German Russian Peace Jan 1945

(inspired by this thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=116083

POD is that Operation Luttich does not get launched and the germans avoid the losses in the Falaise pocket:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Luttich

Germans try to regroup on the Seine but are pushed back but still hold Alsace-Lorraine, Aachen and Belgium north of Albert canal and Antwerp in December 1944. Eastern front is the same as OTL.

This butterflies away the Bulge battle and the German launch a massive offensive in Hungary in December 1944 to relieve Budapest. At the same time the Germans (via Sweeden) whisper to the Russians they will not let the Russians take central Europe even if it means losing to the western allies.

The Germans offer peace on the 1914 German - Russian boundry, rest is pretty much status quo: Russia still occupies Rommania and Bulgaria, Germany still occupies Hungary and Croatia (but Germany evacuates Courland). Germany also suggests she might offer technical assistance on rockets, jets and advanced submarine technology in exchange for raw materials. Germany is also willing to buy back her POWs from Russia (Germany has plenty of looted gold and such for that) while giving Russia hers back free.

The Russians dealing with this offensive in Hungary which is going well for the Germans (relieving Budapest and encircling significant Soviet formations) and fearing:
1) Months and months of hard fighting remain with most of the casulaties theirs, fearing the Germans won't fight hard in the west..
1) They are not going to acquire Berlin and Prauge anyway (the Germans will just move whatever reserves they have to the East, giving ground in the west).
2) If the war ends soon all their lend Lease supplies are going to end anyway.
3) They will be behind in the technological race with the West if the West gets a hold of all the scientists.
4) If at the end of a German defeat the Polish armed forces are established in Posen or Danzig or someplace that they won't be able to setup even Poland like they want.
5) Plus they figure if the Germans are fully engaged in the west, they can always restart the war again at their own choosing when the circumstances are better.

So the Russians agree to peace on these terms. What happens next????

Well first of all one would get a really bad reaction in the West. All aid to Russia would be gone. One might see the west reach a deal with the Germans If the Nazi's are gone.

Cue people screaming "this is ASB!" because the war can't possibly be resolved by anything other than Germany being smashed into the ground at this point.

It seems like a good idea, though there is the problem of Hitler being absolutely insane and probably not wanting to give in to the "Judeo-Bolsheviks" at any cost. Perhaps a good PoD would be to kill Hitler or have him become "seriously ill", allowing the military to take charge.

With peace in the east, I'm interested in how long the war in the west will last.

First of all, its Soviets not Russians.
Second of all, any peace with Nazi Germany is impossible by 1945.

Naturi said:

First of all, its Soviets not Russians.
Second of all, any peace with Nazi Germany is impossible by 1945.

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Yes, Hitler being killed and the generals making such a deal with Stalin might have been possible pre-Kursk. The only way Stalin might agree to such a deal in 44 is to buy time and let the Germans and the Allies beat each other before the Red Army steps in to try to take over all of Europe.

I am assuming the Germans would be able to move the remaining air power in the east to defence of the reich duties. The general flow of supplies from factories could be shited west and the general drain of manpower on the east front would no longer be present.

Fuel shortages and transportation difficulties and the need to watch the russians would leave most of the forces in the east still left there, but several good divisions would begin to get shifted right away.

It would be a long nasty fight for the Allies to get over the Rhine at this point.

After July 45 the Allies know they have an Atomic bomb, but only so many, and some decisions would have to be made on where to bomb.

April/May 1945 woud see the peak of German jets in the air with some dramatic but ultimately futile air battles, The Germans would get a few of their new subs launched making some dramatic attacks in the Atlantic. Both of these events might have some impact on post war weapons development.

I think it's likely that at least one German city gets an atom bomb.

Naturi said:

Second of all, any peace with Nazi Germany is impossible by 1945.

