If Hitler was told my his advisors that the Ukrainians were Aryans descended from the Goths and Varangians as shown by their welcoming of the Germans in the early part of the 41 Invasion would this provide Germany with the needed manpower and resources to win in the East?
What if Hitler declares the Ukrainians an Aryan people?
- Thread starter Musketeer513
- Start date
The Nazis would set up a free and independent Ukraine, recruit Waffen SS Ukrainian divisions and most importantly not be total dicks and the Ukrainian people.
They would be greeted as liberators, the supply situation would be eased with the ukrainians actively helping the Axis war effort with the added bonus I'm not having to divert troops to deal with partisans.
They would be greeted as liberators, the supply situation would be eased with the ukrainians actively helping the Axis war effort with the added bonus I'm not having to divert troops to deal with partisans.
The problem was that the cornerstone of Generalplan Ost involved clearing Ukraine of its inhabitants to make Germany entirely self-sufficient in food production. The Ukrainians were #1 on the Nazis' hit list by sheer virtue of the fact that they were living on the land they wanted most.
It is true that if the Germans treated the occupied populations of the USSR better, the Soviet Union might have collapsed. However, Hitler's plans for Russia were purely long term: little Germany, in his view, could not afford to feed and govern millions of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. That's why he wanted Barbarossa to be even more ruthless than it was IOTL. The bottom line is that if you want Barbarossa to be less genocidal, you have to get rid of the Nazis in the first place.
It is true that if the Germans treated the occupied populations of the USSR better, the Soviet Union might have collapsed. However, Hitler's plans for Russia were purely long term: little Germany, in his view, could not afford to feed and govern millions of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. That's why he wanted Barbarossa to be even more ruthless than it was IOTL. The bottom line is that if you want Barbarossa to be less genocidal, you have to get rid of the Nazis in the first place.
Hitler did not need advisors, he made it up as he went along? The Japanese he made Aryans.
The Ukrainians particularly in the East very close to Russians, many of them would oppose Hitler because they see themselves as Russians. Interestingly the Poles who were anti-Russians were not keen on joining Hitler to fight the Russians.
Then manpower was just the first of his problems, others are food where does he get the food to feed these Ukrainians, he must steal their food to feed German troops which is not going to help with a people living on subsistence levels plus where does he get the weapons to arm them?
Probably No #2, in this respect Poles are No #1 here. But I agree he needs for his plans these peoples land and he does not want that many of them.
I don't see it, mostly because the Nazi plans for Ukraine involved making Crimea a resort province of sorts and the rest a breadbasket, so there would be a need for servile labor for such a project.
The Nazis also had ideas about Volksdeutsche ruling over large swathes of the east, particularly in the Baltics and parts of Poland, but Ukraine was short of Volksdeutsche, so the territory was likely going to be purely used for exploitation.
Now, that is not to say there wouldn't be a puppet Ukraine in some forms, deprived of Crimea and other areas under direct rule, that existed in some form, at least for a while.
The Nazis also had ideas about Volksdeutsche ruling over large swathes of the east, particularly in the Baltics and parts of Poland, but Ukraine was short of Volksdeutsche, so the territory was likely going to be purely used for exploitation.
Now, that is not to say there wouldn't be a puppet Ukraine in some forms, deprived of Crimea and other areas under direct rule, that existed in some form, at least for a while.
I don't see why some long term thinking couldn't come into play at some point. The Nazis were not drooling imbeciles without any conception of strategic thinking or political expedience, as shown by their diplomatic relations in the Balkans.
The long term plan was always genocide and German migration to the east.
More of an emphasis on the Anti-Comintern Pact and the ideological struggle against Bolshevism would have gone a long way in helping on this. The Final Solution could have been put off as well, if the idea of forced labour is applied more.
Marc
Donor
Effectively ASB. Hitler was quite clear about Slavs being vermin. No exceptions.
Oh, and I believe the whole Japanese as Aryan is not really true - they and the Chinese were nominally a respected non-Aryan people. However, in reality, Nazi ideology in practice struggled with that notion.
Racism is used to justify exploitation and oppression, not the other way round.
