Thought this might be a good time to start such a threadand wasn't able to find another on this subject digging through the forum.
I am going to just make a few changes to the events that occured in the first few hours following the attempt. Colnel Brandt does not trip and move the briefcase and thus the bomb goes off from where it was intended and Hitler is killed. General Felligebel is able to get confirmation of this Olbricht before the communication lines are severed. So Valkyrie goes into effect a little after 12 noon instead of 4 PM. General Fromm backs the conspiracy.
I would assume that Berlin would be largely in the hands of the conspirators by the time Stauffenberg returned. Goebbels and other high ranking Nazis would be under arrest. Other arrests would take place all over Europe and several major cities would fall to forces loyal to the plot.
However the counter coup by the Nazis might start to play in almost the same way. The Wolf's lair would be secured and joined by Himmler; would start sending counter orders all over the Reich. Several SS units would move to act against the coup. Wehrmacht leaders loyal to Hitler like Guderian or Runstedt might try to rally the Army to fight the conspirators. The conspirators failure to secure the communication networks early , cost them dearly in the real timeline, I am assuming it does here to ; as anti coup messages are broadcast all over the Reich urging all Germans to resist the coup.
Finally I think its possible Major Remer (by all accounts a fanatical Nazi) might have still backed the regime in power, upon learing the truth about the nature of events. Thus the conspirators position in Berlin itself would have been jeopordized.
The key for the Conspirators would be; in order to prevent a costly civil war, or even a quick collapse of their coup would be; to nuetralize the SS leadership quickly and eliminate its leaders; to arrest and replace Pro Nazi Army leaders like Guderian and Remer; and push for a quick end to the war. Would it be too late for anything other than unconditional surrender or did Germany still have something to bargain with?
A lot of speculation, but think it makes for an interesting discussion
Interesting premise, although I think we did discuss something similar in the Valyrie movie thread.
If the Nazis were to regain power, who would have been the leader. Some of Hitler's underlings were scarier than Hitler himself, because they seemed more rational. Although Goring probably would have surrendered more quickly.
Another question is if the army rallies to fight the conspirators, how will this effect their operations in the field?
Originally Posted by InExile
Thought this might be a good time to start such a thread
I am going to just make a few changes to the events that occured in the first few hours following the attempt. Colnel Brandt does not trip and move the briefcase and thus the bomb goes off from where it was intended and Hitler is killed. General Felligebel is able to get confirmation of this Olbricht before the communication lines are severed. So Valkyrie goes into effect a little after 12 noon instead of 4 PM. General Fromm backs the conspiracy.
I would assume that Berlin would be largely in the hands of the conspirators by the time Stauffenberg returned. Goebbels and other high ranking Nazis would be under arrest. Other arrests would take place all over Europe and several major cities would fall to forces loyal to the plot.
However the counter coup by the Nazis might start to play in almost the same way. The Wolf's lair would be secured and joined by Himmler; would start sending counter orders all over the Reich. Several SS units would move to act against the coup. Wehrmacht leaders loyal to Hitler like Guderian or Runstedt might try to rally the Army to fight the conspirators. The conspirators failure to secure the communication networks early , cost them dearly in the real timeline, I am assuming it does here to ; as anti coup messages are broadcast all over the Reich urging all Germans to resist the coup.
Finally I think its possible Major Remer (by all accounts a fanatical Nazi) might have still backed the regime in power, upon learing the truth about the nature of events. Thus the conspirators position in Berlin itself would have been jeopordized.
The key for the Conspirators would be; in order to prevent a costly civil war, or even a quick collapse of their coup would be; to nuetralize the SS leadership quickly and eliminate its leaders; to arrest and replace Pro Nazi Army leaders like Guderian and Remer; and push for a quick end to the war. Would it be too late for anything other than unconditional surrender or did Germany still have something to bargain with?
