Challenge: Neutral Germany in the WWII

Valdemar II

Banned
Is there anyway we could get a true WWII without Germany with a POD of 1920. Who would the allies be and who would their opponent be. Germany should still exist with the 1919 borders atleast.
 
I can imagine a war not started (directly or indirectly) by Germany, but without it altogether? That's hard. I would expect someone to invade it (Germany's right in the middle of Europe, after all).
 
Tricky one this.

How about a fight beginning in Eastern Med or Balkans?

POD is that Turkey goes Communist. It tries to recapture territory from Greece, Bulgaria etc with Soviet support.

Britain and France help Greece and Bulgaria, Mussolini comes in as an opportunist on whichever side he thinks will give Italy the greater glory/territory.

Japan takes the risk of attacking the Soviet Far East, but is beaten back.

There's the potential for a communist uprising in Germany, the German government decides the best way to avoid turmoil is to stay out of any more wars.

There's an actual successful communist uprising in Spain.

The USA, fearful of the "Red Menace" spreading worldwide, sends an expeditionary force.

?
 
Weimar Republic survives (somehow, not going into details here). Hitler comes to power in Austria instead and unites with Hungary, and starts reconquering the Balkans with Mussolini.

Stalin and the USSR gets aggressive in Poland and Romania after swallowing the Baltic States. Weimar Germany declares neutrality as all three sides (Allies, Austria-Italy Axis, Comintern) fight it out in the Balkans and Africa.
 
Weimar survives, but still economically unsuccessful and goes isolationist (not very likely, I know). a different Soviet-Japan border clash ends in Japanese victory, leading to the IJA becoming deluded about their ability to defeat the Soviets, so WWII is Japan vs Soviets and China, later the Netherlands and France entering too. no European theater at all, until Stalin wins and sets his sight on Poland...
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Sadly, Germany can not avoid being involved in WW II. Her status as a neutral will change the shape of the war, but eventually Stalin would have made his move and dragged Germany into a war, whether it wanted one or not.

This WW II could actually become the Capitalist/Communist war that never happened. I can remember my grandparents saying that, before Pearl Harbor, some of their friend were supporting Japan's actions in China because they were anti-Red. How wide that belief was is way beyond me, but that it existed at all is interesting.
 
Depends on what you define as a world war. Think you need to include multiple great powers in a long slog with significant ground combat. To not involve central Europe you either have a war with Russia [not necessarily Soviet at the POD] which somehow doesn't spread into the European heartland [v difficult I think] or the old bugbear of something involving the US, which means that Britain has to be on the other side.

Otherwise possible a version of OTL Pacific War with Japan or just maybe a powerful [fascist?] China getting stomped by an Anglo-American alliance, possibly with France included as well. However that would still very much be a regional conflict. [Same to a degree with an Anglo-American war although naval fighting would be far more widely spread].

Steve
 

randomkeith

Banned
I can imagine a scenario very much like the one in WW2 but instead of Hitler being the agressive player its Stalin. With a Ribbentop/Molitov style pact between the two countries.

Stalin demands a strip of land off Finland, which he is granted in exchange for "Peace in our time." By the French and British. 6 months later he invades eastern Poland. Forcing the British and French to declare war on him. Meanwhile in the East Japan is being encouraged to attack Russias vulnerable Easter Coast by the British and French, possibley even with help from British troops already stationed in the far east.
 
Japan-USSR/UK/USA

The USSR and Japan might come to a secret deal deviding most of Asia between themselves, rather than fighting at Nomanhan and elsewhere. As the two unlikely allies of convienence work at deviding their spoils, Japan decides to eliminate the one major threat to her ill gotten gains, and strikes at the USA...at the same time, deciding to snap up Britian's loose posessions.

Britian is rightly nervous about Germany, and so has much of the fleet in home waters...so do the French. (Either a Nazi Germany or not--doesn't matter)

But--with Britian suddenly involved in a major war far from home, some understandings are worked out with Germany (to the great dismay of the French) Essentially, The British say to the French, "If Germany can't take care of itself, Stalin will take care of it--for good."

Germany is freed from the tattered remnants of Versailles...and the speed of German rearmament is a clear sign that she was preparing to rearm anyway. But...Germany doesn't want a war with France and Britain right now..that would be a bad idea. So, Germany decalres neutrality. The Great Pacific War has an Atlantic component, too, but the Soviet Navy is in deep trouble there.

Now that the Allies (USA and Britain) are fully at war with the Japan-Soviet Axis, there's plenty of troubled waters to fish in. Who wants a piece of the USSR? Who wants to assist people to rebel against Britian's colonial rule?
 
I can imagine a scenario very much like the one in WW2 but instead of Hitler being the agressive player its Stalin. With a Ribbentop/Molitov style pact between the two countries.

Stalin demands a strip of land off Finland, which he is granted in exchange for "Peace in our time." By the French and British. 6 months later he invades eastern Poland. Forcing the British and French to declare war on him. Meanwhile in the East Japan is being encouraged to attack Russias vulnerable Easter Coast by the British and French, possibley even with help from British troops already stationed in the far east.

So you need two PODs: not only a peace-loving Hitler in Germany, but also a stupidly aggressive Stalin in the USSR.
BTW, in OTL the Japanese did try to tackle the Soviets (albeit not on the coast); they got a bloody nose.
 
