Aftermath of a quick French victory in the battle of France

If the Soviets get involved, it'll be a Continuation War rather than an invasion of Eastern Europe - and the desire for a buffer zone in Eastern Europe was in any case driven by Barbarossa in the first place. No Barbarossa, no real worry about buffer zones.

It's not so simple. Barbarossa certainly heightened Soviet desire for a buffer zone with the west but Soviet/Russian ideas of buffer zones is a much older one in history... indeed, the entire history of Russian expansionism back to the Duchy of Muscovy has basically been one long search for frontiers and natural boundaries which offer buffer zones that shield their heartland from invasion. By the start of the 19th century they had achieved this to their south (via conquering the Caucasus), east (via conquering Siberia and the Central Asian Steppes up to the mountain ranges, deserts, and mountains there), and southwest (via conquering up to the Carpathians). But that still left them vulnerable to an attack from directly west across the North European Plain and indeed, they were invaded or threatened with invasion from this direction multiple times even before 1941. This video offers a good synopsis of the issue. Throw on top of this the fact that the Soviets believes that eventually the capitalist powers will try to destroy the USSR, and indeed that the Anglo-French had made an attempt to destroy the Bolshevik in it's revolution in its infancy (at least from the Soviets viewpoint) during the Russian Civil War, and it's easy to see how the Soviets may still seek to put another country or two as a puppet across this region between them and the western powers.

In addition to the above geopolitical issue is an ideological one as well. While Stalin did prove to be more of a pragmatic-realist in his foreign policy dealings he was still also ideologically a committed Leninist and that likely did play a significant part in his decision to establish client states across Eastern Europe as a buffer zone IOTL. Because in Marxist ideology the means bring about the post-capitalist Communist order is to revolutionize capitalism in its strongholds, to take the concentrated powers of production of the most highly developed capitalist societies and socialize them. There was something of this ideological motivation in the failed 1921 counter-invasion of Poland (as well as to punish the Poles for daring to invade Soviet soil, of course) and while it was downplayed by Stalin in the 1930s with socialism in one country, it still was very much lingering around as a long-term goal. To quote Norman Davies...

No Simple Victory: Europe at War said:
The region of Europe that lies between Moscow and Berlin, sometimes called East-Central Europe, has never been well known to Westerners. But the observant reader may have noticed that the area of the Bolsheviks' dashed internationalist hopes, to which they would some day return, coincided very closely with the area of Hitler's projected Lebensraum. Even in the 1920s or 30s, a prescient analyst might well have spotted where the next great European clash of arms might be concentrated.

So there are still good, solid reasons as to why ITTL Stalin might back-stab a collapsing Germany at the very end to take Poland and Germany up to the Oder.
 
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Several responses have suggested Germany would have to cede territory to France or Poland, or that the Allies could re-divide Germany into the old petty states, or that the USSR might attack "a collapsing Germany".

All of these don't square with the OP's premise: a quick French (Allied) victory in the Battle of France. Germany can be defeated quickly; it cannot be conquered quickly.

If Germany is defeated in the Battle of France, that will be the end of Hitler's winning streak, and of his hold on the German people. The Schwarze Kapelle and its sympathizers will remove him, and move to settle the war quickly. Otherwise the war will drag on for years.

France and Britain will not insist on "unconditional surrender", nor be willing to fight a massive campaign to completely subjugate Germany. They are fearful not only of the battlefield casualties and military costs, but also of the possible effects of strategic bombing - which hadn't been done in a major way yet. Pre-war estimates were very grim - Britain's civil defense planners predicted more civilian deaths in the first week of war than actually occurred in the whole six years of it. ITTL, as far as they know, that hasn't happened only because the Germans haven't tried it on.

If Germany admits defeat, withdraws from all the countries invaded, and liquidates a substantial cohort of Nazis, the Allies will be happy. They've won the war, with far less bloodshed and expense than they feared. They won't risk those losses if they don't have to.

