Fate of postwar Germany with a weaker Soviet Union

Thande

Donor
OK, this is just a WW2 question that occurred to me. I'll briefly sketch a scenario, although the means by which we get to it isn't as important as what happens once the war's over.

Basically let's imagine a world where the Nazis are more successful in their invasion of the Soviet Union. How? Don't know. Maybe Hitler doesn't let himself by sidetracked by Greece and Yugoslavia so the invasion launches a bit earlier and they manage to take Moscow. Maybe Stalin drops dead of a Convenient Heart Attack (TM) at the worst possible moment and the Soviets are deprived of leadership at a crucial time as there's a struggle for power at the top, giving the Germans a useful opportunity. It doesn't matter.

The point is the Germans manage to push the Soviets east of Moscow, though to their surprise the 'whole rotten edifice' of the USSR does not come crashing down when they kicked the door in. The Soviets, much of their industry moved safely to the Urals, fight on and fight hard. The Caucasus/Stalingrad is still probably a bloody campaign, though its dynamics are different. The Anglo-Americans are alarmed by all this and Churchill bows to American pressure to open up a second front earlier. The Anglo-Americans do an Overlord-type operation in 1943. It almost ends in disaster, with the Luftwaffe still much more in play than in OTL a year later, but sheer weight of numbers and superior logistics born of American industry come into play. For a while it turns into WW1 again, with a large part of France liberated but the German defensive lines successfully holding for a while before eventually collapsing under the Allied assault (nuclear weapons might be involved). The war grinds on until 1946 or 47 and is bloodier than OTL. The crucial difference, however, is that it's the Anglo-Americans who march into Berlin and force the German surrender. At that point the Soviets have successfully liberated their own borders, but nothing beyond that (including the Baltic states, which remain Nazi occupied at the time of the surrender).

At the postwar peace, therefore, Poland is restored with its pre-war borders, the Baltic states are probably restored, and the Soviets don't have any of the 1939-41 gains except perhaps in Finland and Romania, which as Nazi cobelligerents the Allies probably aren't going to bother protecting. The USSR is exhausted. It has made a very great achievement in expelling the Nazis from its territory but there is none of the triumphalism of OTL, and no one thinks the Soviets are going to be a superpower in the postwar world--at least not until after a few decades of recovery. Because of the need to focus on Europe, the Soviets were not involved in the war against Japan and have not benefited other than gaining all of Sakhalin. There's a united Korea under American occupation, and what happens in China is anyone's guess.

So here's the question. There's no obvious signs of a Cold War and no one in the US except the Reds-under-the-bed fanatics is scared of the Soviet Union. Indeed American isolationism might potentially kick in again at some point. In the short term, however, Germany is entirely under Anglo-American (and token French and perhaps Canadian) occupation. The Soviets don't have a say, but equally the Allies have no incentive to allow Germany to be restored and rearmed relatively quickly to provide a front line against the Iron Curtain--there isn't one. In TTL it was the Western Allies who liberated the extermination camps and saw what lay within, and with a longer war the Holocaust was even worse. Like OTL, Germany had many attempted anti-Hitler coups but none of them ever came off. The Allies are not inclined to display any mercy to Germany.

In summary, then: what do the Allies do to Germany? Permanent occupation, enforced fragmentation, maybe something like a saner version of the Morgenthau Plan, what?
 
If Nukes are used, the Germans will most likely respond with chemical weapons, the Allies responding with their own, that would very much change the nature of any German occupation.

Also, I can't see the Soviet Union surviving long in this TL, certainly not in all it's Stalinist glory.
 

MSZ

Banned
I doubt any Germany Divided would occur, except independent Austria obviously. The French might keep the Saarland, though even that is not a given. In the East, Poland gets Danzig, Upper Silesia, 1772 western border, maybe parts of Masuria - and that's it, th Polisg Government in Exile didn't seek any more territories. Expulsion of Germans still happens though. All of Germany is occupied by the Allies, and Germany is not restored to independence for longer - there is no need for a German State and a German Army without the Soviet Union as a looming threat. America has Truman as president, OTL he supported the "containment" policy rather than isolationism - but in this timeline there are no communists to "contain", so either he or his successors may want to return to isolationism. Or not - liberated east Europe means they get to benefit from the Marshall Plan, and with Soviet attrocities coming to light just after the war together with the Nazi ones, there might be more support for keeping american presence in the east regardless of the Soviet Union not beeing a threat for the time being.
 
