The Soviet Union Without World War II

[Faeelin]

As a follow up, how would the USSR have been different without World War II?

Obviously, the demographics would have been different, with a significantly larger Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian population. But how about culturally? Would the Soviets have been more willing to loosen up after Stalin if the memory of how the Soviet state got them through World War II?

[CanadianGoose]

It depends on too many "why"s. Why didn't WWII happen? If it happened, why and how did USSR stay out? Off the top of my head, there are two remotely plausible scenarios: (1) Leftist wing (Strasserites) of NSDAP gaining control over party and turning it from "revanchists with socialist rhetoric" into "radical socialists with nationalist rhetoric" and (2) Nukes TL intersecting with WWII TL and preventing WWII from happening (much like nukes prevented Cold War from becoming WWIII).

1st scenario is leading to "communo-Nazi alliance", except that it would be very different Nazi. IOTL USSR caught a pretty severe Antisemitism bug from Nazi Germany, so this TL would feature a lot of OTL trends, but significantly worsened (state-sponsored Antisemitism plus couple of other "-isms" against, for example, Gypsies, Armenians and Greeks, but not a lot of other nationalism, as USSR is multiethnic). Economically *ComBloc (and Soviet-German alliance is bound to get at least as much Mitteleuropa as USSR IOTL) would be somewhat stronger, with more market-oriented German tradition balancing radical state-centered approach of Stalinism and Khruschevites and German R&D potential used to advance technologies. However, unless *ComBloc would eventually move toward more radical market system, it would fall as surely as IOTL ComBloc, may be a decade or two later.

2nd scenario is even less predictable. Peoples' loyalty to the system would not be buttressed by the memories of WWII, but USSR would not be haunted by wartime memories and could be as cocky as USA IOTL. This might bring WWIII, after all.

[Grimm Reaper]

CanadianGoose, what about an alternate where WWII ended without Hitler attacking the USSR, perhaps with a more active response by the French to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 followed by the frantic reorganization in winter 1939 as the French and British realize just how powerful massed armor can be?

The subsequent slugging match goes nowhere and convinces Mussolini to heed Franco and stay out of the war.

A negotiated settlement follows. Of course the question of whether Germany subsequently drops the Nazis is a crucial one.

[CanadianGoose]

CanadianGoose, what about an alternate where WWII ended without Hitler attacking the USSRThis is #2 in my list. I imagined nukes to stop the war, but your scenario is possible too.

[RGB]

1st scenario is leading to "communo-Nazi alliance", except that it would be very different Nazi. IOTL USSR caught a pretty severe Antisemitism bug from Nazi Germany, so this TL would feature a lot of OTL trends, but significantly worsened (state-sponsored Antisemitism plus couple of other "-isms" against, for example, Gypsies, Armenians and Greeks, but not a lot of other nationalism, as USSR is multiethnic).

Ugh. I can imagine that, actually. Really nasty possibility.

Economically *ComBloc (and Soviet-German alliance is bound to get at least as much Mitteleuropa as USSR IOTL) would be somewhat stronger, with more market-oriented German tradition balancing radical state-centered approach of Stalinism and Khruschevites and German R&D potential used to advance technologies. However, unless *ComBloc would eventually move toward more radical market system, it would fall as surely as IOTL ComBloc, may be a decade or two later.

There's the issue of commodity prices. The slump in the 80s, if they had two more decades, would have been overcome and then the rise in commodity prices would allow them to survive an even longer period. It really depends on when exactly do market fluctuations happen.

That said, it's impossible to predict with all the butterflies.

[B_Munro]

As a follow up, how would the USSR have been different without World War II?

Obviously, the demographics would have been different, with a significantly larger Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian population. But how about culturally? Would the Soviets have been more willing to loosen up after Stalin if the memory of how the Soviet state got them through World War II?

As the trend of the discussion indicates, we need to pin down what sort of no-WWII scenario we have here. The Soviets probably behave differently in a no-Hitler world than in a France-and-UK-and-the-Czechs-win-the-Munich-war world, and in turn differently in a stalemated-western-front-Stalin-stabs-Hitler -in-the-back-when-every-is-worn-out world. I doubt Canadian Goose's "Nazi-Soviet alliance" TL was quite what you were looking for. :)

Initial conditions are important.