A lot of speculation, but think it makes for an interesting discussion
I think that with Hitler dead and Goering (his official successor) under arrest, the Nazi regime would have fallen like a house of cards. Himmler was not popular with the German people and although there would have been initial anger and revulsion among the German people, there is no doubt in my mind that the conspirators would then have succeeded, especially if a popular general like Rommel openly backed them. I imagine some clashed between the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht forces, but this would not have lasted long. Even the SS would have gone over to the new regime as long as their position was safe.
In the unlikely event of the conspirators being defeated, much would have depended on which of the Nazi leaders were still alive, but all of them would have concentrated on saving their own skins first. I imagine that someone like Goering would have left the military side of things in the hands of the generals and he wold have concentrated on hopeless attempts to split the allies through diplomacy. Upon this failure he would probably have sought a silent exit to Argentina, along with his family and plenty of valuables.
Considering the reaction of the allies; no doubt their first reaction would be to say it didn't make any difference and unconditional surrender was the only option available to Germany.
But this might have changed over time. Consider a non-Nazi government, agrees to renounce all conquests and withdraw from the occupied and satellite territories as soon as it became militarily feasible. Moreover Germany would be freed from the disasterous military leadership of Hitler; and German war policy would be directed by far more competant heads like Wizlebehn or Rommel. In such it might have been possible for Germany to hold off the allies for a lot longer.
Such a Government would agree to close all concentration and death camps, try the Nazi leadership for war crimes, dismantle the SS and agree to a policy of compensation and reparations.
Would it now be politically feasible to the allies to continue the relentless bombing of Germany, killing hundreds of thousands; when Germany continued to say that all it wanted was peace? Would the US and Britain allow the whole of Eastern Europe to fall to the Soviet Union; given the presence of a potential ally in the new German Leadership?
I think Eisenhower would have concocted an 'unconditional surrender' that would have allowed the Germans a degree of sovereignty, much like happened in the case of Japan. I also believe that the Russians would not have been given as big a slice of the pie as they got, and their influence would have been considerably diminished as a consequence.
The Casablanca declaration of January 1943 was really a piece of propaganda to rally domestic support in the UK and USA behind the war, rather than a fanatical decision to destroy Germany, which is unfortunately the image that the Nazis portrayed to their own people. The Russians, unlike the Western allies, were fighting for their survival, so they didn't need to boost domestic support with any such declaration.
The main premise of the conspirators was that if Hitler were slain, a separate peace could be negotiated with the Western allies, while Germany's war continued with the USSR.
I think the conspirators, even if successful in overthrowing the government, would have soon been disappointed in such hopes.
Even those in the West such as Churchill, who were convinced of a future enmity with the USSR, were nevertheless also fully resolved to destroy German power.
The only distinction to be made on this score, between the various Western leaders concerns the question of whether any sort of German power was to ever again be restored.
Roosevelt, for his part, was comfortable with the notion of a permanently weakened Europe, with the USA and USSR left as the only remaining first-class world powers. Churchill, on the other hand, was eager to allow the recovery of Germany, in a suitably reconstituted form.
But no Western leader was willing to contemplate a separate peace with Germany in any respect along the lines of that envisioned by the July conspirators.
Bear in mind also that in July 1944 the atomic bomb was yet unproven, and therefore the Western allies were looking forward to Soviet participation in the final defeat of Japan. That's another reason for no separate peace.
The most for which the conspirators could have hoped was a quicker surrender to save German lives, with consequently a more orderly enemy occupation of Germany, that would have avoided the massive displacements and massacres of early '45.
The Poles and Czechs might also have ended up with a better deal. Hungary and Austria would have been spared some of the direct effects of battle.
But in other respects things could have become more complicated post-war:
--Germany would have been riven by another "stab in the back" controversy.
--Allied demands for reparations would have been much more insistent if Germany had not been reduced to such utter ruin.
--Plenty of room for inter-allied conflicts over the status of the Baltic States.
