DBWI Stalin does not start the second great war

1938 Germany is growing stronger, the nazi's are starting to become a threat, France and England are worried, and Stalin having read Hitlers book decides he is a threat and in a moment of panic or paranoia orders the March 13th invasion.

This started a war that would consume an entire generation much like the great war before it had. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia would fight a lengthy death battle with conventional and unconventional phases that would continue for decades. Even to this day the relationship between the two countries is utterly toxic. Poor Poland stuck in the middle of this madness would be devastated. Meanwhile France and England were able to sit out the madness slowly regaining their past strength.

But what if the war had gone differently? Hitler had been planning on hitting the West first before turning his attention on Russia, what if he had gotten the chance to be the aggressor in the conflict? What if the russians had not started the second great war?
 
Likely Hitler would have simply attacked the Soviet Union a few years later. The two nations were too different ideologically and in terms of goals to ever get along.

If the Soviet Union gave Germany more time they might not have been able to beat them as decisively as they did. And Britain and France may have decided to ally with Germany. All in all we dodged a bullet.
 

jahenders

Banned
1938 Germany is growing stronger, the nazi's are starting to become a threat, France and England are worried, and Stalin having read Hitlers book decides he is a threat and in a moment of panic or paranoia orders the March 13th invasion.

This started a war that would consume an entire generation much like the great war before it had. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia would fight a lengthy death battle with conventional and unconventional phases that would continue for decades. Even to this day the relationship between the two countries is utterly toxic. Poor Poland stuck in the middle of this madness would be devastated. Meanwhile France and England were able to sit out the madness slowly regaining their past strength.

But what if the war had gone differently? Hitler had been planning on hitting the West first before turning his attention on Russia, what if he had gotten the chance to be the aggressor in the conflict? What if the russians had not started the second great war?

While there's always been speculation that Hitler might consider hitting West first, his natural caution and the menace that is Russia kept him from moving West until Russia was safely neutralized. As you know, he proposed a treaty with Russia to jointly tear Poland apart, but Stalin rejected any partnership with Germany and wanted to seize Poland on his own terms.

As writings from the German General Staff suggest, the general plan was sort of a Schlieffen Plan in reverse -- quickly defeat Russia and THEN attack France.

Thus, Germany sat and built up until Stalin swept into Poland. The Russians make quick progress against the Poles, but the invasion earned condemnation from France and UK and gave Germany an excuse to enter Poland to aid the Poles. Despite initial Russian successes, the weaknesses of their logistic system, coupled with surprising German strength and Polish zeal, soon stopped the Russian advance in most areas.

Stalin is reported to have said, "Those French and English dogs -- they could at least lent, or leased, me a bunch of stuff -- I'm fighting a war here. The dang Americans could send stuff too. Instead, here I sit fighting the Germans alone. Someday they'll regret their sloth."

As we know, Stalin was never able to whip up the Soviet "Defense of the Motherland" zeal that he had hoped since they had started the war.
 

Deleted member 1487

You'd probably have to have Stalin avoid the stroke that changed his personality and made him quite a bit more erratic and paranoid. Hitler taking over Austria really pushed him over the edge it would seem and he thought there was an invasion of the USSR coming so he struck first. But to do that he invaded Romania and Poland and pretty much triggered the Allied material support for both and initiated a German move into Poland as part of 'defensive measures' that saw them never leave and effectively end up conquering the Western USSR with tacit British approval (France didn't approve, but wasn't capable of bucking Britain on that), which meant German domination of Poland too and effective control over Central and Eastern Europe with Allied help. It really was a boneheaded move given the Great Purge had decapitated his forces and meant them pretty much were stymied by the Poles until the Germans were able to build up and invade the USSR.

So if you're having Stalin not do all that he'd have to stay as pragmatic as he was prior to that and let Hitler continue his march to Central European domination without Soviet intervention, making Hitler public enemy #1 and end up fighting the Allies instead if he went after Poland Czechoslovakia. We don't really know what Hitler was planning, the German archives and Hitler's papers are still classified and probably will remain so a long time, but it seems likely that Hitler was going to start trouble with Poland eventually, because he was so anti-Communist and the Poles were in the way. That would probably mean war and a long bloody struggle in the West while Stalin sits back until he can come in and clean up, taking everyone over.

Given Stalin's personality shift after his health problems and the fear within the USSR of Stalin after the Great Purge, they just went along like Lemmings to their doom IOTL, which was gigantically boneheaded. He ended up handing Europe to Hitler and did so in such a way as to get the Allies to support him and destroy the USSR, but then leave him so powerful they couldn't get him out. It certainly did not help that so many Soviets defected because they got that Stalin was nuts and they had united Europe against them. So in the end the USSR got dismembered and set up in a bunch of German dominated successor states that are little more than resource farms, while the areas beyond Moscow fell to warlords and the Far East to Japan.
 
You'd probably have to have Stalin avoid the stroke that changed his personality and made him quite a bit more erratic and paranoid. Hitler taking over Austria really pushed him over the edge it would seem and he thought there was an invasion of the USSR coming so he struck first. But to do that he invaded Romania and Poland and pretty much triggered the Allied material support for both and initiated a German move into Poland as part of 'defensive measures' that saw them never leave and effectively end up conquering the Western USSR with tacit British approval (France didn't approve, but wasn't capable of bucking Britain on that), which meant German domination of Poland too and effective control over Central and Eastern Europe with Allied help. It really was a boneheaded move given the Great Purge had decapitated his forces and meant them pretty much were stymied by the Poles until the Germans were able to build up and invade the USSR.