Bruce

[Blue Max]

If we assume that Germany behaves itself as the reason as for "no WW2", I think the Soviet Union is in a bad situation after Stalin's death.

Stalin has forcibly industrialized the country, but there'd be no relaxation of the secret police state he had created because the Germans would not force that on him. Given that even Japan would probably be contained if there was no general war in Europe, the Soviet Union faces a Global Jihad if it attempts to expand.

I think Stalin simply continues to "Industrialize" the Soviet Union, which means that many more people die in NKVD terror and there is no war to force Stalin to reconsider his actions. With no invasion to justify Stalin's actions and a victorious war to legitimize these sacrifices, I can't believe that the Soviet Union would long survive Stalin.

Whoever follows Stalin is going to recognize that by killing off an appreciable part of his own people, the internal dissent that Stalin had paranoically thought omnipresent has become real--and that killing ones way out of the problem isn't an answer. A Soviet State in 1953 with ten million dead on its own hands, forced into two decades of secret police hell, and left with no legitimacy save force itself, is a nation that's shoved itself into a corner.

Soviet Union--born 1919; dead 1960?

[DuQuense]

It depends on too many "why"s. Why didn't WWII happen? If it happened, why and how did USSR stay out? Off the top of my head, there are two remotely plausible scenarios: (1) Leftist wing (Strasserites) of NSDAP gaining control over party and turning it from "revanchists with socialist rhetoric" into "radical socialists with nationalist rhetoric" and (2) Nukes TL intersecting with WWII TL and preventing WWII from happening (much like nukes prevented Cold War from becoming WWIII).
My reading of the US with no WW2 Thread , Seemed to indicate a world where France and Britain defeated Germany in 1940~41, before Barbarossa, or PH could happen.
This would then depend on how the Allies treat the Russian/Poland question.

[Faeelin]

As the trend of the discussion indicates, we need to pin down what sort of no-WWII scenario we have here. The Soviets probably behave differently in a no-Hitler world than in a France-and-UK-and-the-Czechs-win-the-Munich-war world, and in turn differently in a stalemated-western-front-Stalin-stabs-Hitler -in-the-back-when-every-is-worn-out world. I doubt Canadian Goose's "Nazi-Soviet alliance" TL was quite what you were looking for. :)

Initial conditions are important.

Bruce

Shiny happy Wunderreich!

[B_Munro]

Shiny happy Wunderreich!

Ok, Happy Germany TL. Austria gets annexed and the Czechs are bullied into giving the Sudentlanders all sorts of cultural autonomy and stuff, but no wars.

Stalin never quite works up the nerve to unite Europe against him by attacking his neighbors to the west, especially after Germany (slowly) militarizes. The mass killings abate a bit: even OTL Stalin realized at some point that there was a limited supply of Soviets, and that some of his economic policies weren't working all that well. He decides to blame Beria and gives him the chop sometime around 1950, the same as he had his predecessor as the chief of the secret police. He also manages to find the time, sans Hitlerian distractions, to ship off most of the Soviet Unions' Jews to Siberia and Central Asia: about half of them die over the next few years.

He also manages to create some rather ghastly architectural monstrosities that didn't get built OTL and kills off some more of the country's foremost scientific minds he doesn't need to build him atom bombs or rockets in this TL. In a vaguely positive manner, with less money being spent on the military (although the paranoid Stalin still feels he needs a damn big army in case those capitalists jump on him while he's looking the other way), some more is spent on stuff that actually benefits the Soviet people: more electricity, more fertilizer factories, more shoddy housing, more unsafe household appliances and tractors. Another spur of the transiberian railway is built N. of lake Baikal, at horrendous costs in human life, in case the Japanese try anything. Soviet scientists explore the arctic, and soviet aeronauts perform much touted feats.

Speaking of Japan, what's going on there? Japan keeps on slogging in China until they hit a foreign exchange crisis and their economy starts seizing up, somewhere in the mid-40's. They try to negociate their way out, but having in extreme frustration levelled Chunking and sent Chiang heading for the hills by this point, they have nobody to negociate with. Eventually, after worsening economic problems and ever-legnthening casualty lists lead to levels of popular unrest even the secrets police have trouble handling, heads roll (in some cases literally), and in 1950 they pull out, withdrawing north of the Yellow River (some territory has been added to an enlaged Manchuria) leaving behind a puppet regime which has rather less popular support a shorter time to live than the Communist one in Afghanistan when the Soviets left.