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How impossible is it??? In this time line Germany is stronger (no falaise pocket), Russia suspects that most of Germany's remaining strength is going to be directed at it. Russia does not know that the USA has an atom bomb. Russia does know Germany has some advanced tech it would like to have too. After the peace deal, Germany will be essentially a Soviet client state, dependent on whatever supplies of oil, tungsten etc. it wants to give, if it wants to strengthen Germany it gives more, weaken it gives less.

The deal itself is dependent on only two individual guys (Hitler and Stalin) and whatever whims and paranoias thay have.

In 1943 Germany had a lot to lose (going back to the 1941 start line) so an agreement was not going to happen then. Now the Soviet Union already has most of what it has to gain anyway and Hilter might be worried about dying soon.

Hitler would have never made peace. Goebbels would have never made peace. Himmler would have never made peace. Bormann would have never made peace. Stalin would have never made peace. Molotov would have never made peace. Zhukov would have never made peace. Beria would have never made peace. Even if you kill off those individuals, there where plenty of reason not to go for peace since it was a 3-way war and relations between the Soviets and the Allies where a lot better then with the Germans.

The Soviets where crushing the Germans. Though they would be stronger if the Allies had less decivisve victories they would still push on through into Germany. Eisenhower would have never made peace, Roosevelt would have never made peace, Churchhill would have never made peace. The Germans can't win and the Russians know it. Most German generals knew it too. The Allies knew it too. The other Axis countries knew it too(most had already surrendered by then)

The Stalinists aren't interested in any kind of negotiated peace by this point, they're interested in pushing the borders of their empire as far west as possible to prevent another Barbarossa and later to serve as the springboard for the world revolution.

This is the point in World War II where a single Deep Operation, the Balkans one, has taken the USSR to the region of Budapest, and where the democracies are falling all over themselves in war as opposed to the USSR which is outside Warsaw. The Soviets have knocked out Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia out of Germany's orbit, and they've developed by this point a fair degree of skilled in offensive combined-arms operations. This POD requires also a Stalin who'd be willing to risk such deals with the Germans knowing it endangers all his agreed-upon treaties with his allies, and the USSR was a Jackass Genie when it came to treaties, not a "Meh, we can always break this later" dictatorship like the Nazi regime was.

Snake Featherston said:

Jackass Genie.

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I had to look that up:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackassGenie

Quite an interesting interpretation but true I suppose.

Catspoke said:

I had to look that up:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackassGenie

Quite an interesting interpretation but true I suppose.

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One of my favorite examples of this is the Soviet decision to repay their rather large debt burden to the Weimar Republic for military aid they'd gained from it.....in the same year that Weimar currency was worthless and the huge sum didn't end up meaning any real loss for the Soviet government.

Snake Featherston said:

The Stalinists aren't interested in any kind of negotiated peace by this point.

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That.

Plus, even if those offensives against the soviets go that well they would at best halt their advances for a while and give their western allies more work to defeat the enemy.
After all, the occupation zones were already agreed upon and the only major thing left, the capture of the capital (Berlin), was mainly for moral victory purposes.

The Germans are done by 1945. The War will be over by the end of the year. The only thing the Soviets would do by getting a separate peace would be screwing themselves over in the long run by ceding Central Europe to the Western Allies.

Catspoke said:

I am assuming the Germans would be able to move the remaining air power in the east to defence of the reich duties. The general flow of supplies from factories could be shited west and the general drain of manpower on the east front would no longer be present.

Fuel shortages and transportation difficulties and the need to watch the russians would leave most of the forces in the east still left there, but several good divisions would begin to get shifted right away.

It would be a long nasty fight for the Allies to get over the Rhine at this point.

After July 45 the Allies know they have an Atomic bomb, but only so many, and some decisions would have to be made on where to bomb.

April/May 1945 woud see the peak of German jets in the air with some dramatic but ultimately futile air battles, The Germans would get a few of their new subs launched making some dramatic attacks in the Atlantic. Both of these events might have some impact on post war weapons development.

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The premise of this thread (and your post) are so out to lunch that it beggars description...

Germany's internal transportation network (railways and interior waterways) was thoroughly smashed by December of 1944.

