What REALLY Would Have Happened If Germany Won WWII, And Why Israel Is A Mortal Threat To Judaism's Survival

Dark alternate realities about a Nazi victory are amongst the most eye-rolling cliche. Typically they feature a senescent Hitler, the swastika flying over the US and UK. Very little critical thought goes into such productions. Then there are those holdouts who like to make frighteningly unrealistic YouTube videos about a Nazi utopia. But the truth - what REALLY would happened if the Axis won WWII - is interesting in its own right.

Germany winning WWII and uniting Europe by force of arms would not, in fact, have been an unprecedented development. Charlemagne, Alexander, Genghis Khan, and Theodosius all built mighty empires encompassing, if not continental Europe, at least as great a land area and diversity of populations.

Legend has it that Alexander the Great was asked upon his deathbed, "To whom shall your empire be bequeathed?" Alexander, characteristically, replied, "To the strongest."

Empires founded by conquest in a short space of time by a single great leader pretty invariably follow a clearly defined pattern. The great leader conquers, then upon his death (often precipitated by the end of the conquering), his lieutenants carve up his empire into little fiefdoms. To secure their positions, the lieutenants pander to the native populations; the garrisons gradually "go native" and become assimilated into the localities. The localities become more powerful than their erstwhile conquerors, and within a century, the initial conquest simply becomes another chapter in the establishment of a common history. Obvious examples of this pattern of conquest, dissolution and synthesis include the processes of Hellenization & Romanization, and the spread of Christianity and Islam.

Ironically, if Hitler hadn't committed suicide, he probably would have lived a longer life than he would have if he had won the war. Hitler was insane, and he was the man of the hour for the reason that no sane man could be. As soon as any stability set in, his days would have been numbered; even during the war, different factions jockeyed for power under his neurotic rule; most obviously the Wehrmacht (led by the Prussian clique), the bureaucracy (led by Albert Speer), and the SS/SA (led by Hermann Goering).

Beneath all the propaganda and lip service, none of the three groups really had any loyalty to Hitler. The Prussians hated Hitler (and tried to kill him) because he was "an Austrian corporal"; Speer was a morally flexible technocrat who nodded his head through Hitler's rants over tea; and Goering was already plotting his unrealistic contingency plan of making peace with the Allies and ruling over at least some of the ill-gotten gains (like the Prussians, Goering completely failed to grasp that the Allies would settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender until it was too late).

So, if the Germans won, Hitler would have been knocked off in short order, the empire would have fragmented, the SS/SA and Wehrmacht probably laying claim to different regions (the former most likely taking Eastern Europe, where they found easy recruitment amongst sadly deluded Poles and Ukrainians), native populations would have reasserted themselves, and within a century, the result would have been...the EU.

There are at least two lessons to be learned here. One is that war is deceptively irrelevant to the overall flow of history. Another is that political consolidation is one of the great overall long-term trends of history. Great empires come and go, but the gradual amalgamation of local communities and princedoms has been a "two steps forward, one step back" trend over the last five thousand years of human history. In that sense, the EU is best understood as a historical inevitability.

Nor is the process over. The long-term impact of the current economic crisis - which has yet to hit its climax, not by a long shot (***prediction: something very, very bad is going to happen to the global economy this Christmas***) will probably be a big international consolidation. Now, this won't come about by all of the peoples of this world realizing they're in it together. Quite the contrary, what will happen is, the rich will continue to collaborate to screw everyone else over; their efforts will be rendered futile by the inexorable march of history, and the people of the world will "inherit the wind".

A case study is how the American and Chinese people share the same enemy, although they do not realize it - the unholy alliance between the American Capitalist and Chinese Communist oligarchy. China - less stable than the US, although it is not obvious - will eventually become a democracy, and when it does it will be the US's natural ally, probably within the next 40 years. In the long run, we may actually see a positive iteration of Orwell's dystopian vision of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia - the US/NAFTA, PRC/ASEAN, and the EU. History will eventually guide them all into being moderate socialist democracies, because no other option will prove historically valid. Political history, like natural evolution, is a process of elimination - guess-and-check.

For the same reasons - and many will find this a hard pill to swallow -  I don't believe the Holocaust was actually a mortal threat to the Jews, for the same reason that none of their other historical adversaries were.

The Jews' great strength is that they have never sought national greatness and the inevitable polarization and degeneration it brings. The Jewish way has always been to focus solely on keeping the traditions alive for another generation, embellishing them through literary and philosophical elaboration. This is a supremely wise approach: it is far easier to commit mass murder, bring down a civilization, destroy an empire, than to extinguish a way of thinking, a way of life, certainly not one that has produced so many tangible benefits. Western civilization as we know it is really nothing more than a hybridization of Jewish and Roman ideology.