Three years later, as Stalin approaches the end of his life, there is news out of China. The capital has fallen to that invincible champion of the people, the Red General Chu Teh...[1]

Bruce

[1] Mao was forced to move quarters again due to a Japanese move into Communist territory. On his way to temporary safe quarters in Soviet-protected Sianking (by 1953 as solidly in the Soviet sphere as Mongolia), he had an unfortunate run-in with the Rising Sun's finest...[2]

[2] Sometimes my cynicism is overwhelmed by wishful thinking...the fat bastard probably survive to screw over his people in this TL, too.

[Urban fox]

If we assume that Germany behaves itself as the reason as for "no WW2", I think the Soviet Union is in a bad situation after Stalin's death.

Stalin has forcibly industrialized the country, but there'd be no relaxation of the secret police state he had created because the Germans would not force that on him. Given that even Japan would probably be contained if there was no general war in Europe, the Soviet Union faces a Global Jihad if it attempts to expand.

There's still all those 3rd world commie-movements out there, and without WW2 France and Britain wouldnt suffer humiliating defeats in the far east so they may try to hang on to their empires for longer than OTL the way Portugal did. That could be very very nasty.

Also you must appreciate just damaged the post-WW2 Soviet Union was by it’s experiences they lost a massive chunk of their population and the Soviet economy may never really have fully recovered from WW2. ITL the Soviet economy and population will be much bigger. Sure central planning is sometimes inefficient, but it isn’t doomed to failure anymore and a market economy is doomed to suffer great depressions.:p

I think Stalin simply continues to "Industrialize" the Soviet Union, which means that many more people die in NKVD terror and there is no war to force Stalin to reconsider his actions. With no invasion to justify Stalin's actions and a victorious war to legitimize these sacrifices, I can't believe that the Soviet Union would long survive Stalin.

Post-modern ideas of government ''legitimacy'' are not part of the equation here, a powerful one-party police state can survive indefinitely so long as the leadership stays mostly unitied. If a goverment is in power and controls it’s territory it's legitimate. Thus goverment legitimacy is a separate issue fromdemocratic mandate the House of Saudi is a legitimate goverment, through an unpopular one.

With no WW2 Stalin wouldnt have suffered the initial wartime debacles that dogged him in the history books ever since, plus he never reconsidered his actions he was going to purge the Jews or (Zionists as he called them) just beforer he died of course there’d be no Israel ITL so that can be butterflied.



Whoever follows Stalin is going to recognize that by killing off an appreciable part of his own people, the internal dissent that Stalin had paranoically thought omnipresent has become real--and that killing ones way out of the problem isn't an answer. A Soviet State in 1953 with ten million dead on its own hands, forced into two decades of secret police hell, and left with no legitimacy save force itself, is a nation that's shoved itself into a corner.

Soviet Union--born 1919; dead 1960?[/QUOTE]

There's was no sign of any real internal dissent in the Soviet Union when Stalin died in fact quite the opposite. It’s easy to overestimate anti-Soviet feeling but from all indications most of the population at the time were supportive of the government or at least were apolitical or apathetic ya know like people today. People may have bitched about lines etc, but that isnt really dangerous to the goverment.

Plus a large percentage of the population were complicit in the purges, huge numbers of people were denounced to settle old grudges or advance careers. Stalin and the NKVD may have carried out the purges but they couldn’t have done so to that degree without plenty of ''help from the Ivan on the street'' so to speak.

Also the majorty of people sent to the camps were petty criminals not ''politicals'' and I highly doubt people in the Soviet Union would much care about the fate of petty crooks, hell people in Britain dont we're all for giving harsh sentences.:rolleyes:

Most real dissent came from smug know-it-all intellectuals, and they can only only operate underground which keeps their opinions from reaching all but a small portion of the Soviet population. They had bigger impact abroad than in the Soviet Union itself.

Also lastly with no WW2 the Soviet population’s Russian majority would be much larger since 60% of the WW2 deaths were Russian. Multi-ethnic nations with a clear majority ethnic group tend to be much more stable. There’d definitely be more Rusifaction of the other SSR’s and since Stalin put a lot of effort trying tie Soviet communism to Russian nationalism together (he had some success here) this makes it more likely the Soviet state survives in a united form not less.:)

[Faeelin]

He also manages to find the time, sans Hitlerian distractions, to ship off most of the Soviet Unions' Jews to Siberia and Central Asia: about half of them die over the next few years.

