How long would Nazism have survived after Hitler?

Great Debates
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@Latro Thanks for the correction on the Totenkopf, my memory is a bit rusty.

@All I’m sure that Hitler - or rather Germany - was after Lebensraum, spreading out rather than a specific grab for resources. The Germans had spread out East a long time ago, I think it was Empress Catherine who invited them in. To some extent I suspect that they felt that they had a claim on the territory - and they did get nervous about Russia - as an old adversary.

The Slavic under-race stuff must have been a bit difficult, for example a friend of mine’s grandfather was an officer in the Luftwaffe ( actually an MD), his wife was Russian - or was it half Russian. Things get a bit confused when borders are porous.

It is also interesting that Eastern Jewish communities spoke Yiddish, which is darn close to German.

In a book called ‘Boldness Be My Friend’ by Dick Pape - a British POW who was a frequent escaper, he describes how British POWs were put in with Russian women in the hope that they would breed.

While Hitler (and Germany) put themselves on a war economy basis, it seems unlikely that they would have run out of steam as soon as they ran out of areas to conquer, the skills required for a mechanized war are pretty easily converted into those required for a consumption led economy. The USA did it - very successfully.

My impression is that Germany was quite capable of turning swords into ploughshares.

Hitler cannot have done everything on his own, even a cadre of nutters would not have been enough, the people behind him (the general population) were what made things possible, and IMO they would have gently twisted things to their material advantage once they had reached a finite point.

Personally I would have stopped in the Ukraine, made friends, dug in and concentrated on Baku (this came up on another NG some time ago).

This might sound a bit controversial, but I have long seen the expansion of the EU as being Germany recovering influence in areas that it feels it owns - nobody likes unrest on their borders.

My impression is that Hitler harnessed an entire nation’s feelings of resentment, and although Germany turned itself into a brutal and psychopathic war machine, he was more the kid with a toy steering wheel than a real Fuehrer (driver).

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As it happens, I read an interview with Harris not long after Fatherland came out. He said the idea for the book came to him while he was on a European vacation and was struck by how many wealthy German tourists he saw, no matter where he went. Germany had “won” WW2 in many ways, he thought, given its economic and social predominance on the continent. Harris even makes reference in the book to the European Community (as it was termed in 1964) existing even in his alternate universe, but headquartered in Berlin and even more thoroughly under Germany’s thumb.