And in fact they probably don't want to break Germany, because they are still worried about the USSR; in fact, more worried than before the war, because the USSR has seized the Baltic states and half of Poland, and invaded Finland.
 
Well, there are many impacts.

1) Mussolini survives. He stayed out of the war until France fell; he will here.

2) Imnperial Japan is unlikely to start a Pacific War. They did it OTL when all of the other major powers were heavily engaged elsewhere or defeated. IMHO even they wouldn't be crazy enough to take on the whole world by themselves.

2a) So Japan does not conquer SE Asia, humiliating Britain and breaking Dutch and French rule. This has major implications for decolonization in Asia.

3) The U.S. stays out of the war.

3a) The U.S. never really mobilizes for war; the experience of war service, nearly universal in OTL America, is unknown. The U.S. does not develop the massive armed forces of OTL. This is a huge change in post-war U.S. culture.

3b) The U.S. never becomes involved in affairs all around the world. There are no U.S. forces stationed in Berlin and Korea and Iran; the U.S. does not see itself as the dominant power, ultimately responsible for keeping order around the world.

3c) There is no Pearl Harbor attack. The idea of a great war starting with a "bolt-from-the-blue" attack on strategic forces remains a vague concept - unlike OTL, where the major-power militaries were on twenty-four-hour alert for 50 years or so.

4) The atomic bomb is not developed as soon, and probably first in the USSR. (Neither the U.S. nor Britain nor France would allocate the enormous funds required if there was no war on. Plus, many of the scientists involved were quasi-pacifists who would balk at creating such monstrous weapon of destruction without the danger of Nazi Germany to justify it. And many were left-wingers who could be influenced by the Communist apparat in the West to oppose a Bomb project. Whereas the USSR can allocate the resources on Stalin's whim, Soviet physicists were well aware of the possibility, and under Communism, pacifism means opposing capitalist and imperialist wars.)

5) Big annoying factor that has to be resolved immediately: Poland. Even if Germany gives up and restores its half of Poland, what about the Soviet-occupied east?

6) What happens to the Czech lands? Slovakia?

7) With no victory in France, Germany is in no position to impose the Vienna Award on Romania and Hungary. Do they go to war instead?

As to Israel - there is no Holocaust, but the Jewish community of Poland is smashed up - in western Poland, by German conquest, including murder and deportations; in eastern Poland, by Soviet occupation. There may be substantial emgration from this population (much larger than OTL's survivors) to Palestine.

1: Yep no 1000 Italian lives to earn a seat at the big table here - Mussolini probably dies in some other mans wifes bed :D

2: Japan does not invade French Indo China and therefore does not setup the situation where they have sanctions applied against them which made them lean twards war when they did. A resurgent US Navy + no "Verdun of the mediterranean" meaning that more of the Royal Navy is a: Still afloat and B: Free to head east in additiona to the French navy - results in no war in the Far East. Japan is Crazy but not that Crazy!!

3: I dissagree - the only thing really stopping greater US involvement was the Nov 1940 elections (regardless of who won) - between then and Hitlers declaration of war the US was effectively at war already and was well on its way to building up its armed forces - even if no actual involvement on the ground so to speak. While they might not be as invovled I still think there is ample opportunity for them to fight somewhre during this period. It was still building its 2 Ocean Navy!.

4: Britain was already researching the bomb - Russia was not - they then are the most likely candidates to get the first bomb if not the US - although much later than 1945 (Russia Learns about it through its multitude of 'Useful fools' in Britain and is probably 3rd after France / possibly 4th after the US to get the bomb)

5: The Entente is not going to war over Poland - it probably remains unresolved until a thawing of relations between Russia and the 'West' - possably following Stalins death? So 60s at the very earliest.

6: The Czechs very likely still forcibly deport all 'German' Peoples and remains a seperate nation to Slovakia.

7: I think a failure for Germany in 1940 results in a fall of the National Socialist (Nazi) party leadership (probably at the hands of the Army) - or at 'best' a greatly reduced hold on Power - but probably a coup. What ever happens I don't think that Germany will be in a position to dictate terms to anyone and Romania and Hungary will certainly look to France and Britain - because that option is open to them.

