So, as we all know, the Third Reich winning the war and becoming the dominant force in the world is counterfactual history'ss greatest, most profitable, most tired idea. Variants can go from the maximalist (Swastikas over the White House, Reichprotektorat Amerika, draining the Mediterranean) to the more modest (think Fatherland)
And we all know the tropes associated with such a world: cyclopean cement monstruositues built by Albert Speer and no one else, SS in black leather standing in every corner, colonies in the east, social policies working as they did in the 1930s, Superior Nazi Science making Germany a superpower, winning the space race, the same old gerontocrats staying in power for 20 years, unless Reinhard Heydrich has killed them all, etc.
But in all honestly, is that how Germany and Europe would have looked like decades after a Nazi victory? I mean, what are the realistic consequences of an actual German victory and Nazi run Europe?
Fatherland, for instance, had Germany undergo exhaustion after decades of war in the Urals, constant terrorism and unviable colonies in the East.
A short pieve over at AH.com a few years back dwelt on the massive real estate crisis and giant ghost cities of Eastern Europe, built upon the backs of slave labour by Nazi megalomania, but too expensive for the average German.
Of course, there's the impracticability of projects like Germania (Berlin's soil cannot handle the weight of so much cement), the simmering inter-agency rivalry (if it came down to an SS-Army match, would the SS really come on top?) the impact of brain drain on the German economy, the possibility of further agency reorganizations (who's to say the Gestapo or SS wouldn't go the way of the NKVD, or that some offices would survive their chieftains)
What do you think? What do you come up with?
And we all know the tropes associated with such a world: cyclopean cement monstruositues built by Albert Speer and no one else, SS in black leather standing in every corner, colonies in the east, social policies working as they did in the 1930s, Superior Nazi Science making Germany a superpower, winning the space race, the same old gerontocrats staying in power for 20 years, unless Reinhard Heydrich has killed them all, etc.
But in all honestly, is that how Germany and Europe would have looked like decades after a Nazi victory? I mean, what are the realistic consequences of an actual German victory and Nazi run Europe?
Fatherland, for instance, had Germany undergo exhaustion after decades of war in the Urals, constant terrorism and unviable colonies in the East.
A short pieve over at AH.com a few years back dwelt on the massive real estate crisis and giant ghost cities of Eastern Europe, built upon the backs of slave labour by Nazi megalomania, but too expensive for the average German.
Of course, there's the impracticability of projects like Germania (Berlin's soil cannot handle the weight of so much cement), the simmering inter-agency rivalry (if it came down to an SS-Army match, would the SS really come on top?) the impact of brain drain on the German economy, the possibility of further agency reorganizations (who's to say the Gestapo or SS wouldn't go the way of the NKVD, or that some offices would survive their chieftains)
What do you think? What do you come up with?