Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

(Part 2 – Pax Germanica)

Introduction

In the previous part of this work, I detailed the victory of the Greater German Reich over its foes, leaving it in control of large parts of the former USSR (which was reduced to a rump state) and parts of Africa and the Middle East. Further, the war had destroyed the ability of the British to either maintain their empire or to continue to pose a threat to Germany.

The remaining great power, the United States, had remained apart from the European War. America had been occupied with its war with the Empire of Japan, and later with the need to support Chinese factions, a war that would drain its resources for several years. The US was, therefore, reluctant to interfere in Europe and indeed closed its borders to European immigration in 1946, trapping many Jews in German controlled territories.

However, Germany had considerable problems caused by the war, and this section describes the middle age of the Third Reich.

The Third Reich in Victory

Having defeated or conscripted all of the European powers, Adolf Hitler was the master of Europe. His minions therefore began a massive program to use the German victory to develop the third Reich, which would expend the industrial and social base of the Reich. Swiftly, the Nazi’s divided large parts of their conquests into plantations and began a process of settling Germans in the occupied territories.

Poland was the first recipient of these unwelcome attentions. The Germans had already begun a process of removing the Jews, although the Speer machine had enslaved them, rather than practicing their extermination. Now, the Germans began to press upon the ordinary poles as well, confiscating the best farmland and giving it to German families. The Germans had begun to expand their living space, while pressing the Poles to move away from their own lands, and head east. Soon, there was a substantial Polish population in Russia, which had migrated east to escape the Germans.

Further, the Germans began to enslave Poles and other nationalists. The great autobahns that reach throughout the German empire were all built with slave labour, while Polish women were often conscripted into becoming brood cows for German children. Such children – often the product of rape – were regarded as half-German by the Nazis and were often forced to submit to arranged marriages so their children would be ‘pure’.

Naturally, there was resistance. The Polish Home Army launched a brave, determined and ulitmighy futile revolt in Warsaw in 1945. The Germans, however, held all the cards and used Warsaw as a training ground for the SS. Warsaw was destroyed in a month of heavy fighting, which disgusted Italian observers at the time, although the Italian government, dependent on Germany, made no protest.

The Belgium population fared little better. While the Germans made no attempt to enslave the population, the German-speakers were favoured above the French speakers, many of whom were forced to go to France. The Germans took full control of the docks and harbours, which they used to threaten Britain with occupation. The French were generally ignored, but the Germans took most of the industry and recruited for their ‘foreign legions’ among the French, as well as developing pro-German propaganda in France. Vichy was allowed nominal independence, but that came at a price of toeing the German line, even to the point of forcing German racial policies on the Algerians, which had the result of sparking off war in Algeria. With German encouragement, the Vichy forces resorted to gas, bombing and – it is suspected – biological weapons to force the Algerians to submit. There were masses of new immigrants from France, which allowed massive slaughter of the natives, and allowed France to develop a German-free industrial base.

If any none-German population can be said to have not suffered under the Germans, it was the Norwegians and Danes. Hitler had decreed in 1940 that they were cousins to the Germans and instructed that they be treated better than the other subject races. Certainly, neither of those nations suffered mass depopulation or conscription, and they were allowed to maintain much of their own government.

The Losers – Britain and Russia

Defeat in a war is always shocking. That Britain and Russia would suffer badly in the event of a German outright victory, but for them to suffer when they had achieved – in the claims of their governments – a truce seems positively unfair. However, that is exactly what happened.

The collapse of the British economy in 1945 led swiftly to dreadful conditions in the UK. The money was worth nothing and many places reverted to bartering and other methods of exchange, while many of the poorer people in the cities starved outright. The ‘escape’ of many members of the aristocracy to Canada and other places fuelled outright class warfare of a type not seen in Britain for centuries. Often, the aristocratic estates were invaded by farmers and converted to growing places, which often led to confrontations between farmers, starving people and the police. After the local police started joining the farmers, the government declared Martial Law and sent in the army, which provoked armed revolt in places and sullen disdain in others.