As for Jewish Migration to Palestine - the Nazi's have had far less time to conduct their 'work' in Poland so while there is a great many more survivors - their is also a lesser reason for them to migrate.

Also Britain would be far stronger in this TL and be much more able (and willing) to resist such a migration and enforce the mandate in Palestine.
 
2: Japan does not invade French Indo China and therefore does not setup the situation where they have sanctions applied against them which made them lean twards war when they did. A resurgent US Navy + no "Verdun of the mediterranean" meaning that more of the Royal Navy is a: Still afloat and B: Free to head east in additiona to the French navy - results in no war in the Far East. Japan is Crazy but not that Crazy!!

3: I dissagree - the only thing really stopping greater US involvement was the Nov 1940 elections (regardless of who won) ...

And the overwhelming desire of nearly all Americans not to get into a war if they don't have to. Because of the shocking triumphs of Nazi Germany in 1939-1941, a majority of Americans reluctantly decided that going to war could be necessary. (Gallup polls from 1941 show that about 20% of Americans favored immediate intervention. 20% were isolationists opposed to intervention, 20% had no opinion, and 40% favored supporting the Allies even at risk of being drawn into the war, or if it was necessary to defeat the Axis.)

If Germany is defeated and the Nazis are removed, the necessity goes away. America had no history of large-scale military action overseas. Its one venture into that area had been a bitter disappointment.

WW II changed all that - the U.S. intervened in world affairs on a grand scale, with overwhelming material and moral success. The whole course of post-WW II American foreign policy (which includes military action) was shaped by that experience. One should not project post-war attitudes onto pre-war America which had not had that experience.

Without it, the U.S. will remain on its traditional course of very limited involvement in overseas affairs, with a small volunteer army.

4: Britain was already researching the bomb - Russia was not...

Soviet physicists were discussing nuclear fission, chain reactions, and atomic weapons in 1940. Soviet intelligence was already sniffing around the British and American efforts.

It's not entirely clear which nation had the lead in theory about the Bomb (which is all that existed in 1940). What is clear is that any path to the Bomb would cost hundreds of millions of $. (The Manhattan Project cost $2B.) Britain didn't have hundreds of millions of $ to spare - not during the war, and not in peacetime either. What Parliament would vote for such expenditures? One run by thrifty Conservatives? Or a Labour Parliament devoted to building the welfare state? There would be on-going research into nuclear fission, reactors, even eventually the Bomb, but it would be tiny and slow compared to OTL's project.

But in the USSR... If Stalin said "frog", everyone jumped. And Stalin was capable of understanding the idea of the Bomb. In 1942, a young physicist named Flerov sent Stalin a letter warning him about the Bomb; Stalin responded by meeting with top Soviet physicists. They told him the Bomb was possible, but not during the war; Stalin set up an embryo project for after the war. ATL, there is no war, and no reason for Stalin to delay.

6: The Czechs very likely still forcibly deport all 'German' Peoples...

This assumes the Allies can force Germany to withdraw from Czechoslovakia. Which I suggest is unlikely. At best, Germany might agree to withdraw from the rump Czech area that was left between Munich and early 1939; but nearly all Germans wanted to keep the Sudetenland.
 
It's not entirely clear which nation had the lead in theory about the Bomb (which is all that existed in 1940). What is clear is that any path to the Bomb would cost hundreds of millions of $. (The Manhattan Project cost $2B.) Britain didn't have hundreds of millions of $ to spare - not during the war, and not in peacetime either. What Parliament would vote for such expenditures? One run by thrifty Conservatives? Or a Labour Parliament devoted to building the welfare state?
I think you're drastically underestimating how much money the UK had - Bomber Command alone consumed about 4 times the resources devoted to the Manhattan Project during WW2.
 
...

It's not entirely clear which nation had the lead in theory about the Bomb (which is all that existed in 1940).

The Brits & French were gaining a technical advantage through the presence of the European physicists fleeing nazi repression. That raised the critical mass of experience in the subject.