I'd say it depends on what happens to China. Weaker Soviet Union or not, if one of the biggest countries in the world falls to communism, it's still going to be a shock.

When does Japan surrender in this timeline? Still August 1945, or later?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
In summary, then: what do the Allies do to Germany? Permanent occupation, enforced fragmentation, maybe something like a saner version of the Morgenthau Plan, what?

1) The Allies make Germany like Japan. Germany is a very rich industrial country with no military for decades, perhaps even until today.


2) With the Western Allies firmly in control, Germany keeps its 1935 borders, less east Prussia which goes to Poland. Due to the vast population (over 25% in areas) losses in Poland and Belarus, there is lots of empty land. Polish nationals are largely resettled from Belarus to Poland, and vice versa.

3) Hitler killed 6 million Jews and 11 to 17 million total civilians in 4 years. In this scenario, Hitler has 2 more years to kill. He was rapidly running out of Jews, so it safe to say that he achieve very near 100% kill rate of those that did not escape. Probably 1 more million. A ballpark guess is 3 to 8 million additional total civilian massacred (Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, etc).

4) The USA and Russia wanted show trials after the war, the Brits wanted just to shoot the leaders of the Nazi. Maybe the British view prevails. In any case, a lot more Germans will be shot or go to prison due the additional civilian deaths.

5) The Germans had time to begin to implement one of its new "Rural German Towns" in the East. With two more years, they have time to implement several of these towns. In OTL, the local population fled except for a few that stayed to fight as partisans. Wherever Hitler decides the first 2 to 7 "Rural German Towns" are located is 100% empty of people. The towns would be total failure, and parts of these areas are likely nature reserve type areas much like the Chernobyl zone.

6) After Hitler takes Moscow, he probably starve the city by simply not shipping food into it. The city is stripped of metal, machines, and anything that would help the German war effort. Hitler may intentionally burn/destroy sections of the city. Moscow may not be the new capital of the USSR. The temporary war capital in the East likely remains the capital.

7) Russia has a huge demographic issue due to even heavier war losses. Millions more Soviet soldiers have died. Millions more die in Soviet controlled areas due to famine and disease. Millions of people in OTL are not born due to the men being at the front, separated from the women. In OTL, Russia has a declining population, in this time line, the population may start to decline decades earlier.

8) The USA will not turn isolationists due to Pearl Harbor.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I'd say it depends on what happens to China. Weaker Soviet Union or not, if one of the biggest countries in the world falls to communism, it's still going to be a shock.

When does Japan surrender in this timeline? Still August 1945, or later?

Agreed if China goes communist, it starts the cold war. But in this time line, Mao will get a lot less soviet support, so i would bet on the KMT.

Mostly likely a post 1945 surrender. First, some think that the nuclear weapons alone would not have the ended the war. Second, after Moscow falls, there will likely be diversion of Army divisions and planes to Europe that went to the Pacific in OTL. After the USA navy has stabilized the pacific, there will be even more pressure to divert resources to save Russia. Strategically it is an easy choice, keeping the Soviets in the war is much more important that the speed that island are taken back in the Central Pacific. The Navy was arguing for the Pacific to be a Navy command war, so a best guess is once things stabilize by the end of 1943, the SW pacific will not receive additional units and reinforcements and may have many units sent to Europe to break the German line. Third, the nuclear weapons would have been used on Germany first, so Japan will not be nuked in 1945.
 
A war into 1946/47 sees Britain come close to collapse or actually collapse. There's no way they can sustain a major war of attrition from 1943-46/47 in Europe. Also Canada was having trouble sending soldiers abroad and many Canadian units were short of men as early as late 1944.

