It'd be something like a cross between the Warsaw Pact and European Union.
Let's say the USA stay neutral, Germany wins in the east after Brest Litovsk (UBD, Lithuania, Poland, Belarussia, Ukraine, Finland, and Crimea are now puppet states) maybe there is a CP win in the west or maybe a status quo ante bellum. Anyways, let's focs on the east.
If the USA is neutral, I'm not so sure the Kerensky Offensive gets launched; IIRC, the big reason the Provisional Government stuck to the Tsardom's commitments to the Entente was because the USA promised loans after the war to rebuild, and Britain and the US were able to fund their war effort due to the US's unsecured loans being offered once they joined the war. If that's the case, they probably get the first B-L, which was just Poland, Lithuania, and Courland. Of course, nobody in Russia really wanted to end the war after the revolution, so it might pan out like OTL.
I assume Finland would be very quiet and peaceful but how about Ukraine, Poland and Belorussia? Would their be revolutions or communist (supported by the USSR) or independence insurgencies? How would the Latvians and Estonians act if their independence movements would be suppressed and they de facto live in a baltic german dominated monarchy. How would Poland be?
It would vary. Finland would be pretty chill. Ukraine probably sees some unrest, and I doubt the Hetmanate survives very long. Poland probably becomes a puppet kingdom, perhaps with a Habsburg king. Belorussia I don't see being very troublesome. As long as the regimes are pro German and not communist I don't see the Germans being super hard on them.
Would Germany need to send occupation troops in these regions? Would it have been worth it to have taken these regions from Russia? Could they have exploited them or would it have been an additional burden where the germans would have needed to invest money to repair the infrastructure after the war and spend money due to their troops their.
They probably keep some troops, but I doubt it would be very much. They simply couldn't afford to keep a massive army in the east at all times.
Almost a colony, the local population is not treated as bad as in other German colonies (since they're not racially inferior) but it still will be far from ideal.
It wouldn't be ideal, that's for sure. But I doubt it'd be nearly as bad as Namibia was, or even Ober Ost. Remember that Ober Ost was mostly H-L's pet project, which I doubt would continue post war. From the
1914-1918 Encyclopedia:
Rising pressure from the
Reichstag and the
German government forced Ludendorff to restructure the solely military central administration (
Hauptverwaltung) he had created above the district level, and add a civil chief administrator. Different departments (e.g. interior, education, economy) adopted the political ordinances for the district levels and published them in the official law gazette (
Befehls- und Verordnungsblatt) of the Ober Ost administration. The code of administrative regulations (
Verwaltungsordnung) served as the informal Ober Ost constitution.
(...)
During the peace negotiations of
Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the right of self-determination became a popular demand that put Hindenburg and Ludendorff’s plans under pressure. Especially the German secretary of state,
Richard von Kühlmann (1873-1948), tried to use the growing public interest in Germany’s eastern policy to lend it a more liberal appearance. As a result, the military authorities were forced to ease the strict rule in Ober Ost and allow the corporate bodies (
Landesräte) in Kurland and Lithuania, already selected in 1917, to participate in the political discussion.
Landesräte were established in Livonia and Estonia in 1918.
The Reichstag pressured Luddendorf to improve the situation somewhat, and given that they'd be the ones in power post war, I don't expect it to be all that harsh. Not as good as true independence, of course, but not as bad as the Tsars, Stalin, or the Nazis.
Regarding the German occupation of Ukraine,
it was harsh. During the Hetmanate especially, the Germans conducted reprisals against civilians, established their own courts to try any Ukrainians who committed a "crime" against the German occupiers, arrested any socialist leaders in the Rada, and banned railway workers from striking. And while these measures were harsh, it should be noted that these were wartime measures that would likely have not continued in peacetime. It should also be noted that while the Hetmanate was unpopular and hardly a benign regime, giving land back to wealthy landowners, it wasn't all bad. The economy began to recover slightly, there was relative internal stability, and public health, culture, science, and education were
developed. That's not to say the Hetmanate was good by any means, but it wasn't the worst regime either.
All four you cited have strong independence movements but it depends on how they're treated, since Finland has little of value I would expect relatively better treatment but the other three are going to be treated and very badly and Germanization policies can be expected in all puppets.