What is clear is that any path to the Bomb would cost hundreds of millions of $. (The Manhattan Project cost $2B.) Britain didn't have hundreds of millions of $ to spare - not during the war, and not in peacetime either.

A lot of the costs of the US expense were paper costs. i.e.: Silver bullion from the US treasury vaults was used for electrical wire for mass of Calutrons. That bullion was booked at its market value Which did not reflect the actual cost of manufacturing electrical wire. They used it because it was instantly available.

A large factor in the US cost was that multiple projects were started, and in the end there were two parallel bomb projects. By focusing initially on one type and not running a simultaneous bomb project a large part of the Manhatten project costs can be avoided. a lot of efficiency can be gained by not fast tracking at emergency speed as the US did.
 
To summarise a lot of extensive discussions:
  • The French and British economies will be so intertwined (the Bank of England underwrote French loans in 1939/40, in Sterling!) that undoing them postwar is going to be all but impossible. That's going to lead to a sort of proto-NATO dominated by the British and French in the same way NATO is dominated by the Americans in OTL - but it will also have a major economic component.
  • Japan may or may not enter the war - if they do they probably won't get much further than Indochina before getting hammered. That has all sorts of implications for colonialsim, notably that the British and French will have more prestige and the anti-colonial movements much less.
  • The US won't be involved. That leads to them continuing in a very isolationist manner - no nuclear-armed big brother to protect Europe in the event of the Soviets entering the war.
  • Eastern Europe never falls under Nazi and later Soviet domination - the regimes there may have been pretty unsavoury, but they were never keen on the Nazis. With the collapse of France they had no choice and ended up allied to the Germans. In many cases (Romania for instance) France was actually their preferred ally - so even if the Soviets do enter the war as a co-belligerent the most they could control would be Poland and parts of Germany.
  • The Soviet Union aren't all that likely to get involved in the war - after Finland, Poland east of the Curzon Line and Bessarabia Stalin has got back more or less all of the territories lost by the Tsars. The unfinished business is with Finland and Japan.
  • Similarly, the postwar Soviet drive for a buffer zone of client states in Eastern Europe largely came from the German invasion in 1941 - take the invasion away, and they'll be less worried about it because an invasion isn't a credible threat.
The net result is a much more multipolar world - at a guess you'd see no superpowers and the Soviets, Americans, British, French, Japanese and eventually probably Chinese as great powers with worldwide interests of varying sorts. I think this also means more nuclear proliferation - in such a world I think Australia would almost certainly acquire nuclear weapons, for instance. Proxy wars would also probably be quite common.

Wouldn't the USSR and USA become powerhouses though? Without Germany demolishing almost all of industrialized Russia and the US not going into debt to fight the war, UK and France are going to be blowing their treasure on their collapsing colonies, with the USA and USSR picking up the scraps. The USSR by the mid 40s will have the world's most powerful military and eventually the USA's military will be built up as a result of laws passed in 39 and 40.

I can see the USA's military being leaner and meaner but their GDP will be enormous, as will the USSR with no Nazi invasion.
 
Wouldn't the USSR and USA become powerhouses though? Without Germany demolishing almost all of industrialized Russia and the US not going into debt to fight the war, UK and France are going to be blowing their treasure on their collapsing colonies, with the USA and USSR picking up the scraps. The USSR by the mid 40s will have the world's most powerful military and eventually the USA's military will be built up as a result of laws passed in 39 and 40.

I can see the USA's military being leaner and meaner but their GDP will be enormous, as will the USSR with no Nazi invasion.

