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What would 1960s Nazi Germany actually look like?

C. J. Samson's book Dominion, while a bit 'you see, the SNP are Literally Fascists' at times, does make the good point that since the war between the Slavs and Poles and the Nazis was one where the Slavs and Poles would be exterminated if they lost, the war could not really end while a Slav or Pole was still living, and every Slav or Pole had a hell of a reason to take up arms.

Hence, the new Eastern Territories would be in a state of guerrilla war near-constantly. I'm not sure his description of it as 'Vietnam on a continental scale' holds, but it certainly would be very unpleasant to live in for the next 20 years at least. You'd have to pay people to take up their Lebensraum.

So in Dominion we have a situation where, by 1952, the Eastern Front has stalemated on a front that roughly corresponds with the Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line that was the original stated aim of Operation Barbarossa. As you say there's an endless guerilla war behind the lines and no prospect of the Soviets coming to the table with the Nazis still running Germany. The Soviets are nonetheless hobbled and the Germans are overstretched and as such a military solution for one power or the other isn't feasible either, thus ensuring that Hitler has his vaunted perpetual war to ensure the continued resilience of the Aryan race.

In one way this would be a triumph of Nazi ideology as it prevents the sort of moderation that @Elektronaut mentioned, ensuring the hardliners maintain the reins long after Hitler himself does the world a favour but it also means that Germany will never truly exploit the potentially vast wealth of the conquered regions, let alone colonise the area in what would only lead to a series of Zamosc style flops.

Basically, unless the Soviets throw in the towel or the Slavs just mutually decide to stop existing Generalplan Ost was always going to be a nightmare rather than a reality. Economically this actually means things remain a bit more rational than turning all your engineers and skilled labourers into soldier-farmers but it doesn't solve the fact that the economy of Nazi occupied Europe was already close to burning itself out in 1944 OTL without having to feed the Ostfront in perpetuity.

Can the situation sustain itself into the sixties? Yes, but it's not going to be the Fatherland world of photocopiers and minibreaks to Zurich, it's going to be Kim Jong Il's DPRK.
 
Would they?

People have pointed out that the Green Revolution would have made Hitler's priorities redundant in a matter of years but that does seem to ignore the fact that Lebensraum and the Soldier Farmer were considered necessary for the "Blood and Soil" nature of Nazi ideology; that a return to agrarian life was vital for the Aryan race rather than merely an expediency of autarky. As such I could see modern agronomy going the way of "Jewish physics" if it pointed out that contradiction.
 
People have pointed out that the Green Revolution would have made Hitler's priorities redundant in a matter of years but that does seem to ignore the fact that Lebensraum and the Soldier Farmer were considered necessary for the "Blood and Soil" nature of Nazi ideology; that a return to agrarian life was vital for the Aryan race rather than merely an expediency of autarky. As such I could see modern agronomy going the way of "Jewish physics" if it pointed out that contradiction.

Right. I don't doubt the efficacy of German agricultural science, I just could easily see the whole thing being subordinated to what you say, that having a frontier of stubborn peasant farmers shielding civilization in the Reich matters a lot more than getting maximum agricultural output from those places. Self-sufficiency would be perfectly, uh, sufficient.
 
Though it would be kind of fun to write a short bit about a CIA analyst trying to explain to his unit supervisor that yes, it really doesn't make any sense that the Germans would be shipping foodstuffs into some of the best agricultural land in the world even thirty years after they got control of it, but that's what the satellite photos definitely seem to indicate.
 
Though it would be kind of fun to write a short bit about a CIA analyst trying to explain to his unit supervisor that yes, it really doesn't make any sense that the Germans would be shipping foodstuffs into some of the best agricultural land in the world even thirty years after they got control of it, but that's what the satellite photos definitely seem to indicate.

You should definitely go for that, great idea.
 
Speaking of organic stuff I can see the Nazis pretending to be ecological minded in propaganda and having people infiltrate green movements in the West and trying to turn them Nazi-friendly.
I have a vague idea of a story about a Cold War with the Nazis where the US Counter-Culture of the Boomers are still definately hippies but instead of having a left wing bent are very, very Eco-Fash. Mostly because the politics of the movement were about draft dodging rather then any actual Anti-War or Marxist beliefs.
 
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.

I was pulling my hair out for a bit there, because I was sure it existed based on your description, but it was way further back than I thought.

"Ghost Cities of the Reich" by @varyar
 
::tugs collar:: That one I’m not very proud of for basically taking someone else’s article and changing a few bits. I was youngish and stupider when I did it.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I can delete it if you want, it was just very evocative and I have something of a curse about remembering just slightly too little about short stories to actually be able to find them.
 
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I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I can delete it if you want, it was just very evocative and I have something of a curse about remembering just slightly too little about short stories to actually be able to find them.

No, it's all good. Hopefully it leads people to the original article, which is really interesting.
 
Maybe I've read too many of these things, or they contradicted themselves at various points, but it wasn't always total immediate extermination planned, was it? Like at some point, the plan was that the big manor farms would have non-German peasant work-forces in perpetuity, even if they were never going to be allowed to, you know, learn to read or anything.
Yes, during the transition the plan for Poland was to have the Polish educational system limited to elementary school, with basic numeracy, German language, basic literacy (not the ability to write) and propaganda that Poles exist to serve Germans as the curriculum.
 
I have a vague idea of a story about a Cold War with the Nazis where the US Counter-Culture of the Boomers are still definately hippies but instead of having a left wing bent are very, very Eco-Fash. Mostly because the politics of the movement were about draft dodging rather then any actual Anti-War or Marxist beliefs.

Boomers Gonna Boom
 
I think there would be a pretty significant difference in whatever 'couterculter' effects a victorious Nazi Germany would have in the United States particularly between a situation where the war ends with some big European stalemate - the Soviets fall, the actual fighting is confined to North Africa, eventually it all just peters out - and one where the US maintains neutrality and never actually becomes involved in the war itself, even if that includes some alternate version of the Pacific War.
 
What about the vassal states in the West? Would the Nazis try to Germanise them or what? Fatherland shows them as clearly subservient, economically and politically but not Germanised.

Would they even be allowed to have any militaries at all? I did wonder about them having a smorgasbord of security forces, with the most combat effective of the national forces actually being part of the Waffen-SS because they need to be kept under political control (for example, the officer corp of such units would be either heavily German dominated or with German minders for native commanding officers) while the national forces proper would be less combat effective and really more para-military police units than a true armed force. Perhaps also Anglo/American-Nazi Wars idea of "fortress troops" as another idea as well.

One thing I thought they might also do was use them in the East - I appreciate the idea of the guerrilla war there but thought it would be weird for the Nazis not to have their vassal states send soldiers to die for them. Now these troops probably wouldn't be as well trained or equipped as Germans but they could be used for auxiliary duties or just as cannon fodder.
 
Though it would be kind of fun to write a short bit about a CIA analyst trying to explain to his unit supervisor that yes, it really doesn't make any sense that the Germans would be shipping foodstuffs into some of the best agricultural land in the world even thirty years after they got control of it, but that's what the satellite photos definitely seem to indicate.

It didn't quite turn out that way, but there you go.
 
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