@aequitas:
@KurtGodel7:
@CWO:
If Germany had occupied the Middle East, I’m not sure Germany would have been able to recruit the local population to its cause (assuming Germany was inclined to try doing so in the first place). During the early days of Operation Barbarossa, some of the population groups in the western Soviet Union briefly entertained the hope that the Germans might prove to be more agreeable rulers than Joseph Stalin. The SS and the Gestapo soon came along and dispelled that particular notion. Germany was able to raise a certain number of troops in the various countries it occupied, but even with the help of collaborationist governments like those of Vichy France the forces asssembled in this manner were relatively small.
Similarly, the Japanese were never able to capitalize very much on the anti-British (and anti-French and anti-Dutch) sentiments that existed in the Far East. When Japan marched into one country after another in 1941-1942, it tried to market its conquests as a campaign for the liberation of Asia from white European colonial oppression. The conquered locals soon realized that they’d simply traded one kind of foreign imperialism for another, and that life under Japanese occupation was no picnic. Even Thailand, which was nominally an ally of Japan, was squeezed in a way which convinced pretty much everyone except the country’s top leadership that the proper response was to resist rather than collaborate. Japan also made efforts to cultivate the Indian nationalist movement, but apart from getting some support here and there from people like Subhas Chandra Bose it never got anywhere near to provoking a serious uprising against British rule.
In the Soviet Union, anti-communist sentiment was strong enough that nearly 1 million Soviet citizens joined Germany’s army. Had Germany actually been in a position to feed the people in the territories it conquered–which it was not–the number of people who joined might have been significantly larger. You also raised a good point about the heavy-fronthandedness of the occupation effort–a heavy handedness which may have been due at least in part to the desire to suppress Soviet partisans and guerrilla warfare.
In the scenario I have hypothesized, Germany would have ruled its Middle Eastern colonies with a light touch, with an eye toward winning over as large a percentage of the local population as possible. Cooperation with local leaders would have been paramount. Obtaining adequate food supplies would also have been critical–if necessary by advancing southward along the Nile.
wich “nearly 1 million Soviet citizens joined Germany’s army” are you talking about,please?
They were affectionately called Hiwis by the Germans, and like the other post said they made up a ridiculous amount of manpower for the German army on the Ostfront. They were used a lot for labour duties, better to work a Hiwi to death than a soldier of the Third Reich, their thinking not mine. Another reason for using the Hiwis was already evident by the end of 1941, In 1939, only 19,000 German soldiers had been killed; and in all the campaigns of 1940, German losses had totalled no more than 83,000-serious enough, indeed, but not irreplaceable. In 1941, however, 357,000 German troops were reported killed or missing in action, over 300,000 on the Ostfront. From 22 June 1941 onwards, at least two-thirds of the German Armed Forces were always engaged on the Ostfront.
