If Germany had won the World War

There would have been:
No Communism.
No Cold War.
No nuclear weapon proliferation
No Middle East crisis
No terrorists
No shortage of fuel
No cheaply manufactured products
No grid-lock in party politics
No inefficient and worn-out national infrastructures
No argument over global warming or delay in universal action
No economic melt-down
No unemployment
No Fords and Chevies, only Beemers and Mercs

Hell! Seems to me the bad guys won. :mrgreen:

Maybe, but Germany didn’t fight the Cold War.

I’m not sure why I’m responding to this post, for I’m almost sure you are being facetious. From what I understand, the Nazi regime was very close to developing atomic warfare. If they could have finished with their research, there is a very good chance they wouldn’t have hesitated to use it.
In regard to the rest of the laundry list of your post, who knows what may have occured.
Not to mention the annialation of the remaining Jewish people that would have been scattered throughout the world.

Whatchu talkin about willis…

I don’t know about that. The Sonderweg was already very much in play during the War, plus the Imperial notion of technological advancement at the expense of everything else was quite stunning. I forget which town it was (I wanna say it was near Dresden, but it could have been around Erfurt) but they had used the two lakes as dumping facilities for their factories and the lakes became so polluted that they ran a wire between them and used them as batteries to run the factories! Puts the burning of Lake Eire to shame, if you ask me.

Plus the whole Calvinist ideology embodied by the Hohenzollerns would have lead to some troubles down the road. Not to mention the defeat of democracy. The monarchs would have gained more control in Britain, the Bonapartists probably would have taken over France, and so on down the line.

Dorky - the Cold War began after WWII. Germany wasn’t fighting anyone then.

I’d love it if you could expand upon the lakes which became so polluted they could be used as batteries.

Finally a reasonably objective responce as apposed to banal platitudes.
You are Monday quarter-backing here mate. Today’s real concern with global pollution was not in human consciousness back then. Everybody was exploiting the environment without future thiought and dumping their wastes the cheapest way possible. We were still doing nuclear test blasts into the atmosphere in the 60’s and 70,s. Check out Germany today. No point scored here mate.

So we are having no troubles with the rest of religious mumbo-jumbo. Calvinism is no worse than the rest. No point scored here mate.

Democracy has never been in place. Like it or not we all march to party tunes. Try run as an independent. The rich rule and always have. Give me a benevelent dictatorship any day. At least then I know exactly what my rights are, No point scored here mate.

Completel contradiction to the aims and asperations of the Thousand Year Reich. Zero point here too mate.

Cyrene,

I’ll see if I can look into it some more. It was a while ago, and I don’t remember where it was! Somewhere in the former East Germany, but the lakes were used as batteries around the turn of the century. If I had to guess, I’d say one of the factories was pumping out ammonia using the Haber Process, which would have made one of the lakes basic. The other lake was probably full of sulfuric acid, just because that is one of the most commonly used chemicals, period. Throw in some metal salts and you’d be good to go.

MM,

You seem to be assuming that Germany would have followed a similar trajectory had it not been defeated in the Great War. I don’t see any reason to think that at all!

It isn’t the religion but rather the attitudes associated with it. My favorite example of “Prussian Democracy” is the Berliner Dom. Anyone could enter the church, but only nobles could worship there.

I reject that equivocation entirely. Benevolent dictatorship, sure. But where is the promise of that? The Reichstag certainly wasn’t going to cut it, and the judges were all Junkers!

Which war are we talking about here? 11/11 is all about the Great War. WWII is a different matter entirely.

He’s definitely talking about WWII.

The whole list is an affront to history, frankly.
First of all, it is exceedingly well-documented that the Nazi regime had little interest in annexing France or Britain long-term as its primary concerns over lebensraum were in Eastern Europe and perhaps in the colonial sphere. What would have been much more likely is something approaching the kind of cold war envisaged by Robert Harris in his novel Fatherland, with a Greater Germany replacing the Soviet Union.
Secondly, the idea that the United States could have been overcome by a National Socialist German Reich is little short of laughable, even with the development of nuclear arms by the latter (which Liteninbolt quite rightly points out was on their agenda), so the idea that German manufacturing products would have replaced American simply doesn’t bear up. I would accept that German products would have proved more robust competitors in a market economy than those of the Eastern bloc, but let’s not get carried away.
Thirdly, environmental degradation is an issue so far removed from post-War geo-politics that I am astounded someone would even seek to make such a flight of interpretive fancy.
And finally, there is little to suggest that Communism would have been dead in the water even in the aftermath of a Soviet defeat as Germany would have found it impossible to assimilate the entirety of the former Soviet Union and would have had little or no influence in East Asia. Certainly the influence of Communist regimes on a world scale would have much reduced, but it is wishful thinking in the extreme to think they would have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Perhaps one of the only assertions which stands up to any kind of scrutiny is that the present Middle East crisis would have been averted, although the fact that this seems to be premissed entirely on the non-existence of Israel demonstrates a shocking degree of ignorance about the complexities of the political situation in that region, of which post-colonial questions are a not-insignifcant aspect. Moreover, there were already millions of Jewish refugees who had fled the European continent even before the outbreak of war, so who is to say that some sort of Jewish state would have been impossible?