This provoked political unrest. Labour left the governmental coalition in 1947, declaring its intention to stand on a platform of social justice. However, few people believed them anymore, particularly after a particularly nasty confrontation between farmers and police in one of the labour heartlands. The situation invited anyone sufficiently unscrupulous to grasp power and, of course, someone did. Oswald Mosley may not have been in the Hitler mold, but, backed by many members of the establishment, he had the chance to take power for himself.

Mosley may well have been a figurehead, but the records were destroyed in the Civil War and we don’t know enough to venture more than a wild guess. What is known is that elements of the British army, commanded by General Montgomery, took over the houses of parliament and Mosley declared a fascist coup-de-et. There was resistance, but the shooting of several opposition MPs and statements from the Lords and the Church convinced many people to go along with him for the time being. Many people outside the capital were unhappy, but Mosley’s swift action convinced many people to go along with him – that he commanded most of the army, the air force and the navy might have affected their decisions. Luckily for Britain, the worst of the crisis was soon over.

To give Mosley his due, he made a sustained attempt at rebuilding Britain without allowing Hitler to dominate him to any degree. Mosley was a dictator; Darlen was not only a fascist, but also a collaborator. He had many problems to deal with though, and he had to act as though Britain might become an ally of the third Reich, merely to prevent an invasion by Hitler. His first act was to order the confiscation of all of the untilled land in Britain and it’s sowing with seeds and crops. Using a system of identity cards, the British were able to feed their population on enough food after a year, which made Mosley very popular. Further, Mosley was able to remove many of the older, tired, army officers and place younger ones in charge, which allowed the army to learn new tricks. Further weapons research, however, was difficult for two reasons: German interference (in 1947 they demanded that all nuclear scientists were turned over to them) and limited financial resources.

Russia, the former USSR, was far worse off. The death of Stalin was genuinely mourned by many people across Russia; bad as he was, the disintegrating USSR was worse. In the five years after the war, most of the ground taken by the Russian empire and the USSR was lost, often with parts of the remaining war machine lost with it. The Muslim republics, for example, secured much of their independence in places where the Germans did not rule, although the aspirations of Muslims in Chechnya, Georgia and other places were ignored. The Germans needed those places and while they were willing to ignore much local activity, they would not allow them to have real power. When they revolted, the Germans used terror tactics and crushed hundreds of tribes and villages, often destroying whole branches of the society.

The USSR had, however, built up a large army. They worked hard to conscript people in the rump state and prepared for an invasion. No one in the rump soviet state believed that Hitler would not one day invade further east.

Social Changes in Germany: 1947-60

On a social front, there were many changes in Germany during the Pax Germanica. These fell into three sections; the industrial problems, the development of the new territories and the ‘women’s war’. As those problems helped to shape the development of the Reich, I plan to look at each of them carefully.

The German industry had not followed – contrary to the claims of Hitler’s supporters – any consistent plan until 1940. Rather, the different factories and companies served the Reich as individuals, rather than a grand package. In 1940, however, Adolf Hitler ordered Speer to develop German industry, which he did by working to combine factories and standardise designs. However, this fantastic development annoyed many factory owners, many of whom were patronised by the different members of the nazi hierarchy, and they, once the war was won, worked to regain their power over their own domains. Speer was forced to fight a rearguard action to keep German industry standardised and was forced to give ground in several places.

This might not have mattered, if the factory owners were the entire problem. However, several high Nazi’s wanted to ensure that their factories got precedence in the supply lines and contracts for new weapons. This soon tended to erode competition amount German factories, with a consequent decline in standards and production.

The expansion into the new territories caused other problems. Firstly, the question was who should become owner (under Hitler of course) of parts of the new lands. Hitler himself expressed the desire that plots of land should go to soldiers who had fought well, but he was unable or unwilling to enforce that desire, so many of the best lands were snapped up by high ranking generals and SS officers, who plundered, settled and developed their lands. They needed people to settle, of course, so many people migrated east to the new lands, often leaving the factories, which needed to hire people and increase wages.

