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May 8th, 2006
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May 8th, 2006
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The US and Germany "exchanged" goods via Spain, etc. during the war. Companies like IBM and GM were itching to get back into their lucrative European markets and covertly supplied Hitler with production and raw materials. After Roosevelt's death, it is just hard to see a United States bent on cold war with Germany. I suspect that the "Truman Doctrine" would have sponsored an American-German division of the world in order to move Germany away from Japan. The United States, under these conditions, would have increased trade with Germany to prevent a return to economic depression and probably have instituted a "national democratic" change in policies. More KKK (Truman was a member in the 1920s) and less liberty. England and France probably would have seen a similar development. Hitler wanted to create a European order reminiscent of older Mitteldeutschland concepts. That is, a strong Germany at the heart of a more structured economic order. In terms of France and England, Hitler's Germany would only have expected concessions in a few areas. (ie. handing over Jews or German refugees and permitting a shortterm occupation for national security reasons). Other than that, as we can see from the German-French armistice, German demands were hardly revolutionary. The Germans did not force Vichy to become the antisemites or loyal Nazi supporters that they were...this was the choice of Petain & co. for their own political reasons. There is a frightening dimension to Nazism that the media has generally erased. Questions like "how could Germans have supported Hitler" cover up an even more bizarre issue: how could so many western Europeans have been pulled to that political ideology? Europeans created a myth after 1945. Austria, Italy, Spain and Flemish Belgium supported Nazi Germany outright. As seen by SS recruitment, the Norwegians, Dutch and French exhibited a strong pro-Hitler stance in at least a healthy proportion of the populations. The attitudes against Germany hardened only as the war situation deteriorated and (1) the Allies were systematically destroying city after city on the continent and (2) the Germans were forced to lean heavily on western Europe for civilian commodities to increase military production at home. England represented the only country apparently immune to Hitler, but they were the only democratic state left in 1940 and the English had developed a significant and certainly unadulterated anti-German hatred after 1871 and German unification. I suspect that Mosley's boys (built on the traditions of Kipling & Co.) however indicate that England would have independently "gone Nazi" if left moreorless untouched by Hitler. What would all this have meant? What would the consequences have been? (1) Most of western Europe would have followed Nazi-Germany outright (2) A "harder" British Empire would have tacitly supported Germany (3) The US, now in overt racist clothing, would have cemented German power through trade and probably joint military actions against non-Europeans (4) The rest of Europe would have continued their alliances with Hitler (5) The residual Slavic peoples, ie. Poles or Czechs or Russians, would have supported Hitler much like the East Germans followed Stalin. (People are strange). (6) The rest of the world, because Hitler might have given up Japan for American support, would have been under the heel of the greatest concentration of power in history. Therefore: If Germany had won the war, the world would have witnessed a Pax Germanien resting on the pillars of Anglo-Saxon support. Owing to steadily improving conditions for Europe and the United States, and a population conditioned to think in selfish and racial terms, the new Germanized global system would have lasted for a thousand years or more. By the way, the Jews and many a Slav and Gypsy would have disappeared. Would we care today? The answer, sorry to say, is no. We would think of these groups in the same manner as we think about...say...North American aboriginal peoples. There would be a twist, however. With all that racist conditioning, we wouldn't really think of it at all. The Holocaust (the word, if any, would be something like deliverance) would have been an episode, a transition phase, sort of like the colonization of North America. We would be totally different people...yet sort of the same. |
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May 8th, 2006
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Ollie......you stated....England represented the only country apparently immune to Hitler, but they were the only democratic state left in 1940 and the English had developed a significant and certainly unadulterated anti-German hatred after 1871 and German unification. .....Now I have never come across any one who said that they hate the Germans, even during WW2 we had a German national living next door to us and No one gave her a hard time. There was for several hundred of years a very close tie between the two countries and our troops had fought many campaign together across the world.
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May 8th, 2006
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 Pax Germanica.
