How many Sixes does Adolf Nazi have to Roll?

[Max Sinister]

A long time ago (about 15 years now), I decided to challenge myself by writing a detailed, non-ASBish timeline starting with the Mongol conquests since Genghis being stillborn, and continuing said timeline until the present (roughly, either by year or technology would have counted). This I called "climbing the Mount Everest of AH". You have to read and judge for yourself, but if you ask me, I certainly succeeded. And so far, nobody else seems to even seriously have tried to copy this achievement, in a different, individual way.

After this challenge, I did not find a satisfying challenge for a long time that was realizable as well - "Dubia" and "Jaredia", two timelines with an earlier Global Warming / different geography, proved to be too much of a challenge. Climbing Mount Everest is doable, but this was more like walking from the Cape of Good Hope to tierra del Fuego via the Bering Strait. Maybe doable, but still.

So there seemed to be no other worthy and doable challenge in Althist, and there is only one Mount Everest in the world after all. That's why I mostly dropped the topic of Althist for some time.

But then one day, when I had a lot of time to ponder Althist, I remembered a different challenge at the very heart of it. Not a Mount Everest, more like a Mariana Trench.

This one isn't a new one, of course. It has been tried many times with varying success. Think of "Fatherland", "The Man in the High Castle", the new "Wolfenstein" games, "Swastika Night", "Wenn das der Führer wüsste", or the more recent "NSA".

Most of these works either stay deliberately vague (even "Fatherland", which was written by a real historian after all) or make assumptions simply too outrageous (looking at you, CalBear). I didn't want to do either.

Of course, at that point you have the old problem of the sheer superiority of Adolf Nazi's opponents. It does remind of the old Jewish joke with the punchline "Does the 'Führer' know this map?" Let alone the moral factor. Having FDR and/or Churchill making peace with Adolf Nazi, even one without losses for their countries, is a bit like asking POTUS Lincoln "Is the liberation of the slaves really worth the lives of so many white men?"

It seemed doable if and only if Adolf Nazi was rolling sixes all the time. Or at least close to it. So I decided to let him do exactly that. And got a title for a story at the same time. One that keeps a clear distance to nazism to boot.

 

[Max Sinister]

Just to clarify what I'm aiming at:

• The conflict called "World War 2" has to end in Europe and nearby areas (Caucasus, Near and Middle East, Northern Africa, Iceland/Greenland) until silvester 1945, max. (A permanent armistice as between the two Koreas would count.)
• Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe and nearby (see above) have to have ceased warring with the US, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union, or never started to make war with them in the first place. Or vice versa.
• Nazi Germany and its allies have to control de facto all of the Soviet Union's territory west of the Dniepr and south of the Düna/Dvina river.
• The western Allies (US, Empire, Free French) must not have a foothold on the European continent, save for Gibraltar maybe.

• Nazi Germany has to survive in recognizable shape at least twenty years after World War 2 ends. Meaning:
• The head of state has to use the title of "Führer".
• It has to be a one-party state effectively ("block parties" as in Communist Eastern Europe would pass, though), governed by the NSDAP.
• Said party's ideology has to include German(ic) über nationalism, aggressive militarism, expansionism, white supremacy (even if called differently), and radical antisemitism. In theory and practice.
• It has to control (together with allies and satellites) at least the same territory it controlled when the World War ended. Losses are acceptable only if it gained more and better territory in some other place before said losses happen.
• Adolf Nazi, if dead after those twenty years, still has to be held in high regard officially. No "Dehitlerization" (like Destalinisation) allowed.
• Almost superfluous to say: It has to be settled mostly by German-speaking citizens of Germany. Humans, not robots or zombies. Who actually mostly have German(ic) ancestors.
• Most important: Only realizable events. No FDR/Churchill suddenly becoming convinced to become a nazi and make his country join Germany's side (that's against the laws of human psychology). No sudden invention of genetic engineering or artificial intelligence way ahead of their time (that's against the laws of scientific progress). No Maus for every German soldier (that's against the laws of production). No transports of a million men over 1000 miles in a day (that's against the laws of logistics). No discovery of yuge oil fields under German soil (that's against the laws of geology).
• Additional: Adolf Nazi has to be alive, not comatose, not incapacitated, not committed etc. In short: To be able to give commands to people and notice at least when they aren't executed.

