Then & Now
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What would the world look like if the Nazis had won? Not speculation — evidence. Plans, policies, and what they actually did when they had power. The fascist ideal, unchecked.
Democracy, in its current form, is under pressure. Some on the right see authoritarianism as the only alternative — a strongman who can cut through checks and balances.
This means minimising the worst moments of authoritarianism. The Holocaust has been Hollywoodised. The propaganda and tyranny of fascism have become the primary legitimising myth for liberal democracy. It is an absolute taboo to describe anything about the Nazis as good.
Hitler is the ultimate strongman. He is the end of that road. The thick end of the wedge. He is the shibboleth for what happens when one man has too much power. The root of authoritarian is author — a person who can author the story, without guard rails, totally — totalitarianism.
"What if?" questions — counterfactual or allohistory — help us assess whether the right choices were made. They are a type of imaginative logic. They help construct a picture of ur-fascism — the Platonic Idea of fascism, what it would look like unchecked.
Of history we can ask two questions — what happened and what might have happened?
Mussolini saw the Mediterranean as a new Rome — the historic "living space" of Italy. He borrowed the concept of Volk from Germany, declaring in 1936 that "a people cannot live without space."
The "will to dominate" was the fundamental law of the life of the universe from its most rudimentary forms to its most elevated ones.— Mussolini, after WWI
Struggle lies at the origin of everything because life is full of contrasts. There is love and hatred, white and black, day and night, good and evil.— Mussolini (cited in Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology)
Since the 1960s, historians split into two schools: continental (Hitler's goals limited to Europe) and global (world domination). The evidence is ambiguous — but the ideology of perpetual struggle points one way.
This principle of selection that takes place through perpetual struggle is the guarantor of the success of our movement.— Adolf Hitler (cited in Kershaw, Hitler)
Historian Andreas Hillgruber argued for a multi-stage plan:
A state which, in times of contaminated races, commits itself to the care of the noblest elements of its race will become lord over the entire Earth one day.— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, penultimate sentence
Ratzel theorised that nations needed "living space." Haushofer added that agricultural cultivation was a nation's proper life. Hitler added race: Slavs were biologically inferior "sub-humans" who "generally lack state-forming powers."
Do not consider the Reich as secured so long as it does not provide a piece of land for centuries ahead for every offspring of our Nation. The most holy right on this earth is the right for land which one may cultivate himself.— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
In Poland (1939): ~100,000 members of the intelligentsia — priests, businessmen, judges, journalists — murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in Intelligenzaktion. Many killed by public firing squad to terrorise the population.
At the University of Krakow, after the faculty was gathered for a lecture on Nazi ideology, the auditorium was surrounded by SS troopers and all inside were arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where almost all died.— Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe
In annexed Poland, all Polish-language schools were closed. Children got 4 years of education, in German. In Ukraine and Belarus, most schools shut, universities restricted. Equipment destroyed or shipped to Germany.
Simple arithmetic up to 500 at the most; writing of one's name; a doctrine that it is a divine law to obey the Germans and to be honest, industrious and good. I don't think that reading should be required.— Heinrich Himmler, on Slavic education (Kamenetsky, Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe)
Disease outbreaks left to spread. Medical treatment deliberately withheld. Syphilis sufferers in Ukraine taken to Mariupol hospital and executed. Abortion and contraception encouraged in Poland to reduce the Slavic birthrate.
"Superfluous eaters" — roadblocks were set up to prevent food getting to cities. The same infrastructure was being used to transport food to Germany.— German Economic Armament Staff, 1941 (cited in Mazower, Hitler's Empire)
Even slavery was undesirable — German racial homogeneity was essential. Only by working the soil themselves could Germans realise their biological superiority. Slavic manpower was temporary — after victory, they would be "cast aside."
The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we do not need them, they may die.— Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary (cited in Kamenetsky, Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe)
Many would have died from this de facto policy of "extermination through work," but even more would have perished in what Giordano called "the other Holocaust" — the genocide of the Slavs.— Gavriel Rosenfeld, The World Hitler Never Made
In Mein Kampf, Hitler saw Britain and Italy as foundational allies. British Aryans were already spread worldwide — obvious partners in expanding the Aryan race.
Should the British Empire be destroyed, a vacuum would be created that could not be filled.— Adolf Hitler, 1940 (cited in Rosenfeld, The World Hitler Never Made)
Despite the brutality of his designs, Hitler expected to find indispensable allies. The most important would be the British Empire, which he proposed to support in exchange for a free hand on the Continent.— Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism
Hitler was torn. 60 million Americans of Germanic origin. America's westward expansion was an "Aryan Germanic striving." But Jewish and African racial mixing made America unredeemable — the "headquarters of world Jewry."
In future the only state that will be able to stand up to North America will be the one which has understood how to raise the value of its people in racial terms.— Adolf Hitler, Zweites Buch (Second Book)
America's enormous competitive advantage in industrial technology was above all a function of the size of America's internal market. Fordism, in other words, required Lebensraum.— Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction
The city with the finest historical tradition in all Poland was now, to all appearances, a typical German community. Every sign was in German. The street names were in German. If a German passed by, a Pole had to step off the sidewalk. A Pole could not travel by automobile or trolley and was even forbidden to own a bicycle.— Polish Underground courier, December 1939 (cited in Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe)
The Führer's verdict on the Poles is damning. More like animals than human beings, completely primitive, stupid and amorphous.— Joseph Goebbels, diary (cited in Kershaw, Hitler)
Poznan was transformed in three months. This was not a distant plan — it was already happening. The fascist ideal was not hypothetical; it was being built in real time.
The mass enthusiasm which over half a century of Volkish agitation had made explosive was shifted away from the real social and economic grievances and channeled into anti-Semitism.— George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology
There is a dynamism to it. An enemy is always required and always selected. Jews as the inner enemy came first. Then Slavs. Then "corrupted" Aryans. Then America. The logic of perpetual struggle has no natural endpoint.
Hitler saw the British Empire as obsolete because it allowed racial mixing across geography. The Nazi vision was different: a contiguous racial empire, like the United States' westward expansion — settle, displace, replace.
The question for you: what makes this undesirable? It may seem laughable. But it matters. Because history is meant to be unbiased — but you're not stupid, you can tell this isn't a history anyone should want.
History is normative. You can approach it with moral questions in mind. Those moral questions will be different for everyone. But they exist.