BiasHangover
Banned
Prussian ≠ Franconian
So to a Prussian, Konigsburg would be more significant, but to a Franconian, Koln would matter more.
How did it work with Alsace but not Rhineland? Were Alsatians more demoralised and less energetic?
What if Germany lost all the land west of the Rhine, instead of all the land east of the Oder-Western Neisse?
- Thread starter Official B Dizzy
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So to a Prussian, Konigsburg would be more significant, but to a Franconian, Koln would matter more.
Official B Dizzy
Banned
Operation Unthinkable was an option, perhaps it would have been worth it to avoid tens of millions of people being ethnically cleansed...
My family originated in the Rhineland, Baden-Württemberg, Alsace, and German Switzerland, and even I admit Prussia was more important culturally/historically. Germany was unified by Prussia, Standard German is based on Prussian dialects, many if not most of the most important German historical events happened there, etc...
They could have done several things
1) Operation Unthinkable
2) Independently signing a peace deal with Germany that explicitly affirmed the 1937 borders, leaving the Soviets out of the peace deal
3) Offering other concessions to the Soviets in exchange for a return to prewar borders, such as letting the Soviets turn Italy and Austria communist
4) Essentially filibustering, refusing to sign any deal that involved border changes
Even Wilson's advocacy of self-determination was not absolute - he was fine with giving South Tyrol to Italy and Alsace-Lorraine to France
BiasHangover
Banned
The death toll for the eastern ethnic cleansing of Germans was 2,500,000. What would have been the Allied death toll in an Allied-Soviet War? I'd guess similar to 2 million. I don't know if they would be able to invade far enough to stop the deaths, so they could end up with double the toll. 2.5m Germans and at least 2m Allied soldiers/civilians.
As for stopping the annexation of those lands, I believe it would be very difficult to deter the Soviets. Maybe less pressure on the Polish issue, so there is no "German land compensation" for the Polish People's Republic.
Official B Dizzy
Banned
Well, using the atomic bombs on Moscow and St. Petersburg instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wouldn't have increased the WWII death toll compared to what really happened (since instead of a quarter million Japanese deaths, you now have a quarter million Soviet deaths), and it would have knocked the Soviets out of any war and they would have likely had to surrender, but on the other hand, it would have increased the length of the war in the Pacific.
Would it have ultimately saved lives? I do not know, would the total number of innocent people impacted (both by death and ethnic cleansing) be lower? Probably.
Maybe by getting Stalin to commit to returning to Poland the territory he seized in an illegal invasion in 1939 would be a good start. But Stalin was not a man of his word, nor was he a man who cared about people.
I've said before that that's subjective, but you seem set on this so I'll drop it.
They left it, as they left Poland to be invaded by the soviets and as they didn't lift a finger as Poland was invaded by the Nazis.
Because they were not allowed by Britain and the US, who rightly realized being a cruel and vindictive winner would not bring any lasting peace. They may have been biased against the Germans and morally questionable, but they got this right.
That is the absolute high end of estimated deaths. Most scholars agree on the lower range of 500-600k. I'm not condoning ethnic cleansing, but I will also point out that this was not up to the western allies or Poland.
To suggest the western allies should have "just fought back" is wishful thinking.
Official B Dizzy
Banned
As will I.
The Western Allies were no heroes. Better than the Nazis or the Soviets? Sure. But that's a very low bar.
You don't think that dividing Germany into two rival states for half a century was cruel and vindictive? Even if you ignore the large territorial losses and ethnic cleansing, it's still far crueler than the way France was treated after Napoleon was defeated.
I don't blame Poland at all. Primary responsibility lies with the Soviets, secondary responsibility with the US and UK (who signed off on it).
They probably could have defeated the Soviets, though. Not just saving tens of millions of people from ethnic cleansing, but also from half a century of communist misrule.
I didn't say dividing Germany was a good idea. In fact, I don't think anyone at the time thought it would be a good idea (except maybe the Soviets). It was intended to be a temporary measure, and everyone was supposed to agree on what to do with Germany at some point.
The western allies never "decided" to split Germany into two pieces.
Yes, I know. But he stated that Königsberg was more important to a German, so my counterpoint was that there are places far more important to the German nation in general than it. I used Köln in particular cause it fit the thread.