The ‘women’s war’ was the most unusual problem to appear in Germany and it had its origins in the war, when Speer had called up countless men to the war front, their wives, daughters and sisters had taken over their jobs in the factories. They, therefore, got the wages and were, when the men returned, unwilling to allow them to dominate them for much longer. The divorce rate in Germany quadrupled in the five years after the war.

Speer tried hard to solve the problem of the women in a matter that would satisfy all parties. However, the best he could do was to order them to be treated in the same standard as men, equal treatment and wages, and jail any factory owner who objected. Ironically, he had help from Himmiler, who had developed the idea that any girl who managed to make her own way in the world was racially advanced and was therefore of prime breeding stock. Fortunately, the need to maintain large military forces and to farm the new territories averted many of the possible problems of the ‘war’.

Cold War: The Reich and the United States

The United States left World War Two as one of the world’s superpowers. It had crushed imperial Japan in a four-year campaign and was dominant in parts of the world without any serious competition. As the civil war in India died, the US was well placed to trade with them and the Southern Commonwealth (the former Australia and New Zealand), while US military support was granted to the Chinese nationalists in China.

However, the US was suffering from serious problems. The need to clean up after Japan kept the US heavily involved in areas where it had no direct interest. Indochina, for example, was a US dependency, but required limited military assistance, while China, which still had an ‘independent’ Japanese state, required the commitment of numerous US troops and air support. The incompetence of the Chinese nationalist commanders caused considerable causalities amongst the American forces and morale went downhill.

Further, there were problems with industrial downsizing. The end of the war meant that the US government was cancelling contracts, and there was no foreign market willing to buy. Germany was on the US banned list (as were the German dependencies), Britain was having economic problems and the other nations were either too poor or too troubled to inspire either trade or investment.

This required some method of expanding the US, which would create new markets and new jobs, while strengthening the US’s position against Germany. President Truman was a strong anti-nazi and believed that the US should remain strong. He therefore began plans to develop a trade and mutual defence system, which would involve both the southern commonwealth and the reminder of America. While Canada was willing to become a US ally, the reminder of America was untrusting. It was at that moment that two disasters struck within a month of each other.

Mexico was historically untrusting of the US, with a history that went back over a hundred years. Therefore, the Mexicans wanted to escape US domination as much as possible, while hopefully either deterring a US invasion or even recovering territories lost in the Mexican war. While any competent Mexican knew that that would be impossible, the public opinion was aimed at doing that, and therefore it remained a part of Mexican policy. This made the Mexicans and the Germans natural allies.

The Germans were approached by the Mexican government in 1946 to provide support in building the Mexican armed forces and strengthening their position. In return, the Mexicans promised to develop a system of alliances amongst the other American states in order to challenge the US if trouble appeared on the horizon. To be fair to the Germans, the help they provided was excellent and the Mexican army, previously corrupt and useless, was soon improved. Further, the Germans sold the Mexicans large numbers of older German tanks (which were a fair match for most contemporary American tanks) and older planes, as well as older U-Boats and other naval units. The Germans also took over French Islands in the Caribbean and developed them as small bases, although, as Admiral Raeder pointed out, if war broke out the US would have no problems in sealing off and invading the bases within weeks.

This passed unnoticed in the US until 1947, as the Saudi crisis hit its height. The kingdom of Ibn Saud had been one of the few states to purchase arms and technology of the Americans, which concerned the Italo-German forces in Iraq and Iran. Further, the Saudis had been provoking unrest and uprisings against both the Iranian Shah and the Iraqi provisional (German-dominated) government. The Germans threatened blockade and invasion unless the Saudis halted their interference, which caused the US oil concerns to raise demands in the US congress for armed support to be sent to the Saudis. However, the King of Saudi backed down and agreed to halt his activities, which allowed the Germans a chance to dominate their trade – and deny it to America.

