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What would Nazi Germany look like today?

Discussion in 'What If - European Theater - Western Front & Atlan' started by Trip Jab, Jul 31, 2016.

  1. Trip Jab

    Trip Jab New Member

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    Lets just pretend that Nazi Germany didn't get into any of the conflicts that it did during the real world. Just pretend that Hitler only captured the same amount of land that it did during the real world and then just decided to stop for what ever reason. Just pretend that Hitler was some how successful in getting rid of the so called "undesirables" inside of its territory. And pretend that the world would be just as advanced as it is today. What would that nation look like today? Would it be a world super power or would it fail horribly. What would they have done during the cold war. Would Israel and Germany be at each others throats all the time?
     
  2. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    I always thought Nazi Germany was a futuristic-style society. They ran it like a corporation, their "profits" were the different goals of the regime, and they didn't care how they achieved it, much like the end justifies the means. The movie "The Terminator" where in the future the humans were exterminated just because they were seen as the enemy, that was like a metaphor for the holocaust, but the industrialized mass murder was definitely futuristic.
     
  3. Tamino

    Tamino Doc - The Deplorable

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    Please, could you be more speciffic where Hitler became "reasonable" and had stopped: Benelux, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, A-A line?
     
  4. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    One has to think of the economic side of the equation. Germany was a socialist nation in which the bureaucracy controlled all production. If the western allies had never invaded, and the Soviets had ceded their lost territory you might have ended up with such a stalemate.

    Then what? During the war, Germany was essentially fueled by the looting of vassal states. What do they do after the war? In my opinion, it would simply be another Soviet Union doomed to fail by simple economic reality. Worse, instead of a Soviet state in which the various members were more or less supportive, you'd have all these very unhappy populations who didn't really think living as a peasant for the German Reich was all that desirable.

    The SU lasted 70 years before grinding to a halt. I'd give the Reich ten years before it imploded.
     
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  5. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Interesting question. Given Hitler's "Divide and conquer" way of administering his government, a civil war might have been a result after Hitler's death. Goring was the heir but did not get along with Himmler nor Bormann. Nobody liked Goebbels. Himmler might have come on top. Who's to say. Interesting question. Hmmmm
     
  6. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    Production was still private ownership. The leaned more capitalist than socialist. The private corporations played a big role in the direction and decision-making of the government. Look at the Circle of Friends of the SS to see just how much influence private enterprise had in the Reich.
     
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  7. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    No. All production, wages, profits were dictated by the state down to the finest detail. In effect, it was no different than the Soviet Five Year Plans with the exception that producers were allowed to skim some profit. That's not capitalism driven by market demand, it's communism with a twist. It's actually very much like Venezuela in today's world. Private enterprise, profit, is officially allowed, but in reality all of the production and distribution is dictated by government. People are stealing zoo animals to eat even though it's a small country with enormous oil reserves.
     
  8. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    During the New Deal Roosevelt dictated the direction, etc., in which the private enterprises would run. There are many similarities between fascism and the New Deal. Mussolini stated Fascism is more correctly termed "corporatism"
     
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  9. toki2

    toki2 Active Member

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    Let's face it. I remember TV progs in the 60's that had us all flying about on the super highways in sky pods and robots doing every household task. Predictions are useless !
     
  10. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    I don't think you're grasping the essential difference. A company in 1940 Germany could not decide to produce toasters instead of MP40 magazines. The regime dictated what would be produced and at what cost and how many workers they would use and what they'd pay them and who would supply the steel and what they'd pay for that, etc, etc, etc.
    You could bid for a government contract, but you couldn't produce something else in the free market sense of a "socialist" western European democracy today. The state controlled the economy, completely.
     
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  11. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    The most likely scenario for this to transpire is a Germany unwilling to start a general war, but wait for opportunities to pick off morsels in the Soviet fashion, possibly if the Anglo-French get 6-12 months into a Pacific war and elect to fight one war at a time.

    I see two possible 1,000 year Reich's. The Soviet model as proposed by Kodiak where Nazi Germany fights a 'Cold War' with the West fighting proxy wars and insurrections globally, while trying to match the West in achievement one for one. She might collapse after a few generations, but of course this would be not a two way, but three way Cold War between Communist's, Fascist's and Western Democracy's. Inevitably each side would jocky to gang up one one of them, or act to prevent such a outcome. In such a situation Nazi Germany might actually find the west accommodating enough to help keep them in the game, but just not enough to gain advantage.

    The other is the Sleeping Dragon/Hermit Kingdom in the Red China-North Korea mold where global outreach is rejected for internal interests and the occasional border/proxy war, while selling off weapons/technology for hard cash and resources. North Korea shows you can be a world pariah and still survive and China shows you can 'manage' a transformation, though the jury is still out on them.

    All Germany had to do is hold out long enough to create a viable WMD and delivery system to avoid non existence.
     
  12. green slime

    green slime Member

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    You could produce toasters instead of magazines, because the entire system was so corrupt; all you had to do was bribe the correct officials to get the required license. Then, you bribed the steel producers to slide you some steel, and you bribed the work office to declare your workers exempt. All this meant that luxury consumer items were very costly.

    It was easier and more beneficial with greater profit margins to supply army contracts. But even there you had to bribe in order to avoid getting squeezed by better connected companies.

    It really wasn't socialist, as much as semi-planned nepotism.

    It was this enormous scale of graft and bribery that Schindler managed to navigate so adroitly.
     
  13. A-58

    A-58 Cool Dude

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    There was a movie along the lines of Nazi Germany surviving WW2 called "Fatherland" with Rutger Hauer. I saw part of it and turned it off with the intent of watching it in it's entirety at a later date, but it never came back on. So please no spoilers! Here's the lead to "Fatherland" on the imdb website.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109779/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_104

    Since seeing part of this movie, I always thought it was a fascinating concept (when I was younger and was not as well informed of the evils of the 3rd Reich as I am now of course) in the "what if" genre of sorts.
     
  14. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    Himmler decided to expand Auschwitz because IG Farben put a plant there, Hitler didn't order IG Farben to that part of Poland. We could go back and forth on this, I have valid points and you have valid points. Hitler destroyed the unions and workers were exploited and had little rights, so it wasn't a communist workers paradise. Ownership was still private, Hitler believed private ownership and competition produced the greatest results, that's directly from a Nazi historian who lived in the Third Reich, Franz Neumann.
     
  15. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    It was a hybrid of the right and of the left.
     
  16. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    That's exactly what happens in a communist workers paradise.
     
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  17. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    There were plenty of trade unions in Russia, and Communism is supposed to be a worker's paradise where they flourish. Workers in Germany were oppressed, exploited, underpaid, etc. I'm not saying the USSR was much better, but they were two different ideologies when it came to economics.
     
  18. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    244,706 mi² of craters?
     
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  19. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    No. There were no trade unions in the Soviet Union. The government was your trade union and if you complained, you earned a free trip to the Gulag for more intensive workers paradise activities. That's the same way the national socialist paradise worked.
     
  20. Mussolini

    Mussolini Gaming Guru WW2|ORG Editor

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    I think, architecturally speaking, the Third Reich would have been mighty impressive looking.

    [​IMG]
     

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