In part. New York was reaching equality with London as a global banking center. Conversely the US industrial base had been hit hard by the Depression. i.e.: Surveys taken 1940 - 42 revealed the US had its railroads carrying capacity reduced by over 20 % since the early 1920s. What had not been abandoned or scrapped was reduced from neglected maintiance or lack up upgrades from obsolescent technology. The war brought a massive catch up of improvement in the US railroads. large sections were rebuilt from the road bed up. Trunk lines expanded, mainitance facilities modernized, communications brought to 1940s vs 1910 levels. Virtually all US industry experience the same, with large scale rebuilding & renovation. Then there was the vast new construction. Ie: the aircraft industry went from a capacity of perhaps 2000 aircraft a year in 1938 to over 100,000 built during 1944. Had the US not entered the war European & US Army air Corps orders were projected to bring capacity to 15,000 or maybe 20,000 per year. Britain alone exceeded that during 1942. French plans would have far exceeded that as well. Had a early German defeat occurred then a lot of the projected French & Commonwealth orders would have been reduced or canceled entirely leaving US capacity somewhat less. There were also details in a lot of the European orders from US industry did not reflect long term addition to US industrial base. i.e: Martin had built its final assembly plant for the M167 bomber in Morroco, not the US, & Douglass was doing the same in Algeria.
 
Another thing occurs to me. If the French and BEF defeat the Germans in the Battle of France Britian will not feel as pressed as they did in the autumn of 1940. Most likely no Trizard Mission. No sharing of Whittle's early turbojet design. No sharing of the cavity magnitron and most likely no sharing of Ultra. Make no mistake, the US would of got there all on their eventually. One reason GE was to make rapid improvements in the original Whittle design ws their extensive experience in turbo charging
 
Re: Eastern Poland - Poland didn't get much back anyway OTL.

This POD actually probably results in a smaller Poland than OTL. You'll have East Prussia handed to the Poles, and some more modest redrawing of Germany's eastern boundary (upper Silesia, part of Pomerania), so you'll have a weirdly narrow, truncated Polish state (along with a chunk of "occupied Poland" lying in Soviet Ukraine and Belarus). You won't get the Oder-Neisse line, which was Stalin's initiative.
 
Another thing occurs to me. If the French and BEF defeat the Germans in the Battle of France Britian will not feel as pressed as they did in the autumn of 1940. Most likely no Trizard Mission. No sharing of Whittle's early turbojet design. No sharing of the cavity magnitron and most likely no sharing of Ultra. Make no mistake, the US would of got there all on their eventually. One reason GE was to make rapid improvements in the original Whittle design ws their extensive experience in turbo charging

Certainly not wholesale sharing on the scale of the Tizard mission. Still, the Brits and French were working with US industry to get the material they needed built. Both were incorporating their technology into the aircraft, chemicals, machine tools, act.. they started ordering from the US 1938-40. A lot of technological spillover would have occurred just as it did 1915-1918.

No sharing of the cavity magnetron

The original development of that occurred in Japan. I don't know for certain, but have been told by a electrical engineer the US electrical industry had learned about that early work before the Brits came with their application or it to radar.

ULTRA definitely would have remained a Franco/Brit secret. In fact the French may have taken the lead since they had the Polish mathematicians in their employ and would not have had to wait for someone like Turing to pick their work. With the full resources of the French government there would not have been a gap or slowdown until the British filled in the work that went missing when France collapsed.

The US was able to penetrate the Japanese encryption machine for their diplomatic messages. The "Purple" code. That was no small feat. & the JN25 naval code as well along with some lesser Japanese codes & encryption. The Soviet diplomatic code s were penetrated by the US as well. In theory the US might have penetrated the Enigma machine encryption, but it would have lacked a reason to make the effort.

Fermi may have built his first atomic pile in France or Britain. I'm uncertain he would have moved to the US had France not collapsed.

If the French are harsh enough on German disarmament post war then the rocket research there is defunded. Goddards work remains at the the cutting edge of rocket propulsion & the US keeps a slim lead while researchers in other nations remain underfunded.
 
Wouldn't the USSR and USA become powerhouses though? Without Germany demolishing almost all of industrialized Russia and the US not going into debt to fight the war, UK and France are going to be blowing their treasure on their collapsing colonies, with the USA and USSR picking up the scraps. The USSR by the mid 40s will have the world's most powerful military and eventually the USA's military will be built up as a result of laws passed in 39 and 40.

