Ordensstaat Burgund (TNO:ANM)
Order State of Burgundy | |
|---|---|
| 1957–1972 | |
 Flag (real) | |
| Motto: Meine Ehre heißt Treue | |
| Status | Order State of Nazi Germany (1957-1962) |
| Capital | Nanzig |
| Common languages | German (official) French, Dutch (common) |
| Government | Unitary Nazi one-party fascist state under a totalitarian dictatorship |
| Reichsführer | |
• 1957-1972 | Heinrich Himmler |
| Legislature | Rule by decree |
| Historical era | Cold War |
• Established | 26 February 1957 |
• Disestablished | 1 August 1972 |
| |
The Order State of Burgundy, better known in English by the country's German name Ordensstaat Burgund, was a country in Western Europe that was formed out of the territory of the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and North France in the aftermath of the coup d'état attempt by the Schutzstaffel in 1957. The brainchild of the leader of the Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler, the Order State was created by Nazi Germany as a personal fiefdom for Himmler in exchange for his withdrawal from German politics.
In 1957, during the West Russian War, Heinrich Himmler and the Schutzstaffel launched a failed coup d'état in Germany which was eventually put down. Adolf Hitler, at the time the dictator of Germany, pardoned Himmler but sent him to exile in the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and North France. Hitler allowed Himmler to establish his own state in the region, christened as the Ordensstaat Burgund, as a personal fiefdom of the Schutzstaffel and, to that extent, himself. Germany's assumption was that the country would remain too unstable to mount any resistance to them once the country recovered; this never came to fruition. Burgundy left the Einheitspakt and Germany's sphere of influence in 1962; in 1963, in the chaos of the German Civil War, they invaded and occupied a significant portion of France as well.
Himmler established a totalitarian (oft. called draconian) state with himself as its unquestionable dictator, imposing his fundamentalist views of Nazism on the population. This ideology, referred to as the Burgundian System, was an extremist form of Nazism which believed in the eradication of the supposedly 'non-Aryan' races through a nuclear holocaust which would be coordinated through manipulation of global politics by the Order State. This never came to fruition, and Himmler and the Schutzstaffel spent most of the time dealing with unrest and dissent within the country. The nonsensical systems which the country ran on inevitably failed Himmler and the Schutzstaffel when its collaborator legions (as well as a populist revolution) tore apart the country into civil war- a German invasion in July 1972 put a formal end to the Ordensstaat.
Millions of people were enslaved and often killed through forced labor. Conditions for non-members of the Schutzstaffel were often terrible, with even the so-called 'Aryan' population living under austerity measures that often rendered what better lives they had compared to the rest of the population no different. It is believed that the draconian policies of the Ordensstaat has contributed to a demographic crisis in its former territory, and former Burgundy consistently ranks as among the poorest regions in Europe despite being among the most industrialized. France, Germany and the Netherlands have commemorated August 1 as Liberation Day every year since 1976.