Why? The anti-semitic purges he was starting in OTL 1950ish seem awfully contingent. And why killing the scientists?

Eventually, after worsening economic problems and ever-legnthening casualty lists lead to levels of popular unrest even the secrets police have trouble handling, heads roll (in some cases literally), and in 1950 they pull out, withdrawing north of the Yellow River (some territory has been added to an enlaged Manchuria) leaving behind a puppet regime which has rather less popular support a shorter time to live than the Communist one in Afghanistan when the Soviets left.

I have to say, I really don't think the war lasts this long. With less distractions in Europe, I think the British get motivated to do... something. Watch for an economic embargo.

[The Red]

Less defense of the Soviet Union nowadays and even less for Stalin.In fact with no Hitler hed probably be considered the most evil man ever.

[Seryozha1987]

He also manages to create some rather ghastly architectural monstrosities that didn't get built OTL

You mean.........this? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Soviets)

:D

[Paul V McNutt]

I think the easiest, way for this to happen is to have Hitler not attack the Soviet Union or more accurately delay the attack until it is too late. IN Decline and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler is quoted as saying that It would be easier to conquer the Soviet Union in 1940 than in 1960, or words to that effect, So what if he decides to put it off for a few years, until after he defeats Britain and the U.s. Since that doesn´t happen, there wouldn´t have been an invasion of the u.S.S.R. I think the biggest change would be no Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe and no Cold War.

[Grimm Reaper]

Ultimately for this to work you either have to get rid of Hitler entirely on way or another.

How about this? Hitler doesn't attempt an alliance of convenience with Stalin or doesn't do so in time for it to work, perhaps he gives another of his speeches screaming against communism and Stalin tell Ribbentrop to get lost. Subsequently Stalin does occupy Estonia and Latvia given their proximity to Leningrad which doesn't stand out so badly while Spain is wracked by civil war and Hitler and Mussolini are grabbing everything they can, but Stalin does not occupy parts of Poland or Romania or attack Finland.

With no attack in the east Polish forces last a few more days against Hitler in the west but it takes Germany another 4-6 weeks to regroup and finish off the eastern parts of Poland, particularly the pocket closest to Romania.

Without Stalin as Hitler's effective ally the Anglo-French feel themselves to have more freedom of movement and another reason Poland lasts longer is that on October 1, 1939 the French begin ponderously moving in to the Rhineland and much of the Wehrmacht is frantically called west, alas, not all at once.

The French offensive seizes virtually all of the Rhenish territories south of Koblenz lost including the entire Saar basin. Even worse, a fiery French officer named De Gaulle convinces the French leadership that the overall display by the French Army was actually quite inferior in terms of speed and effect compared to the Blitzkrieg against Poland and that a crash effort to mass tank formations and equp them with some kind of radio net is vital.

Effectively the French decision to build armored divisions with newly produced tanks while leaving existing tanks scattered is thrown out and instead, as a compromise, half the existing tanks in France are to be gathered together at once. By March five new French armored divisions are training together near Paris and a sixth near Marseilles.

Given this shift in priorities the British also choose to reconcentrate on air and armored production, effectively reaching the June 1940 production levels by the beginning of April, lest they be embarassed by the return of Belgium to the old alliance with France in January 1940. No one expected the British Army to equal France's in power but being outclassed by Belgium is another matter entirely.

A key point would be in March 1940 when...


So how does it look so far?

[Urban fox]

All looks good except for the part about the French, I just dont see them being able to pull that off the Heer even with a longer Polish campaign will still outclass the French army which is badly led and had poor morale.

The French military doctrine was also almost totally defensive, and massive re-organization would take more time than they had even with a few extra weeks.

Germany would have to suffer a major shocking setback in the east for the French to have any real chance to get their shit together. Maybe a false alarm about an impending Soviet attack would do it.

With no pact then Stalin wouldnt be above massing his troops on the border in order to force the Nazi's to divide their attention at a critical moment, still that may provoke a war unless handled correctly on the Soviet side.

[Grimm Reaper]

Urban fox, the point is that the French move on the Rhine before the Wehrmacht is done in Poland.

