If Germany won WWII and remained in power for many years, how different would the world be?

All bad, nothing good could have possibly come from such a thing.

I actually don’t think it would be that bad after the initial couple decades of nightmarish ethnic cleansing.

Basically, the level of evil (for lack of a better term) the Nazis propagated is simply not sustainable. You cannot hold a global hegemonic empire together with that kind of xenophobia and violence.

What happened under Nazi Germany, in an abstract sense, was not unique in the history of the world. America has been equally hateful and xenophobic—look what we did to the Native Americans under “manifest destiny.” The reason Germany stands out is because, unlike other xenophobic/genocidal regimes, the Germans had access to remarkable new technology that allowed them to kill people on a much larger scale than ever before.

Which is to say, culturally, I’m not actually convinced that Nazi Germany was all that different from any other European country or America at the time. Plenty of Americans in the 1940’s hated Jews and Communists supported Hitler.

And look how much America changed in a single generation after World War II. Before the 60’s, almost everyone was racist; women were chained to the kitchen, war was considered a fact of life. After the 60’s, we got the civil rights act, a peace movement, feminism, an entire new worldview that propagated throughout America and the world. This happened due to a variety of factors—new technology, especially music and TV, new ways of working—but the point is that radical, unexpected, and moral change is possible, especially in technologically advanced societies. The same sort of change probably would have happened in a German Empire; it’s happening now in Iran and China, after all.

Finally, I really dislike how the Nazis have become the cartoon evil villains of world history. The fact is that every culture is and has been capable of what the Nazis did—genocide is, in fact, still with us today, in Darfur. That they committed atrocities on that scale was more an accident of history and technological evolution than anything endemic to German culture. Americans could just as easily have been Nazis if things had been a little different. And by the same logic, the Nazis could have evolved morally along the same lines that Americans did post WW2.

I think it would be awful. No freedom of thought or action. A strong state police.

@Qingu Concerning your statement : “Americans could just as easily have been Nazis if things had been a little different”
Nazis wanted to decimate the Jews,they took their land,property and hurled them together for mass extinction———Americans did basically the same thing to the American Indians!
“The Small Pox infected blankets were a nice touch”
At least afterward, the Nazis did not pretend to be ¼ ~1/64th Jew as so many Lilly White Americans now a days brag about being part Native American !

* How the F* can it be possible for everybody’s grandmother to be have been a “Full Blooded Indian??”

Seems like another Fluther FAQ.

Germans themselves or other nations would have found ways of getting rid of Hitler and the Nazis. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg failed in 1944. Someone else would have succeeded in, say 1950.

Totalitarian systems don’t last forever. Even the Soviet Union disappeared eventually. So will North Korea at some point in the future.

First, I am forming this post on the hypothesis that the Nazi regime is still in power with the same methodology. I do not necessarily believe that would have been the case.

Well, I would never have been born because my people would be exterminated. Also, history would have been rewritten and those still alive would not be able to speak out agains the Reich. I am afraid that, since part of my family was slaughtered in the Holocaust as well as some 80% of my people, I am a little biased against Nazi Germany. I shall think about your question further and, if I can think of any good things, I shall answer again.

I believe that, had Hitler won, the genocide would not have stopped with the peopes he was already targeting. I bolded the text that follows the background of my statement so, if you do not feel like reading the background, you can find the text where I go into my theory easily. Ok, the background that goes into my belief:

1) The Holocaust made a lot of money for the Reich.
2) Focusing on various groups galvanized the populace against the internal foe.

While Hitler definitely despised Jews, it was much more than that. Hitler and his Doo Whop crowd wanted to focus the nation on an internal foe, already disliked, giving the ethnic Germans someone to freely hate. It was something the ethnic Germans could see. The nation was in a state of low morale along with financial issues, from WWI. The way the Jews were processed from the ghettos to the Camps, provided Germany with a lot of money.

Some of the reasons we were in the Final Solution are the same as for the Jews, some not. Like the Jews, this was focusing the German people on another internal foe. Germany did not get much money from us other than from our slave labor and selling such things as hair due to us being poor, but including us helped earn Hitler in that it would appear he was tough on crime (no, we were not all criminals). Brown and black people obviously do not fit his ideal and, to my knowledge, we were the only brown peoples with a significant presence in Germany.

Another thing that was done to all people in the Camps was to use them as slave labor, the moneys going to Nazi coffers. Art was produced in the Camps that was sold. Teeth were pulled for their gold. Hair that was cut off of the victims was sold. What clothes they had on their backs when they got off of the trains was sold.

I could run down the list of people targeted, from those in the Final Solution to those not in it but targeted, from homosexuals to the mentally and physically impaired, to Christians, to… to…

3) The Holocaust was a highly effective tool to keep the populace in its place via fear.

The category of “asocials” to be sent to the Camps was to stamp out opposition and to keep the ethnic Germans who opposed the Nazi party under tight control. All it took to get someone shot by the Gestapo or sent to the camps was someone reporting them for subversive behaviour. This included a child angry at a parent.

Ok, now the basis of my next statement has been laid:

Once the targeted peoples had been extinguished, it would not have stopped there. 1) I believe the Reich would make use of some other group to fill their coffers. 2) There would still be ethnic Germans who opposed the Nazi regime, thus requiring the atmosphere of terror to be maintained.