Any concessions Hitler might make to anti-Communist Russians, Belarusians or Ukrainians could only be tactical ones to get them to pave the way for their own destruction. As he wrote in Mein Kampf:
"And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our prewar period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the prewar period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
"If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." https://books.google.com/books?id=nV-N10gyoFwC&pg=PA249
"And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our prewar period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the prewar period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
"If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." https://books.google.com/books?id=nV-N10gyoFwC&pg=PA249
thorr97
Banned
Temporary though the move might be, it could prove utterly devastating to the Red Army and the Soviet Union.
One of the primary reasons the Red Army was able to remain on the offensive in '43 and after was due to its regaining an increasing amount of the Ukraine and also thereby gaining an increasing amount of its population to replace its ranks with.
Flip that around and the Red Army would be both losing horrific numbers of troops in the face of the German advance - but the Germans could then draw up division after division of Ukrainians to replace their ranks with. They might not be at the same level as the Wehrmacht troops but having more troops to fight with and no partisans to deal with would've made a huge difference on the Eastern Front. A difference that could've proved terribly decisive.
One of the primary reasons the Red Army was able to remain on the offensive in '43 and after was due to its regaining an increasing amount of the Ukraine and also thereby gaining an increasing amount of its population to replace its ranks with.
Flip that around and the Red Army would be both losing horrific numbers of troops in the face of the German advance - but the Germans could then draw up division after division of Ukrainians to replace their ranks with. They might not be at the same level as the Wehrmacht troops but having more troops to fight with and no partisans to deal with would've made a huge difference on the Eastern Front. A difference that could've proved terribly decisive.
The problem with making even temporary concessions is that part of the motive for the invasion in the first place was to get grain to feed the German army and people even if it meant starving Ukrainian peasants. https://books.google.com/books?id=maEfAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA162
Croats, though? They managed to sell the story of being descended from Goths, and the Nazis accepted it without asking. I'm sure the Nazi ideology as it was would have been flexible enough to accept the Ukrainians as well, but in that regard Hitler would still have to be eliminated in order for Lebensraum to be put on the backburner with his successor.
And the Wehrmacht would have to find another source to feed the advancing troops, which it did not have. And avoid the murder of those Ukrainians captured in the initial battles.
Its also worth noting two things. From 42 the Germans were perfectly happy to conscript very large numbers of slavs anyway and most of the population of the Ukraine, the urban part anyway regarded themselves as Soviet Citizens and served in the Red Army.
Open Green Fields
Banned
Hitler viewed the Ukrainians as Slavs, which they are, but if Hitler had invented a new category for them, and made this new category "acceptable" then sure they would join Hitler.
However that would mean that there are geographical regions, where in Poland there are Slavs and as you continue east there is suddenly a new category, and then more east there are Slavs again. It would be logically hard to explain.
And in those days MOST people did not view Ukrainians as different from Russians, they were all "Russians" only now with the break up of the USSR do people outside of those specific regions view them differently.
However that would mean that there are geographical regions, where in Poland there are Slavs and as you continue east there is suddenly a new category, and then more east there are Slavs again. It would be logically hard to explain.
And in those days MOST people did not view Ukrainians as different from Russians, they were all "Russians" only now with the break up of the USSR do people outside of those specific regions view them differently.
Indeed
..
I doubt this is true, my grandparents came from Western Russia, we talked about it and they certainly saw these people as different.
Open Green Fields
Banned
You prove my point exactly.
And you do not even see it
Let me therefore repeat it
"And in those days MOST people did not view Ukrainians as different from Russians, they were all "Russians" only now with the break up of the USSR do people outside of those specific regions view them differently."
BECAUSE your grandparents are from that region YOU view them differently, otherwise with great probability you would not.
Another example is the Iraq war. BEFORE the Iraq war even with many western nations having 100% literacy, tv, radios and many even internet, how many viewed the people of the middle east differently, even today in 2019 some people view them ALL as exactly the same.
That because those people know little about it. From the point of this discussion, this is not the case anyone that knew about them knew they were different.
Most importantly from this POD, the Germans knew they were different. Bismarck toyed with the idea of an "independent principality of Kiev." Kaiser William II tried to turn Ukraine into a nominally independent state under German overlordship. Then they all knew that there was briefly a Ukrainian state after the Russian revolution. Later Adolf Hitler tried as well.
I have never been to Iraq but I certainly did not and I suspect that most people who did not know and thought about it, would imagine that there would be differences.
I actually somewhat liked the Civil War series they did, ASB or not. Sort of like Robert Conroy. Plausibility is not always needed for entertainment.Then you're asking for...