Bear would be doing fine?

"Welcome to my timeline, the Soviet American Cold War, a scenario looking at the implausible survival of the USSR in WWII. The POD here is a bit of a stretch, but instead of the Italians and Germans falling out in North Africa, Germany commits to helping Mussolini in Africa, crippling his forces in key battles in Stalingrad, avoiding the Second Great Purge within the Red Army. The Soviet Union is able to organize and fight back the German advances leading to a divided Europe...."

"Mussolini and Hitler getting along? Stalin NOT killing his generals? Seems pretty ASB CalBear but I'll give it a read..."

 

[Lalli]

"Mussolini and Hitler getting along? Stalin NOT killing his generals? Seems pretty ASB CalBear but I'll give it a read..."

And there is democratic Germany which is allowed to unite and Germans are good guys and one of most reliable allies of the west?

Japan economical great power?

 

[Pax_Nihil]

This is my historiography regarding Nazism: basically, the entire world at the turn of the 20th century believed in things like racism, racial cleansing, Social Darwinism, and nationalism. Hitler and his cronies looked at everything and said, "Let's do it but more."

The very word "civilized" might become very, very dirty ITTL: since it was the Germans' own belief in their "natural" superiority that led them to destroy Europe effectively. I wonder if the romanticization of pre-state cultures might be more common ITTL, since civilization proved to be even more rapacious and cruel.

"Let's do it but more stupider!"

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

"Welcome to my timeline, the Soviet American Cold War, a scenario looking at the implausible survival of the USSR in WWII. The POD here is a bit of a stretch, but instead of the Italians and Germans falling out in North Africa, Germany commits to helping Mussolini in Africa, crippling his forces in key battles in Stalingrad, avoiding the Second Great Purge within the Red Army. The Soviet Union is able to organize and fight back the German advances leading to a divided Europe...."

"Mussolini and Hitler getting along? Stalin NOT killing his generals? Seems pretty ASB CalBear but I'll give it a read..."

And there is democratic Germany which is allowed to unite and Germans are good guys and one of most reliable allies of the west?

Japan economical great power?

Our history might seem ASB, doesn't it?

"Let's do it but more stupider!"

You can joke, but remember: Hitler had seen one nation get away with annihilating a community that had existed for centuries: the Armenians of Anatolia.

The world Hitler lived in was one where the world didn't care about the plight of an oppressed minority.

 

[Mitridates the Great]

"Let's do it but more stupider!"

Daily reminder that the idea that the Nazis were stupid buffoons incapable of using a blanket without an illustrated instruction book only exists because of an overcorrection of the previously popular idea that the Nazis were formidable in every way and lost solely by sheer bad luck.

 

[Lalli]

Our history might seem ASB, doesn't it?

In OTL is several things which seems unlikely if not ASB in other universes.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

In OTL is several things which seems unlikely if not ASB in other universes.

In TTL, where the final crusade against Nazism was the most brutal conflict in history, the thought that a totalitarian state would collapse with millions of people singing in a massive human chain across the Baltics might seem not only unrealistic but almost like an episode of MLP.

 

[Lalli]

In TTL, where the final crusade against Nazism was the most brutal conflict in history, the thought that a totalitarian state would collapse with millions of people singing in a massive human chain across the Baltics might seem not only unrealistic but almost like an episode of MLP.

That would be indeed seen utterly and criminally ASB in AANW universe. And probably they couldn't believe that unified Germany could be stable democracy which not fall to new nazism and has friendly relations with its neighbors and Israel.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

That would be indeed seen utterly and criminally ASB in AANW universe. And probably they couldn't believe that unified Germany could be stable democracy which not fall to new nazism and has friendly relations with its neighbors and Israel.

The key difference between our world and the AANW world is this: the AANW world has received the brutal lesson that the long arc of humanity DOESN'T always bend toward justice.

OTL, the belief that progress is inevitable is far easier to believe, since the OTL 20th century saw the worst ideologies ever crumble into dust. Remember, we are all taught to believe that the "good" guys won WW2. In 1989-1992, the world saw a massive flourishing of democracy as another totalitarian ideology crumbled into dust and Europe gradually united into a confederation. Our TL has a lot of problems, but there are moments in OTL history that make it easier to have hope for humanity.

TTL, that narrative of progress was utterly shattered when, against all odds, a psychotic ideology took control of Europe's worst ideology and went on a 30-year-long reign of terror that saw millions of people murdered, Europe's Jewish civilization expunged, and truckloads of cultural sites destroyed for good. And the German people didn't willingly topple this horrible regime through public protest but happily profited from the plunder and murder of millions and had to be bombed into surrender.

The simple answer to the actions of the AANW is that there wasn't a happy ending: yes, the Nazis were wiped from the Earth, but they succeeded in leaving scars that will take centuries to erase. And the A4 themselves had to cause numerous war crimes themselves to get rid of that foul monstrosity. The downside is they cynically holding the world hostage to make sure it doesn't happen again. But the upside is that, unlike OTL, governments are more incentivized to make life better for most people.

Someone from AANW is shaped by what happened in their own history, just as we are shaped by what we see. If your grandfather had to fight such a monstrosity, it is impossible to imagine a world where democracy can come through peaceful public protest.

 

[naraht]

Honestly, if you had *tried* to write a future history in 1939 in which a decade later, the British, Americans and French are helping to expand a German Army, I'm not sure what someone would have come up with.