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The Army of A Victorious Third Reich

It's exciting to have the first piece on two blogs-Fuldapocalypse and here. It's also fascinating to see how this gap has appeared-all the real crunchy rivet counters just concentrate on historical wargaming/study, while the people who make soft AH German victories either go right to Wolfenstein Mecha-Hitler sci fi or just (and often rightfully so) don't go into that much detail on their army at all.
 
What I am interested in knowing is if the traditional German military doctrinal/tactical emphasis will end up shifting for political reasons. Ever since Moltke's days the German military had emphasized leading by task (the "Auftragstaktik"), in which individual commanders would be given wide latitude to implement orders in the matter they saw fit to accomplish their objective. In OTL, this remained the German tactical approach through both world wars.

However, one of the key points, if not the key point, of Nazi thought was the Fuehrerprinzip - the idea that underlings should unquestioningly and blindly implement the orders of their superiors, leaving little scope for self-interpretation. Given the totalitarian nature of the Nazi society and the leadership's desire to implement their mode of thinking in every sphere of life (in OTL there were efforts to extend the Fuehrerprinzip to German workplaces, for example), it's plausible that the military's Auftragstaktik model could have been eroded and replaced by an Imperial Japan-style tactical inflexibility. Such thought has been described as leading in the Japanese case to soldiers with "the hearts of lions, but the brains of sheep".

A good approach would be to look at the OTL SS, which was obviously more politicized than the Wehrmacht. If it was more prone to more ridid obedience than the Heer (Army), then it is reasonable to suppose that this could have perculated into the Wehrmacht in the post-war world even if it is not replaced by the SS.
 
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Very interesting @Coiler.

I hadn't really though about the organisational consequences of a Hitler victory.

The interesting thing about a Nazi Victorious TL is that it would retard advancements in military technology.

Who needs an Me262 if you haven't got B-17s and B-24s filling your skies, and you've defeated all comers with the Bf109F?

No Panther tanks, V-2s or or SG44s, either.

In the West, the Manhattan project is stillborn.

All the exciting development money would go towards civil projects, in the Reich as much as the non-Reich.

Cue 6 8-Engined dieselpunk airliners flying to Tokyo.
 
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Very interesting @Coiler.

I hadn't really though about the organisational consequences of a Hitler victory.

The interesting thing about a Nazi Victorious TL is that it would retard advancements in military technology.

Who needs an Me262 if you haven't got B-17s and B-24s filling your skies, and you've defeated all comers with the Bf109F?

No Panther tanks, V-2s or or SG44s, either.

In the West, the Manhattan project is stillborn.

All the exciting development money would go towards civil projects, in the Reich as much as the non-Reich.

Cue 6 8-Engined dieselpunk airliners flying to Tokyo.
Gas Turbines are fairly likely to come about, simply because much of the technology was being developed for turbochargers, even in peace time. That, and the increasing complexity of increasing large displacement piston engines will probably lead to adoption of gas turbines, albeit slightly later and a t a slower pace (and possibly primarily in the form of turboprops rather than turbojets).
 
What I am interested in knowing is if the traditional German military doctrinal/tactical emphasis will end up shifting for political reasons.

Having some formations/generals being "task leaders" and others being "Fuehrerprinzips" fits perfectly into both the "massively uneven in terms of quality" and "a good or bad high-level commander has more effect on low-level performance than in a less politicized army" components of political armies.
 
Now that you mention it, I would be highly interested in a Larry Bond style AH story of Nazis going crazy in the 60s, although I honestly would be the last one to actually write it ( I don’t have a good track record for finishing stuff and an avowedly not a guns and Bolts guy)

my personal thinking for a nice war you could play with but still limit it in scope so you don’t have a nuclear war on everyone’s hands would be Italy.Perhaps in mmm drawing abit too much from the TNO mod but Nazism is a definitively predatory ideology in practicality as well as principale. Once one has looted and Genocided the entire Eastern Europe the value of such provinces decline greatly and to keep the economy going,they’d have to turn to some other nation which wasn’t utterly looted and destroyed. A nation like Italy, who has never experienced the ravages of war, and has a decent Sphere of influence and empire including lots of things the Nazis would like (the Oil must flow...). Spain would also be a decent addition by this metric, now that I think of it.

Now, despite historical incompetence, I actually think the Italians/Spanish have a decent chance of actually pulling this off. The German army has taken a steep dive in quality, They have huge ass mountains which make Mobile Warfare impractical (Alps/Pyrenees) and the Allies will no doubt be sending all possible aid to the beleaguered forces, up to possibly Volunteers.

That be a fun story to see, with harrowing fights against a force (while not as mighty as it appears) would look overwhelming to our brave participants, with POVs from the Italians, US/British Volunteers and of course the Germans to see all of this unfold from a inside POV.

Of course you’d have to handle certain things delicately (Don’t want to wank off to Franco or the heirs of Mussolini as heros after all) but if handled right, it very well could be great.
 
You could always make a civil society protest movement against the Spanish or Italian government the trigger for Nazi involvement.
They've been thinking about going for Spain or Italy for a while, now while there's internal disorder is the time to strike - and then there's an interesting dynamic inside those countries as the protestors who think their government is shit know the Nazis are worse...
 
Thinking again, I do have one disagreement with the article: I think the SS would remain, not as the military organization it became but as the institution which ran the RKs. The Military would be responsible for crushing uprisings and the like with the force of the Panzerrush while the SS are the monsters responsible for the implementation of Nazi policies like the Hunger scheme and The Holocaust. In this event, I suspect the SS would remain basically a secret police organization with a brutal colonialist clerical duty and the Einzatgruppen and other associated units as their military assets.
 
However, one of the key points, if not the key point, of Nazi thought was the Fuehrerprinzip - the idea that underlings should unquestioningly and blindly implement the orders of their superiors, leaving little scope for self-interpretation.
It seems from my understanding that the Führerprinzip actually gave a fair amount of leeway for underlings to creatively interpret instructions from above and take initiatives accordingly, in accordance with the notion of "working towards the Führer". Hitler's orders were deliberately vague and open to interpretation, so that henchmen could compete with each other to implement them in the way most pleasing to him.
 
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