The death of Adolf Hitler in 1950 (after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease) left the Reich with something of a quandary. Hitler had presided over a divided state, allowing him to serve as the final arbiter; he had never named a successor (at least not one who was unchallenged by everyone else.) The different factions within the government nearly started a civil war over just who should succeed Hitler; indeed, it is quite likely that the uprising in the Middle East saved the Reich from internal collapse. Even so, the post-Hitler government was extremely unstable.
Formally, the Fuhrer is the Head of State, with the Deputy Fuhrer as his designated successor. However, neither of them possess any real power; the latter, in particular, is seen as a place to dump awkward sods who are too prominent to place on the Reichstag or simply shove out of power altogether.
Practically, real power is vested in the Reich Council, which is dominated by the Reichsführer-SS, the Finance Minister and the Head of OKW (effectively, the uniformed head of the German military.) Each of them rules a shifting bastion of smaller factions; the Finance Minister, in particular, must balance an array of competing elements to hold his place within the troika. Confusingly, several factions that appear to have a natural bent towards one of the councillors have a habit of going in other directions; army commandoes, for example, trend towards the SS while the navy is generally more supportive of the Finance Minister’s ‘government’ faction.
Government is generally by consensus. The SS can be said to be the hardliners of just about any decision, while the civilian (insofar as the term can be used in Nazi Germany) departments favour a more balanced approach. Personality clashes between the two are constant, with the military taking sides or not as it wills. Partly in order to keep the clashes from turning into open war, it is generally agreed that the SS has near-complete control over Germany East while the remaining parts of the Reich are ruled by the civilians.
The Reichstag is, in theory, a parliament. In practice, it exists to rubber-stamp decisions and nothing else. Technically, German citizens can vote for members, but this hardly ever happens.
Every full-blooded German is, technically, at the disposal of the state. In practice, one-third of the male population in Germany Prime is conscripted into the military when they turn seventeen, although the precise number is often altered to reflect the number of volunteers who sign up. Students who do particularly well in their exams – and win a place at one of the growing number of universities – are not conscripted. (They can, of course, volunteer.)
Volunteers are given first pick of the assignments; conscripts are generally allocated where tests say they should go and complaints are given short shrift. The SS and rocket forces do not take conscripts, while both the navy and air force prefer to avoid them.
Legally, females can also be conscripted, but the Nazi Party’s stance on the importance of motherhood (and raising the next generation of Germans) tends to ensure that relatively few women are conscripted into the military. When they are, they’re normally assigned to either clerical or medical work. (A handful of SS commando units make use of women, but this is extremely uncommon.)
Males are given basic military training at school, as part of their education. Females are not given military training outside Germany East, where everyone may have to pick up a gun and fight if necessary.
Complicating any attempt to understand the Reich is the simple fact that the different arms of its military are rarely united to a single purpose. For example, the Luftwaffe claims control over all aircraft, but all three of the other major services operate their own aircraft. Furthermore, each service has its own equipment and standardisation is largely non-existent.
The Wehrmacht (army) is charged with the defence of the Reich. In this role, it competes with the Waffen-SS, which deploys its own powerful forces and commandos. It remains, however, the largest single military force on the face of the planet.
The SS is an oddity. Parts of it are effectively a second army, other parts are effectively cults, with ceremonies that claim to worship the old gods, or a giant combination of repressive state mixed with social services. It is rarely clear just how seriously some members of the SS take their own claims. Originally, the SS also controlled Germany’s nuclear arsenal, but after nukes were used to smash the Arab revolts the other services insisted on dividing up the nuclear arsenal between them.
The Kriegsmarine (navy) claims to be the most powerful naval force on Earth, although this is flatly inaccurate. It deploys five nuclear-powered carriers, seven battleships and 137 smaller surface ships, but is significantly outgunned by the USN and barely superior to the Royal Navy. Its real power lies in its force of ninety-seven nuclear submarines, which it intends to use – in the event of war – to cut Britain off from America.
In recent years, the Kriegsmarine has been humiliated by the failure to assist Argentina during the Falklands War – see below – and has consequently become the most liberal of the military services.
The SS handles much, although not all, of Germany’s foreign intelligence gathering. Internally, the Gestapo is responsible for security (its independence hangs by a thread) while the Abwehr handles military intelligence collection. A semi-independent service – the Economic Intelligence Service – has become a de facto civilian spy agency.
The Nazi Party is obsessed with breeding the next generation of full-blood Germans. Accordingly, females are encouraged to marry young and give birth to as many children as soon as possible. A German woman who has more than three children is eligible for the Mother’s Cross and, more practically, benefits from the state in exchange for having more children.
Bastardry does not carry a stigma in Germany Prime, provided the father was a full-blooded German. Mothers who do not wish to keep their children tend to hand them over to SS-run orphanages, where they are either parcelled out to women who do want them or raised by the state. In certain circumstances (the father being killed on active service before the wedding) the mother will be treated as his legal wife, with all the benefits that accrue to the widow of a dead soldier.
The SS takes it a step further. Polygamy is technically legal in Germany East, with one man being married to two or more women. Typically, the second wives would have been married already, then lost their husbands to an insurgent attack.
Contraception is banned to women with less than three children – there’s a thriving underground trade in condoms and American-made Pills – and abortion is rarely permitted. Women who are not full-blooded Germans can expect a contraceptive injection after having their second child.
Notably, a fake paternity claim can get a woman thrown into a concentration camp. The party takes bloodlines seriously.