--the mutually hostile regimes in Rumania and Hungary would have remained in place and been perhaps unrestrained by foreign occupation.
--East Prussia would have still been inhabited by Germans, while the London Poles return to Warsaw, with the seeds of a furture war with Germany.
In short, there could very easily have been a messy series of regional "continuation wars," all with the possibility of escalation, that would make our historical post-Yalta situation seem idyllic.
Personally I think it would have exteneded the war. Hitler was probably the Allies best friend during the last two years of the war with his mistakes. I am not sure any of his replacements would have made the mistakes he did.Thought this might be a good time to start such a thread
I am going to just make a few changes to the events that occured in the first few hours following the attempt. Colnel Brandt does not trip and move the briefcase and thus the bomb goes off from where it was intended and Hitler is killed. General Felligebel is able to get confirmation of this Olbricht before the communication lines are severed. So Valkyrie goes into effect a little after 12 noon instead of 4 PM. General Fromm backs the conspiracy.
I would assume that Berlin would be largely in the hands of the conspirators by the time Stauffenberg returned. Goebbels and other high ranking Nazis would be under arrest. Other arrests would take place all over Europe and several major cities would fall to forces loyal to the plot.
However the counter coup by the Nazis might start to play in almost the same way. The Wolf's lair would be secured and joined by Himmler; would start sending counter orders all over the Reich. Several SS units would move to act against the coup. Wehrmacht leaders loyal to Hitler like Guderian or Runstedt might try to rally the Army to fight the conspirators. The conspirators failure to secure the communication networks early , cost them dearly in the real timeline, I am assuming it does here to ; as anti coup messages are broadcast all over the Reich urging all Germans to resist the coup.
Finally I think its possible Major Remer (by all accounts a fanatical Nazi) might have still backed the regime in power, upon learing the truth about the nature of events. Thus the conspirators position in Berlin itself would have been jeopordized.
The key for the Conspirators would be; in order to prevent a costly civil war, or even a quick collapse of their coup would be; to nuetralize the SS leadership quickly and eliminate its leaders; to arrest and replace Pro Nazi Army leaders like Guderian and Remer; and push for a quick end to the war. Would it be too late for anything other than unconditional surrender or did Germany still have something to bargain with?
A lot of speculation, but think it makes for an interesting discussion
I can see your point here , was there not a film portrayal with Lee Marvin sent to kill a high ranking General , the sniper with him saw hitler and was going to kill him instead of the General, but marvin stopped him saying we want hitler alive , not sure if it was based on fact tho ?
TANKIE.
a dead hitler would still mean a german surrender by 1945. the soviets would probably pay more and the western allies would probably pay less for the victory, though.
The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"
-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Huh? I don't know if you want to use this stuff as a water pipe to smoke what ever it is you've got there....
Guderian was loyal to Hitler. After all it was Hitler that allowed Guderian to develope his PanzerWaffe. But a Nazi? I'd have to disagree with you on that. Guderian was purely a military man who cared very little for politics. Clearly he had responsibility though as he will undoubtably have been aware of slave labour and the deportation of Jews, but that doesn't make him a Nazi.
Agreed. I think if the German mutineers offered terms to Roosevelt and Churchill, they would be roughly disabused.
All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
-Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.
You must have read Guderian's book, Pink, which is a great attempt to sanitize his past, which includes being one of the three generals on the tribunal of the show trials of Stauffenberg's plotters.
As Williamson and Murray say on p72 of "A War To Be Won":
" ... his postwar memoirs, perhaps the most self-serving by any German general, which is saying a great deal. .... Guderian was also an enthusiastic Nazi whose loyalty to the regime would lead to his appointment as the army's chief-of-staff in the aftermath of the failed 20 July 1944 coup."
That's right, Triple C ... after January 1943 no separate peace offer from either Hitler or say, Ludwig Beck, would have been acceptable ...
Last edited by clackers; 26 Feb 09, at 12:47.
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