 

[Max Sinister]

Links to collect background information:

• Entry at TV Tropes (updated 23/4/2022)
• Entry on the other place's Wiki
• Entryon the AltHistory Wikia
  • Entry on the German AltHistory Wikia
• Entry on the GURPS Wikia

 

[Max Sinister]

This post gives an overview of various PoDs that might help Nazi Germany win the war. Including their necessary conditions, how they'll influence the war, and how high I guesstimate the probability that they're going to happen.

If I have to heap coincidence and dumb luck for this, I don't mind. Not even if I literally arrive at a chance of one in a million. Not because we are on Discworld, it's the principle of the thing. And admit it: It's somehow very calming to know that Adolf Nazi's chances to win are that low.

Also consider: The shorter the allowed window of opportunity, the smaller the probability of this event happening.

Note: Two independent 50/50 chances usually make a chance of 25%. Rolling eight sixes in a row'd have a chance of less than one in a million. (I'd liked it better if it had been six or seven times.) But if the chances are dependent, things look different. If e.g. Canaris' machinations are discovered, the chances for Spain entering the war grow (because Franco had been misinformed by the Abwehr). Also, Heydrich might survive. And the attack on Crete'd go different if the Nazis knew that British troops there were three times stronger than what Canaris had claimed. And if the BEF was defeated at Dunkirk, practically the whole war changes for Britain, since they'll lack experienced troops now - especially to raise and train more troops!

Only allowed percentages: <1, 1, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 70, 80, 90, 95, 98, 99, >99.

Oh, and every PoD has to happen in May 1940 or afterwards - with the "Sickle cut", Adolf Nazi already got veeery lucky, it'd be very hard to top that.


Alternate Axis members:

- Spain: Depends on two questions: Do they know that Canaris gave them informtion that was wrong? And will they join the war for a short, local campaign (Operation Felix, restricted to Gibraltar), or something bigger?
* Canaris uncovered: 20-30 for a Gibraltar campaign, 5-10 for a bigger one.
* Otherwise: <5/<1 respectively.

- Turkey: <5%. Even then, this wasn't the Turkey of today - their military strength rather was comparable to Yugoslavia, if not worse. Also, the answer'd depend on whether they'd have to fight the Brits, the Soviets, or both.


- Argentine: <1. Even for a local campaign to take the Falklands, nothing more, <5.


- Japan (vs. Soviet Union): <5. Even the chance for an indicent after Nomonhan <20.


- South Africa: <1


- Soviet Union (vs. Brits): <20


- Persia/Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia: Unless the Wehrmacht is already standing near the big population centers, an uprising is likely to fail. Unless British presence was weaker...


- India: A big-scale uprising in India might easily tip the scales of the World War. Despite of Bose and the like, the probability seems to be low, though.



Alternate Nazi campaigns:

- Operation Felix: Attack on Gibraltar. Needs cooperation of Spain (see above). Hence, improbable.

- Operation Isabella: Attack on Portugal. Also needs cooperation of Spain. Even more improbable than Felix.

- Operation Polar fox: Attack on Sweden. Probably doable, but during the war, there's no visible gain. Sweden already delivered iron ore to Germany, a war wasn't necessary. Maybe towards the end of the war, when the war with the strongest opponents is over, to complete the "Greater Germanic Reich".

- Operation Fir tree: Attack on Switzerland. May not look like it, but would be a disaster for the Nazis. Switzerland was able to mobilize 500,000 men, had great defenses in the mountains, and was willing to fight on even if the Germans took the lower parts of the country with the big cities. Hence, improbable.

- Operation Hercules: Attack on Malta. Needs cooperation of fascist Italy. Mussolini's pride would be hurt if his armed forces didn't manage to take even little Malta. Also, the Wehrmacht would needs paratroopers for this, most of which were lost on Crete in OTL.

- Operation Gertrud: Attack on Turkey. Needs cooperation of Bulgaria and/or the Soviet Union, or control of Greece. All of which is possible. As said above, the Turkish army wasn't very strong during World War 2. OTOH, the bad railway network of Turkey (a good part was still single-track) would delay Wehrmacht advances.

