They are very effective in intelligence in general. To this day, the Russian spy services often show up in places you'd never expect them to. Very high quality.
It also provided most of the Post-USSR leadership of Russia.
OP: Punishing Germany as harshly as possible was a DUMB DUMB idea with Europe in ruins, no chance whatsoever at a second "stab in the back myth", and the Cold War starting, and thankfully Harry Truman knew it and ignored Morgenthau. The dividends of this decision are too numerous and great to go over.
FDR would have eventually realized this, he was simply too good of a politician not to. My prediction is he goes along with the tough line for a while, but comes to this conclusion, should he live. At least, that's what I hope.
I agree, WW2 happened largely because we treated Germany too harshly, granted they did a lot of bad things in WW1, but in this case the victors went too far.
Doing it again many not cause a 3rd world war, but it would cause civil unrest.
Couple of reports suggest this thread be locked.
Not going to do it, at least not yet. So far there is ONE post in this thread that went to a revolting revenge fantasy. The other on-topic posts, which are actually the distinct minority have been reasonable suggestions of harsh but non genocidal actions (Balkanization being the most common). It is also worth leaving open because there are at least as many posts questioning the wisdom of any sort of overly harsh punishment.
I trust that the overwhelming majority of the members are able to hold this sort of discussion without delving into decades of organized mass rape and slave breeding as a political tool.
You did a rather good job of the OP with your AANW TL by the way. Then again it took a even harder WW2 for that to happen.
How is it a good idea if punishing them too much didn't work out the first time?
What?
On the OP, balkanize them, give them all unpayable reparations, put heavy sanctions in place for all of them, and give large swaths of their territories to the allied countries.
Yeah, thay worked out so well in 1918...
I'd say it had more to do with the stab-in-the-back mythos. After all, when the cease fire went into effect, Germany still occupied a portion of France. Following WWII, Germany was pretty much burnt to the ground. They were good and truly whooped so it'd be hard to blame it on any conspiracy.
The reason for that and why Hitler and Co gained co much support was because we treated Germany too harshly, in the case of ITTL WW2, you are going to have Germans which question why they must continue to pay the price for their ancestors mistakes (as shown in AANW).
That's a bit too optimistic. There's a big difference from offering east Prussia to the Jews than offering something in west Germany. Germany in its current borders I believe was always considered the heartland, if you give some of that away your just asking to inflame the situation. While there might be no state sponsored terrorism against this theoretical Israel, there will be a lot of bitterness. One must keep in mind that this is a country that has been totally devastated by fire bombings which has basically leveled most major cities into rubble, not to mention that Hitler has essentially thrown them to the wolves for failing to realize his dream and has tried to start a campaign to destroy everything left standing to prevent it from falling into allied control.
If the allies try to pull this stunt all that's going to happen is that various nationalist groups, such as for instance the nationalist socialist underground, will gain way more support guilt or no guilt and carry out the same sort of attacks that the Palestinians were undertaking. War guilt will only go so far and really that only really happened as the horrors of the holocaust became more widely known in the late 50's into the 60's, making it an even harder pill to swallow.
I fully agree with you there, if you think the Nazis are bad, imgaine what could come out of this, such as a German Hamas. Europe is not going to be stable in relation to this.