Merry Christmas to one and all, thought I might as well offer up some explanations here.
What's with the random small independent mecklenburg?
Mecklenburg, despite being surrounded on three sides by Prussia has historically never been part of it, and I couldn't decide on whether NATO would've made it a pseudo-autonomous territory in the post-Reich Prussian Free State or an exclave of the German Federation just to give them more headaches.
I kind of had assumed that Prussia would have owned actual Prussia here instead of Poland owning it.
It was one of the conditions of peace between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and also intended like OTL as a simultaneous punishment for Germany and compensation for Poland losing its eastern territories to Lithuania the Polish SSR.
I'm just trying to figure out what that Warsaw Pact is supposed to be. A genuine non-aligned movement? A collection of non-Nazi right-wing states? The clusterfuck of ethnic tensions that Weber turned Eastern Europe into does not indicate much good.
Anyway, sad to see this TL go.
I mean, this seems like a better all-around result for humanity than OTL. The soviets never reaching the heights of power they did OTL and having to clean up the anarchy which the 'Muscovite republic' became instead of trying to quickly catch up with the USA; the Baltic states are free much earlier as something of a consequence of that as well. France did not suffer from nazi occupation and looting and Britain didn't spend absolutely all of it's resources on defeating the nazi menace. Southern Europe is an alliance of independent states rather than largely soviet puppets (although other than irony in regards to OTL, why that alliance is called the Warsaw Pact I do not understand - Poland is a protectorate, not a prime member).
The "Warsaw Pact" is the bolded answer, with Italy taking over as prime mover; basically once things started falling apart they did a 180 on Poland, recognising its sovereignty and appealing to NATO to back their claims up at practically whatever terms the WAllies demanded, just as long as they avoided treatment as defeated parties by either them or the Soviets. The reconstructed Polish state is a massive clusterfuck of ethnic tensions and clashes, but at least it's independent...right?
counterpoint: Millions more people are dead.
Indeed. While the Soviets don’t get to be masters of Eastern Europe, you’re left with fascism (or some form of it) as a viable ideology that controls half the continent.
And that’s on top of Weber dialing up the ethnic tensions to eleven.
One of the major themes of this was that the end result of a more drawn-out but less intense World War Two means that the old Western world order would've been less exhausted and would've allowed for things like smoother decolonisation and fewer (or more geographically limited) repressions at the hands of communism...it just so happens that the "price" is decades more of Nazism and fascism, and the corresponding blood of millions.
Have some bonus flags, too! It's a Christmas miracle, everyone!
Chinese People's Republic - Manchuria
Japanese People's Republic - Hokkaido
Korean People's Republic - entire peninsula