[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

With all the information flying by, I'm not currently clear how many TL6-7 Germans they're taking, and what their age profile is. Obviously, there are going to be some significant crests and troughs in the age profile for a century or more, as the SS father a new generation of children over a fairly short time period.

They'll have some 40,000 adults and about 12,000 German children in 1945 / Year 1. That's about 28,000 adult men and 12,500 adult women.

Of the adult males, less than a thousand are the new aristocracy of carefully chosen SS men, about 2,000 are other SS men and Waffen-SS men whose positions were such that they had to be included (many of these will also have been hand-picked, but for practical qualities). Albert Lütkemeyer, the commandant of the camps at Der Riese project, is perhaps the best example of someone chosen for loyalty, obedience and willingness to carry out a dull, soul-crushing job without complaining or asking questions rather than any genius or outstanding qualities.

By contrast, Franz Xaver Dorsch was a necessary addition, for all that that none of the inner circle of the SS trusted him one inch and he was never among those who knew every secret of the scheme for the Last Redoubt, even as he was probably one of the most important members when it came to actually granting the future ASN access to German industry and resources.

Of course, the distrust was warranted, Dorsch was a spy for Bormann, and his reports to Bormann allowed that worthy to secure a position in the Last Redoubt. Of course, Bormann was not quite prepared for the supernatural elements involved and his immediate bid for ultimate power in place of Himmler and his coterie was swiftly abandoned in favour of a more long-term plan when he realized the awesome and terrifying power of the Black Knights of the inner circle of the SS.

Some 25,000 of the total settlers are scientists, engineers, experts, technicians and other necessary people from various industries overseen by the SS and the OT. That includes about a thousand of the most elite commandos that Himmler and the Waffen-SS were able to obtain, usually through projects ostensibly connected to Werwolf or similar projects Otto Skorzeny was involved in, as well as probably a couple of thousand SS and Waffen-SS men chosen for soldierly qualities. There were more Waffen-SS men they wanted to bring, as well as their families, but at the end, there were too few trucks, too little time and the Soviets were advancing too fast. Thousands of potential ASNs died in desperate fighting meant to slow the Allied advance, mostly in the East, to give the others slightly more time.

The skewed gender ratios and the few children are due to several factors, but the most important are high numbers of young unmarried men among the volunteers who were prepared to go. There are also fairly high numbers of middle-aged and older experts who have grown children, some of whom are numbered among the other adult colonists. There were also several thousands skilled workers and SS men who were brought over at the end of April 1945 who had been away from their families on the Eastern Front or working at secret facilities and never even got the chance to see them before their headlong flight from the Soviets was directed through gates in the Owl Mountains or Berlin.

Another contributing factor is the rapid collapse of German units at the end of WWII, which led to the ASNs having to hurry their preparations and some 'less vital' shipments being cancelled in favour of materiel that the planners considered absolutely necessary. Various equipment or personnel with vital skills were thus prioritized over unmarried German girls who were to be taken as future wives for unmarried men among the technical workforce.

In any case, it was determined that the local 'Aryan' population of Germania Hyperborea should be able to supply such wives, or breeding stock, at the very least. Which they did, certainly, which is why there are much more pure-blooded descendants of Germans among the SS men and their families than the families of the 'ordinary' Germans, who have mixed much more with the natives, at least those of good 'Aryan' stock.

A source of much anger and frustration among the first generation of ordinary Germans in the Neue Reich was the fact that while the families of SS men were a high priority, many of the technicians and skilled workers who were offered a place in the hectic months as Germany was falling, January to the end of April, 1945, were promised that their families would be moved over, but with several truck convoys being destroyed by Allied aircraft or encircled and captured by Allied advances, thousands of their wives and children were left behind in the Third Reich. Many of these men also suspect, rightly, that decisions were made that prioritized moving important industrial materiel and skilled technicians over the families of those who were already in Jötunheim or Germania Hyperborea.

One last-ditch attempt was made to move some of the dependents over in April 1945, either through Der Riese, in the Owl Mountains in Lower Silesia, or the Berlin gate, with Sepp Dietrich ordered to lead the entire 6th Panzer Army in support and round up as many dependents as possible, failed miserably, at least in so far as it was meant to get thousands of people over.

Only a few hundred survivors, soldiers and dependents both, led by Joachim Peiper, managed to reach Jötunheim through the Silesian gate, after having somehow eluded capture by the Soviets. Sepp Dietrich fell along the way, as did most of the rest of the 6th Panzer Army, breaking through the Soviet lines in an insane offensive without supplies or support, with no goal apparent to the Soviets, merely in order to allow at least that small group to reach the new world. Tanks were abandoned as pillboxes as trucks loaded with refugees and soldiers rumbled through Soviet lines, looking for routes where the Red Army had not yet penetrated.

Originally Posted by johndallman

For that few, train up a few people and hand-load them.

For that they need a full armaments industry, with the capabilities of late WWI, which is when 20mm shells started to become practical as ammo for automatic weapons.

Excellent. They'll have several hundred people who used to make such rounds in quantity in a TL7 factory and at least a few engineers who designed the factory that made them.

The technicians and workers who came along were mostly brought in the last few months of the Third Reich. There were a few scientists, surveyors and technicians in Jötunheim from 1943 and in Germania Hyperborea from early 1944, but in terms of total numbers, 90% of the new settlers did not know where they were going until shortly before arriving there and even those who knew mostly only moved for good in the spring 1945. Regardless, there were some engineers involved with those factories who knew that they'd want some way to handload 20mm shells, and have had that information ever since mid-to-late 1943. These could have designed a way to handload the big rounds with equipment that they brought over.