How to Preserve Royal Yugoslavia

There is one other question that I should ask: how does one make Germany have excellent relations with a Yugoslav entity? I was thinking of coming up with a plausible hypothesis for a German Mittleeuropa that includes Yugoslavia.

There are two ways, which don't have to be mutually exclusive.

A) Ideological. A Communist Germany, supporting either a truly Marxist or some sort of Ba'athist-esque dictatorship of revolutionary military officers*, would be natural allies for each other. The Yugoslavs can supply raw materials to Germany's industrial base, and Yugoslavia can gain access to German manufactured goods on a centrally planned socialist basis. As well, if leftist regimes are few and far between, they would be pressed even closer.

B) Patron-Client. Whether through a quasi-Soviet Union or Greater German Empire, a Yugoslav elite could benefit immensely from having a German patron to arm them and provide protection from other powers (Italy, Britain, Turkey, etc). As long as the Germans give them a measure of autonomy and don't interfere (unless asked) in their domestic politics, a Yugoslav government shouldn't have any problem aligning themselves with Germany.


*This is the regime that runs a German-aligned Yugoslavia in a TL I have kicking around my head. Basically it's dominated by Bosnian and Montenegrin officers, who move the capital to Sarajevo, make the country a unitary state, heavily secularize the place, and crush all opposition with an iron fist of German-designed weapons.
 
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There are two ways, which don't have to be mutually exclusive.

A) Ideological. A Communist Germany, supporting either a truly Marxist or some sort of Ba'athist-esque dictatorship of revolutionary military officers, would be natural allies for each other. The Yugoslavs can supply raw materials to Germany's industrial base, and Yugoslavia can gain access to German manufactured goods on a centrally planned socialist basis. As well, if leftist regimes are few and far between, they would be pressed even closer.

B) Patron-Client. Whether through a quasi-Soviet Union or Greater German Empire, a Yugoslav elite could benefit immensely from having a German patron to arm them and provide protection from other powers (Italy, Britain, Turkey, etc). As long as the Germans give them a measure of autonomy and don't interfere (unless asked) in their domestic politics, a Yugoslav government shouldn't have any problem aligning themselves with Germany.

Solution B might be a bit more feasible though if Yugoslavia hopes to avoid having a communist regime. How can this be achieved though?
 
Solution B might be a bit more feasible though if Yugoslavia hopes to avoid having a communist regime. How can this be achieved though?

A regular authoritarian conservative regime emerging from Weimar, without any of the Nazis' lunacy, would be a good candidate. It's pretty shocking how long you can suppress secessionism with enough guns and foreign support. Over time, you might see the Serbs try to construct a Yugoslav identity that is not strictly Serbian.
 
A regular authoritarian conservative regime emerging from Weimar, without any of the Nazis' lunacy, would be a good candidate. It's pretty shocking how long you can suppress secessionism with enough guns and foreign support. Over time, you might see the Serbs try to construct a Yugoslav identity that is not strictly Serbian.

I can think of the DVNP (which is a non-Nazi, vanilla fascist German party) as the suitable candidate.
 
Azander, what will the PoD for your planned TL about a German-aligned Yugoslavia? My idea for that TL was that Manfred von Richthofen survives in the Great War, but Hitler and Goering are both killed. The Red Baron then joins the Deutschenational Volkspartei and becomes the leader, and under his rule, Germany slowly rebuilds itself and seeks alliances with other countries. The Red Baron's German state resents Poland for taking its territories but could not do anything yet and he doesn't trust Italy's regime.
 
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Azander, what will the PoD for your planned TL about a German-aligned Yugoslavia? My idea for that TL was that Manfred von Richthofen survives in the Great War, but Hitler and Goering are both killed. The Red Baron then joins the Deutschenational Volkspartei and becomes the leader, and under his rule, Germany slowly rebuilds itself and seeks alliances with other countries. The Red Baron's German state resents Poland for taking its territories but could not do anything yet and he doesn't trust Italy's regime.

Your TL idea sounds excellent, mine goes in a very different direction though.

There are a few PoDs actually, the idea is very rough though. Basically, the first PoD is somewhat more successful Socialist and SDP infiltration of the German military rank-and-file and lower officer corps. The second PoD is a successful Spartacist uprising in 1919, which occurs when the SDP throws its support behind the rising and a number of ex-military "Volkswehr" units form to counter the right-wing Freicorps.

