Russian Nazi Satelite State in WWII?

Nosferatu · Mar 31, 2010

The Nazis used ex-Soviets in their war effort, and there was talk of making a "Russian Liberation Army", although it never really became an army, just groups of soldiers attached to German armies.

But let's say they try a different tactic. Using Konstantin Rodzaevsky, the Russian Fascist leader and anti-Semite (who actually had a giant neon swastika on the roof of his HQ building), they set up a puppet regime in occupied Soviet territory. They justify this ideologically by saying they're Cossacks rather than Slavs, as they did in OTL. Or maybe they simply say non-communist, non-Jewish Slavs are a lesser evil. Something to that effect.

This would give a boost to the Eastern Front war effort, as loads of anti-Soviet Russians would probably flock to join their army. It might effectively set off a "second civil war". This could weaken the USSR dramatically. If we assume that the USSR is at least militarily defeated, and their borders pushed back to or beyond the Urals, it would make a buffer zone in the case of future attacks. I heard OTL Japan wanted to set up a white Russian buffer state in the far east as well.

1. Is this plausible enough for a non-ASB TL?
2. How would the Allied and Axis nations react?
3. Could it mean the effective downfall of the Soviets? Or the beginning of a slow one?
4. If the Soviets are out of the game, busy with their new enemy, could the reinforcements to the western front change the outcome of the war itself?

corditeman · Mar 31, 2010

Not in the Ukraine, it won't!

Hitler drafted huge numbers of 'subject peoples' saying that their families would suffer if they didn't turn up. This included the so-called 'Galician Divisions' from the Ukraine, which joined up only to fight Russians and insisted on their own chaplains. Their deep-laid plans were to become the Army of Liberation for the Ukraine when Hitler's offensives collapsed. Unfortunately, due to American kowtowing to Stalin, the remnants of this force ended up as exiles in Britain, Canada and elsewhere, rather unfairly blamed for atrocities that even the Russians conceded were not done by the 'Galician Divisions'. Had matters been otherwise...

Could somebody please do a TL on this? Other Ukrainians in our TL did keep fighting Moscow in the Western Ukraine until the 1950s, with covert CIA support. Talk about a lost opportunity!

Nosferatu · Mar 31, 2010

I suppose I could easily incorporate an American-backed Ukrainian resistance into this TL.

Wyragen-TXRG4P · Mar 31, 2010

corditeman said:
rather unfairly blamed for atrocities that even the Russians conceded were not done by the 'Galician Divisions'. Had matters been otherwise...

Wrong, they where very fairly blamed for atrocities, they comitted more of them than the German forces. "Liberators" also massacred polish civilians too.

Wozza · Mar 31, 2010

Nosferatu said:
1. Is this plausible enough for a non-ASB TL?

Nope, there's no food to maintain the loyalty of a large proportion of the population and no weapons to arm them with.

Nosferatu · Mar 31, 2010

Did the Soviets have much more food? Except for the high-ranking party members? The place was pretty much a perpetual famine, was it not? And the weapons could be raided from Soviet transports etc and brought by deserters, as well as captured from enemies. It would make things more difficult for certain, but I must say, I disagree.

Wozza · Mar 31, 2010

Nosferatu said:
Did the Soviets have much more food? Except for the high-ranking party members? The place was pretty much a perpetual famine, was it not? And the weapons could be raided from Soviet transports etc and brought by deserters, as well as captured from enemies. It would make things more difficult for certain, but I must say, I disagree.

The Germans took all the food they could from the Russians to support the industrial workforce in Germany, leaving vast numbers of the Russian population to starve. That's one reason why the death toll in the occupied areas was so high.

This is not just raiding for a few rifles, this is supporting an army, one that has ample ammunition and even basic heavy weapons and transportation.