- Earlier Operation Barbarossa: Was originally planned for early May, not late June as in OTL. Looks promising, but there's a different danger: The Rasputitsa, the early mud season, which took especially long in early 1941. In fact, OTL invasion didn't start too late for this. Hence possible, but not promising.

- Mega-Dieppe: In OTL, the Allies used about 10,000 soldiers for the Dieppe raid and lost more than 6,000 of them. The lessons learned from this were valuable, though. But what if the Allies had decided to start a bigger invasion (albeit smaller than Overlord) and it had been a failure as well? (Wouldn't necessarily have to happen at Dieppe. Any coastal place controlled by the Nazis and their satellites from Narvik to Casablanca would work.)

- Torch fails:

- Nazis bomb Baku:

- Nazis strike Murmansk/the railroad there: That'd have to be done by general Dietl's mountaineer troops. Might cut off the Soviet Union's most important warm-water harbor, hence L&L.

- Nazis take Cyprus:

- Nazis attack and defeat the BEF at Dunkirk: 50 for an attack. Somewhat less for a successful attack (total destruction of the BEF at lower losses for the Wehrmacht). Would have enormous consequences for the rest of the war, as it'd become harder for Britain to raise and train new troops. Hence, this PoD might influence many other on this page.

- In August '41, OKH commits its reserve mechanized divisions to AGS's left wing (aka Gornostaipol option):


Alternate Nazi personnel:

- Fritz Todt doesn't die: Which also means that Albert Speer won't get his job. Now who might be better to expand German arms production?

- Reinhard Heydrich doesn't die:

- Wilhelm Canaris removed as head of Abwehr:

- Hermann Göring dies:

- Heinrich Himmler dies:


Alternate Nazi technology:

- Konrad Zuse's computers:

- Nazi nukes:

- More/better Messerschmitt planes:

- Enigma security notched up:

- More/better Tigers/Panthers/Jagdpanthers/Königstigers:

- Thermobaric bomb by Mario Zippermayr: Potentially devastating, but needed until 1943 in our history to be tested.


Alternate Nazi economy:

- Operation Desert: Nazis develop oil shale technology. In the long run promising, but the local project wasn't very profitable.


Alternate deaths:

- FDR: The driving force against Adolf Nazi in US politics. Hard to say who'd be able to replace him. Doesn't mean the Nazis should start to provoke an FDR-less US.

- Churchill: The driving force against Adolf Nazi in British politics.

- Stalin: Per se, many might lead the war better, esp. the military and in the early stage of the Nazi-Soviet war. Unfortunately, his death might throw the Soviet Union into chaos at the wrong moment.

- de Gaulle:

- Chiang Kai-shek:

- Eisenhower:

- Patton:

- Zhukov:


Other:

- Wehrmacht during Barbarossa better prepared for the Russian winter. Strangely, planners had warned about this, but the leadership didn't care. Especially odd because some high-ranked Nazis had actually lived in Russia, including Rosenberg. Who was even more reality-impaired than his boss, though. Impact: Many German casualties could be avoided, so quite high. Probability: Still low.

- Better treatment of the people of the Soviet Union. There was a lot of anti-Communism around. But as many have pointed out, it'd mean that we need Nazis who aren't Nazis. Improbable.

- Volga Germans are settled in the Reich before Barbarossa (seriously, was nobody thinking about them? So much about caring about your "Volksgenossen"...):

- Separate peace: Veeery tricky, of course.

 

[Max Sinister]

Another overview, about important people in this timeline.

Longer lives

Leading Nazis

• Adolf Nazi
• Joseph Goebbels
• Heinrich Himmler
• Reinhard Heydrich
• Robert Ley
• Wilhelm Frick
• Alfred Rosenberg
• Hans Frank
• Fritz Todt?