Most Alsacians, even German ones, didn’t like the German empire at all by the end of the war. They felt like second class citizens since Alsace-Lorraine had never been made a state. The Prussian troops stationed there didn’t help, creating incidents like the Zabern Affair which only embittered the population against them. Heavy handed military rule during WW1 was a shitshow. Military trials for speaking French and stuff like that.
In the end most Alsatians were regionalists, especially after WW1. Germany failed to provide them any autonomy or even fairness in the most cases.
All of this is essentially blind to the political panorama of the time. The WAllies might have had some moral reservations over ethnic cleansing, but sending several million soldiers of their own to die in another war before you even finished the last one to save some Germans, who at the time were the enemy? Imagine how well would that have gone in the home front. All you propose is ridiculous in this context.
Prussia is not Germany. It was the most important state inside Germany, yes, but it was also not uniform itself. The Rhineland, Silesia, and Schleswig-Holstein, to name some, had a lot of regional identity. Historically to the German nation, Königsberg is not the equivalent of the 13 colonies are, as you put it.
No, it certainly wasn’t. But he was likely to oppose such a blatant breach of it. Also, Alsace-Lorraine would’ve probably voted to join France in 1918 if a plesbicite had been held:
If the allies are doing all these out of moral reservations, is dropping nukes on the two largest soviet cities any better?
I would say that the stuff Napoleon did does not come even close to the Nazis. If anything a more apt comparison would be the Kaiserreich.
There was no realistic way of not doing that.
BiasHangover
Banned
I highly doubt the Red Army will give in by nuking their cities, that could do the opposite. Diplomacy is likely the only way to stop annexations and the genocide by the Soviets.
This is rather inaccurate, Britain and France declared war on Germany and plunged themselves into another world war, which they both collectively lost a million soldiers.
The sexual assualts on German women was around 2 million, so I think 2.5 millions murdered is accurate, especially considering the eastern population size pre-soviet entry in the region.
The responsibility on the ethnic cleansing would apply to all those involved, Soviets, collaborators in Czechslovakia and Poland, and the Allies.
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Official B Dizzy
Banned
I don't really understand why someone would prefer forcible Frenchification over not having regional autonomy but getting to keep their language and culture, but to each his own.
The Nazi Party was the enemy. Some innocent farmer from Pomerania wasn't.
Texas, Utah, etc...have regional identities, but that doesn't diminish the importance of the 13 colonies.
Then why not just hold a plebiscite?
Either way, two cities are nuked, and nuking these two cities would likely avoid much ethnic cleansing and Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.
IIRC, before WWII, Napoleon was seen as the embodiment of evil in the West, the way Hitler is today.
One option could have been to let Hitler and Stalin exhaust each other, wait a little longer to get involved in the war, and then knock them both out.
In which case the Western diplomats were either immoral (wanted Germans expelled), amoral (didn't care if Germans were expelled), or incompetent (unable to stop Germans from being expelled).
Like I said, I don't have a very positive opinion of the Western Allies. Don't get me wrong - the Nazis and Soviets were worse, but the Western Allies are only "good" by comparison to the truly evil and heinous Nazis and Soviets.
The Polish government in exile didn't want nearly that much German territory, though. They were the legitimate Polish government.
You need to remember this, people. You can genocide a few million of filthy Soviets to save some German lives. There was a whole war fought over that idea and it was totally fair for the Western Allies to make another pass on it. Obviously. /s.
And this is how they calculated the amount of rapes that happened in Berlin.
"As the table shows (scan 1), the fathers of 12 (or 13) of the 237 newborn children surveyed in the hospital in 1945, and 20 (or 21) in 1946 were Russian. On the basis of the data at another hospital, the Charité (scan 2). Johr postulates that rape causes pregnancy in 20% of cases (118 of 514). That calculation follows that claim (scan 3):
1. Official statistics have 23124 newborns in Berlin for the period from September 1945 to August 1946. According to the clinic "Empress Augusta Victoria" fathers of 5% of newborns were Russians. 5% from 23124 is 1156.
2. 90% of women who become pregnant as the result of the rape have an abortion: it means that the number of pregnancies was 1156 * 10 = 11560 women.