I am talking about WWII. I am not talking about what German aims would have been if there had been no war. I have also said that Hitler had no idea of the larger evolutionary event of globalism that he was initiating. Circumstances change consciousness. Man proposes, God disposes. Having won a world war, German aims would definately have expanded and what I have listed may well have come to pass.

You have all missed the central point entirely.
The reason I posted this original notion of a German-domminated world is to make all of us look at the present mess in responsible planet management from another angle and gain some kind of perspective on how righteously naive we are about ourselves and our abilities. There has not been a single sober or original reflection come back from any of you - just a bunch of data you have Googled and regurgitated.

I must have misread your OP.

But what is there to argue about? You have a list of speculations.

Big deal.

I don’t accept that you have made a cogent argument for the “Man proposes, God disposes” philosophy of history: we are only given the suggestion that it be accepted as self-evident, which it isn’t.

Secondly, the probable reason for which specific responses were made is that you set out your theory in a list of specific virtual circumstances, not as a general interpretation. Nor do I see what that list tells us about “how righteously naive we are about ourselves and our abilities”, although I would be delighted if you would explain your line of reasoning.

I am certainly not opposed to “virtual histories”, but do they not need, much like actual histories, to make reference to more than simply the observation itself?

Or am I just “missing the point”? (In which case, show me rather than just telling me.)

What did you expect with this provocative hypothetical? I suppose the Nazis would have destroyed every minority that they supposed inferior to themselves. But they would have sown the seed of their own demise even if they had won. Imperial regimes don’t last forever. Based on solely violence and stupidity as was Nazi Germany, it would have brought itself down faster than most.

I would have thought that any idiot would have recognized that the post was meant to be ironical and self-reflective. It seems I over-estimated the level of intelligence I am addressing. The self-serving response has been pathetic.

The Germans like us, have better and worse sides to their nature. We might have won the war, but was for the good of the mankind and our planet? We are living in our own filth, hundreds of millons are starving and the planet is suffering and all you can do is be self-righteous. Explain to me how dropping not one but two atomic bombs and incinerating two entire cities filled with women and children is more humane than Nazi atrocities. Lets not include napalming Vietnam and the collateral damage in Iraq. Jesus F Christ! Give me a break!

I would suggest that you return to the OP and take a more reflective look at each of implications I have delineated. You definately need a reality check on yourself. And tell your self-serving friends too, before you bore the shit out of me.

MM - tone down the rhetoric - felix is answering in good faith. I suggest you do the same.

There is a limit to my patience. Every single post I have made on this forum is the resuilt of original research and original conclusions. Every other post on this forum is basically old knowledge rehashed. The only reason I post here is an attempt to stimulate creative discussion on new ideas, not listen to pseudo-intellectual responses that come from browsing Google.

My outburst is a deliberate attempt to wake up uncreative minds, yours included. Show me one thread other than mine that is entirely original and I will take these words back. If you can’t take my frustration thats too bad - for you, not for me. Unless I see a change of attitude I am not going to waste anymore of my time here. If you are really sincere about the quality of this forum, which I doubt, I would suggest you take a breath and think about what I have just said. If the response is not positive, and you can show me where I err, then this is Goodbye and Good ridance.

MM, while we have no rules about originality, we have rules about decorum.

You may take that as positive, negative, or anywhere in between.

MagnetMan, I answered your post with what I thought was an appropriate, dignified reply. Apparently, you didn’t receive the responses with which you had hoped. Perhaps if you would have prefaced your OP with more of an introductive qualification as to what you were looking for, it may have gleaned the proper responses you sought after. Not everyone here thinks at the same level or is educated in all fields of thought.

I recall now why I took a hiatus from this forum.

I post about perpetual physics, original. You can’t even Google perpetual physics and find anything! :slight_smile: Anyhow, you’re wrong, 100%. I see originality all over this site…uncreative minds are watching Dancing with the Stars, not posting here.