A weaker, smaller or non-existent USSR would probaboly have the desired effect, perhaps resulting from the loyalists being stronger in the civil war, some sort of borderline being drawn with the USSR consiting of the areas around leningrad and with moscow being contested between loyalists bolsheviks and SR's and pro-tsarists holding the rest until both tsarist and bolshevik regimes broke down in the mid-20's to be replaced by a central russian republic and a range of ex-russian empire states and regions fill in the gap resulting in some interesting smaller states in the area. Some of which may be pro-bolshevik or even ''anarchist'' (would makhno still exist in the ukraine without the red army moving in for example) and others dominated by more nationalist independence movements of one sort or another.

Given that this way you wouldn't get a big communist party in germeny and therefore you'd have the SPD just about staying in power due to some popular front style manouevering with the Nazis remaining an unpleasant oppostion group. Thus you get germany's neutrality as it struggles with internal problems wracked as it is by what would be largely nationalist terrorism.

Without Nazi help the spanish civil war is longer and bloodier and starts a little later, weimar republic dithering and germany's unwilingness to fund or arm groups it sees as being ''a bit too revolutionary'' eventually means Franco finally ''wins'' the war in late 1940.
Turkey would by this point have expanded into the crimea with the absense of russian influence. Carving out what effectively amounts to a new ottoman empire. A stronger turkey results in ongoning conflicts with greece and the british empire.
Poland free from german intereference and the russian threat moves eastwards expanding its borders becoming a far more nationalist state as a whole.
Austria, Romania and Hungary remain as in OTL, nationalist regimes.

All in all in europe the axis would consist of Italy, Turkey, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Romania being the major ''fascist'' powers with some assistance from a few western russian sattelite states. Bearing in mind that fascism here generally resembles resurgent nationalism or at the most italian corporatism not national socialism.

Whereas the allies would consist of Britian, France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Greece and some assistance from the poverty stricken central russian republic

It seems logical that this sort of powder keg would go off sooner or later in the early to mid 40's, victory would be questionable and he war would be less mechanised than the war in OTL. You'd probably have colonial wars in north africa and eastern europe sparking off a full scale war between the two blocks with multiple fronts in the mediteranean, north africa, the balkans and eastern europe. It;d look good on a map i reckon.

To make it a world war we have to decide what occurs in the east however, japan is likely to be moving into eastern russia before it invades china. Japan would be focussed on china, where they would have to fight more open warfare at first but would advance quicker than OTL once they'd won opening victories since much opposition in OTL was based around the chinese communist party which would be sigificantly weaker here without the USSR. Japan would then be looking to take on British and French colonial interests now strecthed by the war in europe. In this timeline japan is unlikley to attack the US and bring them into the war, and the embargo has limited effects since japans advances in eastern russia and china are likely to secure them the resources they need albeit very slowly.

So it all hinges on what the US does. Do they
a) Remain isolationist
b) Attack japan
c) Do some form of deal with japan to carve up east asia
Some form of combination of a and c is most likely. B seems highly unlikley given that there isn't the motivation for it and the military build up neccessary took several years even in OTL, and thats without a slightly longer great depression and a lack of offensive action by Japan.

Thus its most probable that you get an axis victory here, with Britain slowly forced off the continent, france slowly falling to the weight of numbers and multiple fronts it would face from this ATL axis, the rest of europe and north africa is also conquered and the far east belongs in part to the empire of the rising sun.
 

randomkeith

Banned
BTW, in OTL the Japanese did try to tackle the Soviets (albeit not on the coast); they got a bloody nose.

But in this time they would be tackeling the Soviets without any weapons or feul embargo and probally with British help on the ground.

Everyone always makes a big deal of the Soviet-Japanese battle, but you have to remember that at the time the Soviets were under the comand of Zhukov by far their best general. In this timeline their would be no way he'd be stationed in a backwater place like the soviet far east.

Facing a less brilliant general and with British support im sure the Japanese could easily open up a second front on the Soviets.
 
Everyone always makes a big deal of the Soviet-Japanese battle, but you have to remember that at the time the Soviets were under the comand of Zhukov by far their best general. In this timeline their would be no way he'd be stationed in a backwater place like the soviet far east. .

Na i'd always assumed the japanese lost because they simply weren't a mechanised enough force to take on russian tank divisions and didn't have enough heavy infantry to deal with siberian mechanised corps. The british and french might have fared a little better but they;d have to move their forces through china, also they';d be fighting from colonies.
Sending troops to face off against a japanese invasion is one thing, but with mass famine occurring in india in the early 40's, allying with the japanese who would be seen to have comitted numerous atrocities in china, and then sending thousands of colonial troops into afghanistan and eastern russia into a seeminglt endless war wih what most people would perceive as the invincible russian collussus is likley to cause a mutiny and unrest. Also i still don't really see how either Britain or France had the mechanised/tank forces available to take on russias armoured might. Its not like they're employing blitzkrieg or combined arms very effectively, and they'd only have relatively few updated matildas and advanced models available, they're pretty much going to get massacred when they come up against T34's and KV's at the end of 1941.
Plus i think the POD your describing overlooks the influence of pacifism, especially in France, the idea of France starting an offensive war against the soviet union in 1940 is pretty unlikely without some major policy shifts much earlier on.
 
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