The American president, Truman, had been made to look a fool. While there was probably no truth to the wild allegations about cunning German spymasters, the simple fact was that the US had been frozen out of an important market and therefore the president wanted revenge. The observation of German activity in Mexico and the formation of the ‘Latin American Alliance’, comprising all nations in Latin America except Panama, suggested that the Germans were building an anti-US bloc in South America.

What happens next really depends upon whose side you take, but the basic facts are simple. The US started to quote the Monroe Doctrine and demand that the Germans stopped arming the Mexicans. The Germans, backed up by the Mexicans, refused, saying that it was an internal matter and they were not colonising Mexico. The US threatened military action, but after a tense stand-off, backed down.

Truman went to the election on a platform of anti-germanisim and was returned with a majority vote. He promptly began a rearmament program and political movements that were intended to improve the US position, including the annexation of both Greenland and Iceland and improving relations with the other American nations. An attempt to annex panama was rejected by the Panaman government, which declared its intention to destroy the canal and fight a greaulla war if the Americans attempted to reinforce their garrison. Further, he invited Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Philippines to join the United States, who accepted the invitation, apart from the Philippines who rejected it. The US military soon began to strengthen their positions, as well as withdrawing from China.

The Nuclear Bomb Crisis

It is commonly asserted by alternate historians that the US could have constructed an atomic bomb in 1945 and used it to halt German expansion. However, the need to prioritise resources in the war with Japan and the discovery of a soviet spy ring caused the atomic program to slow down, while allowing the Germans a chance to catch up. Historians have not made much process in discovering the chain of events that led to the crisis, but one thing is clear – in 1948, both superpowers had atomic bombs.

This left both powers with a serious problem. Until the development of ICBMs, the ability to deliver bombs to their targets was lacking, but it appeared that Truman would use the bomb to force Mexico out of its relations with Germany. Therefore, Hitler ordered the deployment of atomic-armed planes (the British aircraft industry sued the German government in 1960 after relivatians that the Germans had copied a British long-range bomber design) to Mexico to reassure the Mexican government. In response, Truman pulled arms and persuaded Iceland to allow the US to station its own planes on Icelandic grounds.

Luckily, the diplomats convinced everyone that no one could gain from an atomic exchange. In 1950, both powers agreed to withdraw their weapons and guarantee the independence of Mexico and Iceland. However, the crisis exposed serious problems in the German system.

Germany – The crisis of industrialising

The results of the war left the German industrial base a finely tuned productive entity, capable of huge projects and massive construction works. This was demonstrated by the design and construction of the new German navy, which involved six carriers and ten battleships, as well as supplementary units. Further, the Germans were able to reequip their army very quickly when war threatened and build several atomic bombs.

However, the Germans had several problems. Unlike the USSR before the war, Germany had been built on a system of independent industrial factories, rather than a collective system. The old owners of the plants wanted them back, while fighting off senior Nazis who wanted to build more ‘empires’ of their own. This pressure got to the point where Speer was forced to order the return of the factories to the old owners.

Unluckily for them, it was too late to save their monopoly. In the years since the war, a new group of factory owners had appeared, occupying the niche held by the factories that were pressed into service. These new owners lacked political acumen, but they paid taxes and therefore Speer was unwilling to move against them. However, the owners of those factories had no say in the government or the laws that determined how they could work. Needless to say, this provoked discontent.

1955 – Death of the Dark Hero

The year 1955 brought internal crisis to Germany for the first time, as Adolf Hitler died. He had been suffering for the last two years from Parkinson’s disease, but his death still came as a shock to the people of the Reich. However, he was dead and there was no getting round it.