If the Holocaust had continued unopposed, claiming the lives of those in the camps, the not insignificant number of Jews outside Europe would have just keep digging themselves further into their new homes - India, Japan, South America - just as they had when they were previously forced out of Spain or Judaea itself.

The Nazi regime was always an organized hypocrisy that appealed to human stupidity by claiming that all complex political, social & economic problems could be solved through the doctrine of racial superiority and the dictator's infallible judgement. A Nazi victory would have inevitably resulted in decadence and degeneration, as Germany would have become a country reliant on plunder and incapable of exporting anything but violence - just like every other great conquering power - born with the seeds of its own destruction.

And when that would have inevitably happened - in no more than a few decades - the Jews would have simply come back to Europe, or come out of the woodwork, just like the Spanish "crypto-Jews" who survived the Inquisition by writing really clever cookbooks of kosher recipes designed to appear Gentile. There is a book, which I haven't read (and don't know how good it is) entitled, "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers".

That's not to say that if the Holocaust had proceeded without Allied interruption the final death count and human suffering wouldn't have been far, far greater. The truth of the matter is, though, in war or peace all the same, Nazism would have destroyed itself in the end - and Judaism would have endured. The old cliche that compassion ultimately prevails over hatred is in fact an empirical truth.

Which brings me to my views on Israel.

I perceive Israel itself as the most mortal threat the Jews have ever faced, because the nature of what Israel is - a Jewish state - threatens to vacillate the conditions that have made the Jews a great people.

Christians, Jews and Muslims do not realize it, but they have a symbiosis - all the horrible wars and petty feuding aside, the three major religions have achieved much more together than they could have apart. For all the horrors of anti-Semitism, bitter Christian persecution of the Jews coerced them to take on their singular role in European history, as niche-finders and agents of change. The Jews' role as unfortunate effigies kept Christianity alive (which, as hard as it may be to believe, was a good thing - any dogma is better than a society with no rules at all - if you doubt this, compare the Sistine Chapel to Wal-Mart). And Islam served as a reservoir for Classical wisdom during the dark days of the Early Middle Ages. The historical fact is, any one of those groups alone, would have inevitably sunk into barbarism. We are beginning to see that today, with the advent and failure of secularism as a way of life.

My view is that just as the EU has redefined the European dynamic to capture most of the strengths of a Balkanized Europe without all the killing, religious differences must be expressed in a vocal and peaceful way to ensure that different cultures remain discrete and clearly defined, continue to feel external pressure to maintain their respective traditions and ways of life.

Therefore, I believe it is actually to Israel's long-term advantage to allow the Palestinians to become an enfranchised majority and for Israel to join the EU, while continuing to allow the yeshivas and Mosaic law their special privileges in Israel. Ensuring that the Jews become a minority in a state run by Jewish law and guarantees the Jews protection, becoming a small member of a much larger organization, will ensure that the Jewish people continue to enjoy the external pressure necessary to continue to push themselves to greatness, without the downsides of the previous iterations of the symbiosis.

Their partners - the rest of the EU, and Palestinians - would enjoy the same benefits. After all, I think it was Golda Meir who bitterly remarked that there was no Palestine before Israel. If Palestine could gradually become another Lebanon or Netherlands - a munificent sub-group of a larger culture borne of contentious history -  that would be nothing but good for the world at large. Being a majority population in a Mosaic law country could provide the cultural definition to push Palestinian culture to novel definition as well...

Comments?

Israel & Palestine: Why The Two-State Solution Is Doomed

The geopolitics wonks of today's NGOs and foreign services have a fetish for two-state solutions. Whenever there are two (or more) ethnic groups that happen to unhappily share a state, the wonks' solution is always to take the same approach as American family courts: split the home, split the assets, give Mommy the house and Daddy the car, send the kids to whomever appears best able to care for them (or has more public support).

The British Raj was split into India and Pakistan. Cyprus into Turkish and Greek halves. Czecho-slovakia, into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. East Timor and Eritea were amputated from Indonesia and Ethiopia. The USSR and Yugoslavia were, well, Balkanized.

Surely, a happy ending awaited the previously unhappily married ethnic groups.
But it never quite works out that way.

There are some pretty solid general trends that can be observed in human history. One is that bigger countries, which benefit from diverse populations, economy of scale, and sheer size and momentum, tend to do better in the long run. (The obvious exception, Switzerland, owes its continued survival and success to impassable terrain, a highly stable and conservative society, and constant influx of foreign capital from its banking industry).

Another is that any viable nation must ultimately forge a national identity strong enough to withstand not only ethnic feuds, but also political quarrels. It is easy to forget that almost every Western nation was forged from disparate tribes, kingdoms, states, localities, etc, through a combination of force and diplomacy. The Magna Carta, the Articles of Confederation, the machinations of Bismarck, watersheds in this process.