Other Germans

• Eva Braun
• The Goebbels kids
• Many German Soldiers (up to 5 Millions)
• Many German civilians (esp. from the East and the big cities)
• Klaus Junge (young chess talent)
• Relatives of Adolf Nazi from the Waldviertel
• Erwin Rommel?
• Hanna Reitsch?
• Heinrich George

Foreign Statesmen

• Benito Mussolini
• Gian Galeazzo Ciano
• Italo Balbo?
• Pierre Laval
• Vidkun Quisling
• Adrian Mussert
• Ferenc Szalasi
• Ion Antonescu
• Jozef Tiso
• Joseph P. Kennedy jr.
• Robert F. Kennedy?

Others

• Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Buddy Holly
• Ritchie Valens
• The Big Bopper
• James Dean
• The Heydrich killers

Shorter lives

Foreign Statesmen

• Franklin D. Roosevelt?
• Winston Churchill?
• Charles de Gaulle?

Partisans

• Tito
• Karol Woytila?

Other Nazi opponents

• Konrad Adenauer
• Kurt Schumacher
• Oskar Schindler

Never born IOTL

• TBD

Never born ITTL

• The author's parents. Both of them. Draw the conclusion.
• Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz
• All POTUSes since Clinton, Hillary too. Even Biden.
• All British PMs since Tony Blair
• Emmanuel Macron, Nicolas Sarkozy
• Juan Carlos of Spain, Aznar, Zapatero
• Mario Draghi, Matteo Renzi
• Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, AOC
• Binyamin Netanyahu
• Greta Thunberg, Malala, Emma Gonzales
• Prince Charles, Lady Di, Carmilla etc.
• Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi
• No Popes so far!
• Steve Bannon, Mencius Moldbug, Andrew Breitbart, David Duke
• Michael Kühnen, Lutz Bachmann, Attila Hildmann, Ken Jebsen, Akif Pirincci, Alice Weidel, Bernd Lucke, Bernd Höcke, Jörg Meuthen, Storchi, Anders Behrend Breivik
• Joschka Fischer, Winfried Kretschmann, Jürgen Trittin, Cem Özdemir, Jutta Ditfurth
• Jürgen Möllemann, Guido Westerwelle, Christian Lindner, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger
• Sigmar Gabriel, Martin Schulz, Andrea Nahles, Peer Steinbrück, Rudolf Scharping
• Markus Söder, Uschi Leyen, AKK, Luschet, Roland Koch, Günter Oettinger
• Horst Köhler, Christian Wulff, Ole von Beust, Klausi Wowi
• MbS, Osama bin Laden, ISIS people

Alternate careers

• TBD

 

[Max Sinister]

This scientific concept was popularized (as a part of Chaos Theory) during the 1980s. In its best-known form it's usually quoted as "A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil may cause a tornado in Texas". The concept was discovered by the scientist Edward N. Lorenz in 1963, during a computer simulation of weather. It was when he entered the almost-precise data from an earlier point in time than that which the calculations had already reached. After continuing to run the simulation for the same amount of time, the results turned out completely different: Proving that small changes don't have to stay small, but may grow exponentially.

(Ray Bradbury's story "A Sound of Thunder" predicted something like this as early as 1952, BTW.)

In Alternate History, many authors like to use well-known historical characters in similar functions as in our world's history. Take Goebbels as an inquisitor in the service of the Vatican, or Richard Nixon as a used-car salesman - of steamcars to boot. This makes their stories easier to digest, and their characters easier to relate to. "How many Sixes does Adolf Nazi have to Roll?" is not supposed to be an easy story.

Also, it fits that - if we use the butterfly effect - that the world we know is destroyed bit by bit as the years go by. (As if the Nazis hadn't done enough damage in the first place.) Hence, the only people who are the same as in our world are those conceived and born before the Point of Divergence. That is: 1940s, roughly. If I decide to let people from our history appear who are born after this date, they'll be really more like siblings from the same parents (possible after all, esp. if these parents were already married/betrothed/an item before the PoD), with the same sex (the chance is about 50%), the same first name (possible, families like to reuse names, esp. traditional ones, and people's tastes tend to stay similar), and roughly the same birth date.

Furthermore, there's still the possibility of "morphic twins", as Terry Pratchett would have said: Different people who have the same function as certain people from our history. If there is no Steve Jobs, someone else will probably still invent the PC.

 

[Max Sinister]

How would a victorious Nazi Reich react to...

