DBWI: Second Great War if Hitler had lived

It was a matter of nationalism. The demilitarization of the Saar was seen as an enormous insult to German sovereignty. These feelings were amplified by its importance to the German economy, and the fears that France would seek to permanently deprive German of its coal, iron and industry.

Hitler with much bravado remilitarized it. It was an a public relations coup, and showed the German people that they were "strong" again. Hitler would behave in a smiler manner with both Austria and the Sudetenland, reunifying traditionally German areas with political charisma and aggressive foreign policy.

I think your confusing the return of Saar from being a League mandate to German control in 1935 with the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.
 
1938 Germany (minus East Prussia), Czechia, Slovenia, 1938 Italy, France, Benelux, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, "free Greece" (Ionian Islands, Crete, Aegean Islands, Dodecanese, and Cyprus), Egypt, and Greater Israel remain in the Western bloc.

Slovenia is in Yugoslavia. Shillinger asked me to change that and he changed the map accordingly.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Slovenia is in Yugoslavia. Shillinger asked me to change that and he changed the map accordingly.

OOC: well, I disagree so far, and I never heard of the reasons that you two based this change upon. Please give me a convincing reason to change my mind or as thread author I'm not going to acknowledge this and Slovenia stays in the Western camp ITTL.

OCC

These are more or less canon

Economically the United States is somewhat poorer than OTL. The sunbelt misses the WWII war industries buildup. There is no GI Bill, nor was the military desegregated in a timely manner. The South is a mess. Civil rights is about at least 50 years behind OTL's. The rough approximation of a civil rights movement flared during the 70's and 80's, but segregation is still a major problem throughout the entire country. There is a black middle class in major urban areas, but little interaction between races.

Japan has collapsed due to civic unrest and imperial over reach in China. When this happened, and what kind of regime emerged in the aftermath is still up in the air. It is larger but presumably much poorer than in OTL.

Decolonization has occurred in a much slower manner, as Europe is less willing to give up its colonies. Views on race are extremely regressive and eugenics has not been discredited.


OCC this is speculation on my part

I imagine both Britain and France are quite conservative states with building colonial resentment. They haven't left their settler colonies, and they presumable hold a heavy hand over their African and Asian commonwealths. I know nothing about the state of India, I imagine it isn't pretty.

Oil is less important primarily due to the Russian Bloc's domination over global supplies. This is also due smaller global demand; suburbanization is stillborn in the united states, japan is much poorer, and trade is still protectionist. Energy wise most of the developed world is power by a combination of coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power.


OOC: This is mostly correct, except I'd not say that the civil rights movements is 50 years behind OTL. Jim Crow segregation is not going to survive to present day. The PoD may delay its demise by a generation at most, but by the 80s-90s at the latest, the civil rights movements would be victorious (compare with OTL South Africa). So by 2010, the civil rights situation would be more akin to the '80s, but Political Correctness (or stuff like busing) is never going to arise. So yes, social segregation largely endures, but legal one is dead.

As it concerns women equality and sexual liberation, and the rise of the youth as a separate social identity, the POD is not going to change them overmuch, since they happen because of social changes driven by industrialization. It is actually possible that they get more successful and less controversial than OTL, since they don't get entangled with desegregation.

Progress of biological sciences is eventually going to discredit early 20th century racism, but sheer prejudice stays a respectable opinion much longer. Multiculturalism and post-colonial guilt are in all likelihood never going to arise.

Eugenics stays respectable and popular. Over time it most likely gets channeled in the form of widespread popularity and strong legal-social support for prenatal testing and eugenic abortion, although sterilization of the disabled gets used much longer. Eventually it is also going to drive greater development of bioengineering than OTL, which shall promise a less brutal means of dealing with disabilities.

I dont' think postwar trade is going to be that protectionist. The EL is going to unify Western-Central Europe in one federal free trade area, and the USA drop isolationism after the war, taking a foreign policy similar to OTL. So at least as it takes the Western world, there is still going to be much free trade.