So if you're having Stalin not do all that he'd have to stay as pragmatic as he was prior to that and let Hitler continue his march to Central European domination without Soviet intervention, making Hitler public enemy #1 and end up fighting the Allies instead if he went after Poland Czechoslovakia. We don't really know what Hitler was planning, the German archives and Hitler's papers are still classified and probably will remain so a long time, but it seems likely that Hitler was going to start trouble with Poland eventually, because he was so anti-Communist and the Poles were in the way. That would probably mean war and a long bloody struggle in the West while Stalin sits back until he can come in and clean up, taking everyone over.

Given Stalin's personality shift after his health problems and the fear within the USSR of Stalin after the Great Purge, they just went along like Lemmings to their doom IOTL, which was gigantically boneheaded. He ended up handing Europe to Hitler and did so in such a way as to get the Allies to support him and destroy the USSR, but then leave him so powerful they couldn't get him out. It certainly did not help that so many Soviets defected because they got that Stalin was nuts and they had united Europe against them. So in the end the USSR got dismembered and set up in a bunch of German dominated successor states that are little more than resource farms, while the areas beyond Moscow fell to warlords and the Far East to Japan.


Those German dominated successor states did not last long, the russians got their asses handed to them in the conventional portion of the war but when the war went gurilla well it took decades but the shear expense broke germany.

Theres a reason why you have people like Abbadon arguing that the soviets had a decisive win, why people argue germany had a decisive win, it was a war that went on for decades, and the only real winners were the British and French who stayed the hell out of that disaster.

Though we can all agree the poles got screwed the worst.
 

Deleted member 1487

Those German dominated successor states did not last long, the russians got their asses handed to them in the conventional portion of the war but when the war went gurilla well it took decades but the shear expense broke germany.

Theres a reason why you have people like Abbadon arguing that the soviets had a decisive win, why people argue germany had a decisive win, it was a war that went on for decades, and the only real winners were the British and French who stayed the hell out of that disaster.

Though we can all agree the poles got screwed the worst.
I mean it broke the Nazi party, Germany certainly recovered once it tried to stop overtly dominating the Eastern states. Once the Nazi regime started to fall apart after Hitler and Goering died and the German people got sick of the conflicts and they went to a more capitalistic/free market economy they had a lot of influence over trade in Central and Eastern Europe, plus retained their global markets and trade deals with Japan. It caused a lot of short and medium term pain, but in the long run they laid the foundation for a pretty major trade empire. And we can argue about the British and French success in the long term too; they ended up in their own endless colonial wars to maintain their empires and in the end had to let them go and start dealing with international, namely US and German, trade competition in their former captive markets. Meanwhile Ukraine, the Baltic states, to a degree Czechoslovakia, the Caucasian states, etc. all ended up trading with Germany in the end anyway even after Germany abandoned propping up the unpopular puppet regimes. Arguably too the big industrial build up in Germany gave them a major advantage relative to France and Britain, much like how the wars with Spain helped make the Netherlands a major (for the time) industrial nation relative to its size. Germany had a huge market for weapons post-war that it could fill once it started demobilizing, plus a large base of people that had technical training from serving in the military and many who went on for further higher education; Britain and France still maintained their more rigid class systems and weren't willing to sell out for anything like that de facto mass training system for all classes, so while they maintained short and medium term fiscal solvency, in the end the triumph was for Keynesian stimulus and the build up of German industry and technical expertise in the wider population. Its part of the reason their electronics industry, car industry, and various other industries, including chemical and pharmaceutical, are dominant in Europe and in many ways globally. Post-war they had the industry to shift from vacuum tubes for military radios to make civilian ones much more cheaply than the competition, plus then dominate in the TV revolution for the same reason: economies of scale and industry having been already expanded on the government's dime that needed something else to shift to when military spending dried up.

And let's not forget that the British and French also helped fund the German war for a while too, which really helped with that industrial build up; they were keen on the USSR being crushed so they funded the major combat operations to defeat Stalin, which happened shockingly quickly, while even initially were fine with the Germans setting up post-Soviet successor states until they refused to leave and then offloaded the cost onto Germany alone.
 
although lets all agree the Japanese out of the major power got it the worst, once it faced England, France, the Netherlands, and the US it was never in doubt who would win. Even the USSR had a chance for hope (Especially after Tiomenshko and Zhukov got into it, sadly being killed for beating Jerry at the battle of Kiev probably ended the dream.)
 
Less Jews would die. As it was, both Germany and Russia killed nearly 8 million Jews between them.

Thats one quoted number but honestly a lot of jews were able to escape into the french and british empires during the war, with a confirmed 3 million jews escaping into the two empires, rounding down. Most of the 'jews' killed were ethnic russians who had made enemies with their urkrainian, or baltic neighbors.

Most actual jews were able to get out during the conventional phase of the war when germany preferred expulsion and the two empires wanted settlers to help hold their empires. This isn't even going into the fact that the Italian, scandvian, british, french, spanish ect, jewish population was not hit during the war.
 
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