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While the great men spin their webs, what of the normal people and the opinions and motives of the soldiers? :p:rolleyes:

Hermann Goering said:
Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Nazi Germany runs on the Great Man Theory. :p
 
Jfk_inauguration.jpg

Figure 146: Typical of Kennedy Presidency treatment of Reich officials, Ambassador von Ribbentrop was cropped from the right edge of the official Inauguration photograph.

Nixon...so close, but so far. :(

Still too many Kennedys running around.
 
Nazi Germany runs on the Great Man Theory. :p

The thing is, war ended 10 years ago...
Someday one might even ask for a freedom of speech, followed by other freedoms?
And the next generation is not like the past generation.
People get fed up at some point. :rolleyes:

So no inner 'movement's?
 
The thing is, war ended 10 years ago...
Someday one might even ask for a freedom of speech, followed by other freedoms?
And the next generation is not like the past generation.
People get fed up at some point. :rolleyes:

So no inner 'movement's?

Why would there be? It's not like there were a huge number of uprisings under Stalin, and he was vastly unpopular compared to Hitler. The last people who would know about things like "freedom of speech" were born in the 1920s, and they're precisely the ones who were fed the diet of Fuehrerprinzip in the '30s that led to the OTL cult of personality. As long as the middle class is happy - and they are, what with their televisions, vast public spectacles, et cetera - there's nowhere for a revolutionary movement to gain traction. See late-Republican Rome, America, France, Russia in 1905, Russia in 1917, Russia in 1989... all of these movements rely on discontent in the middle class. That's lacking in the Reich of the 1960s.
 
Goldwater in '64! :cool:

Btw, excellent update, I can't wait to see the Joe Kennedy Jr. Administration at work... but it seems like two political families dominate the White House, the Kennedy's, and the always so warming Rockefellers! ;)
 
Just so you know, updating is likely to be delayed by two factors.

1 - It's semester's end, so I have something like three major projects, plus catch-up homework, to complete in two weeks.

2 - I rediscovered Civ4.

As a result, it's currently February 1962 in-game.
 
Colin Status Update:
Down to one major project (eight hours-ish work) and catch-up homework, plus finals.

Game Status Update:
Man, it's slow in the '60s. I'm up to June '62 and literally nothing interesting has happened since the last in-game update, though I fixed my CAG problem... just started researching the American CAG tree.

So in summary, I fully intend to get a real update up this week, or at least this weekend if the week proves over-full.
 
3. The Death of Heinrich Himmler

Much has been written since 1962 on the death of Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, especially in international circles. Among American authors, with their mania for conspiracy theories, every member of the Reich's leadership, from Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach to Himmler's successor as Reichsfuehrer-SS, Reinhard Heydrich, has been accused of Himmler's murder. However, the prosaic truth is almost certainly as the Sicherheitspolizei investigation found after the fact: the Reichsfuehrer was victim of a mechanical failure in an airplane that was more than twenty years old. Himmler was never able to bring himself to trust jet aircraft, since he could not actually see the propellers when at rest. Hence, he had stayed all but wedded to his Fw-200 "Condor" transport, a relic of the late 1930s.

Did the Reichsfuehrer have enemies? Certainly. During the last year of his life, he managed to alienate even the members of the military establishment who owed their positions to his stubbornness in the 1930s and 1940s. Otto Skorzeny, who was by now Chief of the General Staff, was scathingly frank in his description of Himmler at the time: "Reichsheini couldn't wipe his own with both hands and a mirror." The root of this was the proposed internationalization and expansion of the Waffen-SS, which would have completely severed the Reichsfuehrer's link to that organization, and was the brainchild of Skorzeny and his immediate superior, War Minister and Reichsmarschall Paul Hausser. Even Heydrich, whose service in the past twenty years had included time as Hitler's viceroy first in the Balkans, then in Russia, approved of the project, seeing it as a way of binding the non-German nations in the various German-organized Economic Unions more firmly to Germany.

As with many things with which Skorzeny was involved at the time, the project had its genesis in South America. His experience had shown that the German soldier had an absolute lack of affinity for local conditions, and that soldiers conditioned to the temperate climate of Bavaria were less than perfect in the stultifying conditions of Bolivia. His proposed solution was to begin mobilizing the vast manpower resources of the African countries in exchange for Reich economic assistance - mercenary service, he admitted, but the French Foreign Legion and the British Gurkhas, both formations which had resisted the general malaise of their respective countries, had technically been mercenaries.

