This is what boggles my mind: if Hitler and his cronies had been competent military leaders and limited the scope of their war and stopped at the English channel and kept the peace with Russia, or at least one of those, it seems to me chances were pretty good the Nazi grasp of Europe could have solidified and perhaps grown permanent. What a nightmarish scenario that is...

I am therefore happy the Nazis bit off more than they could chew by starting a war with the Brits, which eventually brought the Americans on board, and the Russians, where they suffered most of their losses. On the one hand it seems that it's just a matter of chance their leadership was so grossly incompetent, but on the other hand maybe we can always bank on such types to get caught up in their own rhetoric and they by definition are too ambitious for their own 'good'.

Surrender of France: June 1940

Barbarossa (invasion of USSR): June 1941

Pearl Harbor: December 1941.

If the Nazis had somehow negotiated a successful end to hostilities with the UK between 1940 and 1941, they could have become a stable power holding much of central Europe. The problem they faced was lack of oil - there isn't much central Europe. That forced the push east into the oil fields of the caucasus. The Japanese invasions were similarly triggered by the need for oil that could not be embargoed from them.

Without a war with the USSR they could (continue to) be supplied by the USSR.

In that circumstance it wouldn't even be a footnote; nobody would even hear of it, except perhaps as a "conspiracy theory".

Eh, probably more like how the Holodomor is treated in Russia or Nanking massacre in Japan and the west for that matter: disputed by apologists in public, lauded by nationalists in private, denied by the people in power and mostly forgotten by the rest.

United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and most it's citizens don't/didn't feel bad about it. Why do you think a victorious German society would've cared that deeply about Jews who have been historically loathed?

It would've been publicized as a success, not something to hide away.

> United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and most it's citizens don't/didn't feel bad about it.

The US didn't drop nuclear bombs on Japan just because the people there are Japanese.

> Why do you think a victorious German society would've cared that deeply about Jews who have been historically loathed?

Why do you think Germans would not care that their government exterminated six million Jews?

> It would've been publicized as a success, not something to hide away.

Then why did they take such great lengths to hide it away?

Exactly. People can't wrap their minds around the fact that their own country is constantly peddling propaganda. I noticed this after I started travelling around the world working in different countries. Every single country is constantly pushing its own propaganda and they all have some element of truth mixed together with lies. Conspiracy theory is how governments hides aspects of the truth that they don't like.

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Not the least because the holocaust happened late in the war. I underdstand Hitler's original plan was to exile those populations [1], and the turn of ww2 forced him to come up with another plan. That is still ethnic cleansing but not of the same degree of horror.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

I don't think that Holocaust did even had such a mindshare for a some time afterwards. People were quite desensitized back then - you had horrors aplenty to choose from.

But then you had the rise in all aspects of art, politics and culture of the Jewish Americans and for them obviously it was the event in WWII and great part of their identity and life. So it percolated to the other parts of the society. If Chinese Americans have risen to prominence in the 80s we would have gotten Unit 731 instead of Schindler's list. After all a creator creates on topics that are close to them.

In my part of Eastern Europe when learning about WWII the emphasis was about the monumental struggle and bodycount of the USSR and the Holocaust was sidelined.

You are incorrect, it was so horrific that the US president had as many troops as possible "tour" the sites as possible to be witnesses of what happened.

It was kind of a big deal immediately

People like Eisenhower (who was a general at the time) immediately knew it would be downplayed and denied

https://remember.org/facts-aft-lib-eis.html

It was such a big deal they had to make up a whole new word for it.

I was talking about mindshare.

If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films if we look at US

there are just a couple per decade when we reach late 70s early 80s when the pace picks up considerably.

It was one hell of an opportunity that is for sure. Almost a blessing in disguise.

Interesting, thanks. Maybe because The Netherlands actually did ( or suffered ) so little, it has been Holocaust front and center.