I seriously doubt the existing German forces in the west circa September 14th could do stop the French and if Hitler is only grudgingly pulling a few divisions every few days until Poland surrenders...note that despite a huge starting French edge of four or five to one they still only gain about half of the Rhineland. Indeed, this poor display may be what convinces De Gaulle and other key French officers that changes are necessary while they have some months to actually make them, with emphasis on changes involving redeployment of existing tanks instead of building more.

Another important point!

Without a pact with Stalin how far can Hitler go in terms of stripping the east to go after France, Belgium, Holland and the small nation which is not to be named? A better organized French army(months between September 1939 and May 1940), a renewed alliance with Belgium and Hitler forced to keep, say, 30 or so divisions in reserve could do much to explain a German debacle in summer of 1940.

Another development is that the invasion of Norway(and Denmark) is pretty much off the table as the Wehrmacht hated the operation and with another 30 or so divisions needed to to watch Stalin and perhaps 10 lost in the additional fighting in the west or Poland...the excuse of the Winter War is gone too.

[A_Die_Hard_Confederate]

The Soviet Union would have simply became a more formidable foe and grown and grown and eventually launched their own Barbrossa against Germany.

[B_Munro]

Why? The anti-semitic purges he was starting in OTL 1950ish seem awfully contingent. .

Well, as far as I know, Stalin never met a minority (possibly excepting Georgians) he didn't find suspicious. And it wasn't just Nazis who were accusing the Jews of being "rootless cosmopolitans" - and there were lots of Jews _outside_ the USSR, in such suspicious places as the USA. Also, Jews had played a major role in the earlier days of the Bolshevik party - what were Trotsky's parents? Might they not play a role in an effort to overthrow him. Paranoid sort of guy, Stalin. And there was an increasingly strong campaign vs. any sort of independent Jewish culture after WWII, from 1948 on.

Given that there is no Holocaust to make antisemitic acts look particularly nasty in this TL, I'm not sure why he's _less_ likely than OTL to crush any sort of Jewish influence (as he sees it) in the USSR. Of course, he's a busy man: monuments to his glory to build, death lists to write, propaganda photos to pose for: he might not get around to it before Azrael comes to carry him off to that lake of boiling pigshit.


And why killing the scientists?.

Because they're intellectuals, and therefore automatically suspect. And anyone who deviates from the Party Line is in deep trouble. OTL Einstein's theories were denounced for not being properly Marxist; Lysenko's nonsense dominated Soviet biology for quite a while because his theories were more ideologically "correct." Korolev was in the prison system, and might have died there if he hadn't met Tupolev. (Also in prison, if working, at the time.) There's probably a list of Soviet scientists killed by Stalin somewhere on line, but it's getting late. (PS - kills "more of", not "all.")


I have to say, I really don't think the war lasts this long. With less distractions in Europe, I think the British get motivated to do... something. Watch for an economic embargo.

What else might they do? It strikes me as unlikely that the UK is going to risk a war with Japan out of moral indignation, especially since the Japanese appear to have China firmly lodged in their craw and are therefore unlikely to embark on any adventures vs. a prepared British Empire. What do the British have that the Japanese (with their dwindling reserves of foreign currency) can't buy elsewhere? I'm expecting the Japanese to put up with a lot of economic hardship before public discontent becomes too much for even their authoritarian government to stand. Now, a general League of Nations embargo, perhaps organized by the leadership of Shiny Happy Germany...

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Urban fox, the point is that the French move on the Rhine before the Wehrmacht is done in Poland.



Sorry to stop you, but the thread creator _did_ say, I quote, "Shiny happy Wunderreich!"

"France beats Germany" is the _other_ thread. :D

Bruce

[Macsporan]

Hitler remains dominant in Western Europe and forces the British to sue for peace by a Mediterranean Strategy and an enhanced naval war.

Stalin and Hitler both die in their beds some time in the mid fifties and after a time are replaced by parliamentary democracies as the ideological fervor of the one-party states winds down with time and prosperity.

The European colonial empires are destroyed by Japanese, Soviet and Nazi subversion and are up for grabs in a four-way 3rd World Cold War.

Nuclear weapons are invented a decade later but are not used by anyone because the danger they present to all mankind is immediately apparent.

The Chinese Communists are defeated and China is consolidated under the Nationalists.

America withdraws to the Western Hemisphere and never becomes a world power, but remains greatly respected by the other powers.