3. Only 20% of the women became pregnant after rape, therefore number of raped women is 11560 * 5 = 57800 women.
4. At the time 600,000 women of childbearing age (18 to 45 years) lived in Berlin. 57800/600000 = 9.5% of them were raped.
5. In addition 800 thousand of women between 14-18 years and older than 45 years lived in the Berlin . If we assume that 9.5% of this group had been raped too, it gives 73 3000 additional victims (36650 at 4.75% rape rate)
6. Thus, about 94 450 to 131 100 girls and women from 1.4 million total in Berlin were raped between the spring and autumn of 1945 with an average of more than 110,000."
And then this proportion of assaults to women in Berlin was extrapolated to the entire Soviet occupational zone in Germany and it is how you get 2 million figure. To say the least - this methodology is bullshit from the scientific or statistical standpoint. Assaults were happening and there was quite a lot of them, but we actually do not know how many and most commonly cited figures come from this tainted source.
The issue with 2 million sexual assaults number is that it was calculated via rather questionable methodology. Anthony Beevor did a lot to popularize it but he get it from Barbara Johr and Helke Zander German-language work "BeFreier und Befreite".
And this is how they calculated the amount of rapes that happened in Berlin.
"As the table shows (scan 1), the fathers of 12 (or 13) of the 237 newborn children surveyed in the hospital in 1945, and 20 (or 21) in 1946 were Russian. On the basis of the data at another hospital, the Charité (scan 2). Johr postulates that rape causes pregnancy in 20% of cases (118 of 514). That calculation follows that claim (scan 3):
1. Official statistics have 23124 newborns in Berlin for the period from September 1945 to August 1946. According to the clinic "Empress Augusta Victoria" fathers of 5% of newborns were Russians. 5% from 23124 is 1156.
2. 90% of women who become pregnant as the result of the rape have an abortion: it means that the number of pregnancies was 1156 * 10 = 11560 women.
3. Only 20% of the women became pregnant after rape, therefore number of raped women is 11560 * 5 = 57800 women.
4. At the time 600,000 women of childbearing age (18 to 45 years) lived in Berlin. 57800/600000 = 9.5% of them were raped.
5. In addition 800 thousand of women between 14-18 years and older than 45 years lived in the Berlin . If we assume that 9.5% of this group had been raped too, it gives 73 3000 additional victims (36650 at 4.75% rape rate)
6. Thus, about 94 450 to 131 100 girls and women from 1.4 million total in Berlin were raped between the spring and autumn of 1945 with an average of more than 110,000."
And then this proportion of assaults to women in Berlin was extrapolated to the entire Soviet occupational zone in Germany and it is how you get 2 million figure. To say the least - this methodology is bullshit from the scientific or statistical standpoint. Assaults were happening and there was quite a lot of them, but we actually do not know how many and most commonly cited figures come from this tainted source.
Official B Dizzy
Banned
Declaring war on a country that is actively trying to ethnically cleanse people is not the same as committing a genocide.
The end result is the same. Responsibility to protect never made any freaking sense. It was always an excuse for imperialism and backporting it to 40s will not make it any better.
BiasHangover
Banned
I was generally referring to collaborators on the ground, who worked with soviets to murder and ethnically cleanse millions of Germans. I am not aware of the exiled Polish Government having anything to do with the USSR in this regard.
Germanization policies were not much better for most of the population. You’re assuming that Alsace-Lorraine was divided between full Germans and full French, when most of the population was an in between. Forbidding everything even vaguely French was stepping on most people’s culture.
And anyways, it’s not like the French announced loud and proud that they would expel people.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nana.12665 read more about the feelings of the Alsatians here.
Probably internal politics.
Source for that?
How is letting Hitler run rampant and murder a few more millions slavs any better than letting the ethnic cleansing in East Germany happen? That’s really starting to fall into racism territory.
Also mind that there was very little sympathy for the German people after the war, due to starting WWII (the Prussians were specifically blamed for helping start WWI as well) and all the mass murder and genocide they committed (Allied soldiers were liberating concentration camps and recorded what had happened there to prevent historical revisionism in the future, so knowledge of what the Germans were doing is well known in the Allied military). Not that it makes what the Soviet did right, but it's hard to convince people to fight to prevent a genocide of a people that, as far as they were concerned, abetted the largest genocide in history. Which, mind, saw the mass murder of millions of Eastern Slavs.