Hausser had taken this idea and expanded on it; one of the conditions for economic support from the Reich should be military support of the union as a whole. The Reichsheer clearly was not the place for these foreign soldiers, as the Reichsheer was Germany's army and it was unlikely that foreign soldiers in the German army would sit well with the English, Scots, or French public. The solution, therefore, was to internationalize the Waffen-SS fully. The German divisions of the Waffen-SS would be Germany's contribution to the organization's forces, while each of the member nations would be expected to contribute as they were able. Some nations - France, for instance - would be spared further mandatory contributions for the presence of the Waffen-SS Division "Charlemagne," but would be encouraged to contribute further. In the French case, Hausser stressed that an unofficial requirement should be made that the Foreign Legion should be transferred to German control.

Himmler objected strenuously. This would represent the stripping of the last vestiges of the Waffen-SS subordination to the General SS (Allegemeine-SS - trans.) and thus the further reduction of Himmler's already shrunken sphere. At the first of a number of staff conferences devoted to the plan, held on March 6 at Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop's instigation at the Berchtesgaden retreat, Himmler categorically refused to allow SS participation in the scheme, despite the fact that he had fought strenuously throughout much of the 1940s to bring foreign formations under SS control. The Reichsfuehrer's reasoning was, to say the least, tenuous - wartime measures were one thing, but diluting the purity of the Reich's elite forces deliberately in peacetime was tantamount to turning them into regular soldiers. Von Manstein, who attended in his role as the Fuehrer's African viceroy, commented: "Of course, the Reichsfuehrer has an extensive knowledge of regular soldiering." The mere fact of the Reichsmarschall-Afrika's comment to his face in a public setting should have been a cue to the Reichsfuehrer that his influence was, perhaps, waning. Characteristically, the Reichsfuehrer refused to take notice, attempting to tighten his fragile control of the SS. Decree after decree poured forth from SS Main Office (SS-Hauptamt - trans.) as the Reichsfuehrer, and his immediate subordinate Gottlob Berger, returned to the basic roots of the SS, insisting on uniform discipline, smart appearance, and punctuality - in short, attempting to create an appearance of watchfulness where in truth there had been no laxity to complain about.

The twice-monthly leadership conferences on the expansion of the Waffen-SS, drawing as they did on a majority of the so-called "Social Cabinet" (Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Rosenberg, among others) in addition to the obvious participation of the Military and Economic Cabinets, were admittedly gruelling affairs with typically a hundred attendees, indicative of how difficult it had become by this late in the Fuehrer's rule to achieve anything in Germany without his direct participation. Over time, most of the high-ranking attendees began sending deputies. Himmler always attended in person, or if he was unwell, sent his military attache, Gruppenfuehrer Joachim Peiper, who was admittedly unenthusiastic and, according to recently declassified papers, was in fact Skorzeny's man to the core after thirty years of off-and-on direct exposure to the Reichsfuehrer, whose leadership style had charitably been described as "deliberate" and "measured." Neither Himmler nor Peiper managed to muster any substantial objections to the plan, Peiper's resistance being mostly pro forma, but for six months the Reichsfuehrer delayed any progress at all on the expansion of the Waffen-SS. Eventually, Hausser used his position as head of the Military Cabinet to appeal directly to the Fuehrer, who had been tangentially aware of the discussions, but not of the details. Secretarial transcripts reveal some of that meeting.

HAUSSER: Mein Fuehrer, either that man goes, or I do.

FUEHRER: What man, Paul?

HAUSSER: The Reichsfuehrer, mein Fuehrer. He has... I hesitate to describe it, as decency fails me when I consider it.

FUEHRER: Does this have something to do with that foreign legion idea of yours? Certainly worked out well for the Pope.

HAUSSER: Yes, mein Fuehrer, it does. The Reichsfuehrer has obdurately refused to allow SS participation in the matter.

FUEHRER: We are talking about the same man who insisted that Bosniaks were eligible for membership in his private army? Who called Balts, Franks, and even Indians "honorary Germans" during the war?

HAUSSER: The same. You see why I am angry.

FUEHRER: Let me tell you something I learned many years ago, Paul. Heini means well. He's a very good accountant. But he is fundamentally crazy. Not like you and me. He lives in the clouds. I hardly need to remind you about Wewelsburg.

HAUSSER: God, if I have to attend another cremation while he selects his next "Grail Knight," I will jump on the pyre myself.