So you have the Americans bearing a higher burden than OTL. US public opinion was not as solid as many would like to believe. Heavy casualties from 1943 with a semi repeat of WW1 attrition until the Germans are ground down won't work. Once Roosevelt dies a new president like Truman would look at what's happening (Truman served in WW1) and try to find a way to kill off the war as quickly as possible. The Atom bomb might end it but he would go for a ceasefire/armistice and forget unconditional surrender.

Finally unless Hitler believes the Red army is his greatest threat he won't station most of his forces there. He will have them facing the mostly and pretty soon entirely US forces.

In this scenario I think Germany avoids occupation. Hitler was sick and on medication and may well be dead or incapacitated some time in 1946.

The British and French have too little power to have an input at any peace conference and the Russians are exhausted and counting their dead.

The US goes home and the next generation of Americans vows never to intervene in Europe again.
 
4) The USA and Russia wanted show trials after the war, the Brits wanted just to shoot the leaders of the Nazi. Maybe the British view prevails. In any case, a lot more Germans will be shot or go to prison due the additional civilian deaths.

Actually if anyone was likely to expound those views it would have been the Russians. Stalin once told a joke over dinner in Tehran that at the end of the war 50-100 thousand German officers should be rounded up and summarily executed (Russian humour escapes me). Roosevelt joked that perhaps it needed only be 49 thousand but Churchill took it seriously;

"THE PRIME MINISTER took strong exception to what he termed the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country. He said that war criminals must pay for their crimes and individuals who had committed barbarous acts, and in accordance with the Moscow Document, which he himself had written, they must stand trial at the places where the crimes were committed. He objected vigorously, however, to executions for political purposes."

Some sources I found even go as far as suggesting he stated he would rather "be taken outside and shot immediately than be party to such an inequity". I doubt any subsequent Prime Minister would put the sentiment so strongly (or eloquently) but I cannot see any situation under which a British Prime Minister would find the extrajudicial murder of any group of people acceptable, no matter who they were.
 
Actually if anyone was likely to expound those views it would have been the Russians. Stalin once told a joke over dinner in Tehran that at the end of the war 50-100 thousand German officers should be rounded up and summarily executed (Russian humour escapes me). Roosevelt joked that perhaps it needed only be 49 thousand but Churchill took it seriously;

"/QUOTE]

Unlike Roosevelt (who seemed to shut down all brain activity when he met Stalin) Churchill knew only too well what Stalin was capable of.

He was also becoming aware of the serious flaws in Roosevelts character especially the way in which he seemed to be easily fooled by Stalin.

By the Tehran conference he could imagine Roosevelt agreeing to almost every demand Stalin made.
 
(Russian humour escapes me).

It's reversal humour and present in our own culture. We laugh because Paddy the Irish builder outsmarts the foreman; people at the time, which was in many ways a nastier, harder time ("If all of us shoot one fascist...") laughed at the idea of it being the German officer corps being summarily executed.

I know I'm fulfilling my own stereotype here, but I am rather troubled by the outrage this remark often causes. Do people not get that it is what was being done to the Soviets, except less?
 
Basically let's imagine a world where the Nazis are more successful in their invasion of the Soviet Union. How? Don't know. Maybe Hitler doesn't let himself by sidetracked by Greece and Yugoslavia so the invasion launches a bit earlier and they manage to take Moscow.

The thing about Yugoslavia is vastly overused and usually is wrong. Even without Yugoslavia it would still take the Germans several weeks to put all forces into position in Eastern Poland, so at most they would have a week or two more; not nearly enough to achieve many more gains. Furthermore, taking Moscow is simply impossible. At most two weeks will see German forces bogged down in brutal street fighting in the suburbs before they're encircled by Soviet reserves and destroyed. IOTL the Germans were completely overextended. Advancing further with the intention of taking Moscow simply isn't possible. Plus, if they did somehow take Moscow, the fact is that the Soviets would collapse. All major rail and fuel lines ran through Moscow; taking it would destroy the logistic and command and control ability of the Red Army, cut the Soviet Union in two, and leave the surviving forces to be torn apart in the Spring, as with Moscow devastated further major offensives will be out of the question. But this is beside the point, because German forces could never take Moscow. Soviet reserves were too large, German forces were well ahead of their railheads, and their forces were well below strength. Stalin's leadership was not necessary for this counterattack. All one needed was reserves and a general to command them to attack, which Stalin's death would not effect.

In conclusion, you scenario is based upon a flawed premise. A better one would be for German forces to:

1. Halt all offensives after the Bryansk-Vyazma encirclement battles in October and dig in.

2. Absorb Soviet attacks with heavy losses and ground lost, but overall a better strategic position than IOTL.

3. Convince Hitler to launch a series of limited offensives to take Leningrad (Or push back the Volkhov Front enough that the city can't be supplied), take Rostov and Voronezh in order to move the front up to the Don River, and focus on letting the Soviets pound themselves uselessly against German defenses while the Germans build up to attack Moscow (With Hitler having been convinced of its strategic importance over that of the Caucasus, perhaps by Walther Model)

4. Have the "2nd Battle of Moscow" in 1943 end in a bloody stalemate and eventual German defeat, but with the Germans able to pull back into improved defenses.

5. Soviet counteroffensives eventually break the German defenses in mid 1943, but with heavy losses and no major German forces encircled, allowing for an immediate withdrawal to improved positions (If Hitler can be convinced that this is feasible, likely not)

6. Have Walther Model be granted command of one or more fronts; his strategy was far superior to Manstein's obsession with "elastic defense" which was infeasible against superior Soviet reserves.

7. German forces pushed back to the Vistula and Budapest by early 1945, but are able to hold off Soviet advances until the Allies reach the Oder. Because of Soviet weakness in the early years of the war British and American mentality is different on Soviet zones of occupation, and Stalin is willing to accept Poland, the Balkans, and east Berlin in his sphere of influence, with all German lands east of the Oder being divided up as IOTL.

This is a bit more realistic than your scenario, though I admit that it's still out there.
 

Inhato

Banned
Without the threat of Soviets their will be no need to accommodate with Nazis in postwar Germany(at least, not as big).
No amnesties in 50s mean hundreds of thousands Nazis stay in prisons for their war crimes.
Most of Germany remains under occupation longer. There is high probability of establishment of couple of different German states later(Federal Republic of Brandenburg-Prussia), South Germany and Republic of the Rhine)-maybe in middle of the 50s.

The outlook for Europe is mixed. On one hand without Germany it harms a bit the economic rebirth, but OTOH most Central Europe is in western camp and part of the capitalist system.

Interestingly, Germany without intensive Cold War wouldn't be so white washed from crimes as it was in OTL. There is a chance that the myth of "clean Wehrmacht" won't emerge.
Also I can see regional blocks emerging equivalent to today Visegrad Group and early EU(something similar was proposed in OTL war) emerging earlier.


Personally I see somewhat different outcome of the POD:

In OTL Churchill proposed a Danubian Confederation, maybe something along these lines would be created as well.

As to borders not much would change. Polish border in the West on Oder-Lusatian Neisse (which would mean Lower Silesia remaining in Germany), East Prussia completely in Polish hands with Krolewiec/Königsberg, but without Stettin/Szczecin. Eastern border along modified Curzon Line, perhaps with B version(which includes Lviv). Don't see it having Belarus or Lithuania.

Maybe a Sorb state connected to Czechs militarily and economically.

Expulsions of Germans would happen for sure.

Can't see any independence for Balts, either will become Soviet states or will be annexed into Soviet Union anyway.
 

Thande

Donor
Expulsions of Germans would happen for sure.

The will would certainly there, but where would the replacements come from considering everything said above about Poland (a) being restored to its prewar boundaries, and (b) a lot more people being killed in the Holocaust and associated war crimes?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The will would certainly there, but where would the replacements come from considering everything said above about Poland (a) being restored to its prewar boundaries, and (b) a lot more people being killed in the Holocaust and associated war crimes?

The large amount of empty Soviet land combined with a totally demilitarized Germany (like Japan) is why i chose Germany only losing East Prussia in the east. With so many more dead Eastern Europeans, maybe more than 20 million, East Prussia would largely be empty, nature reserve. Maybe not an intentional nature preserve, but once the Germans were moved out, a few decades later it would be much like the Chernobyl zone, minus the radiation.
 
It's reversal humour and present in our own culture. We laugh because Paddy the Irish builder outsmarts the foreman; people at the time, which was in many ways a nastier, harder time ("If all of us shoot one fascist...") laughed at the idea of it being the German officer corps being summarily executed.

I know I'm fulfilling my own stereotype here, but I am rather troubled by the outrage this remark often causes. Do people not get that it is what was being done to the Soviets, except less?

This was, on the one hand, Stalin's trademark dark humour, which turns up quite often. On the other hand, it's rather less funny when similar events started to actually happen, and Churchill the intense anticommunist isn't that wrong.
 

MSZ

Banned
The will would certainly there, but where would the replacements come from considering everything said above about Poland (a) being restored to its prewar boundaries, and (b) a lot more people being killed in the Holocaust and associated war crimes?

From all over the country i suppose. OTL pre-war Poland was a highly agricultural state, with most of the homesteads being however quite small - all it would would take is for the post war government to forcefully implement a land reform consolidating all of them into "no less than xxx ha." and compensating the population which would have to surrender their land to their neighbours with land in the east and west. Additionally, there would be about a million displaced Poles who OTL fought on the western front and after the war emigrated to the UK and Americas - in this timeline they could easily return home and be granted land anywhere they want.
 
What are the butterfly effects on Japan here, with the war in Europe dragging on longer, but the Soviets unable to make any offensives against the Home Islands or likely even Korea.
 
interesting war scenario.....

AANW'verse had a more complete soviet defeat....

here, they just dig in and hope for the best.....


after the war, the USSR will be in no state to start saber rattling and doing a cold war. they will still probably have stolen plans for the A-bomb, but not enough resources to build one until the 1950s, by which time the U.S. has developed the H-bomb.


cold war might still come, but would be much later, and might end quicker....
 

Cook

Banned

Stalin once told a joke over dinner in Tehran that at the end of the war 50-100 thousand German officers should be rounded up and summarily executed (Russian humour escapes me). Roosevelt joked that perhaps it needed only be 49 thousand but Churchill took it seriously...
I know I'm fulfilling my own stereotype here, but I am rather troubled by the outrage this remark often causes. Do people not get that it is what was being done to the Soviets, except less?
The event you are referring to took place at the Tehran Conference, during the dinner at the Soviet Embassy on November 29, 1943 and it was not a joke.

Stalin proposed that to prevent German millenarianism from rising again and threatening the world with another war in 15 or 20 years, ‘At least 50,000 and perhaps 100,000 of the German Commanding Staff must be physically liquidated.’

Roosevelt joked that he would put the figure at 49,000 or more.

Churchill objected in the strongest terms. He said that war criminals must face trial and punishment for their crimes, but that wholesale slaughter without trial was unacceptable.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=906

Churchill had been thoroughly briefed by British Military Intelligence on the German discoveries in the Katyn Forrest in April 1943 and was well aware that Stalin fully meant to do what he proposed. It is possible that Roosevelt believed Stalin was joking, unlikely but possible. Roosevelt always felt that he could ‘handle’ Stalin and went to great pains to avoid any direct disagreement with him.
 
Interestingly, the Germans are likely to end up doing much the same thing as the Soviets - relocating whatever they can to the East to keep it out of range of Allied advances and bombers. Given that it would match the regime's intended policies anyway, this is likely to result in an enormous (albeit brief) transfer.

I'd expect there to be very large, very recently-arrived communities of Germans in Poland, Bohemia-Moravia, the Baltic, southeastern Europe, and to a lesser extent, further east. Only a relatively small portion of these would be fitting the ideology - sloppily attempting to pick up the role of the East's farmers in feeding the Reich. Most would likely be in clusters around industrial enclaves located on sites easy to access - the Danube and Vistula are fair bets.
 
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