Fast-forward about 25 years, and Europe is again on the verge of a major war. Italy has also fallen to fascism, although Mussolini (as a Lenin parallel) was assassinated and replaced by a Stalin-like bureaucratic leader, who reformed the economy and military while crushing all dissent. France saw a relatively brutal 18-month civil war, after which a right-wing, isolationist authoritarian dictatorship took over. During this war, France lost control of Corsica, Nice, Savoy, Algeria and a number of their African colonies to Italy, and Alsace to a German-backed "Workers' Republic". Germany is a quasi-democratic socialist state, with disagreement within the left* tolerated but "counterrevolutionaries" suppressed brutally. Britain is warily watching the continent; while it has tactily aligned itself with France, it is undecided on whether to support the Italian-backed Pact of Seville (Spain, Italy, Portugal, a czarist-fascist Russia, Albania, Prussia, royal Greece, Bulgaria and Austria) or the German-backed "Mitteleuropa" (Germany, Poland, republican Greece, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Romania).

The Second Great War begins when the beleaguered royal government in Yugoslavia, a British client (Britain is the only party without designs on their territory) falls to a "National Progressive Front" military coup. Immediately, Italy and Germany invade. Germany promises to maintain Yugoslav territorial integrity and support the "peoples' republic" while Italy is in it to annex Dalmatia and carve out "free kingdoms of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia".


*The German left actually includes some members of the Nazi "Strasserist" left, who often ally with the authoritarian socialists in the German Revolutionary Socialist Party (similar to OTL Stalinists).
 
Miscellaneous Royal Trivia

The current Obrenovich pretender to the throne of Serbia is also the Petrovic-Njegos pretender to the throne of Montenegro.

King Peter II was officially deposed in late November 1945. He had been in exile since 1941.
 
Your TL idea sounds excellent, mine goes in a very different direction though.

There are a few PoDs actually, the idea is very rough though. Basically, the first PoD is somewhat more successful Socialist and SDP infiltration of the German military rank-and-file and lower officer corps. The second PoD is a successful Spartacist uprising in 1919, which occurs when the SDP throws its support behind the rising and a number of ex-military "Volkswehr" units form to counter the right-wing Freicorps.

Fast-forward about 25 years, and Europe is again on the verge of a major war. Italy has also fallen to fascism, although Mussolini (as a Lenin parallel) was assassinated and replaced by a Stalin-like bureaucratic leader, who reformed the economy and military while crushing all dissent. France saw a relatively brutal 18-month civil war, after which a right-wing, isolationist authoritarian dictatorship took over. During this war, France lost control of Corsica, Nice, Savoy, Algeria and a number of their African colonies to Italy, and Alsace to a German-backed "Workers' Republic". Germany is a quasi-democratic socialist state, with disagreement within the left* tolerated but "counterrevolutionaries" suppressed brutally. Britain is warily watching the continent; while it has tactily aligned itself with France, it is undecided on whether to support the Italian-backed Pact of Seville (Spain, Italy, Portugal, a czarist-fascist Russia, Albania, Prussia, royal Greece, Bulgaria and Austria) or the German-backed "Mitteleuropa" (Germany, Poland, republican Greece, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Romania).

The Second Great War begins when the beleaguered royal government in Yugoslavia, a British client (Britain is the only party without designs on their territory) falls to a "National Progressive Front" military coup. Immediately, Italy and Germany invade. Germany promises to maintain Yugoslav territorial integrity and support the "peoples' republic" while Italy is in it to annex Dalmatia and carve out "free kingdoms of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia".


*The German left actually includes some members of the Nazi "Strasserist" left, who often ally with the authoritarian socialists in the German Revolutionary Socialist Party (similar to OTL Stalinists).

Well I still don't know if Russia could still become a socialist or not, but if it did, then I'm trying to aim for a Russian socialist state that is more like OTL Tito's Yugoslavia than Stalin's USSR. It'd still be called the Soviet Union. but I don't know if it will have Belorussia and Ukraine within its territory.
 
Does Yugoslavia have to include all the territory of Royal Yugoslavia OTL? Could we have Yugoslavia without Montenegro, Yugoslavia without Serbia, or Yugoslavia without Serbia or Montenegro?
 
I will have to research this a lot more closely because I wanted it to be realistic. Of course, this will be my first Yugoslav-centric TL attempted.
 
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