Ultimately, the problem with these unhappy marriages is not an surplus of ethnic sentiment, but a deficit of political loyalty. The wonks' fetish for splitting countries is equivalent to an incompetent cook carving the turkey before he cooks it.

The basic political and economic problems - and the inability of extremists to reconcile their religious or ethnic sentiments with the secular needs of a modern state - are in no way corrected by partition. In fact the problems are now compounded by the guaranteed presence of an incorrigibly hostile neighbor who believes itself to have rightful claim to at least some of the other's land and resources. And so goes the same sad story, every time...military dictatorship, petty wars, economic weakness, foreign dependence, "the road to nowhere".

The Israeli and Palestinians peoples need not be natural enemies, it is said. Very true. Yet this begs the question: if the two peoples need not be natural enemies, then why has the peace process met with such difficulty? After all, surely it is only the extremists on both sides who desire to continue of the long conflict? Yes, it is so; but rather than fight the good fight against those extremists, the partition promises to give them free reign, and guarantee unremitting hostility between the two new nations.
So - is there a better alternative? Yes, there is - from Jewish history, no less.

The ancient Hebrews called themselves, "The Twelve Tribes", after the sons of Joseph. The historical truth is, those tribes represented serious political challenges to the survival of the Jewish people - divisions that, over time, became less relevant than questions of sectarianism and national origin.
The system of collective representation settled by Moses directly parallels the Roman comitia tributa (Tribal Assembly), which, too, provided structure to Roman society in its early years, before being superseded by considerations of class, the British House of Lords, and the American bicameral legislature.

The lesson is clear. Representative political systems, that provide a balance between headcount and ethnos, can, over time, provide a scaffolding on which to build a strong and stable national identity.

Israel's Arab policies in the last 60 years has had two main objectives:

1. Ensure the physical security of the State of Israel through military superiority and control of buffer zones
2. Ensure the political security of the State of Israel through undermining Palestinian political unity from without and effective representation from within

Now, the goal of these policies - the security of the State of Israel - is only right and reasonable. The problem is, like all ethnic squabbles, the approach leads Israel down the Road To Nowhere.

If nothing else, it ensures that Israelis will continue to "earn Greek salaries, and pay Swiss prices".

Israel continues to expend US$15B on its military annually. In a nation of eight million individuals, this represents a per capita expenditure of almost US$2,000 annually, or an eighth of the per capita GDP. The expenditure is so great, that the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and defending each and every Palestinian between Gaza and Amman, would amount to only a fraction of these expenditures.

Israel's arguments against political integration of the Palestinians are twofold:

1. Israeli Jews are outnumbered by Palestinians by about a 2:1 ratio
2. Enfranchising the Palestinians will empower a Palestinian "Fifth Column"

These concerns are valid. Yet they ignore three important facts.

First, Israel is guaranteed a demographic nightmare if the Palestinians are excluded. Ultra-orthodox Jews - the Haredi - average about ten children per couple, managing a 6% annual growth rate, while birth rates for mainstream Israeli Jews are in line with those of Europeans and Americans, with a 1.5% annual growth rate.

Today, the ultra-Orthodox - who do not pay taxes, who do not serve in the IDF, who are supported by state benefits their whole lives and who are typically the most hawkish - today make up about 8% of Israel's population. In twenty years, the Haredi will make up 20%; in fifty years, they will make up over half, and in a century - well, no one dares think that far ahead.

It would be incorrect to say that mainstream Israeli Jews and Palestinians share "a common enemy". It would be correct to say that mainstream Israeli Jews, Israeli Haredi Jews, and Palestinians, share a common interest. The three groups have different visions for Judaea: a modern Israel, a pious Israel, and a just Israel. Interests that ultimately complement each other. A Knesset balanced between liberal Jews, Haredi and Palestinian Arabs is a much more palatable thought for any sensible person, than a Knesset starkly divided between Haredi and secularist, forever glancing over the border towards an all-Arab Palestine.

Second, Demonsthenes' admonishment to "keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer", although a bit harsh, applies. Removing the Palestinians from the Israeli political system will ultimately empower extreme nationalists on both sides. Losing a vote in a half-Palestinian Knesset is ultimately less fearful than Hamas getting a supermajority in a Palestinian legislature.

A partition of Judaea will allow powerful outsiders - both economic competitors, Europe, Russia and the US, as well as regional rivals - to mercilessly pit the two Balkanized states against each other. Why give an Israeli a job when an impoverished Palestinian across the border will work for food? How big a TV do Palestinians think their dinars will buy against Israeli shekels?