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May 8th, 2006
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This is quite a claim to make, not the idea but its longevity. I find it difficult to predict any world order 50 years from now nevermind 1000 years. There are 2 forces currently in our world that promise to have a big influence on global power in the foreseeable future. The influence of Islam in the traditional 'old power' states of Western Europe and the rise of China and India as both economic and information superpowers. In your alternate history, what would either have happened to the degree they have in our history? Islam, according to some observers, is currently undertaking a gradual fifth column 'invasion' of Western Europe. Would this have happened under a German dominated Europe? It is logical to assume that birth rates under German hegemony would not have been much changed from today. Rapidly improved standards of living have negated one of the traditional needs of having a large family, that of economic power for the family unit. The other factor of rapidly improved standards of living is the increase in health and average lifespan, meaning that the burden of social care to look after elderly citizens is much increased. IMO both would have affected a postwar Großdeutschland as they are affecting Western society today. The western decline in birth rates would have meant that Islamic migration into Western Europe would likely have happened in any alternate history too no? High birth rates and the steady increases in population size would still have happened in China or India had Germany won the war, as they have happened in reality. It's hard to predict for certain but it seems that both nations would have challenged a German/Anglo-Saxon dominated world, not simply through sheer numbers alone, but through sheer numbers supported by economic and 'brain' power. This cannot be ignored. This is why I find a notion of any 'empire' lasting a thousand years difficult to agree with, whether Germany had won the war or not. |
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May 8th, 2006
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Sorry for the thousand years bit...I used flowery language to express a crude concept. I only meant to emphasize that the Slavic world, the only real thorn in Hitler's side, would have been "Kaputt"...for a long time. Or, alternatively, that another type of European and North American system would have emerged that unlike NATO would have used force to guarantee basic political and economic interests. (ie. A violent NATO). I am not so certain about the population increases. The Nazis used considerable propaganda pressure to encourage large families and the highest possible birthrate. In fact, Himmler's SS sponsored the "Lebensborn" project to help German women avoid abortion by giving them an alternative. Women were granted full anonymity and the state took responsibility for raising the children. The program was later expanded to protect the children fathered by German soldiers in the occupied territories. There was a great emphasis on children in the Reich. I speculate, for a number of reasons that I do not want to outline, that the German population today be around 250 to 300 million instead of 85. [Incidentally, just in case, the old SS "breeding factory" idea has been totally refuted as another myth propagated by the spin doctors]. In theory, the Nazis would not have permitted any immigration. The object of the entire Hitler experiment was to (re)create a pure Aryan race through state racial engineering...sort of like "Brave New World" without Huxley's incredible and farsighted attention to genetic engineering. In fact, some of Hitler's more romantic notions entertained the idea of moving all factories outside of the Reich and creating some strange form of forest fantasy land. None of this would have worked, of course. There are no Aryans. Industry is dependent on geographical and a thousand other factors. And, it is ultimately hard to control entire populations. Regarding the Islamic, Indian and Chinese futures, all three would have been in serious trouble owing to a variety of factors: (1) China & Civil War: China would have been completely screwed. An extended Japanese occupation would have meant hundreds of thousands or millions of additional deaths. Even if the Americans defeated Japan, China would have been handed over to Chiang Kai Shek and the nationalists. Since his power was built on a number of cruel warlords, China would have been heavily splintered and in no way similar to the post-Mao example. All of this is supremely theoretical, but I would suggest that a series of brutal civil wars would have devastated China...a country reeling from nationalist mismanagement and horrific Japanese occupation policies. (2) India as Colony: A radicalized British Empire would not have permitted Indian independence. That country would have continued in their role of servicing the British Empire. Considering Hitler's general support for Britain, it is highly likely that the Royal Navy would have been busy transporting German ground forces to India to crush any serious independence movement. Ghandi and the independence movement would have been in trouble. [There was a degree of British opposition to independence at the end of the 1940s. If we look at France, that fought long wars in Indochina and North Africa in order to safeguard their empire, Europeans already exhibited the type of hardcore thinking that I am trying to outline.] (3) Even slower Islamic development: The Nazis, for some strange reason, did not really have any problems with the Islamic world. Bearing this in mind, and subtracting the matter of Israel, it is fair to suggest that relations would have been stable. But, the Nazi economic system aimed at complete autarky and ultimately independence. It was opposed to the American model based on free trade and liberal or "fair" practices. This means that the American-style flow of technology and ideas would not have taken place. German factories would have produced commodities for Arab consumption and turned the region into just another massive market for German exports. Sort of like today but without any of the calls for Jihad. In any case, a German victory might have led to a series of revanchist wars on the part of Turkey...ie. the old Ottomans trying to gain control of their lost territories. Hitler & Co. probably would have supported such actions as the tool with which to control Arab oil. Divide and conquer. |
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May 9th, 2006