The world is much like it is today but much more prosperous, particularly Eastern Europe, Russia and China which is spared Mao tse Tung's grotesque totalitarian experiment.

Severe global warming becomes a problem in the late 20th century.

[Grimm Reaper]

Bruce, yes, I caught that.:D

A minor point is that Japan in OTL was perhaps three months from complete exhaustion of currency reserves when FDR slapped the embargos on Japan so time is running short for Japan regardless.

[Urban fox]

Hitler remains dominant in Western Europe and forces the British to sue for peace by a Mediterranean Strategy and an enhanced naval war.

Stalin and Hitler both die in their beds some time in the mid fifties and after a time are replaced by parliamentary democracies as the ideological fervor of the one-party states winds down with time and prosperity.


All those Jews in the U.S.S.R would set Hitler off on one of his rampages. As for Nazi Germany turning into a parliamentary democracy. I dont think so, the idea of one-man-rule (as opposed to just one party rule) is too strong and Nazism doesn’t have the ideological malleably Marxism has.

Even in the U.S.S.R the trends towards a less tyrannical one-party state are stronger than that towarsd a parliamentary democracy. Assumeing Russians make up a larger share of the Soviet population and the economy is doing better because of no appalling WW2 damage many of the factors that brought Gorby to power may not exist…Plus without the stress and strains of total war Stalin would live longer. He aged a lot during WW2.:eek:

The European colonial empires are destroyed by Japanese, Soviet and Nazi subversion and are up for grabs in a four-way 3rd World Cold War.

Nuclear weapons are invented a decade later but are not used by anyone because the danger they present to all mankind is immediately apparent.

The Chinese Communists are defeated and China is consolidated under the Nationalists.

In fact Nuclear weapons may be even more dangerous because without the two A-Bombs dropped on Japan people wont realize just how horrid these weapons are.

China can not be consolidated under the Nationalists the KMT isnt even consolidated under itself it's just a pack of warlords. Chaing Kai-Shek is top warlord but there are many others each with their own army & ''turf''. If Mao loses then China remains a second rate power for a lot longer the ''KMT'' is too busy stealing money to invest it in builiding the country. Most of China remains under the control of local bosses and warlords who have very dubious loyalty towards the ''goverment'' in Beijing. Xinjiang remains independent as a Soviet vassal, Tibet remains independent also.

China looks like a lot of the other post-colonial tin-pot dictatorships

America withdraws to the Western Hemisphere and never becomes a world power, but remains greatly respected by the other powers.

The world is much like it is today but much more prosperous, particularly Eastern Europe, Russia and China which is spared Mao tse Tung's grotesque totalitarian experiment.

Severe global warming becomes a problem in the late 20th century.


The USA would start looking beyond it's own shores sooner or later with the growing influence of other powers the USA would likely feel compelled to act at some point.

And with no UN international law is much more hazy.

Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R are a lot more prosperous the war had a crippling effect on those nations that extended for perhaps decades.

Germany was already rich, so we can assume it'll be doing well but the Soviets will be Catching up fast in terms of industrial power so the Nazi leadership may start sweating bullets over the fact that ''sub-humans'' may soon overtake the Reich in terms of industrial/military power

China remains subject internal discord warlordism, regional insurgencies and meddling from outside powers.:p

[CanadianGoose]

Stalin never quite works up the nerve to unite Europe against him by attacking his neighbors to the west, especially after Germany (slowly) militarizes. Dubious. Having highway from Eastern Prussia all the way to Leningrad (a.k.a Baltic Countries) is going to generate many sleepless nights in Moscow and things could indeed turn nasty. The mass killings abate a bit: even OTL Stalin realized at some point that there was a limited supply of Soviets, and that some of his economic policies weren't working all that well. He decides to blame Beria and gives him the chop sometime around 1950, the same as he had his predecessor as the chief of the secret police. IOTL Beria's ascention as the chief of secret police marked end of the Great Purge (quite a few peoples were released from Gulag at this point) and there was nothing of comparable scale ever since. He also manages to find the time, sans Hitlerian distractions, to ship off most of the Soviet Unions' Jews to Siberia and Central Asia: about half of them die over the next few years. Again, dubious. Most of accounts agree that pre-war years were actually quite OK in terms lack of of official antisemitism. A lot of OTL's events had been triggered by Stalin's vision of Israel being Soviet puppet not coming into reality.less money being spent on the military I can bid gold coins against eggshells that Soviet military budget would not be any smaller ITTL, as leadership is till going to be paranoid about "imperialist aggression". soviet aeronauts perform much touted feats. Soviet space program was an off-shot of MBR development.