Third, the integration of the Palestinians is essential to Israel maintaining its identity as a Jewish state. Without ethnic contrast, Israeli Jews will inevitably fall into ennui and apostacy, just like every other religiously homogenous nation. Religious extremists will become the face of religion in an increasingly secularized society, and will ultimately destroy public confidence in Judaism, just as has happened in most modern secular nations.

The Haredi are completely correct in their belief that an unchallenged secular society is a mortal threat to Jewish piety. The Jewish faith owes its survival and success to constant challenge from outsiders - as Bernard Malamud observed, "If you ever forget that you're a Jew, a goy will remind you." The successful integration of the Palestinians into Israel will ultimately not only head off Jewish religious extremism, but ensure the long-term survival and success of mainstream secular Judaism.

So, how could this be accomplished?

Ethnic squabbles are very rarely about ethnic issues. Most often, ethnic issues are strawmen for the machinations of the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous - land developers, terrorist leaders, military contractors, religious bigots, demagogues of all sorts.

The Palestinians and the Jews must commit to an equitable sharing of the limited resources of the area - as well as long-term plans to cultivate and increase those resources. The sharing must take into account both the numerical superiority of the Palestinians, as well as the need to preserve overall balance between the two sides.

Moses, not Marx, is instructive here.

I would propose extending IDF conscription to Palestinians, and distributing the Palestinians alongside secular Jews in conscript companies. Company captains, however, should be equally divided between Arabs and Jews, and a central military committee comprised of equal numbers of Arab and Jewish captains should have a preponderance of authority over military concerns.

These captains should be well-paid, serve 20-year terms, appoint their successors (subject to ratification by a majority of the council), be responsible for the security of a district on land, and the cultivation of a portion of Israel's territorial waters - the laying of kelp fields, oyster and shrimp farms (which, forbidden by kosher and halal laws alike, would have to be traded for foreign currency, giving the captains money, power, and a stake in the survival and success of the government).

In this way, a military aristocracy would be formed, similar to that previously existing in Prussia or Japan, that would have a strong personal and financial incentive to ensure the security and stability of the Israeli state, and the quashing of any ethnic feuds. Like most such aristocracies, the Council of Captains would likely evolve into a reactionary body that would provide an better balance to Israel's notoriously unstable democracy than its shady relationship with IDF/Mossad insiders.

Like the Iron Curtain, the walls dividing Judaea must come down. Jew and Arab must learn to live alongside each other. To that end, in addition to conscription, every year, the IDF should move one out of every hundred Jewish families from their neighborhood, and transplant them into a majority Arab district, and do the same to an Arab family. The matches should be defined by percentile rating of household wealth compared to members of the same ethnic group - a Jewish family at the 55th percentile for Israeli Jews would be uprooted and replaced by an Arab family at the 55th percentile for Arabs.

Haredi would be exempt from this arrangement. In this way, wealth would gradually be equalized, and a Israeli Palestinian majority would coexist with a Israeli Jewish "center of gravity".
Finally, and perhaps most controversially, minarets should be built all over Israel, and all non-Haredi Jews should be required to answer the salah, the call to prayer, five times a day, just as Muslims do, but in their own synagogues, with Jewish prayer, and in Hebrew. (Or, if they prefer, they can just watch Jewish movies or plays). Again, in this way, the Haredi would keep the Jewish faith stable, while contrast with the Palestinians reminds every Israeli Jew that he is a Jew.

Some might see this as a bastardization of the Jewish faith with Muslim traditions. But we must remember that the Jewish faith as it exists today is itself the product of many influences from other cultures. Extreme monotheism (the belief in one God, rather than the belief in the one true God) only came about via cultural cross-pollination with Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian Exile. The tale of Samson was conceived by way of contact with the Selucid Greeks and their tale of Heracles. Most Ashkenazi Jews identify the jelly donut as an ethnic food to their liking, but (as President Kennedy learned, to his bemusement), it was originally known as the berliner, a German delicacy. All these influences peacefully coalesced with Jewish traditions, because although they were novel, none were forbidden.


Finally, Jerusalem should become a free city, directly administrated by the Council of Captains, while being (on paper) the capital of the State of Israel. The State should have a monopoly on the sale of food and lodging within its walls, with all citizens of the City receiving free food and lodging, and tourists being made to pay extortionate rates in dollars or euro only. The Council of Captains should receive a large share of these receipts as their privy purse, while the rest ought to subsidize aggressive building programs to increase Israel's supply of land and water, by building Chinese junks, tree farms, and artificial lakes.

All this could be possible with the sponsorship of American Jews. If you like these ideas - please - talk about them with your friends.

"Opinions are like glaciers. You stand on them, they seem solid enough. But if they didn't move, the whole Western would would still be covered in ice."