Anti-Soviet WWII Nuremberg Trials

Eurofed

Banned
This is inspired by Onkel Willie's recent excellent "Munich Coup" TL. Let's assume that ITTL the Nazis get overthrown by the generals in 1938, Germany returns to a democratic constitutional monarchy, the Munich Agreement and the First Vienna Award iare implemented and followed by detente between Germany, Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia, the Western powers support German irredentist claim on Poland, Germany recovers 1914 borders after a limited German-Polish war, Yugoslavia is broken up in another limited war by a coalition of Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria (Italy gains Dalmatia and a protectorate over independent Slovenia and Croatia, Hungary regains Vojvodina, Bulgaria gets Vardar Macedonia).

Stalin is emboldened by Western appeasement and regime change in Germany, annexes the Baltic states, attacks Romania and gains Bessarabia despite subpar performance of the Red Army (which allows Hungary to snatch northern Transylvania and Bulgaria, southern Dobruja), attacks and conquers Finland after military reforms, eventually invades Poland and Romania and triggers WWII, the Red Army conquers Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Balkans, the Middle East, Persia, and western India, in an alliance of convenience with Japan that invades South East Asia. The SovJap Axis is eventually stalemated at the Oder-Neisse-Vienna-Prague-Trieste line, at the Suez Canal and Turkish border, and at Delhi and Calcutta, and gradually pushed back by an alliance of America, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

Japan goes down just like IOTL, the Soviets are pushed back and eventually forced to surrender when Allied armies get close to Moscow and nukes destroy several Russian cities (both Americans and the Anglo-Germans develop their nukes). Russian generals pull a Valkyrie on the Soviet regime and surrender.

Now, the thread issue is, which top Soviet leaders get indicted and convicted in TTL equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Let's assume that Stalin and Beria die during the coup. Soviet leaders get indicted both for war crimes and genocidal atrocities on civilian population of occupied countries (it is assumed that up to half of it died) and for the crimes against the peoples of the USSR from 1917 to WWII.

Who gets to star in those process (let's assume that the defendants are at least as many as in the OTL Nuremberg Trials, including a mix of Communist party, NKVD, and Red Army leaders), which sentences do they get, and where the Trials get held ?

The international tribunal is made up of one judge each from the Five Great Powers, plus a Canadian one to represent the Commonwealth countries and a Swedish one for the European minors.
 
Why would you assume that half of the people of the occupied countries die? Also, the Soviet Union wouldn't have acted like that. OTL, the appeasement of Germany didn't embolden the Soviet Union, it caused them to seek a peace treaty with Germany so that they could prepare their countries defenses.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Why would you assume that half of the people of the occupied countries die?

Large-scale Soviet genocidal methods of counterinsurgency and various ethnic cleansings, which Stalin was often fond of. Also, I said "up to".

Also, the Soviet Union wouldn't have acted like that. OTL, the appeasement of Germany didn't embolden the Soviet Union, it caused them to seek a peace treaty with Germany so that they could prepare their countries defenses.

This has been debated time and again. Stalin was wholly prone to make mistakes about other countries' ability and willingness to fight (Korean War, Barbarossa, Winter War) and to decide for pre-emptive attacks out of his paranoia. Either, or both, motivations are wholly plausible to plunge the USSR into a World War. Also Stalin was buying time OTL until the modernization of the Red Army was ready in 1942-43. Without the Nazis, Stalin going on a similar rampage is not a given but wholly plausible gioven the nature of the regime and the dictato's mindset. You are free to disgree but please don't derail the thread reopening an eternal discussion about it.
 
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Large-scale Soviet genocidal methods of counterinsurgency and various ethnic cleansings, which Stalin was often fond of. Also, I said "up to".

Except that famine (which up to now I don't think anyone has undeniably proven was a planned genocide) takes a while and usually is conducted in areas where Stalin's regime would have solid control, not warzones. Other than that, most of Stalin's murders came from deaths in labour camps (and even then you are not going to get large scale deaths over just 5-8 years you would need Stalin deporting large sections of the eastern european population over a couple of decades to replicate the number of deaths experienced by Soviet gulag inmates).


This has been debated time and again. Stalin was wholly prone to make mistakes about other countries' ability and willingness to fight (Korean War, Barbarossa, Winter War) and to decide for pre-emptive attacks out of his paranoia.