After a massive funeral in Berlin (the president of the US abstained) the politicians of Germany began to argue over the succession. Many of the original Nazis were older now and some were unfit for anything. Goring, for example, had damaged his mind with all the drugs and was convinced he was back in the days of the First World War. Further, some of the old guard were known to be untrustworthy and/or believed that ‘Fuhrer’ was a title that Hitler alone could bear. However, the pressure to appoint a new leader was overpowering and Manfred Rommel, the son of the celebrated war hero, became Fuhrer.

Space – The Final Frontier

The Third Reich was convinced that its success lay in two things; its genetic superiority over its opponents and its technological superiority. The former was a pipe dream, but the latter was a true success builder and contributed to the German state. Therefore, it was logical for the Reich to build on that. Space would prove the next battleground for the Reich and it was important, they figured, for the Reich to establish a presence – if not outright dominance – in space.

The Germans had begun serious experimentation with rockets in 1943. They had started with the objective of using missiles to bombard London and perhaps America, although the small size of the missiles made it difficult to do any real damage at first. The Germans did launch a number of missiles in 1944 at London, but the results were disappointing and the rocket team disbanded until after the war, when the military possibilities of space sank in. Once they did, the Germans funded a large space program and they achieved considerable success. Working, at first, with large rockets, the Germans managed to place the first man in space in 1957 and built rapidly on that success.

The Americans rapidly matched the German developments. By 1963, both sides had space stations and a program for exploiting space and space-based weapons. By 1970, the Germans and Americans had established bases on Mars and the Moon, as well as asteroid mining missions and scientific research. However, it soon became clear to the German leader ship, including the new Fuhrer, that the Americans were moving ahead faster than the Germans in the use of space. This caused some crisis within the German political structure, but the Germans were unable, at the time, to discover the reasons why they were falling behind.

The second Russo-German war: 1960-75 (Part One)

The origins of the second major war the Third Reich engaged in are very simple, but the outcome of the war was and indeed remains difficult to explain. Basically, until 1960 the Germans and the Americans were the only acknowledged nuclear powers on earth, although reports suggested that the British and Chinese had developed bombs as well. However, in 1959, the German intelligence services had discovered evidence that the Russians were on the fast track to a bomb and would have a completed model within three years.

This caused considerable concern in the German leadership. The second Fuhrer was in ill health at the time and authority was pretty much delegated to a committee of seven, all of whom were ultra-nationalists. They promptly issued their summery of the situation, which basically stated that Germany would be nuked by Russia as soon as the Russians had bombs ready, and then attacked by Russian ground forces. This was intolerable and so they prepared a pre-emptive strike on the Russian rump state.

The German forces crashed into the remains of Russia in a massive attack, swiftly establishing their forces in Russia. However, the sheer distance of Russia kept them from managing to wipe out the Russian factories and command centres in the first swoop, while the Russians, who had had plans for this for twenty years, struck back with a mixture of armoured forces and partisan attacks on the German forces. However, the Germans managed to conquer much of the land they wanted in the first year, but then the Russians launched their counter strike.

Conclusion

That Germany, without any further powerful emernies on the European mainland, would succeed in establishing an empire was almost inevitable. Hitler was the sort of person who would have an empire and he had the common sense to appoint people who knew how to use the German resources to the vital posts.

However, what was not inevitable, although a logical outcome of the nazi system, was the rise of powerful, but not influential, pressure groups within the Reich and its empire. In Germany and the new territories, the rise of a ‘middle class’, who provided much of the consumer goods and backup to the state-owned system (not to mention much of the tax revenues), but lacked any influence within the state pressured the state to change its governing system. They tended to find German/nazi laws an encumbrance, while they were restricted by the cold war from trading in America and developing space along with American companies.

Further, there was resistance developing outside the formal empire. Vichy France was slowly becoming more assertive and was secretly arming resistance groups within occupied France, with Italy, Turkey and Spain, all, but German puppets, were rediscovering their spines and considering their options.

And, as the war ground on with no end in sight, many of the people’s of Europe began to say “Its time for a change…”

Coming soon: The rise and fall of the Third Reich (Part Three): The Fall

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich