Does having a First World War mean we always would have a Second?

Perkeo

Banned
Not sure what the relevance of those surnames is. Was there a significant, strictly genetic-based racism? Maybe not, but that was not the point...

Interestingly, the native memoirs of the Imperial German occupation in the Baltics extremely often refer to it as a "colonial" rule, and to the Imperial Germans as "colonizers".


The Gulag system was established in 1930 under Stalin...

Did the Central Powers operate their own gulags? No. (Though I will note that the Austrian internment camps were nothing to sneeze at; their death rate often matched or overcame the USSR's future Gulags.) And we can also note that forced labor - an important feature of the gulag system - was fairly popular in CP-occupied eastern Europe.


But this is all a side question, since Terror (be it Red, White, beige, whatever) takes many forms; a gulag is only one of them.

"White Russia" already did recognize Poland as independent, and explicitly excluded Poland's territory from any plans for a future Russian state.

As for the Baltic Duchy, it's strange that you mention it in this context; because the Duchy did not represent any kind of concession or compromise with the Baltic nations. It was was not even a valid native state like, say, Poland, or Ukraine (where the CP-installed regime was screwed-up and illegitimate, but at least the state itself was legit). The Duchy was completely opposed to, and incompatible with, the national aspirations of the Latvians and Estonians - just as opposed and incompatible as direct Russian rule was, and arguably even more.


Note that the comparison was between the White governments and the Central Powers' puppet creations in the east - not the German (or Austro-Hungarian) governance at home.

Semi-democratic with a tendency towards full democracy? For Austria-Hungary, at least, this claim is a massive exaggeration that distorts its real picture beyond recognition. If maybe it's not for Germany itself.
Note that I never said the CPs didn't deny any justified demands by the Polish or Baltic. What I did say is
a) that that doesn't make them the greater evil since Russia didn't grant those demands either IOTL. Any anger to be only semi-independent in Mitteleuropa won't make them mourn full annexation by Russia.
b) even if you have doubts if a) applies to OTL, then you have to note that we are in a CP victory timeline. And I don't see how the CP can win if they're too dumb to be the lesser evil. They need all their military ressources in the west and they need a enough sense of diplomacy to know better than alienating natural allies.
 
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Perkeo

Banned
There've always been wars, but the really big ones - Spanish Succession, Napoleonic, WW1/2 - were typically at intervals of about a century. There's no natural law saying there had to be a WW2 only twenty years after 1918. There was a Polish Succession war two decades after Utrecht, but it was little more than a spat. Nor was anything major happening two decades after the Congress of Vienna. Germany's comeback after 1918 was quite exceptional.
The difference was that the Congress of Vienna actually provided a concept about how Europe should function while the ToV completely lacked any credible long-term solution. But there was a reasonable chance that in the long term a peace order is developed, if only German democracy hadn't fallen.
 
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