In OTL, Franco was neutral in WW2 but he authorized the creation of a volunteer "blue division" that would take most of the more radical franco supporters off his hands and into the meat grinder that was the eastern front. Franco's regime was much more conservative and stable than other fascist regimes, so I've wondered if Franco used WW2 as a pressure release valve to get rid of the most ideological fascists.

Is there any way to create a similar conflict that attracts most of the extreme right in German-speaking areas. My assumption is that German politics would be more stable if some of the radicals leave/are killed off in a foreign conflict. Weimar World had lots of radical pan-Germanists dying off in the alt-Austrian Civil War, but I'm not sure if that would have a similar effect.
 
The Condor Legion?
To my knowledge those were "volunteers" who happened to join as entire active duty units, not volunteers. I was thinking if Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler can be killed off in some distant war or "anti-communist crusade" the German establishment can breathe a sigh of relief at getting those loose cannons off its hands.
 
I doubt it, interwar germany is still under versy at that point and the only likely ideological crusade target is Russia and I doubt they would want to help the poles.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
In OTL, Franco was neutral in WW2 but he authorized the creation of a volunteer "blue division" that would take most of the more radical franco supporters off his hands and into the meat grinder that was the eastern front. Franco's regime was much more conservative and stable than other fascist regimes, so I've wondered if Franco used WW2 as a pressure release valve to get rid of the most ideological fascists.

Is there any way to create a similar conflict that attracts most of the extreme right in German-speaking areas. My assumption is that German politics would be more stable if some of the radicals leave/are killed off in a foreign conflict. Weimar World had lots of radical pan-Germanists dying off in the alt-Austrian Civil War, but I'm not sure if that would have a similar effect.

Yes, you just need the Entente (France) to allow it. Given a reason to fight such as retaining West Prussia or annexing Austria, there would have been plenty of Germans willing to fight. In fact IOTL, there was the FreedomCorp that were informal armies. I don't think it is even a terribly hard POD, you just need something to motivate the French such as highly publicized massacre of French civilians by the Reds. After a POD like this, having what amounts to light infantry units of brigade size or larger help the whites in Russia would seem tolerable.

It probably also helps if the French leaders and people can pretend that Germany is not retaining/gaining lands in the east. So for example, the Danzig Freedom Corp that happens to occupy West Prussia and will eventually rejoin Germany looks a lot more acceptable than a Germany keeping West Prussia. It also helps if there are enough ethnic minorities so one can pretend these units are not German. Helps even more if we have some Frenchmen in these units in position of leadership. We all know what will happen if 80% of these units are German nationals, but fig leafs do matter.
 
It worked the other way around. The Freikorps that took part in the various conflicts linked to the Russian civil war were very influential in the rise of Nazism.
 
It worked the other way around. The Freikorps that took part in the various conflicts linked to the Russian civil war were very influential in the rise of Nazism.
Yeah, a lot of the Baltic Germans and German-speaking elite leaving Russia was involved in the early stages of national socialism. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism 1917-1945 covers the topic quite well. Alfred Rosenberg and Max von Scheubner-Richter, for example were born in what are today Estonia and Latvia.
 
Röhm was doing something in Latin America between the wars...
That could be a good POD. I'm trying to figure out the net effect of foreign fighters and civil wars on radicalism elsewhere.

Many of the leftist foreign volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, for example, became the core of their home country's resistance movements during WW2 thanks to their combat experience.

The net effect of a the average civil war/conflict (like the Syrian Civil War/Rise and Fall of ISIS, for example) on instability elsewhere is harder to see. ISIS attracted foreign fighters from as far away as France and Uyghurstan, so I was thinking that the Syrian Civil War might have reduced instability/terrorism in other places by essentially concentrating the potential terrorists in one conflict.

Alternatively, foreign fighters returning from the Syrian civil war to their home countries with military training could also increase instability and the chance of terrorism. I'm trying to figure out if conflicts that attract foreign fighters tend to concentrate/kill off radicals from elsewhere or increase instability elsewhere due to a new group of ex-foreign fighters with military training.
 
Top