Michel Van · Mar 31, 2010

after german Literatur on that topic:

the Wehrmacht had reused a old WW1 plan
Were German Empire had Russian Satelite States controlled by German Governor

But Hitler rejected to that plan.
after him West part of USSR had partitioned into Gau (country subdivision)

the SS made several study about wat to happen after War with Russia ( up to Ural mountains)
wat became "Generalplan Ost" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Germanisation for 50% of Czechs, 35% of Ukrainians and 25% of Belarusians
For 80 % of all east european and Russians had SS a cruel fate: extermination, expulsion and to starve!
the rest of 20 % live as Slave for Nazi

but in TL were Socialist radicalism under Ernst Röhm rules the NSDAP (and not Hitler and his fraction)
were more likely the Nazi install Russian Satelite State

Literatur on that topic:
Adolf Hitler "Mein Kampf": he write that most of locals in "Neue Lebensraum" has to be exterminat and rest have to be slave

Ralph Giordano "Wenn Hitler den Krieg gewonnen hätte"
in dept look in "Generalplan Ost" and other SS Plans

Niall Fergusion "Virtuelle Geschichte"
He looks in Wehrmacht plans and "Generalplan Ost" in chapter Europa under the NAZI

Nosferatu · Mar 31, 2010

Alright then, I suppose you're right. (@ Wozza)

But how about Rodzaevsky, supplied by the Japanese, occupying cities in the Russian far east? He had some thousand followers after all. I suppose the Soviet garrison in the area would deal with him rather quickly anyways.

@ Michael Van

That's interesting, thanks for the info.

Wozza · Mar 31, 2010

Nosferatu said:
Alright then, I suppose you're right. (@ Wozza)

But how about Rodzaevsky, supplied by the Japanese, occupying cities in the Russian far east? He had some thousand followers after all. I suppose the Soviet garrison in the area would deal with him rather quickly anyways.

Hmm, well I don't want to kill your thinking at germination. I imagine there is plenty of opportunity for the Germans to be more rational, effective and better organised in their use of Russian auxiliaries.

I see Roszaevsky was based in Manchuria. Perhaps if the Japanese attacked the USSR in December 1941 you might have him playing a major role. On his own seems optimistic though.

I Blame Communism · Mar 31, 2010

Wozza raises excellent points, and the points he raises are why several historical German attempts came to nothing much. That, and the oft-forgotten fact that nobody likes having their country invaded and the people of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine were quite capable of defending themselves from invasion and genocide without being hard-boiled Stalinists. And in any case, in the broadest sense ("Stalin is a good leader and the Soviet Union is the Scoialist Motherland and all that jazz"), far more were than most people seem to think.

corditeman said:
Hitler drafted huge numbers of 'subject peoples' saying that their families would suffer if they didn't turn up. This included the so-called 'Galician Divisions' from the Ukraine, which joined up only to fight Russians and insisted on their own chaplains.

The reason it was "so-called" is because it was recruited from Galicia.

corditeman said:
Their deep-laid plans were to become the Army of Liberation for the Ukraine when Hitler's offensives collapsed. Unfortunately, due to American kowtowing to Stalin, the remnants of this force ended up as exiles in Britain, Canada and elsewhere, rather unfairly blamed for atrocities that even the Russians conceded were not done by the 'Galician Divisions'. Had matters been otherwise...

There were attrocities on record. That's not to start on OUN, which industriously murdered all the Poles, Jews, "Moskals", and Ukrainians from rival political factions it could lay its hand on.

corditeman said:
Could somebody please do a TL on this? Other Ukrainians in our TL did keep fighting Moscow in the Western Ukraine until the 1950s, with covert CIA support. Talk about a lost opportunity!

To kill Poles? The day was seized on that one. Any "opportunity" to create an all-Ukrainian state did not exist.

Nosferatu said:
Did the Soviets have much more food? Except for the high-ranking party members?

Not in Leningrad. I wonder why that might have been? Generally yes. The Soviets needed Lend Lease to keep everyone just about fed, but they did.

