And what did happen to Austria-Hungary?
It collapses into several countries, which are Austria (annexed by the German Empire as Ostmark), Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and parts of Romania.
That sounds really high level killing. Even OTL Germany lost around 7M people and even then mostly military personnels. Yes, Soviets were really brutal but they hardly would commit something what could be described as genocide.
It was called the
Ochistka.
After the Central Powers won World War 1, there was a wave of anti-German sentiment all over Europe. All sorts of manifestations such as anti-German literature and propaganda campaigns spread around Europe. The infamous book
Knight Without A Horse was anti-German hoax, written by an anonymous French writer, which became the basis of various anti-German conspiracies. Claims include the Kaiser's plan for world domination, supporting the Russian Revolution, child abduction and murder by the German aristocracy, and others,
Joseph Stalin ideated the Prussian militarism conspiracy theory. According to this conspiracy theory, the Kaiser and his cabal of German nobles, military officers, arms magnates, major industrialists and members of the German bourgeois were planning to invade the Soviet Union and exterminate its populace for German settlement. Afterwards, the Kaiser and the Prussian cabal would take over the world to dominate all the non-German people. It also claimed the German people were inherently warlike, man-eating and venal, being compared to Huns.
In a fit of rage, Joseph Stalin ordered the government to spread the Prussian militarism conspiracy theory all over Eastern Europe while building up military strength in preparation for Operation Yekaterina - the invasion of the German Empire. In the build-up to the invasion following the fall of the Eastern European states under Soviet influence, Joseph Stalin and his comrades discussed in a meeting on ending the Prussian militarism system, leading to the
Kaganovich plan.
The Stalinist occupation of the former German Empire was described as devastating and full of suffering. Germany was in ruins after months of brutal warfare between the Imperial German Army and the Red Army, terror bombings by the Soviet Air Force, mass killings of German non-combatants by the NKVD Destruction Battalions, and earliest usage of biological warfare in the 20th century, followed by the French invasion of the western territories of the German Empire.
Rosa Luxemburg was installed as a puppet leader for the occupational government with the Rotfront acting as enforcers. The Red Army and the NKVD patrolled the occupied territories, engaging in the mass deportations of Germans to labor camps in the Soviet Union and its allies. German intellectuals, army officers, nobles, and Imperial government officials were murdered by NKVD death squads.
All industry in Germany underwent deindustrialization by the Stalinists through the forced labor of Germans drafted, and the machinery were sent to the Soviet Union. The Red Army plundered all of Germany for things considered important in the buildup for the invasion of Italy and France. Tanks, planes, trucks, artillery, foodstuffs, medicine and other construction materials were requisitioned from the Germans. This resulted in widespread starvation and easily-treatable diseases becoming deadly and reaching in pandemic levels.
And if Germany is indeed such devastated as you describe, how East Germany can even be exist? More logical would be either fascist west Germany and democratic/moderately left-wing East Germany.
Can explain about your statement?