The issue is that Burgundy itself has thick plot armor and is competence-washed.
Having played Burgundy a couple of times (albeit not to completion), I would disagree with this.
The "plot armour" that people refer to is that AI Burgundy is hard-coded not to collapse, while avoiding this collapse is devilishly difficult as a player. Personally, I'm fine with this - we know from OTL, DPRK that a crazy hermit kingdom with nuclear weapons can survive even as its economy and power completely collapses around itself. If North Korea could survive the dire situation of the 1990s (in which their benefactor kicked the bucket and famines were thinning out their population) despite not having nuclear weapons yet, Burgundy can scrape through its own crises.
But
surviving is one thing.
Thriving is another. And actually executing Himmler's grandiose ambitions is yet another. Seriously, as far I can tell the Globalplans
fail almost all of the time - they can be derailed at any point by various state actors simply refusing to play along. And on the off chance that they do succeed, all Himmler really did was poke at states that were already unstable to begin with, and maybe give them a nudge in the right direction.
Also, one of the early events you get as Burgundy is the BurgSys country in Russia (Josias' state I think) deciding that they no longer feel like playing along with Himmler, and opting to simply stop sending Himmler money and resources. And there's
nothing Himmler can do about it except shake his fist impotently.
Not long after that, we get Himmler's chief economic minister telling him that even if Josias were to continue sending the money, it would not make up for the budget shortfalls. Burgundy has gotten by through pretty much looting France in several ways and...and now there's nothing left to loot or exploit. Himmler has already squeezed every last drop of blood from the stones. And Himmler's response is to have him
shot. A new Yes-man is appointed afterwards.
The conquest of new French territories staves off the eventual collapse on paper, but introduces a whole host of new problems. Now Himmler has lots more inconvenient Frenchmen who pose
problems to him, and need to be oppressed accordingly. It can be done, but it takes time and resources away from the Globalplans and Himmler's endgame.
And then the SS manage to engineer a freaking
FAMINE in some of the biggest and most fertile agricultural areas France has. Pretty much everything has to be put on hold to deal with that problem.
As for the nuclear weapons...I can attest that creating even
one nuclear weapon is an ordeal as Burgundy. Most of what Himmler has, he had Heydrich steal for him from Germany during the civil war.
Oh, and to cap it all, Burgundy is honestly unnecessary for ending the world. Things can get shrimpy just fine without the intervention of "FUNNI NUKE MAN."
So, absent the God Hand of the player,
what's actually going to happen to Burgundy? I'd say
this guy makes a good case:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in North Korea in the 70's, Kim Il-Sung began a massive military buildup. He trashed the previously booming DPRK civilian economy in favor of refurbishing the army for the final reconquest of the peninsula. But the moment never came. The South began to surge past them economically, the USSR and China never came anywhere near giving them that kind of permission...and eventually he ended up having to give way to his son, Kim Jong-Il. Kim II, while just as paranoid as his father, had no real interest in "finishing the job" as his father did. He liked movies, nice food, and artwork. And once a series of massive storms and famines wrecked the infrastructure of the DPRK, and the USSR wasn't around to give them aid to rebuild...well, it took all their resources just to keep the country under control and the elite of the country in the style they'd become accustomed to. Who cared about the South, except to periodically fuck with them or kidnap people, in exchange for a bit of aid or food?
This is all a long-winded way of saying that while the Ordenstaat will always be an absolutely awful neighbor, I could absolutely see them "degenerating". As Himmler grows increasingly senile, as the economy grinds itself into dust, as a life spent in cold, damp bunkers grows pale compared to the images the young officers see on the signals they intercept from other countries. As a muscle held at full tension will eventually shred itself into a collapsed nubbin, so the Ordenstaat's own state of eternal readiness destroys it. Eventually, you've got a miserable country that periodically makes threats against the "JUDEAIZED BOLSHEVIK RATS" all around them, while secretly sending messages that they'll tone down the threats and periodic kidnappings if the Reich/OFN will send them a few truckloads of grain...and maybe some new films?
Not whitewashing nazism, or ruining the excellent role Burgundy plays as this terrifying figure in the game's first stage...but showing the sad ending of someone who spent their lives lost in a fantasy, sacrificing everything to be ready for a moment that already came and went when Heydrich lost the war.
To reiterate: the high water mark of Burgundy - when it was its best position to execute Himmler's dreams - was in the 1960s, when they still had a massive and up-to-date army, and Heydrich as a willing puppet ready to win the civil war and hand the country over to them*. After that, they are doomed to expend almost all their efforts and resources just holding themselves together while the country slowly degrades and Himmler steadily descends into senility like Hitler did. Himmler's successors, if they can hold the decaying mess together
at all, will have no interest in his grandiose saturday morning cartoon villain schemes.
There might be no hope under the Black Sun...but even the Black Sun must eventually set.
*Well, not really, as the Heydrich path shows.