None of the examples you cite actually support the behaviour you are attributing to Stalin.

1. The Korean War - as far as I know Kim il-Sung was pressuring Stalin from early on to give him the go ahead and then Stalin did so when he thought the time was right. Note here too that the Soviets under Stalin never openly involved themselves in the Korean War and the most Stalin allowed was for Soviets pilots to fly only over North Korean held territory. Nothing about the Korean War was pre-emptive; it was opportunistic.

2. Barbarossa - don't see how this could cited as an example of Stalin's pre-emptive tendencies when he basically refused to believe the evidence presented to him about an upcoming German invasion and basically paralysed the defence of the country during the first few days. For this example to be worthwhile your scenario would need to have the British, French, Americans, Japanese and Germans all gearing up to invade the USSR and for Stalin not to believe a word that his spies tell him.

3. Winter War - this was conducted after Stalin concluded that pact with Hitler and nobody seriously believes that Stalin thought Finland was about to overthrow the USSR and therefore Stalin invaded to prevent that. Plus the whole winter war happened after Stalin attempted to get what he wanted from Finland (basically some bases and some territory around the Leningrad region) through bullying negotiations(though strangely a territorial swap was offered) - but that is not a "pre-emptive strike".

All those examples only show Stalin had a good ability to underestimate the ability of the opposition (in the case of South Korea and Finland) and the intentions of his enemies (in the case of Barbarossa) but none prove he would actually start a pre-emptive attack, much less against enemies he actually tended to be extremely cautious of (Germany, Britain and France).

Either, or both, motivations are wholly plausible to plunge the USSR into a World War.

How? If both motivations you attribute to Stalin are supposedly enough to plunge the USSR into a World War, why on earth did Stalin dilly-dally and attempt to prevent provoking Germany in OTL? Surely if both motivations were enough then Stalin would have launched his "pre-emptive strike" while Germany was busy in Scandinavia or in France and the Low Countries.

You must be confusing Stalin's paranoia induced pre-emptive action against "enemies" he could control (such as those who lived in the USSR or in his own government and who couldn't really fight back) with how he operated against perceived foreign enemies (especially whole countries). The two were totally different. Stalin never ordered any pre-emptive invasion of Manchuria from 1938-1940 even though the clashes on the border in the late 1930s should have easily been enough to send him into paranoid fits that the Japanese were about to invade and attempt to do permanently what they only did temporarily in the late 1910s and early 1920s - take the Soviet Far East. German reconnaissance flights apparently flew over Soviet formations with impunity in early 1941 because Stalin didn't want to provoke Hitler - that isn't behaviour consistent with the idea of taking "pre-emptive action". If he was like that then he would been paranoid enough to actually believe a German invasion was imminent and the only course of action would be to immediately invade Germany and its allies and it's occupied area of Poland.

Also Stalin was buying time OTL until the modernization of the Red Army was ready in 1942-43. Without the Nazis, Stalin going on a similar rampage is not a given but wholly plausible given the nature of the regime.

Except you can't attribute OTL intentions to a TL where the situation is different. Without the Nazis, Stalin probably loses a trading partner and by 1942 in TTL the situation will be absolutely nothing like what Stalin expected 1942-1943 to be like in OTL. He expected to take the opportunity provided by Germany and the western powers duking it out to go in for easy pickings, no Nazis means that doesn't happen. In fact in the initial part of your TL you have western power cooperation with Germany which is certainly not the situation under which Stalin would expect easy pickings.

You are free to disgree but please don't derail the thread reopening an eternal discussion about it.


That's a bit unfair on the fella. This is a discussion board. Mulligan is free to discuss whatever he wants. If you don't want people to derail your thread by noting what they consider to be errors, then why start a thread at all?
 
2. Barbarossa - don't see how this could cited as an example of Stalin's pre-emptive tendencies when he basically refused to believe the evidence presented to him about an upcoming German invasion and basically paralysed the defence of the country during the first few days. For this example to be worthwhile your scenario would need to have the British, French, Americans, Japanese and Germans all gearing up to invade the USSR and for Stalin not to believe a word that his spies tell him.


To be fair to Stalin, their had probably been many false alarms about a German attack and Stalin may have had a difficult time discerning whether the reports of a German attack were more false alarms.
 
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