I can see the USA's military being leaner and meaner but their GDP will be enormous, as will the USSR with no Nazi invasion.
Yeah, the US GDP will be ahead of OTL most likely (although the recovery will take longer) - they'll just be a very isolationist state compared to OTL.
 
Yeah, the US GDP will be ahead of OTL most likely (although the recovery will take longer) - they'll just be a very isolationist state compared to OTL.

Probablly. In economic terms there will still a lot of support for trade killing tariffs. The effects of the Smoot-Hawley Acts will remain for at least another decade. With fresh war debt neither Britain or France will be in the mood for abandoning the restrictive imperial trade policies for more open markets, at could lead anywhere. Another factor is the Berreton Woods agreement that returned the global economy to the gold standard won't happen. Any change from the 1939 monetary system will be slow.

Bpottom line is the market conditions of 1945-50 or 1955 won't exist in this scenario.
 
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Probablly. In economic terms there will still a lot of support for trade killing tariffs. The effects of the Smoot-Hawley Acts will remain for at least another decade. With fresh war debt neither Britain or France will be in the mood for abandoning the restrictive imperial trade policies for more open markets, at could lead anywhere. Another factor is the Berreton Woods agreement that returned the global economy to the gold standard won't happen. Any change from the 1939 monetary system will be slow.

Bpottom line is the market conditions of 1945-50 or 1955 won't exist in this scenario.

I wonder what the U.S would like in terms of demographics with this. The post-war immigration isn't going to happen on nearly the same scale, and heck a lot of the restrictions on immigration are still in place IIRC. It kind of seems like that, with stuff like tariffs, globalization will be set back by a lot.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I wonder what the U.S would like in terms of demographics with this. The post-war immigration isn't going to happen on nearly the same scale, and heck a lot of the restrictions on immigration are still in place IIRC. It kind of seems like that, with stuff like tariffs, globalization will be set back by a lot.
Bizarrely, the OTL World Wars and especially the Cold War actually significantly reduced globalization - as in, there was a lot less during and after the Cold War than before it started.

In 1905, people didn't exactly consider it too unusual to move to Argentina or Australia or Austria because of a good job opening, to be pithy about it.
 
Bizarrely, the OTL World Wars and especially the Cold War actually significantly reduced globalization - as in, there was a lot less during and after the Cold War than before it started.

In 1905, people didn't exactly consider it too unusual to move to Argentina or Australia or Austria because of a good job opening, to be pithy about it.

True, I might be thinking of it from a more American-specific perspective. None of the changes in trade, no/different immigration influxes, no overseas deployments or wars like those throughout the Cold War, and so on. Globalization might not have been the right word, I guess I'm thinking more of the isolationist strain, and how never getting involved really effects stuff like demographics.
 
There was still a lot of immigration from Europe through the 1930s. A lot of folks still saw better opportunities in the US despite a 18% unemployment rate. They, like my grandfather who was born here, saw opportunities others did not see.

I suspect any settlement will see in 1943-50 a lot of displaced people migrating about the globe. Through the 1930s the US was still very friendly to 'Germans' despite the hate campaign of 1917-18. A large portion of the Germans displaced from Bohemia would have found their way to the US. Facists or nazis fleeing Germany would have found refugee. Men like Henry Ford, Irenee DuPont or the Rockafellers had not only extensive business connections with Germany but were admirers of the nazis. They & the Bund would have seen to at least a few more Germans emigrating. In the 1950s & 60s we would have seen cities like Chicago or Cleveland littered with aging SA & NSDAP men talking about the good old days pushing Jews off the sidewalk.
 
A related question is what happens to all the Jews in the camps and ghettos of Germany, Cezchoslovakia, and Poland. They have been stripped or their property, money, businesses. released from the camps & ghettos they & the gypsys, and imprisoned Communists or other polticl enemies of the nazis, represent ten, fifteen, or twenty million impoverished, homeless, and unwanted people. With complex and unpayable claims for the wealth stolen from them.
 
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