German regions secede in ending days of WWII

[Strategos' Risk]

Could any regions of Germany had attempted to secede from Nazi rule during the ending days of WWII to broker a peace with the Allies? Italy switched sides, after all, though the secession in that case came from the fascists.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Could any regions of Germany had attempted to secede from Nazi rule during the ending days of WWII to broker a peace with the Allies? Italy switched sides, after all, though the secession in that case came from the fascists.

Austria did under the O-5 revolt... didn't help them very much though, the Russians didn't treat them much nicer than the east prussians when they canme through

[Josephus]

They did. There are still german-speaking Austrians in those areas.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Josephus

They did. There are still german-speaking Austrians in those areas.

There are still German speaking Germans in East Germany; the Soviets didn't deport and execute EVERYBODY... I'm just saying the revolt didn't win them any favors during the initial occupation (same goes for Romania and Bulgaria too)

[Ariosto]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

There are still German speaking Germans in East Germany; the Soviets didn't deport and execute EVERYBODY... I'm just saying the revolt didn't win them any favors during the initial occupation (same goes for Romania and Bulgaria too)

Well I would think so.

But yes, in formerly German lands in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, there are still ethnic Germans.

[Strategos' Risk]

I was thinking of maybe Saxony or Bavaria revolting.

[Roslin's Wig]

I don't think it would help. Saxony is to the east, in the path of the incoming Red Army.

After what the Germans had done to their country, the Russians were out for blood. And at that point in the war, very few of the Russian soldiers bothered to make the distinction between "German" and "Nazi".

[Cryptic]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Could any regions of Germany had attempted to secede from Nazi rule during the ending days of WWII.

WWII, no chance. But what about.... WWI? Regional identity was stronger amongst the 1918 generation and was even stronger amongst the older generation.

1918 was also before the days of mass radio, rudimentary television and mass travel. So "Barvarian" in 1918, might not of really been intelligible with the local German based language used in East Prussia and vis versa. Even Catholic verse Protestant religous differences would have been more pronouned in 1918 than in more secular 1945. These differences would makie the split easier psychologically.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by Cryptic

WWII, no chance. But what about.... WWI? Regional identity was stronger amongst the 1918 generation and was even stronger amongst the older generation.

1918 was also before the days of mass radio, rudimentary television and mass travel. So "Barvarian" in 1918, might not of really been intelligible with the local German based language used in East Prussia and vis versa. Even Catholic verse Protestant religous differences would have been more pronouned in 1918 than in more secular 1945. These differences would makie the split easier psychologically.

Bavaria actually tried to secede in 1919. It was put down rather brutally IIRC.

[Cryptic]

Originally Posted by Falecius

Bavaria actually tried to secede in 1919. It was put down rather brutally IIRC.

Good point. do you mean the leftist Barvarian Peoples Republic? What if the Barvarian sessionists were a unified group of religious based, right wing catholics and not a coalition of leftists? I think they could have pulled it off.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by Josephus

They did. There are still german-speaking Austrians in those areas.

There's a reason that Communism has been DOA in Austria since the State Treaty in 1955.

[NomadicSky]

Originally Posted by Roslin's Wig

After what the Germans had done to their country, the Russians were out for blood. And at that point in the war, very few of the Russian soldiers bothered to make the distinction between "German" and "Nazi".

They didn't even care if they were Jewish and had been in hiding, what they did to the German populace really makes me question who was really more evil.

[Typo]

Originally Posted by NomadicSky

They didn't even care if they were Jewish and had been in hiding, what they did to the German populace really makes me question who was really more evil.

And here we go again

[Rickshaw]

Originally Posted by NomadicSky

They didn't even care if they were Jewish and had been in hiding, what they did to the German populace really makes me question who was really more evil.

A very naive statement if ever I've read one.

As bad as the Soviets were, they never built industrialised death factories. Nor did they set out to completely eliminate an entire population on the basis of their religious affiliation (Jews and nominal Jewish people) nor sexuality (Gays and Lesbians) or ethnicity (Gypsies) or (physical or mental) disability. The Nazis took the idea of oppression to a whole higher level. Soviet brutality at the end of the war was not systematised, nor was it officially approved of. It was simply ignored by the authorities and allowed to occur in a hap-hazarded manner.

[Valdemar II]

Originally Posted by Cryptic

Good point. do you mean the leftist Barvarian Peoples Republic? What if the Barvarian sessionists were a unified group of religious based, right wing catholics and not a coalition of leftists? I think they could have pulled it off.

The problem are while we think of Bavaria as Catholic, in reality a significant part of the population are Protestants, especially in Franconia and the Pfalzian exclave. (which if I remember right had a Protestant majority). So the internal opposition against such a regime would be enourmous, not only among the Protestants, but also among the workers.

[I Blame Communism]

Originally Posted by NomadicSky

They didn't even care if they were Jewish and had been in hiding, what they did to the German populace really makes me question who was really more evil.

And this shows us the basic misconception about the Red Rape Rampage. I presume what the Soviets should have done is this:

"Are you Jewish and have you been in hiding?"

"Yes, noble liberator! See me yellow star! Please raise your trousers!"

"Ivanov, raise your trousers. We try the next house."

"Yes, sir."

This is, of course, stupid. The Soviets did not go into Germany with a standing order to revenge themselves by raping everybody (they revenged themselves by reparations and war crime tribunals).

What happened was that thousands upon thousands of young men who had been torn away from homes and families, undergone acute mortal terror again and again and again, been sent back to the front after nervous breakdowns (the biggest complaint the Americans dealt with was combat stress; Germany and Russia had no such luxury), kept themselves sane by drinking excessive amounts of dead men's vodka, and seen sights more horrible than most of us ever will came into a country where their position was a mix of absolute life-and-death power and constant fear.

All of this happened to a different (greater) extent when the Germans invaded Russia. The German troops hadn't yet had their nerves used to string a fiddle and play an Irish jig, but on the other hand they had been inundated with propaganda portraying communists, Slavs, and Jews - all intentionally confused - as bogeymen for twelve years.

And that, of course, was a policy of the Nazi leadership. Some more policies of the said were rounding up and gassing all the Jews, denying all food to Soviet prisoners of war, anti-partisan warfare by means of burning villages, shooting every Jew and political officer they caught, plundering the country of food, and eventually killing near-on every man, woman, and child in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

All of this was planned, controlled, and intended. The Stalinist regime did horrible things in the same way: it uprooted nations from their homes, broke the society of Kazakhstan, roused witch-hunts, and relied on slave-labour (but millions of Russians, Kazakhs, and Kalmyks don't seem to get half as much press as a comparatively small number of Germans, Poles, and for some reason Ukrainians, who it would seem are all imagined to be "Galician", that is, adhering to the western view of Soviet history).

Some other countries had hands which, if not as dirty, were not clean. Britain's conduct in WW2 contributed to the Bengal Famine, America locked up the Japanese, and Allied strategic bombing killed more French than German strategic bombing killed Britons.

But none of this is a remote comparison to the plans of the Nazis - not even the plans of Germany's allies came close to that.

The deeds of thousands of individual Soviets are not a comparison at all. As for the Soviet policy in occupied Germany? It involved, among other things including industrial reparations, soup-kitchens in fallen Berlin. There are also plenty of individual stories of kindness - quite often in Poland or the Czech countries rather than in Germany or Romania, for obvious reasons, but even there. War brings out the worst and the best, after all.

The continuing mythological portrayal of the Red Army as an organised, disciplined machine for raping all the white women is a nonsense.