Historical Hypothetical

[stui magpie]

I'm reading a book at the moment and the question was posed, what would have happened if Hitler and Nazi Germany had stopped and just consolidated their spoils at the end of 1940 and not invaded Russia?

1939 Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII.

By the end of 1940 they controlled France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway. At this stage, the USA was still neutral and hadn't entered the war.

Invading Russia in 1941 was the over reach, but what if it never happened? What if Hitler had stayed content with controlling western Europe, maybe picked off a few more peripheral countries and focused on establishing Western Europe as his new 1000 year Reich?

Without the Russians and the USA getting involved, nothing would have stopped him, would it?

It's a hypothetical and one for the history buffs, potentially the world as we know it would be very different. The cold war may never had happened, or it may have been a 3 way with the new Germany as the 3rd party, the USA may have never became the worlds super power, Israel may have never existed nor the USSR, The Korean War and Vietnam may never have happened, we may all be driving Volkswagens.

Now we know Hitler was a whack job and didn't stop, but the point of the hypothetical is, what would have happened if he did?

Thoughts?

Here's one opinion https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-if-operation-barbarossa-never-happened

[Magpietothemax]

The issue is, that such a hypothetical is an utterly absurd and impossible scenario. The entire Nazi economy was based on seizing raw materials and slave labour. Invading the USSR was not "overreach"...it was the only option ever possible to the Nazi regime. To have stopped the war suddenly, thereby undermining the entire war economy and the associated Nazi ideology would have led to the rapid collapse of the regime under the weight of its own internal contradictions (lack of foreign markets and colonies - controlled by its rivals, continued rebellions from those populations it had conquered, forcing the regime to expend resources on internal repression which it could not afford due to its inadequate foothold in the world market, to name but a few. The very posing of such a historical hypothetical betrays in itself a total lack of understanding of what caused the war in the first place.

[David]

Weirdly, I was just thinking about something similar yesterday (except, for me, it was what would have happened if the UK hadn’t declared war on Germany in 1939, and whether WWII could have been avoided in the process – though obviously the results would have been pretty grim in the meantime either way). Whether, as MTTM says above, confrontation between the Nazis and the USSR would have been inevitable – and whether, in that scenario, the Soviet Union still would have been able to withstand invasion and turn the tables on Germany without the UK and US taking up military resources on the western front – is a question for people who’ve read a lot more history than me!

[What'sinaname]

I guess you could look at the current conflicts. If Russia eventually roll over Ukraine, will the West, in time, resume trade and economic relations with Russia? I would say, yep, once conflict is finished.

Similarly if the NAZIs expanded to Western Europe and stopped, in time, countries would have recommenced economic relations with the new expanded Germany.

Germany would have to deal with internal civil wars as groups try to reclaim their sovereignty, but other nations wouldn't really care all that much.

[David]

A broader, related question, is how many years the Nazi regime would have lasted if Germany had won the war (and conquered most or all of Europe in the process, either including the Soviet Union or excluding them in some Cold War scenario with them as posited by Stui in the OP). I have no doubt that it would have long since collapsed, though it's hard to know how long ago. Francoism survived in Spain until the 1970s, but the country was also relatively isolated and had no empire to rule over. And the Soviet Union lasted until 1991, but that was largely despite substantial economic problems exacerbated by the Cold War. I suspect MTTM is right that a German-controlled Europe would have fallen apart pretty quickly.

Anyway, for those into speculative fiction, this is needless to say a popular topic : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_Axis_victory_in_World_War_II

And another random forum discussion on this I found while googling: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/if-nazi-germany-won-how-long-would-they-last.195736/

[think positive]

[David]

^ No doubt on the first one, and obviously on the second (I assume much or all of the Middle East would have fallen into German or perhaps Italian hands pretty quickly and the fate of those territories would have been very different from what they are today).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_(Nazism)#Middle_East_and_Central_Asia

As for the Holocaust, no doubt it would have been expanded substantially. I expect Jews would have continued to have a safe haven in the US, whatever remained of the Soviet Union and some other parts of the world like South America and Australia*, but certainly not anywhere in Europe.

*We haven't really discussed what would become of Australia in this scenario, but for me it makes sense to consider the European and Pacific theatres separately, particularly if the US saw Europe as a lost cause and put all their resources into fighting Japan. It seems quite possible to me that Australia would have survived any Axis takeover in that situation.

[stui magpie]

^

On that last point, Germany wasn't that interested in the Pacific and didn't have much in the way of a navy, so they were no real threat to Australia. The threat was Japan.

It's likely that if Germany had largely stopped in Europe and instead went to the Middle East , they would have ended up treating with Britain which would have kept the US out of Europe and focusing on the Pacific instead.

How long Germany would have lasted as an Empire would be an interesting one as it seemed almost inevitable that Russia and Germany would end up in conflict.

The other interesting question is how any arms race may have played out.

Germany had developed expertise in Rockets, the USA had their atomic program. Post war both Russia and the USA snaffled their share of German scientists and developed long range missiles (and likely the fore runner of the space program) which wouldn't have happened, or at least happened a lot more slowly if the conflict in Europe ceased in an uneasy peace.