of course there’d be no Israel ITL
Disagree. Jewish community of Palestine was half-million strong and naturally growing by 1939, so any TL with Britain getting rid of the Mandate is going to see a lot of political games around the community's fate and general relationships between world Jewry and powers.It’s easy to overestimate anti-Soviet feeling but from all indications most of the population at the time were supportive of the government or at least were apolitical or apathetic ya know like people today. People may have bitched about lines etc, but that isnt really dangerous to the goverment.Although you are right to a large degree, I can't help but wonder what would happen with this attitude in a world without WWII. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of this attitude had been caused by fear of possible war IOTL. To put it simply, mere thought about civil war or "imperialist aggression" caused by USSR's weaknes scared people to death. The saying "if only it can prevent war" (as in "we will endure anything if only it can prevent war", "Лишь бы не было войны") became the motto of many people. Would USSR avoid WWII, children of ones who does not remember Civil War of 1917-1922 would call the shots since 1950 on, and this generation would be much more likely to rock the boat and question commie authority earlier.
Also the majorty of people sent to the camps were petty criminals not ''politicals'' and I highly doubt people in the Soviet Union would much care about the fate of petty crooksYou need to know that a lot of those so-called "petty criminals" were actually half-starving and otherwise law-abiding citizens, who got into Gulag through "wheat ear law" (stealing as much as fistful of wheat ears from kolkhoz was considered a criminal offence).
since Stalin put a lot of effort trying tie Soviet communism to Russian nationalism together (he had some success here) this makes it more likely the Soviet state survives in a united form not less.:)I would say that tie was between Russian Imperial tradition and Soviet Communism, not between Russian Nationalism and Soviet Communism. And "Imperial tradition" is not "Nationalism".

Less defense of the Soviet Union nowadays May be yes, may be no. One has to remember that a lot of modern Anti-Soviet feelings and most vocal propaganda (names like Applebaum and Lucas spring to mind automatically) are fueled by nationalist feelings in EE countries and by their Western friends. Said countries were either ethnic dictatorships or (best case scenario) ethnic democracies themselves before Sovetization. With less toes hurt by Soviet foreign policy, you might not see that much of it. USSR could be seen as a country which started with wooden plow and ended with nukes and universal free education and health care in 30 short years.

Indeed, this poor display may be what convinces De Gaulle and other key French officers that changes are necessary while they have some months to actually make them, with emphasis on changes involving redeployment of existing tanks instead of building more. Reorg of proposed scale renders an army useless for months, and could any army be counted on to risk such a move in the middle of the war?

The Soviet Union would have simply became a more formidable foe and grown and grown and eventually launched their own Barbrossa against Germany.Quite possible. That's why I prefer nukes to keep all major players from doing something insanely stupid (as in "going into war with each other").

Well, as far as I know, Stalin never met a minority (possibly excepting Georgians) he didn't find suspicious. Hell, he never met a single person he didn't find suspicious. However, ethnic deportations were largely post-1941 invention (although a lot of "independent researchers" are working overtime to present relocation of Koreans or Baltic deportations of 1941 as "ethnic cleansings", they don't fit the mould for different reasons).

Given that there is no Holocaust to make antisemitic acts look particularly nasty in this TL, I'm not sure why he's _less_ likely than OTL to crush any sort of Jewish influence (as he sees it) in the USSR. Holocaust had pretty limited effect on Soviet minds IOTL. USSR suffered so badly, neither people nor leadership saw the fate of Jews as something exceptional (at most they thought that Hitler just had enough time to deal with Jews but would do to Slavs the same thing). So any link between OTL Holocaust and possible Soviet actions is questionnable.

[Faeelin]

Well, as far as I know, Stalin never met a minority (possibly excepting Georgians) he didn't find suspicious. And it wasn't just Nazis who were accusing the Jews of being "rootless cosmopolitans" - and there were lots of Jews _outside_ the USSR, in such suspicious places as the USA. Also, Jews had played a major role in the earlier days of the Bolshevik party - what were Trotsky's parents? Might they not play a role in an effort to overthrow him. Paranoid sort of guy, Stalin. And there was an increasingly strong campaign vs. any sort of independent Jewish culture after WWII, from 1948 on.


