If not for Nazi Germany would WW2 have been the USSR vs the Western Europe?

No. Stalin isn't stupid enough to start a world war.

I really hate this cliche.

You might just have a limited regional war started by Japan but nothing else.

Of course the other potentiality is due to butterflies of say, Hitler being killed on the Western Front that it may be a Trotskyite faction that takes power in the Soviet Union. Trotsky's vision of global revolution and his connections to the Red Army's more competent pre-1941 elements might well mean he'd be a flipped version of Stalin: develop a Soviet Union which has a huge, modern, and COMPETENT leadership in pursuit of global ambitions on an opportunistic basis.

In this case Trotsky's alternate Soviet Union which is both militarized and with a huge, modern army led by a leadership that has the competence the OTL Soviet military lacked would well be a scarier analogue of Nazi Germany.
 
I think the usual assumption is that the rise of Stalinism leads to a USSR that seeks Socialism in One Country. Such a Soviet Union is not likely to go adventuring and thereby triggering a general war. Now, should the Trotskyists get control the ironic result could well be that a European power develops a large military and has an unpredictable, opportunistic leader seeking a bloody war.

Only instead of it being Hitlerian Germany it's a Trotskyite USSR. :eek:


Stalin's motivation for invading Poland and Finland were in the interest of obtaining a buffer zone against western Europe. He had no desire to enact a large scale communist revolution outside the borders of the USSR. Now depending on the political situation in Europe in a TL without the rise of Nazism may create more or less motivation for Stalin to pursue similar ends. But supposing that Stalin has an equal drive to achieve buffer territory against the west, it becomes quite possible for a misjudgement on either side can lead to a full blown war between the soviets and the west.
 
Stalin's motivation for invading Poland and Finland were in the interest of obtaining a buffer zone against western Europe. He had no desire to enact a large scale communist revolution outside the borders of the USSR. Now depending on the political situation in Europe in a TL without the rise of Nazism may create more or less motivation for Stalin to pursue similar ends. But supposing that Stalin has an equal drive to achieve buffer territory against the west, it becomes quite possible for a misjudgement on either side can lead to a full blown war between the soviets and the west.

He also had in Adolf Hitler a leader willing to bargain with the Soviet Union that way in pursuit of a short-term aim. In the absence of the Nazis would any Western leaders be inclined to engage in that kind of geopolitical horse-trading with the Soviet Union?
 
He also had in Adolf Hitler a leader willing to bargain with the Soviet Union that way in pursuit of a short-term aim. In the absence of the Nazis would any Western leaders be inclined to engage in that kind of geopolitical horse-trading with the Soviet Union?

I can certainly imagine plenty of alternate German regimes willing to horse-trade with screwing over Poland in mind, although I'd imagine they'd want enough Poland left at the end to still provide a buffer.

Bruce
 
He also had in Adolf Hitler a leader willing to bargain with the Soviet Union that way in pursuit of a short-term aim. In the absence of the Nazis would any Western leaders be inclined to engage in that kind of geopolitical horse-trading with the Soviet Union?


That's why I said that such a situation depended upon the exact political environment that existed in Europe of TTL. In a TL where Stalin either percieves that the west is more timid, or where there is a major power block that will give him carte blanche in Eastern europe, the chances of him messing around there are just as high as it was OTL, if not higher.
 
I can certainly imagine plenty of alternate German regimes willing to horse-trade with screwing over Poland in mind, although I'd imagine they'd want enough Poland left at the end to still provide a buffer.

Bruce

With the Soviet Union? Given how much pull anti-Communism had IOTL?

That's why I said that such a situation depended upon the exact political environment that existed in Europe of TTL. In a TL where Stalin either percieves that the west is more timid, or where there is a major power block that will give him carte blanche in Eastern europe, the chances of him messing around there are just as high as it was OTL, if not higher.

Yet butterflies that prevent the rise of Nazism could well create the rise of Trotskyism or even a Soviet Union that adopts a more NEP-style industrialization or something like that.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
With the Soviet Union? Given how much pull anti-Communism had IOTL?