The Nazis were neither logistically capable nor ideologically motivated to feed people, which led to horror stories like Kharkov.

Nosferatu said:
The place was pretty much a perpetual famine, was it not?

...No.

Nosferatu · Mar 31, 2010

The perpetual starvation thing was meant a bit ironic, but it's all but impossible to convey in writing. And of course, I was not trying to say the Nazis were better or more humane.

I Blame Communism · Mar 31, 2010

Nosferatu said:
The perpetual starvation thing was meant a bit ironic, but it's all but impossible to convey in writing.

"The historical tendency of Russia, a society with a climate giving rise to unreliable harvests and a society where resources were long used inefficiently, towards rural famine was severely aggravated by the crash-industrialisation programmes of the early 1930s: physical-geography bad luck combined with the ruthless and heavy-handed policies of the Soviet regime to cause severe food shortages for peasants, especially in the main grain-proudcing regions including the Ukraine, North Caucasus, and Lower Volga. These famines had ended by the time the Great Patriotic War broke out, but wartime shortages meant many would go hungry, especially in besieged Leningrad; while the policies of the German occupiers deliberately plundered the country of food as part of a scheme for genocide."

That didn't seem too hard.

Nosferatu said:
And of course, I was not trying to say the Nazis were better or more humane.

I'm glad.

corditeman · Mar 31, 2010

Dear Wyragen...

...When the Ukrainians were interned, the Russians were asked if they had committed atrocities that needed to be tried. The Russians did not, the atrocities concerned appear to have been carried out by units that may have been recruited long before the enforced drafting of the 'Galician Divisions'. I suggest that you look at wiki's article 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian), at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Ukrainian)

Important here to understand that 'Waffen SS' was not the same as that horrific organisation in Nazi Germany, the Schutz-Staffeln.

"Jan Stanislav, the director of the National Uprising Museum in Slovakia, denied that the Division or that Ukrainians took part in any brutalities committed against the Slovak people at this time"

There were some Police Regiments that also had the 'Galizien' title that were believed to have been involved in massacres of partisans and civilians, but it is not clear whether they were assigned to the Division, although some did join the Division on its re-formation after the Battle of Brody.

Read the wiki article carefully - it seems to be quite eclectic.

My contact with the First Ukrainians came from visiting a chapel built by them in an old Army camp outside Lockerbie. I was intrigued by the very definite anti-communist and religious attitude. The Ukrainians suffered starvation before the war - almost a seventh were starved to death by Stalin. Hitler treated them similarly as dirt, then as cannon-fodder.

I Blame Communism · Mar 31, 2010

corditeman said:
...When the Ukrainians were interned, the Russians were asked if they had committed atrocities that needed to be tried. The Russians did not, the atrocities concerned appear to have been carried out by units that may have been recruited long before the enforced drafting of the 'Galician Divisions'. I suggest that you look at wiki's article 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian), at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Ukrainian)

Wikipedia is not always terribly reliable, and the fact is, pretty much every substantial unit on either side committed warcrimes.

While "Russian" is a pretty common usage for "Soviet" in this case, it's a disingenious one, since the vast majority of Ukrainians who fought the war did it with the Red Army. Of course part of the problem is that English lacks a russkiy/rossiskiy distinction, but "Soviet" covers all bases in this and other cases.

corditeman said:
Important here to understand that 'Waffen SS' was not the same as that horrific organisation in Nazi Germany, the Schutz-Staffeln.

The Waffen-SS were a Nazi combat formation, which pretty much guarantees attrocities. The regular Wehrmacht was knee-deep in blood on the eastern front.

corditeman said:
"Jan Stanislav, the director of the National Uprising Museum in Slovakia, denied that the Division or that Ukrainians took part in any brutalities committed against the Slovak people at this time"

Slovakia is not the USSR.

corditeman said:
There were some Police Regiments that also had the 'Galizien' title that were believed to have been involved in massacres of partisans and civilians, but it is not clear whether they were assigned to the Division, although some did join the Division on its re-formation after the Battle of Brody.