I doubt that very much. It's important to note that while Ober Ost was certainly very harsh, such a harsh regime wasn't going to last after the war. I'm going to quote from
@CHKeeley's thread
here:
Unsurprisingly, the top brass of the Heer wanted a pretty damned punitive peace. Russia was to be dismembered, police actions to seize more territories or an outright invasion would be launched to overthrow the Bolshevik government and drive 'Great Russia' further and further east. Operation Faustschlag was planned by Ludendorff for the fall of 1918 to seize Petrograd and march on to Murmansk. The Kaiser essentially agreed, although he was particularly concerned with securing dynastic titles for his children. The navy broadly pursued expansionist aims, but were more geared towards securing ports and colonial expansion in order to bolster the world presence of Germany in the post-war world. Such plans as Mittelafrika and the seizing of the Faroe islands belongs to these gentlemen. The Deutsche Vaterlandspartei of v. Tirpitz and Kapp was also a full-fledged supporter of maximalist and punitive war aims against the defeated powers.
On the other side of the proverbial barricades were the civilian authorities. The Foreign Office's v. Kühlmann staunchly opposed any adventurism against the Bolsheviks. He saw only a waste of resources, a newfound Soviet unity, and a potential Valmy in the propositions. He sought to work with the Bolsheviks and "let them stew in their own fat" while Germany prosecuted the war in the west and tried to win the peace. Much of the parliamentary forces seem to have aligned similarly:
"The protocols of the February 1918 meetings of their caucus leaders are liberally sprinkled with declarations against annexations and indemnities: Deputies Hermann Pachnicke, Georg Gothein, Otto Fischbeck, and Friedrich Naumann of the People's Progressive Party (FVP) repeatedly came out against a land grab in Poland, Courland, and Livonia. Matthia Erzberger and Karl Trimborn of the Center Party as well as Philipp Scheidemann of the Social Democrats (SPD) resolutely supported their stance. And both Gothein (FVP) and Eduard David (SPD) on occasion warned about the dangerous degree of political interference by the army's ruling duumvirate of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Indeed, these leaders must have felt greatly relieved five days after the Homburg Crown Council when Kuhlmann informed government officials that "any kind of wars of conquest ... are absolutely alien to German policies" in the east."
The alignment of forces was thus:
"The deliberations at Bad Homburg on February 13, 1918 produced a renewed Drang nach Osten not unlike the days of the Teutonic Knights. In one corner had stood the emperor, unabashedly pursuing dynastic ambitions in Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states with the zeal of a medieval potentate; decidedly anti-Bolshevik and desirous of dismembering "Great Russia." In another had stood the German navy, studiously disinterested in t east because the war at sea was to be won in the waters surrounding the British Isles before one turned to the Baltic, Barents, and Black seas. In yet another corner at Bad Homburg had stood Ludendorff and the "demi-gods" of the General Staff - vociferously assisted by industry, the Pan German League, and the Fatherland Party who, victorious on the eastern battlefields, were without a realistic concept of Ostpolitik, save their desire to lay their hands on as much real estate as possible. No less than one million German soldiers stood occupation in the east in March 1918, at a time when the great offensive in France foundered before Amiens for lack of infantry. And finally, Kuhlmann had stood virtually alone, the one person with at least a tenuous grasp of die grosse Politik. The foreign secretary was convinced that Russia needed to be included in any future concert of Europe, that the Brest-Litovsk peace was but a stop-gap measure (Provisorium) requiring revision at a future European peace conference, and that no Russian government could accept the permanent reduction of the state to pre-Petrine borders without access to either the Baltic or the Black seas. Moreover, he correctly discerned that German domination "Great Russia" and the "borderland states" would never be accepted by the Allied and Associated Powers. Yet his concept stood little chance of success. Kuhlmann became strangely silent after Bad Homburg: at two future crown councils at Spa (May 1 he uttered hardly a word; to a third (July 2) he was not even invited. A belated appeal in March 1918 to Chancellor v. Hertling to uphold the primacy of the political branch fell upon deaf ears."
There were factions in Germany pushing for what you've described. But the factions I see as most likely to be in power after the war wouldn't push for that kind of thing, so it probably wouldn't happen.
With regards to the comparison to Germany's colonies, after the whole Herero genocide fiasco, the Germans actually reformed their colonial administration significantly.
From
Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
As a result of the colonial wars in South West Africa and East Africa, which had been caused by poor treatment of native peoples, it was considered necessary to change the German colonial administration, in favor of a more scientific approach to the employment of the colonies that improved the lives of the people in them. Therefore, the highest authority in colonial administration, the Colonial Department (Kolonialabteilung) was separated from the Foreign Office and, in May 1907, it became its own ministry, the Imperial Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt).