Hilter would have shifted his demonization and slaughter to other peoples. He needed it to keep people under control. When he succeeded in slaughtering another group of people, he would need another. I suspect that his next targeted group would be various dark skinned peoples but I really do not know.

@Arisztid, I don’t think it’s true that the Holocaust “made a lot of money” for the Reich. My understanding is that lots of Nazis thought it was crazy and wasteful to kill a major source of slave labor.

Well for one thing i’d be an Inglorious Basterd.Not taking that shit lying down, mother fuckers. Besides all the men would be forced to wear ridiculous little tache’s & affect an effeminate pose whilst goose stepping around the place.No no no no can’t be having that.

@Qingu I do not think that the Holocaust was motivated solely on finances but it definitely was a factor. I think the internal foe thing would have been the primary benefit the Reich had from the Holocaust.

As far as the slave labor being killed, considering all of the peoples already targeted, they really did not have to make an effort to keep them alive. The Reich did not have to pay for these slaves. There were some who were sufficiently skilled that they made more of an effort to keep these people alive. The rest were completely disposable.

Think of the ghettos. The Jews stripped of their moneys and their property before being shipped to the ghettos. There were some quite expensive homes and belongings that went to the Reich. Once at the ghettos, the price of food increased steadily until people were unable to purchase it. Once this was done, off to the Camps. For us, it was internment camps rather than ghettos.

The following was done to the vast majority of the victims. Their heads were shaved, what was left of their belongings were stripped from them, and the ones who were useful to the Reich as slaves, those that Mengele wanted for his experiments (Gypsy twins being his favorites), and others who would benefit the Reich were not immediately slaughtered.

Then the obvious slave labor. After that what could be removed from their bodies and sold was done so.

I do not know where my links about the financial motive to killing the mentally and physically handicapped are and the Google Goddess (that would be my wife) is in the hospital after surgery. If you would like me to try to find documentation of the financial motive in these killings, I shall do my best. If I cannot find it, I shall have to wait for said Google Goddess to be alert enough (and just plain be in the mood for some digging) to find the links for you.

@ucme I guess I would be in trouble, assuming that I was not a Gypsy, because I do not grow facial hair. I would need a ‘tache prosthesis.

@ucme… Where do you come up with this stuff? lol

@slick44 My child like immature fucking mind.Ah well may as well roll with it.I’m stuck with it so, happy days.

@Arisztid Well you could always do the comb trick, works just as well.

@ucme Now true that. However, I would be one of the Inglorious Basterds as well. Thankyou for reminding me about that movie. I have not seen it yet and had forgotten its title.

The entertainment world wouldn’t be the same without these people

Plenty of us would not be here today.

It probably would have happened in Hitler’s originally planned way:
Europe dominated by Großdeutschland, the rest of the world by the British Empire,
an uneasy peace between the two maintaining a yin/yang status quo and guaranteeing global stability.

He didn’t expect the British to hate him as much as we did, and we went down in a Phyrric Victory to destroy him, with the help of….
ENTER: USA & USSR.

So a very similar thing happened anyway, after Germany and Britain knock each other out, with USA taking the place of the British Empire as the Sea Empire, worldwide traders & bastion of freedom, and the USSR taking the place of Nazi Germany as the mass-murdering, totalitarian, secret-policing, never-ending personality-cult Land Empire.

…funny.

Hitler thought the English wouldn’t make a continental intervention to prevent consolidation of Europe into a single power, I guess his history wasn’t much up to scratch; We’d spent the past few hundred years doing exactly that, repeatedly.

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?

@The_Idler He also was out of his mind by the mid 40’s, luckily for the rest of us. I suspect that this is part of why he underestimated his opponents and made such bad decisions. I cannot remember when Theodor Morell became his private physician. Morell filled him with substances that would have killed most of us. Too bad it did not. Oh, I cited Wiki because I am lazy and know from earlier studies that that Wiki link is quite accurate.

He underestimated his opponents and made that assumption about Britain out of arrogance and ignorance, later, drug addiction and poison courtesy of Morell.

Yeah he did go pretty crazy… even more crazy than he was anyway.

First he thought we would be cool with his schemes, then he though he could invade Britain (noone, not one of the “great” European land powers had succeeded for 900 years), and then he invaded Russia.

British Sea Power and Russian Winter being for several hundred years synonymous with “unstoppable”, he was clearly getting a little over-ambitious.

Fatherland

Interesting movie.

@ChazMaz Got that on the DL now. I hope it’s good cuz its gonna take 53mins.

@Arisztid – What do you mean by ethnic Germans?

@The_Idler – What did you think of the movie?

@mattbrowne That is the term I have heard used for, specifically, not Rroma or any other minority group German people. I guess “non minority” might do it.

Here’s what Wikipedia says: Ethnic Germans are a largely West Germanic ethnic group, with minor West Slavic roots due to assimilated Sorbs, Obotrites and other Slavs, as well as Celtic roots in Southern Germany and Baltic in the formerly Prussian areas. Germans are closely related to other Germanic peoples such as the Dutch, English, Norwegians, Swedish, Danish, Faroese, Icelanders, Flemish, and Frisians.

ewiger Brüder!

Also @ChazMaz, that film was pretty good, I liked it.

It will be kept forever on my extHDD. Thanks for the rec.