Read Alfred C. Mierzejewski: "The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway".

They were pushing rail cars full of goods off the tracks with bulldozers, to let higher priority trains pass. The marshalling system was trashed and most of the primary routes were running single line diversions around the chokepoints that the Allies (RAF: 617 Sqd in particular) had created. Nothing was moving anywhere by rail (unless by "Fuhrer decree") and the curtailment of barge traffic saw coal piling up at the mines with no way of getting it to the (now largely dispersed) industries, where it was needed. They could mill thousands of tonnes of steel in the Rhur and produce electricity in the "Braunkohl" area (i.e. where the coal supply was right next to the consumer) but distribution to end users was increasingly "complicated".

Speer's "Miracle" was also "coming home to roost": his "all in" production strategy had sucked the system dry of all the cafefully husbanded "contingency" resouces at the production facilities.

But you knew all this...right?

Take off the horse blinders people...

stick a fork in 'em.

By the end of '44, they're done.

Albidoom said:

That.

Plus, even if those offensives against the soviets go that well they would at best halt their advances for a while and give their western allies more work to defeat the enemy.
After all, the occupation zones were already agreed upon and the only major thing left, the capture of the capital (Berlin), was mainly for moral victory purposes.

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With of course another obvious point that much as the Western Allies weren't about to betray the Soviets, the Soviets weren't going to betray the West, either. If nothing else wanting the Red Army to capture Berlin and involvement in the Asian war is a good motivation for the Soviets to focus on winning WWII with their allies.

January 1945 is too late for a negotiated peace IMO. The Soviets (actually just Stalin) don't care about casualties and apalling suffering they just want Berlin and their share of the spoils.

I think June 1944 just before Operation Bagration was the last time Stalin thought about a deal with Hitler to end the war early. After the destruction of Army Group Centre there is NO REASON for Stalin to negotiate with Hitler. He now knows that he can just TAKE.

As far as the Western Allies are concerned they know Germany is defeated utterly on June 7th 1944 when they know their army cannot be driven into the sea.

Devolved said:

January 1945 is too late for a negotiated peace IMO. The Soviets (actually just Stalin) don't care about casualties and apalling suffering they just want Berlin and their share of the spoils.

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Actually they did care about casualties, this was one reason they adopted maneuver campaigns and sought very much to minimize their casualties in the last leg of the war. The need to rebuild and grow crops was actually eating into Soviet manpower. They didn't care very much but they did care.

Devolved said:

I think June 1944 just before Operation Bagration was the last time Stalin thought about a deal with Hitler to end the war early. After the destruction of Army Group Centre there is NO REASON for Stalin to negotiate with Hitler. He now knows that he can just TAKE.

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I don't think Stalin ever really thought of such a deal after 22 June. It er....was not in the man's nature.

Snake Featherston said:

Actually they did care about casualties, this was one reason they adopted maneuver campaigns and sought very much to minimize their casualties in the last leg of the war. The need to rebuild and grow crops was actually eating into Soviet manpower. They didn't care very much but they did care.



I don't think Stalin ever really thought of such a deal after 22 June. It er....was not in the man's nature.

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How do you explain Seelow heights then?

iron said:

How do you explain Seelow heights then?

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The downside of Zhukov's preference for overpowering frontal attacks. The Germans built a very powerful defensive line there, Zhukov overdid his artillery and misused searchlights, this contributed to the clusterfuck that happened there. The difference between that and Konev's simultaneous attack shows that didn't exactly need to happen. And that the attack on Seelow Heights happened as it did was because Zhukov's nerves failed him for the only time in the war.

Zhukov's strategies obviously did work given the USSR was in Berlin and the Germans didn't get to kill all Europe's Slavs and turn Moscow into an artificial lake. They did, however, lead to the instances like this and at the Battle of the Okha Line where the frontal attacks produced heavier casualties than maneuver might have.

TL;DR: They wanted it thus, this did not mean they always got what they wanted.