Yet butterflies that prevent the rise of Nazism could well create the rise of Trotskyism or even a Soviet Union that adopts a more NEP-style industrialization or something like that.

Poland: The Germans would want their piece. If the USSR attack, the Germans would probably go in to "protect Poland", but acctually they'd just seize the Corridor, and perhaps help help rest of Western Poland if they feel for it, but definitely annex the Corridor.

USSR: Trotskyism and NEP don't go well hand in hand, if anything NEP would be abandoned earlier, and the forced collectivization of agriculture would happen earlier with Trotsky in charge.
 
Stalin had a wild card in it's ability to modernize into a military force capable of defeating Germany; Spain's gold. During the Spanish Civil War, Republican Spain gave Stalin 72.6% of it's gold for safe keeping and war supplies. It added up to about 510 tons of gold! After the Republicans lost, Stalin kept the gold.

If there is no Nazi Germany this exchange probably wouldn't have happened. While a lack of this gold probably wouldn't mean the Soviet Union crumbles in economic despair, everyone can agree that this is a lot of money that could help any country out.

Would not having this money prevent the Soviet Union from making war in Finland and Eastern Europe as it did in our time line? Could it even weaken the country enough so that some other empire would consider taking a shot at Russia?

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Gold
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Stalin had a wild card in it's ability to modernize into a military force capable of defeating Germany; Spain's gold. During the Spanish Civil War, Republican Spain gave Stalin 72.6% of it's gold for safe keeping and war supplies. It added up to about 510 tons of gold! After the Republicans lost, Stalin kept the gold.

If there is no Nazi Germany this exchange probably wouldn't have happened. While a lack of this gold probably wouldn't mean the Soviet Union crumbles in economic despair, everyone can agree that this is a lot of money that could help any country out.

Would not having this money prevent the Soviet Union from making war in Finland and Eastern Europe as it did in our time line? Could it even weaken the country enough so that some other empire would consider taking a shot at Russia?

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Gold

This would have represented 4-6 billion dollars in 2000 (I'm not sure if the wikipedia figure of 9 billion is as currency or as commodity; if as commodity gold has sort of bubbled since 2000); probably a few million in 1930: Soviet GDP was counted in tens of billions then already at least. It's a lot but it's probably a drop in the pond. Russia also has significant gold mines anyway.
 
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Typo

Banned
I can certainly imagine plenty of alternate German regimes willing to horse-trade with screwing over Poland in mind, although I'd imagine they'd want enough Poland left at the end to still provide a buffer.

Bruce
Considering the fact that the Weimar Republic and the Soviets had joint military programs and other corporations yes.
 
We're hearing a lot about Trotsky or a Trotskyite taking the helm in the USSR, despite Trotsky's complete lack of political finesse. If we're going to posit a leader other than Stalin, it could just as well be Bukharin or somebody else on the right - and they'd be no keener on war than Stalin was. Less paranoid, true, but given that they meant to keep going with an altered version of the NEP their industrial and military buildup would likely be somewhat slower as well.

Besides, although Trotsky, if he did somehow take charge, would probably mean an expanded role for the Red Army in the state, rapid industrialisation, and "permenant revolution", that still doesn't mean he wants to fight Europe. With someone more willing to take risks and with more trust in his army in charge, the USSR is more likely to try and pull a fait accompli on the cordon countries, and that means it faces a greater risk of being confronted by the capitalist powers; but it's not like Trotsky, who's foreign policy meant working closely with communists in the colonial world and who wanted to attract foreign investment to the USSR, wants to fight them.

The really simple answer to this question is in another question: looking over the period of history when there could be said to be a balance of great powers. how many times has one comparatively backward one decided to attack 2-3 more modern ones without any help whatsoever?

Once we get our ideological blinkers off, it's just a splendidly unlikely bit of great power politics. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would have to be the result of a major mistake (or western European aggression, of course). Calling it a 50-50 chance is exaggerated.
 
I concur with IBC. I think it's also worth noting that Trotsky was one of the few opposed to the invasion of Poland in 1920. But I guess "isolationist promoting foreign investment" isn't quite as terrifying.
 
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