As it concerns Japan, I don't think it is going to be that much poorer, since it was a budding industrial power even before the war, and it going to keep Korea and Taiwan. The various foreign policy setbacks and the quagmire in China may drive a revolution by reform-minded young officers akin to Portugal OTL (but less left-wing-oriented, probably with the ideology of a "second Meji restoration" against the Showa imperialists that screwed it out).

In full agreement that Soviet control of Middle Eastern supplies drives North America and Europe (probably by the 60s, when Western Hemisphere oil sources start to be insufficient) to give up oil as a fuel (even it stays an important commodity for the manufacturing of plastics, fertilizers, etc.). Energy is produced by a combination of coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power, railroads stay the most important means of continental long-range transport, cars (less important because of less development of suburbia) go electric.

I'm more uncertain on what happens re decolonization.
 
He is only the father of greater Germany. He is accredited for ending Germany's depression in the 30's, he got the french to leave the Saar, he led the Anschluss of Austria, and as his final act annexed the Sudetenland.

Hitler had nothing to do with the French leaving the Saar. The election in which the people of the Saar would vote on whether to rejoin Germany had been scheduled for 1935 years before Hitler had come to power. Saar would have rejoined Germany no matter who was in power.
 
But perhaps if he hadn't weighted so heavily on German Jews, motivating them to leave after the war, Israel would not have come into being (even if the critical population boost for the creation of the Zionist state came from Polish Jews fleeing Soviet occupation, German Jews provided most of the technical expertise), which means the Soviets would have got even more of a free rein in the Middle East after the war.

OOC: Why would Polish Jews flee the Soviet occupation? Given the degree of anti-semitism in Poland, I would think that the Jews would welcome the Soviets as liberators.
 
Necromancy

Now onto your points

  1. While he might not be the cause of it Hitler is still given credit for that, because he was in power and a very inspiring individual good at getting credit for such things
  2. OOC: The Soviets weren't out to kill Jews but still were not nice, persecuted organized religion, and killed the intellectual class. Therefore the Jews would flee for the same reasons anyone else would.
 
OOC: Why would Polish Jews flee the Soviet occupation? Given the degree of anti-semitism in Poland, I would think that the Jews would welcome the Soviets as liberators.

Yes for probably the 5 minutes necessary to understand that they are the same of the Polish (Stalin was not very keen of Jew, not at Nazi level but nevertheless)
 

Eurofed

Banned
OOC: True, Stalin would not be out to exterminate Polish Jews. OTOH, Jews were often a sizable part of the intellectual class and of the elites, which would be a prime target of Soviet persecution and repression since the beginning of the occupation. Stalin's policy towards the Jews often wandered into antisemitic distrust and perscecution of a minority with 'cosmopolitan' ties. Moreover, ITTL the Soviet invasion and occupation of Eastern Europe won't have any pretense of coming to liberate anyone, in the eyes of anybody but Commie sympathizers and Pro-Soviet Pan-Slav nationalists. A nasty vicious cycle is to be expected between Soviet harsh repression, mass deportations, and Katyn-like atrocities, and popular resistance to the occupation, rather similar to the one that the Nazis faced in the Balkans. Jews are likely to find themselves more or less in the same boat as the Gentile Eastern Europeans. Due to their long-standing ties to the Russians, Serbs and Bulgarians are likely to make themselves willing collaborationists to the Soviets. For the opposite reasons, Finns, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Croats, Greeks, and Turks are going to act the opposite in the face of an open Soviet invasion.
 
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Eurofed

Banned
i dont think the soviets will be that mean

OOC: yes they would, IOTL the Soviets could mask as liberators from the Nazi at the beginning, here they do not have that pretense available, they are naked aggressors and invaders, and nobody has reason to like them except Commie sympathizers and Serbians-Bulgarians due to old ties with Russia. IOTL the 1939-41 Soviet occupation policy in the Baltic and the Kresy was very brutal, ITTL it shall be the same writ large across Eastern Europe and the Middle East, resistance by the conquered peoples shall quickly drive the Red Amy and the NKVD to even greater levels of brutality, breeding more resistance, that in turn shall breed more brutality, and so on.
 
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