As others have pointed out, post 1948 antisemitism was tied into Israel; before WW2, after all, many Jews in Eastern Europe looked to the USSR as a role model.

What do the British have that the Japanese (with their dwindling reserves of foreign currency) can't buy elsewhere? I'm expecting the Japanese to put up with a lot of economic hardship before public discontent becomes too much for even their authoritarian government to stand. Now, a general League of Nations embargo, perhaps organized by the leadership of Shiny Happy Germany...

Bruce

Rubber, oil, etc. America was growing more and more hostile to Japan, and I could see it agreeing to an embargo in the early 1940s. From there, it's "wham, boom!"

[Grimm Reaper]

CG, the French have eight months from the invasion of Poland to the strike in the West and since they were already trying to form armored divisions grabbing half of the existing French tanks makes it a matter of reassigning a small portion of the French army.

[CanadianGoose]

As others have pointed out, post 1948 antisemitism was tied into Israel;That and unexpected success of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Anti-Fascist_Committee). It likely brought feared question of "double loyalty" of Soviet Jews closer to surface in Stalin's mind.

before WW2, after all, many Jews in Eastern Europe looked to the USSR as a role modelI would not generalize like this. Jewish Left, as most other Left movements of the day idolized USSR, true (even those who did not, like Trotskyites, despised Stalin highjacking the revolution, not the glorious experiment itself). However, I doubt that Left represented majority of EE Jewry. However, I would say it is safe to think that majority of EE Jews considered USSR a better place to be than Nazi Germany or lands it annexed/occupied/influenced.

CG, the French have eight months from the invasion of Poland to the strike in the WestDate of German attack in the West is a hindsight knowledge and you know by now how much I hate using hindsight knowledge as explanation of people's actions in ATL. France was in war with Germany. Germany just finished Poland off. French had no way to know when would Germany attack. However, with French Army holding left bank of the Rhine and winter coming, French could gamble on Germans sitting still until spring 1940.

[The Red]

Date of German attack in the West is a hindsight knowledge and you know by now how much I hate using hindsight knowledge as explanation of people's actions in ATL. France was in war with Germany. Germany just finished Poland off. French had no way to know when would Germany attack. However, with French Army holding left bank of the Rhine and winter coming, French could gamble on Germans sitting still until spring 1940.

Actually the Dutch had been forewarned,how much this would actually have mattered is debatable.

[B_Munro]

As others have pointed out, post 1948 antisemitism was tied into Israel;

The fact that the USSR turned hostile to Israel over time (it was rather friendly at first to the notion of a socialistic Israel) proves nothing one way or another about Stalin's views on potentially dangerous minorities. The Soviet Union under Kruschev, etc. was certainly actively anti-Semitic in a way it hadn't been before, but it was also rather less nasty in a number of ways. How would you describe Stalin's motives for the OTL "Doctor's Plot"?

(C-goose's comment re deportations strikes me as a relevant point, although it just means Jews get shipped off to Siberia on an individual basis rather than being shipped off en masse). But what the hey, there's no real need for it in the timeline. Let the idea be gone, and never darken our towels again.


before WW2, after all, many Jews in Eastern Europe looked to the USSR as a role model. !"

Lots of gentiles did as well: I believe some of them were known as "useful idiots?" :)

(And I do apologize if I'm coming off as excessively snarky. I've haven't been getting enough sleep lately, and it makes me tense and grumpy).



Rubber, oil, etc. America was growing more and more hostile to Japan, and I could see it agreeing to an embargo in the early 1940s. From there, it's "wham, boom!"


Well, a joint US-UK embargo would be bad news: although without a Japanese invasion of SE Asia, it would probably take rather longer to materialize than OTL. The power of the China lobby OTL has at times been overstated, and without an Axis to belong to Japan doesn't look so menacing.

But upon consideration, Japan probably reaches some sort of crisis point, one way or another, before 1950.

Not sure it would be "wham, boom!" Attacking the US OTL with a badly distracted USSR and UK was nutty enough - what are they going to do, attack the Dutch East Indies and hope the UK and US don't get involved? We are talking about taking on the Dutch, the UK, and the US while the USSR watches and waits. At the very least, for this to happen I suspect we need a coup by the crazier elements in the military against the "defeatists...."

Bruce