The creator of the new colonial policy was a successful banker and private-sector restructurer, Bernhard Dernburg from Darmstadt, who was placed in charge of the Colonial Department in September 1906 and retained the role as Secretary of State of the revamped Colonial Office until 1910. Entrenched incompetents were screened out and summarily removed from office and "not a few had to stand trial. Replacing the misfits was a new breed of efficient, humane, colonial civil servant, usually the product of Dernburg's own creation, the ... Colonial Institute at Hamburg."[95] In African protectorates, especially Togoland and German East Africa, "improbably advanced and humane administrations emerged."[96] Dernburg went on tours of the colonies, to learn about their problems first-hand and find solutions. Capital investments by banks were secured with public funds of the imperial treasury to minimize risk. Dernburg, as a former banker, facilitated such thinking; he saw his commission to also turn the colonies into paying propositions. He oversaw large-scale expansion of infrastructure. Every African protectorate built rail lines to the interior.[97] Dar es Salaam evolved into "the showcase city of all of tropical Africa,"[98] Lomé grew into the "prettiest city in western Africa",[99] and Qingdao in China was, "in miniature, as German a city as Hamburg or Bremen".[100] Whatever the Germans constructed in their colonies was made to last.[98] Scientific and technical institutions for colonial purposes were established or expanded, in order to develop the colonies on these terms. Two of these, the Hamburg Colonial Institute and the German Colonial School are predecessor organizations of the modern universities of Hamburg and Kassel.
Dernburg declared that the indigenous population in the protectorates "was the most important factor in our colonies" and this was affirmed by new laws and initiatives.[95] Corporal punishment was abolished. Every colony in Africa and the Pacific established the beginnings of a public school system,[101] and every colony built and staffed hospitals.[102] In some colonies, native agricultural holdings were encouraged and supported.[103] In January 1909, Derburg said "The goal must be colonies closely bound to the Fatherland, administratively independent, intellectually self-sufficient, and healthy."
Wilhelm Solf, who was Colonial Secretary from 1911 until 1918, also undertook tours in Africa in 1912 and 1913. The resulting impressions informed his colonial plans, which included an expansion of the powers of the governors and a ban on forced labor for Africans.[95] As governor of Samoa, he had referred to the islanders as "unsere braunen Schützlinge" (our brown charges), who could be guided but not forced.[104] Similarly, Heinrich Schnee, governor of East Africa from 1912, proclaimed that "the dominant feature of my administration [will be] ... the welfare of the natives entrusted into my care."[105] Solf also advocated a network of motorways in the colonies. He secured support for this comparatively peaceful colonial policy, instead of the highly militarized approach that had been taken up to this point, from all parties in the Reichstag, except for the right.
There were no further major revolts in the German colonies after 1905 and the economic efficiency of the overseas possessions rapidly increased, as a result of these new policies and improvements in shipping, especially the establishment of scheduled services with refrigerated holds, increased the amount of agricultural products from the colonies, exotic fruits and spices, that were sold to the public in Germany. Between 1906 and 1914, the production of palm oil and cocoa in the colonies doubled, the rubber production of the African colonies quadrupled, and the cotton exports from German East Africa increased tenfold. The total trade between Germany and its colonies increased from 72 million marks in 1906 to 264 million marks in 1913. Due to this economic growth, the income from colonial taxes and duties increased sixfold. Instead of being dependent on financial support from Germany, the colonies became or were on track to become financially independent. By 1914, only German New Guinea, Kiautschou, and the African Schutztruppen were subsidized.[106] "The colonial economy was thriving ... and roads, railways, shipping and telegraph communications were up to the minute."[96]
(...)
In the years before the outbreak of the World War, British colonial officers viewed the Germans as deficient in "colonial aptitude", but "whose colonial administration was nevertheless superior to those of the other European states".[111]
(...)
The British position that Germany was a uniquely brutal and cruel colonial power originated during the war; it had not been said during peacetime.[115]
As we can clearly see, the idea that the Germans were insanely brutal in the years leading up to WWI is a false one. Now, I am
NOT TRYING TO DEFEND GERMAN COLONIALISM. Colonialism is evil and cannot be justified no matter what. What I am saying is that it got a lot better after the Herero genocide. The B-L states would probably be treated even better than this, with more autonomy. You probably remember a lot of this from my CP victory thread.
So, what do I think Eastern Europe would look like? The Eastern European states probably follow Germany and Austria-Hungary in foreign policy, and their economies are set up to benefit that of Germany. The Germans probably build up infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. The Mitteleuropa states can probably govern themselves with relative freedom.
