Quote:
Originally Posted by Futurist110
What do you think would have happened afterwards if Georg Elser had managed to assassinate Hitler in 1939 (like he almost did in real life)?
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As far as What-Ifs go, this is a decent one. One thing to remember in these analyses is that it is easier to determine what doesn't happen that what does.
First question: who is Germany's next leader? The circle of potential leaders is small. There's Hitler's main lieutenants, such as Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann, Ribbentrop, Hess, Speer. Hess was far out of his league by that point, while Bormann's star was yet to ascend - and at any rate he was so loathed that with Hitler gone, his power would mostly vanish. Ribbentrop was widely disliked, while Speer too lacked a power base. Goebbels was a very good propagandist but appears to have recognized that while he had that niche he lacked national leadership abilities. That leaves Goering and Himmler, and the military is going to play kingmaker. For one, Goering was Hitler's designated successor. The military, for all its toadiness regarding Hitler, valued the rule of law and placed a great deal of emphasis on the personal loyalty oaths that Hitler extracted from all officers. Also, Keitel (Army) and Raeder (Navy) had comparatively little power. So the military was going to swing behind Goering. Himmler might object, but the brass is never for one moment going to equivocate between an Air Marshall and the SS.
It will very likely be Hermann Goering.
Now, a mistake many make when assessing Nazi Germany is to assume that Adolf Hitler was merely the embodiment of the Nazi Party. The opposite is true. The Nazi Party was the embodiment of Adolf Hitler. When Hitler dies, the party will be fairly malleable. And Goering is a very different man that Hitler. For one, Goering lacks Hitler's man-of-destiny self-mythologizing. Second, he surely lacks Hitler's do-or-die gambler's tendencies. Goering was leery of the wisdom of the attack on Poland, and even more so of the move west. It is extremely unlikely that he attacks the western powers. Such an action is simply not in his nature. Since neither France nor the United Kingdom were inclined to press the issue military, the Sitzkrieg continues. But there's more possibility here than just avoiding open conflict. Goering is going to have some opportunities for rapproachment with France and the UK.
Three weeks after Hitler is assassinated, the USSR invades Finland. And Goering will have a chance to cast Germany as a preferable alternative to the Stalin-led USSR. To begin with, much of the West's opposition to Germany was imbued in opposition to Hitler. Goering offers a different person as well as a political out for the West if it wishes to switch gears. Though Goering is an anti-Semite who cares nothing for the Jews, he lacks the maniacal drive to exterminate them, which is counterproductive in numerous ways (politically, as a drain on resources, etc.). So though he would surely keep up the persecution (anti-Semitism is a tried and true political tool), he scales it back considerably. This costs him very little and gains him much. He can end the General Government and create a rump Polish state (which some nice bits of territory sliced off for Germany) as a sop to the West, while also allowing him to tell the German people that the so-called Polish threat has been neutralized and, hey, some lebensraum, too! The fascist Polish puppet state will, of course, be anti-Soviet. And this action will put pressure on Stalin to do something similar. We might end up with a West Poland and an East (communist) Poland. He can offer the British a scaling-back of German naval expansion. Some sort of peace - not friendship, but a normalization of stable relations once again - can probably be had with the UK, and France will have no choice but to follow.
Domestically, Goering will have his hands full. The Nazi economy was a basket case. Hitler was totally ignorant of economics, and his management style was not conducive to allowing his ministers to properly manage it. The government-led boom of the 1930s was necessary but unsustainable, and the economy was shifting to a dependency on looting conquered territories and exploiting them for slave labor. Goering will have to oversee, or at least appoint those who can do so, the transition to a normal economy. If he can manage this, he can offer the German public all the fruits that Hitler had brought (rearmament, expansion, national prestige, etc.) with an avoidance of war. There's no guarantee he can do this, but it's 1939. Goering has not yet withdrawn into amusing himself with outrageous outfits and admiring the art he looted.
What then? Who knows. Europe is unstable, split between a democratic West, a fascist Germany, and Stalin, none of which like each other. But the knock-on effects are considerable.
*Churchill's star never ascends. He never becomes Prime Minister and is largey forgotten to history.
*Soviet expansion doesn't happen. Eastern Europe doesn't fall into Stalin's lap as a consequence of having to roll back a German invasion, and Stalin remains primarily insular.
*Faced with a Southeast Asia controlled by powers unhindered in Europe - France and the Netherlands unconquered, Britain not beseiged - Imperial Japan doesn't roll the dice and attack. They're constrained by sanctions and have no choice but to scale back their actions in China.
*As a result, Chiang Kai-shek holds on. Mao never comes to power. The great arrival of global communism in the latter half of the 1940s doesn't happen.
*America's coming-out doesn't happen. No postwar reordering of Europe. No President Eisenhower. No President Kennedy. Maybe no President Truman, as FDR has no war to parlay into third and fourth terms.
*Japan is never conquered and never falls into the U.S. orbit.
*No De Gaulle.
*No Israel.
*No billion-dollar Manhattan Project, and nuclear weapons don't appear until the 1950s at least.
Like I indicated earlier, beyond a very short horizon it's far easier to discern what doesn't happen than what does.
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