Read the wiki article carefully - it seems to be quite eclectic.

The various units are confusing, it's true; you were doing nothing to lessen the confusion by making the Banderovtsy (who committed mass-murder against Polish and other civilians, no bones about it) into a "missed opportunity".

corditeman said:
My contact with the First Ukrainians came from visiting a chapel built by them in an old Army camp outside Lockerbie. I was intrigued by the very definite anti-communist and religious attitude. The Ukrainians suffered starvation before the war - almost a seventh were starved to death by Stalin. Hitler treated them similarly as dirt, then as cannon-fodder.

Have you ever considered the massively distorting effect that receiving your impressions of a nation's history and outlook from one particular small group who fled the country will have?

"Anti-communist and religious attitide": I'd be interested to know which church the chapel belonged to. I suspect, given you knowledge of the chaplain clause in the Galician division, that it was Greek Catholic.

About 10% of Ukrainians, in Galicia, are Greek Catholic. I repeat that outside Galicia-Volhynia, anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalism amounted to very little. In most of the country, although there was the Autocelaphous church to muddy the waters, the population were and are Orthodox. Back then there was no Kiev patriarchate, and the Moscow patriarchate (which still IIRC has a larger following in Ukraine) was staunchly pro-Soviet.

History, as usual, turns out to be a lot more complex than we like to assume.

Susano · Mar 31, 2010

corditeman said:
Important here to understand that 'Waffen SS' was not the same as that horrific organisation in Nazi Germany, the Schutz-Staffeln.

"It is important to understand that the UN Peacekeeping Forces are not the same as the bureaucratic nightmore of an organisation, the United Nations..."
You do know what SS stands for, yes?

Emera78 · Mar 31, 2010

Important here to understand that 'Waffen SS' was not the same as that horrific organisation in Nazi Germany, the Schutz-Staffeln.

It was its military arm. All of SS as per Himmler's internal publication was to serve in fighting "revolution of untermenschen"

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/ssnur1.htm

This new mission-protecting the internal security of the re-gime- was somewhat more colorfully described by Himmler in his pamphlet, "The SS as an Anti-bolshevist Fighting Organiza-tion," published in 1936 (1851--PS):

"We shall unremittingly fulfill our task, the guaranty of the security of Germany from the interior, just as the Wehr-macht guarantees the safety, the honor, the greatness, and the peace of the Reich from the exterior. We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without. Without pity we shall be a merciless sword of justice for all those forces whose existence and activity we know, on the day of the slightest attempt, may it be today, may it be in decades or may it be in centuries."1851-PS)

For Nazi Germany anti-communism was always connected with racism.

Dathi THorfinnsson · Mar 31, 2010

I Blame Communism said:
While "Russian" is a pretty common usage for "Soviet" in this case, it's a disingenious one, since the vast majority of Ukrainians who fought the war did it with the Red Army. Of course part of the problem is that English lacks a russkiy/rossiskiy distinction, but "Soviet" covers all bases in this and other cases.

???Explain, please. Is one Russian and the other Soviet, or the one (Great) Russian and the other ('great/white/little=red') Russian, or what?

wormyguy · Mar 31, 2010

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
???Explain, please. Is one Russian and the other Soviet, or the one (Great) Russian and the other ('great/white/little=red') Russian, or what?

Yes, basically.

Old Airman · Mar 31, 2010

Nosferatu said:
Or maybe they simply say non-communist, non-Jewish Slavs are a lesser evil.

Non-communist, non-Jewish Slavs are known as Poles, man. Sorry, could not resist

Seriously speaking, letting Russians mind their own affairs (even under close supervision of German overlords) was the only serious chance of winning Eastern War that Adolph ever had. But Lebensraum idea pretty much killed it.