[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There's a basic problem, in that a colony this small can't produce all the variety of technological parts, machines and materials necessary to sustain early TL7, let alone go beyond it. No plausible planning, simplification and centralisation can do that: if it could, the Nazis wouldn't have been both out-produced and out-teched by their enemies.

That's fair.

On the other hand, military expeditions can have significant capabilities to make spare parts for their already existing weapons. Given that there was every opportunity to loot German industry as part of their escape plan, I'm sure the original settlers had thousands of spare rifles and everything they needed to manufacture ammunition.

I agree that as for maintaining a TL7 military, with mechanised logistics, aircraft, tanks, etc., it's doubtful that they could. So they probably didn't try, but instead focused on only what technology they absolutely needed to ensure military superiority over various supernatural beasts and forces of TL3 or lower primitives.

Obviously, I'd really like to justify zeppelins as the one type of vehicle they'd focus on, in the absence of rail or road infrastructure, refined petroleum industry, airfields, etc. In their home world, they do have massive numbers of semi-skilled workers to act as ground crew and they'd probably considered the military advantages of higher ground over any primitive foes.

In terms of their 'allegiance' with the Cold Ones, the ability to produce surplus energy is pretty damn important. In fact, it's right up there with exploring new worlds and securing sources of sacrifices. Either they need to pursue nuclear reactors from the start or they'd need to focus their slave industry on some form of energy production, whether petroleum, coal or something else.

Originally Posted by johndallman

So we need the colony to grow much larger, and for plot purposes, we need that to happen within a handful of generations of the leadership, or they won't be recognisably Nazis any more. To do that, we need a way of producing and educating people that allows much faster population growth than the traditional methods, and we need the leadership to become extremely long-lived. The solutions to both of those problems will have to found among demons and/or the fey.

Oh, the leadership are already immortal, at least those who dare.

And recruiting obedient Nazi soldiers is going to be a snap, what with the FNORD. Slaves can be controled easily enough, though at the cost of removing initiative and independent thought (but it's not as if slaves are known for applying these in your favour anyway).

No, the bottleneck is going to be the leadership caste, who need to be born and educated the regular way. That being said, I'm sure that children born to blond and blue-eyed TL3 female slaves (fathered by Nazi leadership) would be made citizens and educated as good little Nazis.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Once you've grown your population to a level comparable with that of Germany (50-100 million) you can sustain and develop TL7, and have your nuclear airships with no problems. For the atmosphere of such a world, I can recommend no better source than Norman Spinrad's novel The Iron Dream.

Well, I was rather imagining that exploration of the other worlds would start before they'd reach that level of threat.

I mean, sure, they'll be using every method to increase their population base and educate new generations of Nazis, but there are things they require from other worlds that make it imperative that they don't simply wait until they've constructed a massive army to begin exploration.

Originally Posted by johndallman

You'll also have to construct a set of beliefs about the heroic past that fulfill the role of religion in this Nazi society. Those will justify the retention of historic weapons and uniforms (and the StG 44 isn't bad), and should horrify the PCs adequately.

Oh, these Nazis are Irminists. At least some of the leadership are. Others will just embrace the mystical trappings of the SS.

Thinking about it, we already know that Mauser Kar98k rifles can last 50+ years, even with hard use, so not only can these Nazis use identical weapons as WWII ones, they'll use the same ones. Before reaching sufficient size, there probably won't be much technological development, just repair of gear they already have.

I would like some ideas on which rifles and other weapons it would be easiest for them to construct for new recruits, once they run out of original stock.