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Okay, just an idle idea here again stemming from the researches involved in the Weimar Republic Survives thread....

POD 1925 Ernst Thalmann, leader of the Communists in Germany, is assassinated.

During the 1926 elections, the Communists do as Moscow suggested and throw their support to SPD candidate Otto Braun, who becomes President of the Republic of Germany.

1928 General von Hammerstein-Equord becomes Army Chief of Staff; begins to purge the army of the more extremist right-wing elements.

1930 Herman Mueller's coalition goverment collapses, but no one else is able to form one either. President Braun, by emergency decree, keeps Mueller as Chancellor of the republic.

1932 Paramilitary groups remain banned and suppressed during the Presidential elections. Braun narrowly voted back into office.

1930s Continued cooperation with the Soviet Union. No Popular Front formed in France, and the French and Germans along with the Soviet Union give more support to the Republicans in Spain, leading to a Republican victory in 1939.

1939 The Soviet Union and Germany invade and partition Poland along pre-WWI lines in an exercise of 'Socialist Solidarity'. France, under Socialist government at the time, does not block the invasion, and while the UK and Italy complain, there is essentially nothing they are willing to do. The Baltics fall to the USSR at this time as well, with the Memel region going to Germany.

By 1940, a 'Red' Socialist/Communist band stretches from East to West across Europe, starting in the USSR, going through Germany to France and thence Spain. Dolfuss led Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria all in the Italian Fascist camp. Czechoslovakia is still a non-socialist Republic, surviving basically by playing the two sides off against each other.
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