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The matter of the British-German relationship is a toughie...especially since both nations might meet in the round of 16 at the World Cup next month. I am sure that the tabloid press will get ugly if that proves the case. National hatred is a hard if not impossible thing to define. Considering Doppleganger's rebuke of my use of "thousand years" and your point concerning my use of "hatred", I guess that I have to be a little more careful. However, think about the following comments made by Churchill: (It fits in with some of the stuff I have written in the posts above): (1) Churchill & racism: "I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place". (1937) (2) Balance (1) with these two statements: a) "If Hitler won, he said, "then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we know and care for, will sink into the abyss of a New Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science". (1940) b) "You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war by land, sea and air, with all our might and with all the strength God has given us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy". (1940) Obviously, the killing of "Red Indians", etc. did not represent a crime in Churchill's mind. German actions (even those not yet perpetrated) were however "monstrous". If we subtract genocide as a problem, since it so obviously was not, we are left with pure hatred on Churchill's part. The prime minister, the political leader of Britain, was referring to something ethereal or the essence of Germans. Germans were for him "sinister" and "monstrous" and "perverted". That is percisely how Hitler classified the Jews...and, believe me, Hitler hated the Jews. (3) Churchill BELIEVED in a ubiquitous German danger: "The twin roots of all our evils, Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be extirpated. Until this is achieved, there are no sacrifices we will not make and no lengths in violence to which we will not go". (1943) [The date is misleading because Chuchill announced a similar view prior to 1939]. Balance this against Hitler's viewpoints and the attempt at peace in 1940: "He [Hitler] then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world....He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church -- saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany's position on the Continent. The return of Germany's lost colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops, if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere. He concluded by saying that his aim was to make peace with Britain, on a basis that she would regard compatible with her honour to accept". (discussion between Hitler & his generals concerning policy towards Britain, May 1940) An interesting view of postwar British anti-German hatred: "Indeed, the frequent attitude displayed by members of the British public that the German hand is the only one (except possibly the Japanese) that is too dirty to be taken ignores the turn that has been given to propaganda by post-war events. Even if such people have heard nothing about the French épuration and have next to no knowledge of what is happening in China or of the shadier parts of Turkish, American, and British history, they ought to know that if there is anything to choose between the habits of the Russians and the Germans it is now officially in favour of the Germans, since it has hardly been possible to pick up a paper during the last five years without reading the opinions of prominent politicians, archbishops, and others that the Russian aggressions, tyrannies, slave labour camps, political trials, and torture of prisoners are "the worst in history"; which must mean that they are worse than anything the Germans did in that line. Yet there are plenty of men and women in all walks of life who are only too anxious to "come to an understanding with Russia" and would be prepared for considerable sacrifices to that end if only the Russians would "show a little sense and friendliness." Then why not with Germany? Why not with Germany? Because the brains of the bulk of the British are still semianaesthetised by the propaganda of the war years. "If a thing is said often enough it becomes true" is a well known journalistic dictum: and the villainy of the Germans was stressed so continuously between 1939 and 1946 or 1947 that most of the British acquired a mental fixation to that effect and so find it extremely difficult to readjust their minds to a different outlook. They find it difficult because of a natural disinclination to revise an opinion they have long and passionately held; because they have an unpleasant feeling that there is a risk of unpopularity in saying anything favourable about the ex-enemy who was lately so much reviled, and because they have an instinctive fear of something worse. The memory lingers that not so very long for the German enemy was liable to find himself in prison and treated as a common criminal. And so, in spite of the post-war emergence of a new menace altogether, in spite of the official encouragement of the Germans to rearm, and not only encouragement to rearm but threats that they must, the bulk of the British still persist in regarding the Germans as a world menace and an outcast nation with which no decent people will associate. The British who take that line are undoubtedly blind to the certainty that they are thereby assisting the cause of hostile Russian Communism. Never have boomerangs returned so accurately to smite the throwers as the British hatred campaign against the Germans, and Regulation 18B". (Capt. Russell Grenfell, RN, 1954) |
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May 14th, 2006
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Hi Ollie
I've never heard of that quote by Churchill in regards to the Red indians and Aboriginal Australians. But from what I know the Australian Government were doing to Aboriginals and Half Castes, I would very much beleive it. One thing I cannot stand here in Australia, is that people beleive that what we did to the Aboriginals was no where near as bad as what the Nazi's did to the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Homosexuals etc. The Fact is, we were just as bad. We forcibly removed children from their parents, (Some where given away, but not all), most without a reason at all, sent them to a Home, forced christianity onto them, forced them to speak english and abandon their traditional languages, told them to forget their customs, and sent them out as domestic servants. Their guarentee of saftey, lied in the hands of their Masters, it was legalised slavery. Some (not all) girls were raped, many children boys and girls were beaten frequently, forced to live in squalid conditions whilst at someones home (In the garage, in the attic, basement etc.), very few knew why this was happening mind you. And it was not offically stopped by the Federal Government, until the Early 1970's, 30 years after WWII finished. When i bring this up in an argument with someone, they always use the Chemical Expirements done on the detainees of the Concertration camps by the Nazis as Australia's dfence. "We never did anything that bad". The sad thing is, That is not correct. In the 1950's, the Australian Government, allowed the British to conduct Nuclear testing in Maralinga, without even bothering to warn, or even remove the local Agoriginal People, Who still live their today. Wheater this was intentional or not is up to your interpretation, but it happened. Children were born with mutations, the life expectancy dropped about decade, and so did the population. Yet we hear almost nothing about it. And, what really rubs salt into the wounds, is in Compolsary Australian History at High school, they may mention the Maralinga testing, and the Royal Commission into the Stolen Generations, but do not cover them at all in detail, then in year 12 Modern History, you learn with great detail about the Nazi atrocities. We are more willing to learn about other peoples faults, but not our own. I see Germany being used as a deterrent from the rest of the worlds own faults. Britian didn't Stop Australia from doing what it did, it sat on its hands, so how do you justify it, simple, shift focus to someone else. |
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May 14th, 2006
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics |
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