Old September 8th, 2015, 11:32 PM
MattII MattII is offline
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So there's maybe no Polish-Soviet war, which improves relations between the two countries, which means no Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which quite possibly means WW2 never actually starts.
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Old September 8th, 2015, 11:34 PM
Ingsoc Ingsoc is offline
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Hitler writes a book about the evils of Jewish Bolshevism just over the bor...oh.
Yeah no WWII, or at least not in any recognisable sense
Sure WWII can be knocked away or butterflied by an event as early as White Victory in the Russian Civil War. But, a reasonable analogue could occur.
I think that the Hitler-esque ideology of Lebensbraum and giving continental domination a second try is more plausible with a PoD post- revolution and post-Brest-Litovsk than it is with a scenario where there is no revolution and Brest-Litovsk.
A few reasons for this:
a) The Germans retain a memory of actually beating the Russians. It makes contempt for the Russians and the belief that they can be colonized like full non-Europeans more plausible in right-wing German circles than would be the case if the Russians took Berlin in WWI or never got pushed east of Poland.
b) Russian-Allied relations may be worse, the White Government might in retrospect feel more let down than the Western Allies and be more of a mind to consider the French alliance a mistake if they've gone through defeat and revolution and civil war rather than if a Tsarist regime or Provisional Government managed to win or hold on to the end of WWI. Mutual allied acrimony gives German revisionists more of an opportunity.
c) Poland has become independent, and its border with Russia may well be settled violently even with the Whites in power, making Russo-Polish cooperation hard purely for nationalist reasons. In a scenario where the Russian Empire or Provisional Government held on, Poland will either remain either federated with Russia and under its protection or if independent will be in a position where it has to accept the border Russia grants it.
Now could the Germans still be motivated to put a group like the Nazis in power and to launch a war on their eastern neighbors in a White Victory scenario?
Well, it is not predetermined, or super likely, but still plausible -
Without a living Communist state a radical right takeover is harder to swallow, but the memory of the Boleshevik state and sympathetic communist uprisings in Germany can make the powerful feel vulnerable and desirous of protection by a "firm hand".
Anti-semitism can go on with equal force.
Appeasement is a harder sell once Germany starts militarizing and expanding again, because western right-wingers won't need to worry about Communism benefitting.
But it's still not an impossible sell and Russo-Franco-British relations could still be fraught and troubled. Tension over the extent of Russia's borders with Poland, Romania etc could alienate the west. Even if not a communist bogeyman, Britain could excessively fear a right-ist Russian geopolitical bogeyman.
Also, the Nazis, and certainly the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht certainly had no problem being virulently against a right-wing Poland, and was ready t massacre its people and steal its land even though it was not a communist country.