• The first nuke, and further developments, including nuclear power plants. Especially if the Communists get them!
• Space flight/ICBMs (consider that Nazi Germany was most advanced in rocketry, at this time)
• Wide-spread television
• Growing pollution, the hole in the Ozone layer, acid rain, the Climate Catastrophe
• IT innovations (computers, databases, networks, e-mail, the PC, office software...) Consider that Konrad Zuse created a working computer during the war which was more advanced than what the Allies had at that time!

• An invasion of Japan, let alone defeat and destruction
• A Sino-Soviet split
• Independent India trying to go its own way
• Independence movements throughout Africa, Asia
• The Civil Rights movement, other black and non-white movements
• Communist takeover of China, other important states
• Islamist movements, e.g. the Ayatollahs' in Iran (Khomeini was born before the PoD!)
• A tripartite (Nazis and fascists/Communists/Capitalist Christian Democrats) Cold War, if not with even more participants
• A breakdown of the Soviet Union (The Soviet Empire might last shorter if they don't have Eastern Europe to exploit)

• The Reich's bureaucracy growing sclerotic
• New kinds of guerillas (Che Guevara was born before the PoD!)
• Open power struggles among factions of their own
• An ally (Franco's Spain, Vichy France, or even italy) trying to part ways with the Reich/fascism
• The holocaust becoming known by the public
• Germans demanding freedom/democracy (well, it's possible)

• Rock music, new drugs, the seual revolution, in short: The counter-culture
• The invention of the birth control pill
• New Hollywood, video games, science-fiction/fantasy/horror
• Vatican II (maybe even a split?)
• A relevant neopagan movement, or widespread atheism

• Improved agriculture (which puts the Lebensraum idea into question)
• Food surplus, and growing obesity of "Aryans"
• An oil crisis
• An end of the gold standard (if there is a Bretton Woods equivalent)
• New kinds of organized crime
• Rise of the megacorps

 

[Max Sinister]

I'm still not sure about which PoDs to use and in which order - all I can say is that I want to use as few nudges towards Nazi victory as possible. Makes a better balance between the two or three political camps in the Cold War that's going to ensue. And creates more tension for the story. (Hope this isn't too much.)

All while keeping it as realistic as possible.

Only that much: No matter which PoDs I'll choose - these sharp turns in history will have to get the best descriptions. No handwaving allowed.


"Kill your darlings"

This is a writing advice you often hear, although I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it, TBH.

It's true however that I had to follow it occasionally. One example:

I would have liked to appoint Leni Riefenstahl first female Nazi minister (of propaganda, natch) after the death of Adolf Nazi and Goebbels becoming new "Führer", but as things look, Goebbels couldn't stand her, so her career would be cut off without Hitler...

 

[Max Sinister]

This is a story where Adolf Nazi, initiator of World War 2, and main responsible one for the organized mass murder of about six million Jews, not only wins this war, but keeps on reigning over his new Reich. What do you expect, except colonialism of the worst kind, mass murder, and sadism on a gigantic scale?

But if you insist on details: This story offends everyone to the left of the Nazis (because the latter won), and in particular the government of the US, the UK, and the Stalinist Soviet Union (because they are willing to make peace with him); Jews, Zingaros(?), Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Czechs, French, Serbians, and several other people, plus the gaysexuals (because hundreds of thousands of either of them are murdered, tortured, and/or enslaved, without justification or punishment for the culprits); the European resistances and the German one in particular, for not being able to topple the Nazi regime; various people from Germany, continental Europe, Northern Africa, the Near and Middle East, for becoming Nazis or their collaborators; various moral institutions (the churches, the feminists, the Dalai Lama) for failing to stop the Nazis either; and of course Nazis, for being the unrepentant mass murderers, or at least the latter's apologists, they were and are. And often corrupt and/or perverted to boot. And often quite ridiculous characters, indeed. And often infighting (so much about unity a la "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer"), even when their country and their people (whom they allegedly loved so much) had a World War to fight. And people from the rest of the world, for being at lest willing to cooperate with Nazis. The Japanese in particular because the millions of Chinese they were willing to kill, and the hundreds of thousands of Allied PoWs they had planned to kill just in case aren't glossed over - and they receive a harsher punishment than in OTL.