Not only that, but WWII was absolutely brutal and ruinously expensive. And the US had sent over an incredible amount of arms over to the Soviets to help them fight off the Nazis. The general mood in the US was amiable to the Soviets, the US's ally of several years by that point, and they didn't care much for the Germans. To say nothing of the French, who lost their country for a while, the British, who saw their capital bombed to rumble, and all the other nations that had been occupied and brutalized. Imagine trying to justify several more years of war and even more debt to bail out the people that the Allies blamed for starting the slaughter in the first place?
Besides, the Soviets outnumbered the other Allied troops in Europe at the time, the other Allies were still fighting the Japanese, who were also quite active in brutalizing and massacring population they had conquered, and the other Allies would be fighting an offensive war against a former ally that had their equipment. Plus, there weren't enough nukes produced yet to impact the Soviets to the same effect they had on Japan and the US would've need to have air bases much closer to the Soviet's main population centers to hit their industrial base.
In any case, it would've taken millions more Allied troops to finish the job when there was no apparent self-serving interest at the time to attack the Soviets. The Soviets weren't threatening to wipe out the Allied nations and the Allied nations were exhausted, both in finances and manpower. In the best case scenario for the Allies, they lose at least a million troops (a fraction of the total losses against the Nazis) and see over a million troops Soviet troops die.
It was also easy for West Germany to verbally oppose the Oder-Neisse lines because them, too, had no choice in the matter, as in they had no power whatsoever to do anything about it since that wasn't actually their border. Which incidentally probably made the rest of NATO, as well, a little more comfortable in dealing with them. Imagine the optics of a NATO member Germany with an active territorial dispute with a non-German WARPAC bordering country.
Also about 2+ million deaths via ethnic cleansings. This figure comes again from the Western Germany state-sponsored studies in the 50s and since then it lost most of its credence and disputed by a lot of scholars even if it is still an official position of the German government.
My issue with it is rather simple: German military and civilian casualties for the most of the first half of 1945 (till surrender) are literally unknown because not only a massive amount of documentation was destroyed by Nazis on purpose but collapse of the German state prevented them from counting deaths and losses altogether during that period. So the question about 2-2,5 million official figure would always be: what part of ~1,5 million unaccounted people from the 50s studies are actually Wermacht and Volksturm soldiers who were drafted and died in 1945 without leaving any surviving paper trail? How many are civilians who died during the fighting? 'Ethnic cleansing victims' was a very easy solution to that question for the West German government which allowed them to maintain their resistance towards accepting Order-Neisse line.
Or to put it simpler: if you actually want a scenario which reduces German death toll from World War 2, you need to not think about 'Unthinkable' and undoing Yalta and Potsdam conferences. You need to make Germany unconditionally surrender in 1944. This was a best option for Germans and not another war on German soil.
My issue with it is rather simple: German military and civilian casualties for the most of the first half of 1945 (till surrender) are literally unknown because not only a massive amount of documentation was destroyed by Nazis on purpose but collapse of the German state prevented them from counting deaths and losses altogether during that period. So the question about 2-2,5 million official figure would always be: what part of ~1,5 million unaccounted people from the 50s studies are actually Wermacht and Volksturm soldiers who were drafted and died in 1945 without leaving any surviving paper trail? How many are civilians who died during the fighting? 'Ethnic cleansing victims' was a very easy solution to that question for the West German government which allowed them to maintain their resistance towards accepting Order-Neisse line.
Or to put it simpler: if you actually want a scenario which reduces German death toll from World War 2, you need to not think about 'Unthinkable' and undoing Yalta and Potsdam conferences. You need to make Germany unconditionally surrender in 1944. This was a best option for Germans and not another war on German soil.
Think the ethnic cleansings would probably still happen, even then. Furthermore an unconditional surrender would involve situational awareness the German senior officials lacked, for the most part. And I'm not talking about the Nazis alone. Even the people who tried to kill Hitler during the July plot fantasized about getting away with a negotiated peace.