FUEHRER: Just so, Paul. Have you spoken to Hauptgruppenfuehrer Heydrich about this?

HAUSSER: No, mein Fuehrer. It seemed inappropriate given that he is the Reichsfuehrer's subordinate.

FUEHRER: Terribly practical man, Heydrich. Not like our Heini at all. Go talk to Heydrich, Paul. Heydrich will know what to do.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-619-2663-06%2C_Flugzeug_Focke-Wulf_FW_200_%22Condor%22.jpg

Figure 149: Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler developed a lifelong preference for the Focke-Wulf Fw-200 "Condor" transport plane, despite its outdated technology.

Himmler, at Heydrich's invitation, flew to the Luftwaffe Expertenschule to inspect the first squadron of Waffen-SS pilots, SS-Jagdstaffel "Hans Baur," on November 8, 1962. Himmler's outdated Focke-Wulf transport arrived at Stendal the day prior, and he spent much of the day in unofficial, off-the-record meetings with the pilots. The official review was on the morning of the 8th, and that evening, he left Stendal for Berlin.

He never arrived. Expertenschule observers reported hearing distress calls from the aircraft prior to it plummeting spectacularly into Lake Havel, outside Brandenburg an der Havel. There were no survivors. Immediately, a Sicherheitspolizei investigation began, but gathering debris and information was made difficult by severe weather, the approaching winter, and the destructive nature of the crash. Within twenty-four hours of Himmler's crash, the Fuehrer had summoned Heydrich back to Berlin and ordered him to take up the Reichsfuehrer's position as head of the SS organization. Within seventy-two hours of that, the new Reichsfuehrer-SS had reached an understanding with Hausser, Skorzeny, and Ribbentrop the elder. The German Waffen-SS, with the signature of the Berlin Agreement on December 24th, became the European Treaty Force (EVW, for Europaische Vertragswaffe - trans.).

639px-Schwarze_sonne.jpg

Figure 150: The Generals' Hall at Wewelsburg

Perhaps most appropriate was the treatment of Himmler's death by the more mystical wing of the SS. When Heydrich was approached by Hauptgruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger of the SS Main Office regarding funeral procedures for the Reichsfuehrer, he apparently gave his assent to the treatment which Himmler himself had described - cremation in the Generals' Hall at Wewelsburg. It was a purely symbolic cremation, and records make it quite clear that Heydrich, Hausser, and Skorzeny all attended. It would be the last cremation in the Generals' Hall. This rather hollow funeral, at the heart of the monument which he had spent twenty years building, formed the perfect description of Himmler's relationship with his own SS at the end.
 
Europäische Heere would be moe more fitting. ;)

Vertragswaffe would be translated more into Treaty-Gun.

And it is Allgemeine SS. :)

Quite ironic.
Hitlers personal guard transforming into an European Defence force. :rolleyes:
 
Europäische Heere would be moe more fitting. ;)

It would be, if there was a strict requirement to sticking to land warfare forces.

Vertragswaffe would be translated more into Treaty-Gun.

And it is Allgemeine SS. :)

Treaty-weapon, unless you want to suggest "Air Gun" for Luftwaffe, or "Gun Factory" for "Waffenfabrik," which applies equally to tanks and rifles.

I'd wondered about the second E.

Quite ironic.
Hitlers personal guard transforming into an European Defence force. :rolleyes:

Well, it's what Hausser (among others) claimed after the war that the Waffen-SS really was - that it was the forerunner of NATO. I figure that working for Himmler is enough to drive anyone around the bend, so every step that divorces the Waffen-SS from Himmler's control is good by them.

Plus the training apparatus for the post-Waffen-SS force is still in German hands. ;)
 
Looks like Germany needs a new class of aviation aircraft! Where has all that science and technology gone too for transport aircraft? :p
 
Looks like Germany needs a new class of aviation aircraft! Where has all that science and technology gone too for transport aircraft? :p

Oddly enough, the tech for researching turbojet transport aircraft has just opened up. Coincidence?

Seriously, the default transport right now is the real-life Transall C-160, which has always looked like a baby C-130 to me. Makes sense based on real life, where the C-130 was designed in the '50s based off '40s experience and is still alive and kicking today. The US Navy actually did some experiments once upon a time to see if the C-130 was suitable for carrier use. The short answer: It was, but there were better alternatives.
 
Given how slow the first few months of the year always are, it might be a little while before I update, I've just gotten back to playing after a week more or less devoted to academic life.